# The Orville-Seth McFarlane **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 17, 2017, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814 "2017-05-17T03:28:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/421 "2017-09-20T04:54:09Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Uhm … homeworld. Homework is … something else. 😉 Maybe in the 25th century they’ll have autocorrect that can detect context. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/422 "2017-09-20T10:59:47Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Back when I served, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, alcohol was available when off-duty, and smoking was _verboten_ in all but a few designated areas (and never during unrep). Of course, I served on a carrier, so rules may have been different on other vessels. Jet fuel and flame don’t mix. In the original _ **Battlestar Galactica** _, Starbuck smoked huge phallic-symbol cigars pretty much wherever he wanted to. Have never watched the reboot, so I don’t know if the same was true there. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/423 "2017-09-20T12:32:05Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > That was in The Naked Time, so he was drunk on water. Scotty is cutting through the door, the guy is about to destroy the Enterprise somehow or other. Crewman “I’ll sing I’ll Take You Home Kathleen one…more…time!” Kirk: “For God’s sake get that door open!” ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/424 "2017-09-20T13:31:06Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Scotty is cutting through the door, the guy is about to destroy the Enterprise somehow or other. > > Crewman “I’ll sing I’ll Take You Home Kathleen one…more…time!” > > Kirk: “For God’s sake get that door open!” The “crewman” was Riley. Lt Kevin Thomas Riley. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/425 "2017-09-20T14:42:24Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > They returned to Earth at the end of the last episode; Kelly had an entire conversation with the Admiral were it was revealed she used her family connections to get Ed his command. > > So if Bortus’s species is all male how would he even be able to recognize his offspring as female? :dubious: It doesn’t have a penis? Perhaps his species USED to have females, some sort of calamitous disease hit them, and they came up with a way to reproduce anyway. We could fanwank a lot of things, but I didn’t like Episode 2 as much as Episode 1, for a few reasons: 1. The episode just seemed kind of light. 2. You can’t present the audience with characters and have character-altering events happen to them in the SECOND EPISODE. We barely know Alara and Bortus, and within the first half of the second episode, Alara’s youth is running up against her rank in a hugely important way, and Bortus is presented with a literally race-altering bit of news. I mean, I don’t really know either of these people yet. The fact Alara lacks moral courage isn’t something that was built up. The backstory of Bortus’s species we don’t know at all; I had to fanwank why he’d know his baby was a female. We don’t really know anything about Bortus individually except that he’s very stern and has a shitty sense of humor. Putting those together, I guess my complaint is that **MacFarlane needs to establish the group dynamic before he can twist it for dramatic effect**. Alara taking command of Orville would have had more dramatic weight if I’d spend ten episodes learning that she is unsure of herself, and has been promoted too quickly. I actually didn’t even know she was the ship’s fourth-ranked officer. Maybe we could have has a scene in Episode 7 where the fact she outranks the much more skilled and experienced John Lamarr is played for a laugh or a moment of tension, and she wilts under his influence. Then, when she’s asked to take command of the ship, you’d have a sense of tension as to what was going to happen. Same with Bortus. (Bortis?) For 47 minutes of this show he was tough and unflappable and now he’s married and hatching an egg. Wait, what? I barely know the guy. I think they would have been better off allowing the show to gestate a little more over 4-6 episodes where Ed’s the captain of the ship, we see what he’d good and bad at and how he commands, and his chain of command does their jobs and we see what they’re good and bad at and how much they like each other, or not. This episode at least did give us some good scenes between MacFarlane and Palicki, who really have chemistry, but it didn’t have to happen in the context of this plot. It didn’t even have to happen in Episode 2. If you’re hoping for a multi season run, you can’t blow the entire arc of their relationship in a month and a half. One of the many good parts of "Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show The Orville is trying to be, was the relationship, such as it was, between Picard and the Crushers. The relationship had a natural source of conflict which was, as we found out, later complicated by the fact Picard and Dr. Crusher loved each other, but could not quite admit it (in the standard timeline) because it was too emotionally hard. This was especially important in the image of Jean-Luc Picard, a man of great strength in many areas but who was, in this one way, frightened and walled off. The story was actually very poignant, **and they didn’t mention it at all more than twice a season, tops.** His relatiopnship with her son was more depicted (And added to the complex nature of it.) Ninety-eight percent of the time he was the Captain of the ship and she was the doctor, and that was it, and they let the characters’ interactions speak for themselves. The Orville would be well served by trying this. