(Sorry, not sorry for the old yet still valid meme)
I just wanted everyone here to know that [email protected] has been taken over relaunched by me and will become an active community again!
In the name of interplanetary peace, everyone here is invited to sub if you have not already done so and to start posting whatever news/discussion/memes related to The Orville you can think of.
I’m going to add .world’s c/startrek and c/tenforward to the links section of our community and I hope you guys do the same.
Happy Arbor Day! (No, seriously, the 25th of April is actually Arbor Day.)
Five hundred cigarettes
good god I love the orville so much
I tried The Orville, but got a little put off by McFarlane as the captain.
Does this improve as the series goes on?
As I might give it another shot.I didn’t like the humor, but it tones down in each season. By season 3, the humor is about as frequent as a lighthearted TNG episode, and it’s done better.
Doesn’t really matter, because it’s a show pretending to be satire so it could get greenlit. It’s just a TNG-era Star Trek with a different coat of paint. There are a lot of places where it’s doing the same plot as some other bit of Star Trek, except doing it better with more lead up across many episodes.
It does get better, and Ed becomes a lot less wishy-washy.
The conceit of The Orville is that it’s not the best ship in the fleet with the best crew. The Orville is an older mid-sized cruiser and the only reason Ed made Captain is because they couldn’t find enough Captains to fill out a rapidly-expanding fleet. So they gave this unimportant ship to him.
I think they spent way too much time on Ed getting over his divorce with his XO Kelly, but after that he’s fine.
As for the show itself, only the Pilot really feels like “Family Guy in space,” because that was a Trojan Horse to get the show on the air in the first place. After that, it really does become a send up to The Next Generation and the 3rd season, New Horizons, is an actual science fiction epic.
I think they spent way too much time on Ed getting over his divorce with his XO Kelly, but after that he’s fine.
He gets over Kelly at some point? I can’t remember if I watched 2 or 3 seasons but one of my problems with the show is how cringey and toxic he consistently is towards her. “The only way to stop me from dating this younger clone of you we came across is if you date me instead” was pretty late in the series.
I like the rest of the cast, but the captain is grating.
That’s a reassuring bit of info. If the in-universe explanation is that he isn’t the best captain, I might give it another shot.
As my initial reaction was “has McFarlane just made himself kirk?”No, he actually sidelines himself quite a bit.
Stick with it. The first few episodes were terrible, and I was very pessimistic about it’s future. Then it suddenly got better very quickly, and became nearly as good as the Star Trek series’. Its gotten even better as time went on. Im looking forward to its return.
McFarlane as the captain? No it/he doesn’t improve.
Damn, guess I hit a sore spot!
My face when I realize the crossover meming potential:
The Orville was sweet justice for Penny Johnson Jerald as an actor. She has been so good and used so well as Doctor Finn.
God this is perf for that “time is linear” “i’ll make your arse linear” community mashup. Inception that shit.
It has all been downhill since the late 90s
Fuck, Agent Smith was right.
I put 9/11 as the beginning of the end.
Finn screaming is already a meme.
Discovery gets more hate then it deserves, but The Orville is certainly more of a Star Trek show. I’m glad I stuck out the rough start (which is on brand for a Star Trek show lol)
I respectfully disagree, discovery is a truly awful star trek installment. However I respect your opinion.
Strange new worlds is legit though
SNW is great. It is such a pure distillation of Star Trek
I don’t really like the gorn plotline, but it’s the show I recommend as a first for new Trekkies
Discovery gets more hate then it deserves
I think the problem is the writers clearly had a show that they wanted and for some bizarre reason they decided that it was also going to be a Star Trek show even though they clearly didn’t actually want it to be Star Trek.
If they just made it its own thing it would have been fine, but all this Star Trek lore kept popping up and then they had to come up with some hand wavy explanation for why their particular vision doesn’t fit established canon, and the whole thing just didn’t work as a result.
I would have been totally down for a “magic exists alongside the sci-fi technology” show. There’s a lot they could have done with that concept, but then for some reason they kept trying to introduce Klingons into it.
I’m so sick of Klingons.
I’d argue that it was hurt by specifically trying to fit TNG-era Star Trek, or people expecting that of it.
It would have worked perfectly fine as a TOS/TAS show, since they never really shied away from there being unexplainable magic with the science out in the universe. Witches, wizards, and the devil are all real, and one universe away, so too is actual magic.
Whereas TNG and post-TNG would always try and hammer that into the work of a godlike entity such as a Q, or some grounded science. Q abilities are the work of highly sophisticated subspace interactions that have yet to be technologically replicated. There are particular neurotransmitters, psychology, and brain structures involved in telepathy, and it’s not simple ESP/psionics.
