# 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:** 57
**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:** [October 30, 2017, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1121 "2017-10-30T18:47:34Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Funny as viewership for _Black Mirror_ is significantly lower than _Community_, but whatever. I can barely make it through the episodes they are so slow and ponderous. Give me a repeat of the _Twilight Zone_ anyday. I actually count both shows among my favorites, but to argue that _Community_ is “relatively obscure” is preposterous. Just being on a major broadcast TV network in prime time for several years gave it a significant profile. And in addition to that, its Internet fandom is legendary. [Vulture ranked it](http://www.vulture.com/2012/10/25-most-devoted-fans/slideshow/13/) as the 13th most dedicated fanbase (with _Star Trek_ #14 and Oprah #15) and noted that at the time (after the show’s third season), the most recent AV Club episode review had over 100,000 comments. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1122 "2017-10-30T19:01:57Z")
This is the dorkest timeline. ---
**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:** [October 30, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1123 "2017-10-30T19:05:08Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > This is the dorkest timeline. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1124 "2017-10-30T19:28:47Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > “My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: Don’t even try.” - Capt. Kathryn Janeway, USS _Voyager_ I like the way they addressed it in the _Time Machine_ film from several years ago: “You built your time machine because of Emma’s death. If she had lived, it would never have existed. So how could you use your machine to go back in time and save her?” ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1125 "2017-10-30T19:34:10Z")
I didn’t like this episode at all. Aside from the inescapable fact that it totally pales in comparison to the Black Mirror treatment, 1. Just not a lot happened, really. There was no secondary story. John got in trouble and then he got out of it because they gamed the system. Oh well. 2. The character of John LaMarr is just too far into “black clown” for my comfort level. Was it really necessary to have the black guy be a jive-talking, irrelevant jokester? If he’s such a skilled navigator why does he never do anything smart? For a guy who logically must be both educated and skilled, he sure acted stupid. He’s insulting people on his way out the door; he could have gotten downvotes on his badge and gotten to 10,000,000 right there. His character borders on offensively racist. The thing is that the misunderstanding and subsequent problem would much more logically have come from the Orville’s crew just being uncomfortable with what’s going on, and accidentally making offense. Have them screw up with money, or the cultural appropriation thing with Alara’s hat, or use an Earth phrase that’s offensive to the locals, or something that seems like no big deal to use but would be offensive to other people. Having John act the fool is just over the top. Later in the show he gives audience members high fives and the TV host is offended that he hit people - it could have been something like that. 1. They brushed against some of the thing that would be interesting about such a society, and again I like the fact that one way of doing things did not win out over the other; note that for its weirdness the society they visit was a functioning, peaceful one. But they spend 44 minutes of screen time on it and hardly touched some of the cool and funny implications such a society would have. You could think of a thousand things about such a place that would be off or weird or the opportunity for a joke, but it just looked like they felt like shooting an episode out on the street. Oh well, they got to get off set and shoot in Westlake Village, good for them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1126 "2017-10-30T20:28:44Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Of course, now a precedent has been set - you can anesthetize and surgically remove the genitals of anyone you want for your personal use and call it a joke while they go through the minor inconvenience of growing new ones. And hope they don’t have to pee anytime soon. > [@simster](#): > > Who said it was Malloy’s [leg]? Wow, maybe starships weren’t the only thing Charlize Theron’s character was stealing… > [@What\_Exit](#): > > My mistake, [Uhura taking command] only happened in the animated series, not TOS. That’s right: [The Lorelei Signal (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lorelei_Signal_(episode)). Sulu seemed to outrank her throughout TOS. > [@simster](#): > > look around you - maybe you could build a rudimentary lathe… And be sure to tear your shirt. > [@RickJay](#): > > …The character of John LaMarr is just too far into “black clown” for my comfort level. Was it really necessary to have the black guy be a jive-talking, irrelevant jokester? If he’s such a skilled navigator why does he never do anything smart? For a guy who logically must be both educated and skilled, he sure acted stupid. He’s insulting people on his way out the door; he could have gotten downvotes on his badge and gotten to 10,000,000 right there. His character borders on offensively racist… I’ve had a similar reaction to the character (and half-expected the guards to reach out to tap his red down-arrow as his court-appointed PR advisor dragged him away before he could hit 10 million). But both he and the (white) helmsman have been shown to be different varieties of dumbass, good at some things but laughably not at others. ---