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/426 "2017-09-20T19:55:06Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > 1. You can’t present the audience with characters and have character-altering events happen to them in the SECOND EPISODE. We barely know Alara and Bortus, and within the first half of the second episode, Alara’s youth is running up against her rank in a hugely important way, and Bortus is presented with a literally race-altering bit of news. > > [snip] > > The Orville would be well served by trying this. In point of fact, Orville IS following in TNG’s footsteps here. In the original series we got “The Naked Time” as the fourth episode, which had impact _because_ by then we knew about Vulcans and their logic and control of emotion and how much Spock’s sense of self was invested by his need to be VULCAN (in all caps.) So then we got TNG, and the SECOND episode was “The Naked Now” which had no real impact except for some amusing lines. We knew barely anything about the characters and weren’t invested in them yet. Either this episode was a deliberate homage to TNG screwing up that way… or they learned the wrong episode from TNG’s experience. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/427 "2017-09-20T21:53:27Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > In the original series we got “The Naked Time” as the fourth episode, which had impact _because_ by then we knew about Vulcans and their logic and control of emotion and how much Spock’s sense of self was invested by his need to be VULCAN (in all caps.) Or at least Vulcanian. Aside from the cliché of “Screw the Admiral’s orders, we’re going anyway” and there (probably) being no repercussions, I thought the second episode was okay, even if it relied pretty heavily on the 1960-2010 pop-culture window which, given the show’s creator, I have no business being surprised by. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/428 "2017-09-20T22:05:30Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Or at least Vulcanian. > > Aside from the cliché of “Screw the Admiral’s orders, we’re going anyway” and there (probably) being no repercussions, I thought the second episode was okay, even if it relied pretty heavily on the 1960-2010 pop-culture window which, given the show’s creator, I have no business being surprised by. That’s an interesting span you mention. Quite large, but pointedly missing the last seven years. What would be in there if it were more like 1960-2015 or so? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/429 "2017-09-20T22:36:32Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That’s an interesting span you mention. Quite large, but pointedly missing the last seven years. What would be in there if it were more like 1960-2015 or so? Millennials in SPACE! :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/430 "2017-09-20T22:53:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That’s an interesting span you mention. Quite large, but pointedly missing the last seven years. What would be in there if it were more like 1960-2015 or so? There’s no attempt in there to pointedly miss anything. I figure if something’s a pop-culture product of just the last seven years, I probably wouldn’t recognize it. Heck, there have been whole _South Park_ episodes relying heavily on references to such-and-such singer and such-and-such reality-show star and such-and-such internet sensation, and I have no fucking clue who any of these people are. I figured roughly the range from “Ensign Parker” (_McHale’s Navy_, first aired 1962) to _Duck Dynasty_ (first aired 2012) meant I was pretty close, rounded off to the nearest decades. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/431 "2017-09-20T23:14:42Z")
On reflection, Kermit the Frog is older than I thought, making his debut in 1955, though the early version of the character only somewhat resembled the stuffed-animal version on the Captain’s desk, which I figure is from the 1970s or later. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/432 "2017-09-20T23:22:17Z")
So we’ve had an Admiral Halsey and an Ensign Parker. Can a Captain Crunch be far behind? ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/433 "2017-09-20T23:46:13Z")
More potential names for starships (all vessels prefixed with _USS_): \*Curtiss Richtofen Rickenbacker Mitchell Lindbergh Earhart Wiley\* (or _Post_) \*Hughes O’Hare Yeager\* Care to add any more? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Aquadementia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aquadementia/32/555_2.png) [@Aquadementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquadementia)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/434 "2017-09-21T00:39:22Z")
I’m expecting the Orville’s sister ship to be the Redenbacher. Or maybe the Wilbur, but that would be a brother ship. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/435 "2017-09-21T01:27:51Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > More potential names for starships (all vessels prefixed with _USS_): > > \*Curtiss > > Richtofen > > Rickenbacker > > Mitchell > > Lindbergh > > Earhart > > Wiley\* (or _Post_) > > \*Hughes > > O’Hare > > Yeager\* > > Care to add any more? 🆒 Already been used, but _Grissom_, _Armstrong_, _Gagarin_, or any other of a number of aviators-turned-astronauts. _Wright_ (duh) _Montgolfier_ (eh, that’s a stretch) _Sukhoi_ _Hughes_ _Arnold_ (commander of the USAAF) _Symington_ (first Secretary of the Air Force) _Bush_ (the first and only combat-aviator President) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/436 "2017-09-21T01:36:55Z")
Oops, missed the duplication… ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/437 "2017-09-21T02:08:23Z")
I’m really enjoying this. It’s much better than I imagined it would be. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/438 "2017-09-21T02:14:42Z")
> [@Aquadementia](#): > > I’m expecting the Orville’s sister ship to be the Redenbacher. Or maybe the Wilbur, but that would be a brother ship. Or the _Robin_, followed by the _Frank Lloyd_ and the _Little Joe Cart_. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/439 "2017-09-21T02:21:05Z")
Continuing with WWI aces, I’ll add \*Ball Bishop Barker Boelcke\* (or _Oswald_) _Immelmann_ (or _Max_) \*Fonck Guynemer Nungesser\* _Luke_ Another one I’m partial to is a real rocket scientist: _Goddard._ \*Tsyolkovskii \*was used on _ **TNG** _, so I’ll also add _Oberth_. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/440 "2017-09-21T02:28:53Z")
\*Robin \*should be paired with _Olds_. 😃 Can’t forget \*Bader \*or \*Gibson \*either. 🆒 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814.md?page=23)