And people wanted the latter. This is most notable with the cause of the Burn. People hated it because the idea of a child being able to psionically disrupt dilithium galaxy-wide would have been silly in TNG, without them being a child Q, or something like that.
But as a TOS/TAS plot, it fits in fine. Lazarus briefly caused the entire universe to blink out of existence, and Charlie X, due to the powers bestowed upon him needed to keep him alive, could explode ships with his mind, and would have destroyed the Federation if left unchecked.
TL;DR: It worked as Trek, but people basically wanted TNG and got TOS.
I find that’s a fairly reasonable assesment of ‘science’ versus ‘magic’ sensibility, but the main thing for me is that the arc concept due to the modern “binge” sensibilities is rough.
When Babylon 5 and DS9 did arcs, they did so carefully embedded in generally episodic series (people couldn’t “binge”, maybe you would tape it if you felt like it, but people weren’t always that engaged, so you catered to people that may miss some of your airings). So you had nice, digestable pieces and the underlying big thing plays out a bit at a time sometimes taking over for 2 or 3 episodes, but generally letting other smaller stories take the foreground for the episode.
But with “binge mentality”, there’s an inclination for showrunners to go nuts. Picard and Discovery produce a season that is pretty much just one story. The story doesn’t have enough meat to really drive that much runtime, but they make the pacing pretty torturous to fill the time. Also, with episodic, if you don’t like a particular story/execution, you kind of forget it because there’s a whole new story with new execution the next week. When you have a season you don’t like, well that’s harder to overlook.
but then for some reason they kept trying to introduce Klingons into it.
Ones with a third different head shape, no less!
Ones with a third different head shape, no less!
And long drawn out subtitled scenes for some reason.
In TNG when Klingons are talking on a Klingon ship I don’t think they’re actually speaking English. I understand they are speaking their native language and it is being translated for me. I don’t know why Discovery thought this was the place to go for “realism”.
Fourth. You forgot about the “Kelvin timeline” Star Trek films.
I remember right before Discovery aired they showed a few behind the scenes pictures and one of them included the Klingon uniforms.
Me and a lot of other people started saying “Did they steal those from the Abrams movies?”
And not even abrams klingons, they always reminded me of Krall from Beyond
Wouldn’t that be 5 then?
- TOS
- ST: VI
- TNG
- ST: Kelvin Timeline
- ST: Discovery
Interesting point! Had to look up some screenshots, but it does look like they were maybe trying to “bridge the gap” between the TOS and TNG-era Klingon look in that film, which I am going to be watching again after this meeting in order to verify.
Even if it’s an intentional transitory look, I’ll agree that it’s still unique, and therefore counts. Great call.
I’d say there are up to 8 designs, depending on how much you want to nitpick:
- TOS: Smooth. Unnaturally smooth.
- TMP: Single column ridge with hair on either side. Behind the scenes the concept was that the spinal column continued up from the back all around the head.
- TSFS: Ridges cover the forehead, are wider and flatter, and have a continuous hairline behind them. Female Klingons have substantially less pronounced ridges.
- TUC: Chang has those same less pronounced ridges. Maybe it’s not a male/female thing. Or maybe Chang is trans?
- TNG: Those less pronounced ridges are gone. Male and female Klingons both get roughly the same degree of lumpyness.
- Kelvin: Ridges look flatter and more pleated. I don’t think we see any hair, but it’s been a while.
- Disco: Coneheads, quadruple nostrils, and no hair.
- Disco S2: Partial retcon as the Klingons start growing their hair in and the heads appear less conical.
- Picard/SNW: Fully revert to the TNG era look. Doesn’t count since it isn’t a new design.
Enterprise also had slightly different looking Klingons and IIRC addressed why (a genetic disorder or disease IIRC)
This is starting to feel a bit too nuanced.
Yeah, how dare those artists do their jobs! I can’t stand this sentiment. Times and technology change, and so designs can change because of that. Yes they ham fisted an explanation witht the ENT arc. But like, should we go back to the racist Asian caricature based look? People who can’t separate the stories from the fact that their real productions that have to actually exist in reality don’t deserve Star Trek.
You can change costumes and makeup without completely changing unnecessary parts.
Klingons went from being established as clearly mammalian and very hairy to a completely different reptilian-in-appearance species (also with an entirely different culture but let’s ignore that), then back to mammalian.