**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:** [October 30, 2017, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1127 "2017-10-30T22:20:03Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The character of John LaMarr is just too far into “black clown” for my comfort level. Was it really necessary to have the black guy be a jive-talking, irrelevant jokester? I wonder that no one began screaming “Racism!” ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1128 "2017-10-30T23:07:17Z")
> [@gonzoron](#): > > A valiant effort, but fell short a bit. Too many unanswered questions. Too much went the obvious way. Too much idiot-ball. But I liked where they were going. > > I would have loved at least a throw-away moment where Kelly tried hitting his upvote button a bunch of times (getting told she can only upvote once per day or something). > > Also, would have wanted to see what the upvotes were for at all. They couldn’t have just cancelled out downvotes, otherwise you could only have one or the other, not both. Or if they registered both, then we should have seen the difference, not the downvotes only, make the sentence. > > But it felt like classic Trek’s take on Social Media, which didn’t exist when classic Trek aired, so it was something that was uniquely Orville. Just wondering why John didn’t get in any trouble with his captain for doing something so dumb when he wasn’t supposed to draw attention to the landing party. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1129 "2017-10-30T23:33:36Z")
I’m just thinking about how poorly that landing crew did to pass as locals. Obviously, there was LaMarr humping the statue of their national hero, but also another character wore a hat that was reserved for a particular nationality or ethnic group. In the real world here on Earth, travelers have offended locals by using gestures that, while harmless in their home country, are offensive to the residents of the country being visited. And there were even stories of Allied spies in World War II who were caught by their use of obviously foreign table manners. (We discussed these stories [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=305277).) So it seemed an obviously bad idea for the landing party just to put on some local clothes, land and hope to pass as natives. (Of course, this was a one-hour episode, and they couldn’t devote time to the necessary training one would need to go through, but the writers could at least not have written the story around one character’s offensive behavior.) ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1130 "2017-10-31T00:50:17Z")
I think they deserve some slack cut for them on the clothing issue. I believe they had a few photos of large groups of people to work with, and that’s about it. They didn’t notice the badges (yes, you could argue if they were looking closely they should have), and they had no idea that certain hats were reserved for certain ethnic groups. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1131 "2017-10-31T01:45:28Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’m just thinking about how poorly that landing crew did to pass as locals. Obviously, there was LaMarr humping the statue of their national hero, but also another character wore a hat that was reserved for a particular nationality or ethnic group. > > In the real world here on Earth, travelers have offended locals by using gestures that, while harmless in their home country, are offensive to the residents of the country being visited. And there were even stories of Allied spies in World War II who were caught by their use of obviously foreign table manners. (We discussed these stories [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=305277).) > > So it seemed an obviously bad idea for the landing party just to put on some local clothes, land and hope to pass as natives. (Of course, this was a one-hour episode, and they couldn’t devote time to the necessary training one would need to go through, but the writers could at least not have written the story around one character’s offensive behavior.) In fairness though, this kind of scifi always requires us to suspend disbelief on that. The heroes always just rock up at some major city and make significant observations about the local culture there and then. In some ways you could say Orville is being more realistic by the fact it bites them in the ass. _Of course_ in real life it would be a very carefully planned exercise. You’d have a dedicated team gathering information for weeks at least (and that’s assuming the premises of the show: FTL travel, and civilizations being commonplace). ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1132 "2017-10-31T10:22:32Z")