They also made significant changes to Andorians. The hair, facial structure, skin tones, and antennae changed, but they were still clearly Andorians, so nobody cared. If they made them red with yellow hair and a rhino horn instead of antennae then it would be rightly ridiculed.
The assertion that if you’re against what early DIS did to Klingons then you’re a racist who wants Asian caricatures is absolutely insane. What are you smoking?
The designs chosen for alien characters are based on the limitations and of the technology of their time, not just creative wants. You know why Klingons were so hairy up till disco? Because wigs were cheaper and look better on camera than full body prosthetics did. Remember the fish heads?
But now they have a lot better prosthetic technology so let’s reinterpret the designs for this new show. We can maintain the characteristics from the text but we can also change the things we did because they were more practical then.
But then we get to your last paragraph and you completely lose me. How you made that jump from what I said is just, bravo. 👏🏻 that’s some fancy gymnastics right there. Again, people who can’t understand that stories produced in live action actually have to exist in reality and make choices for practical and not just creative reasons are absolutely insufferable.
You know why Klingons were so hairy up till disco? Because wigs were cheaper and look better on camera than full body prosthetics did.
That is complete bullshit. Klingons were never designed to be reptilian. There have been reptilian races shown in Trek long before DIS.
Klingon design settled on how they look throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s because that’s what they wanted them to look like. They’re a hairy, mammalian species.
But now they have a lot better prosthetic technology so let’s reinterpret the designs for this new show.
You can reinterpret without throwing away everything and making a clearly entirely different species. Like going from mammals to reptilians. And again don’t try to bullshit is into thinking making a reptilian species was impossible until 2017.
But then we get to your last paragraph and you completely lose me. How you made that jump from what I said is just, bravo
That’s exactly what you said. Your mental gymnastics is insane.
Again, people who can’t understand that stories produced in live action actually have to exist in reality and make choices for practical and not just creative reasons are absolutely insufferable.
Jfc, there’s an insufferable person here and it’s certainly not me. You are the one who doesn’t understand.
Stop with this stupidity and mental gymnastics. It’s not impossible to make Klingons mammalian, because we’ve already done it for decades, and we again do it now.
Why are you lying by saying that the change was done for a “practical” reasons and that mammalian costume design “doesn’t exist in reality”?
We’re clearly experiencing two different realities here and this just isn’t gonna work. Sorry, have a good one.
How you made that jump from what I said
Maybe it was when you said:
should we go back to the racist Asian caricature based look?
That’s less of a jump and more of a… What’s smaller than as step?
What’s smaller than as step?
Agreed. It’s a decent action scifi show that is hurt by trying to fit the IP. It did do some interesting things with the mirror universe, and some of the latter season parts where it takes nonsensical one off TOS concepts and completely seriously says “that’s canon, let’s build a plot point on it” were entertaining, if not good.
But it just doesn’t get Star Trek and it says something that I tell people getting in to the shows not to watch it.
It got the hate it deserved
Now I’m thinking I should give it another try.
I gave Discovery half a season, I have the Orville 2 or 3 episodes and while it was funny it didn’t really click for me. I just lost interest after a few episodes.
Edit: just finished episode 3. Now I remember why I didn’t keep watching. I should have just read the plot breakdown and skipped the episode. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Just read your edit yeah…about a girl is so fucking facile, it’s a massive piece of shit. I hate that episode.
They revisit the plot hook later though and it is spectacular
I found the first three eps “okay” ish. Something to watch.
Then ep 4 landed and oh shit we got trek here boys. Then you got Pria, Krill is still my go to introduction ep because it starts with a crewmember being dared to eat a cactus but ends on a damning note about cycles of violence. Keeps going from there, ep 4 (If the stars should appear) is the growing of the beard.
The best way that I found to think about The Orville is that Seth MacFarlane had to shoe-horn jokes into the first few episodes to satisfy the execs who expected him to make a comedy and then gradually that tapers off to become a really solid Star Trek-type show (that still has humor, but it’s more organic, workplace type humor).
Yeah, it follows a lot of the “futuristic parallels to modern day issues” that we saw with ToS and TNG, while at the same time adding in humor that ranges from tongue-in-cheek to outright raunchy. I can’t imagine a TNG episode that would address “holodeck sex addiction” but Orville actually manages to do a pretty good job of stradding seriousness of that issue along with humor.
For the more serious stuff: imagine an alliance when it’s discovered that one of the members has done (and is still doing) some stuff that’s pretty strongly against the morals of the rest. If called on it they threaten to pull out. While all are in the middle of a war for survival. And they’re also one of the biggest weapons suppliers
That’s pretty close to some issues today while also being years old.