Heck, I don’t get why the original two-man research team had a permanent residence (and it looked like a pretty nice one, at that), and for some reason the address wasn’t in their file and the investigating team’s first stop. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1133 "2017-10-31T12:16:56Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The character of John LaMarr is just too far into “black clown” for my comfort level. What makes LaMarr a ‘black clown’ other than the fact that he’s a clown who is also black? My main complaint about that character is that he and Malloy are pretty much interchangeable at this point - they’re both irreverent, inappropriate jokesters who, when not sitting at the front of the bridge together, are generally doing incredibly stupid shit. Malloy has a slightly more developed background of the two, pretty much boiling down to “Mercer’s best friend” and “knows 20th centry pop culture,” so I suppose you could argue that LaMarr’s identity is more wholly tied up in the clowning. But we’re still early on - Bortus is the only member of the bridge crew that we’ve really learned much about. If the show progresses and LaMarr ends up being the only bridge crew officer with no character development, then sure. I also don’t buy the “jive talking” thing. He’s not a caricature just because he doesn’t talk like a white dude. Come to think of it, has there **ever** been a major black character in science fiction television who didn’t speak with a pretty neutral accent? Just in Star Trek, you’ve got Ben Sisko, Uhura, Worf, and Geordi. I don’t know if LaMarr’s accent is completely unprecedented, but it’s certainly **unexpected,** and perhaps that’s what’s making you uncomfortable. ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1134 "2017-10-31T14:37:34Z")
**Bryan** and **Johnny** both make great points. They definitely should have known the anthropologists’ address. And to expect black characters to have nothing culturally black about their speech patterns is a kind of whitewashing. Maybe this was important in the _Cosby Show_ era, to counteract previous stereotyping. And I would never want there to be _no_ black characters on TV who don’t use African-American vernacular, because those people do exist and deserve to be represented. But by completely avoiding the depiction of such characters, we are failing to provide realistic role models to kids, black characters they can recognize; and we are implicitly saying there’s something bad about the way the vast majority of African-Americans talk. ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1135 "2017-10-31T14:53:12Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But by completely avoiding the depiction of such characters, we are failing to provide realistic role models to kids, black characters they can recognize; and we are implicitly saying there’s something bad about the way the vast majority of African-Americans talk. But he is also depicted as being stupid. Will that cause kids to believe that Black people should act stupidly? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1136 "2017-10-31T15:03:48Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > Because _Community_ is a relatively obscure American show that was not broadcast in the UK, and hence would have been obscure to Charlie Brooker. Whereas _Black Mirror_ is a critically-acclaimed darling of the sci-fi community, almost impossible to escape mention of if you’re involved in the industry like Seth MacFarland is. > > And Charlie Brooker [stated](https://decider.com/2016/10/27/black-mirror-nosedive-did-not-steal-from-community-interview/) he wasn’t aware of Community. Or Sliders. Or STtNG, or the Jon Ronson book… And altho I am a big SF fan, I don’t watch Black Mirror nor do I know anyone who does. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1137 "2017-10-31T15:06:59Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **Bryan** and **Johnny** both make great points. > > They definitely should have known the anthropologists’ address. > . They apparently knew the close location from where reports came. ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1138 "2017-10-31T16:07:26Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They apparently knew the close location from where reports came. Only to the extent of knowing which city, it seems. These records are damn sloppy - were the anthropologists hired by some kinda _mining_ company? ---
**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:** [October 31, 2017, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1139 "2017-10-31T16:17:24Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > But he is also depicted as being stupid. Will that cause kids to believe that Black people should act stupidly? Do you think he is depicted as being below average in intelligence? I don’t. He’s not that cautious, obviously; but I would say he comes across as having average or slightly above-average intelligence. Which is therefore not “stupid”. Furthermore, we have a black doctor on the show who is clearly very intelligent. Is it your position that if there are stupid characters on a show, they can never be black? > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Only to the extent of knowing which city, it seems. These records are damn sloppy - were the anthropologists hired by some kinda _mining_ company? LOL! ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814/1140 "2017-10-31T16:28:36Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Only to the extent of knowing which city, it seems. These records are damn sloppy - were the anthropologists hired by some kinda _mining_ company? Thank you for that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814.md?page=56) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-seth-mcfarlane/786814.md?page=58)