The Orville is a weird show. It hews very closely to the format and production design of 90s Trek (including a lot of budget-conscious decisions), and many of the creatives have a Star Trek background going back that far. Frankly, I think a lot of the scripts were from the TNG slush pile. It’s clearly a love letter to those shows.
However, it’s also clearly Seth MacFarlane’s love letter. He gets to be the captain. His friends and lovers get to play major parts despite sometimes not really having the acting chops for it. The characters are all obsessed with the cultural touchstones of white American Gen-X’ers. In the early going, the Family-Guy/Ted/etc. sense of humor is front and center, and while that gets much better, it never fully goes away. One can also just about imagine 20-something Seth and his buddies screaming at the TV that there is no moral ambiguity in a given ST episode and that Jean Luc needs to just pick a side.
In some ways, it can be pretty rough, but then, mostly because it is such an earnest homage, it’s greater than the sum of its parts. I never fell in love with it the way many have, but after wading through the first few episodes and getting a feel for what it was and wasn’t, I grew fond of it. I’d say it’s worth watching, but you don’t have to apologize for not fully buying in. TBH, I feel fairly similar levels of tempered fondness for Disco, though for very different reasons.
wjrii hit the nail on the head. If you categorically don’t like the vibe it might not be for you. Like any true Trek show it takes time to find its feet. The plot is coarse and hamfisted (as a trans person, the trans allegory episode was hard to get through) but eventually turns around to be a good example of scifi for contemporary social commentary. The humour (both quality and balance) improves but it doesn’t stop being a Seth MacFarlane show. I value its earnesty, but it’s pretty far down the list for my suggested “Star Trek” viewing order.
Just finished ep 3. it was definitely the forced gender assignment on a baby episode that did it…
Yep that’s the one. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t come up again for a while, and when it does it’s actually quite well done.
Scenery: repainted ikea furniture
vulcan / doctor / kirk: check
All extraterrestrial planets are shot in the back lot: check
Well, everything seems to be acceptable here.
They need to make more Orvilles.
They are! https://imdb.com/news/ni64745287/
Excited for s4 oville!
Me too. I would like if they packed a little more humour into the season, like season 1 and 2. Season 3 was a little too serious. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but there were just a little too far between the jokes.
The problem with s3 wasn’t the seriousness - we had plenty of that everywhere else - it was the missing small moments. Those little filler moments they slipped into the episodic serials that picked out little threads here and there and brought such a very very heartwarmingly humorous and human element to the show. Bortus’ moustache. The random Karaoke. Talking shit in the mess, finding out a crewmember can eat anything and Gordon promptly producing a cactus and a dare. Latchkum! Shit that made you invest in the characters. The reminder that even in utopia we’re still batshit humanity
Is it happening?
Admittedly I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the news but it’s been radio silence for a few years now so I am kind of sceptical.
The fact that they didn’t immediately go into season 4 after finishing season 3, which is what most shows do, kind of implied that the studio at least felt done with it. Which personally I think was short-sighted. You don’t leave large gaps like that because it increases the likelihood that the actors are going to go off and get other gigs. It’s not like they’re being paid in the interim so they kind of have to.
The timing was that Disney was in the process of transferring ownership of all the 20th Century Fox media to them right as The Orville would have been gearing up for a fourth season production.
What’s more interesting than them not immediately green-lighting it was that they never ever canceled it. Disney rattled off a list of Fox/Hulu properties they wouldn’t continue and The Orville was suspiciously absent. Seth confirmed later on that he was negotiating to continue the show and told fans to never say die.
And, yeah, the extended production timeline of season 3 is what made Adrianne Palicki (Kelly Grayson) walk. It seems like most, if not all, the rest of the principal cast is still onboard.
Disney wasn’t sure, the showrunners all wanted to keep it going.
Hold up what?
apparently https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18158340
Amazing
Farscape: any chance you could send O’Brian over for some pure jet fuel?
I’m going to add .world’s c/startrek and c/tenforward to the links section of our community and I hope you guys do the same.
Why?! They are totally different shows that share no similarities, do not share themes, do not share numerous details, share no actors, writers or directors and are just completely different, distinct SF shows!
/s
This comment directed by Jonathan Frakes
That’s fantastic Aeronmelon! I’ve just added a link to our sidebar!
Subscribed!
Here I am a novice Trek fan booking the next few years to watching the rest of the Star Trek I’ve never seen … now I have to add this to my list
Thanks! … and subscribed!
You’re in for a wild ride!
Remember to add it to lemmy-federate.com
The Orville is the New Vegas of Star Trek
