That pretty much seems to be the online fan consensus, MacFarlane is just too lowbrow to be given any sort of latitude. Orville episodes are very reminiscent of ST:TNG, which are guilty pleasures at this point – 2 decades after the original showing. Much of Mercer’s hand to hand combat in this episode is very Kirk-like, and ST:OS is considered very hokey – you’re only permitted to like that as nostalgia, you must concede that there is no sci-fi left in those episodes. None. Deny that to your peril. Thus speaketh the reviewers. Only the very best television, that hits all the buttons, all the time, is worth your time.
People really hated what MacFarlane did to their Oscars. Now they’re dredging up his Weinstein joke. Are they admitting he got it right? Nope. He’s one of those guys who, “knew about it and didn’t do enough.” “Saw Your Boobs” was just too much of a leaning on the 4th wall for them to accept. Yeah, Jennifer Lawrence was playing along, but others couldn’t stand it. Low brow comedy must never be sanctioned.
ST:Discovery is new. Its still finding its feet, and only giving tastes of its eventual direction. Like really good television, say Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones, you never know how good it will eventually be.
The Orville is just dropping everything bare in rapid fire bursts. The only difference from a sitcomis that you get a plot twist from time to time.
See, you can watch an episode of The Orville here and there, just like ST:NG, and still enjoy it. Miss one episode of ST:Discovery or Walking Dead and you’re completely lost. Somehow, reviewers have equated the latter with the “greatest work of television writing ever” and not a plot to command all of your evening time.
I’m not a fan of MacFarlane at all. Don’t like most of his stuff. But this is an excellent affectionate parody of Star Trek in the mode of Galaxy Quest. But how many critics are Star Trek fans? It might be a big factor. The audience rating is self selecting I believe, so he is doing great with Seth fans and Star Trek fans. But that is all.
**Lucky for him, those are 2 fairly big audiences that can defy the critics and keep this show on the air. **
*…Oh my god they’re turkeys! … They’re falling like sacks of wet cement!..
Les? Les? Les, are you there? Les isn’t there. Thanks for that on-the-spot report, Les. For those of you who’ve just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven.*
Actually, when Picard and Data put on makeup and try to pass for Romulans, its almost played humorously. Data behaves as if the soup seller really needs to hear his encyclopedic knowledge of Romulan accents. Pardac calls them out – you guys were in danger of being arrested, you can’t act like Romulans at all. Even surgically altered empath Deanna can’t figure out what to eat at a Romulan dinner table, and they’ve been drinking Romulan ale since a century before. Notice Malloy couldn’t eat the food, you see it, but they don’t focus on it. That’s a nice bit of subtlety.
My faith is Rotten Tomatoes has been shaken by this. How the crap that is Discovery can be 91% while the fun and pretty good Orville is 19 is just plain wrong.
I’m warming up to the Orville. I’ve long been a fan of Family Guy, but I knew if they tried to make this “Family Guy in Space” it’d bomb. They seem to be keeping a semi-serious foundation for the show, with random (but appropriate) humor. I’ll keep watching.
Actually, I got the feeling they were going more for the Koran, and the Krill were being equated with Islamic fundamentalists (what with the decapitation and all). I also thought the warning to the Union at the end (“Yes, that may have been your duty, but the children will hate you once they realize what you’ve done!”) was also appropriate to the present day.
I had a hard time believing there would only be one copy of a book that important on board the Krill ship. There should have been a copy in every bedstand in every crew cabin, just like Gideon Bibles. Mercer and Malloy could have just stolen a copy, rather than go through the whole Mission: Impossible thing of photographing every goddamned page!
Once they had their photographs, how the hell were they supposed to escape? The whole mission was about as well thought-out as Kirk’s assignment to steal the Romulan cloaking device in “The *Enterprise *Incident.”
I agree with most of the above that the ‘infiltration’ act was not the strongest plot and the carrying-on by the navigator while on-board the Krill ship was some of the worst dialogue they’ve had (hint: don’t try TOO hard for a laugh), and yet…
It did show an alien race that had a wildly different mindset that most aliens, and what the eventual relationship between the Union and Krill turns out to be is going to be …interesting. And the matter-of-fact mention by a character we were starting to like of a horrible massacre and later on the final denouncement, were well-handled and food for thought.
It’s more space opera than SF, but they are doing it pretty well, they are keeping the story moving, and they provide some food for thought in most of the episodes so far.
It was also obvious at the end that she now hated the Union more than ever.
I do hope **most **aliens have a wildly different mindset than the Krill in real life. Unfortunately, there’s nothing so far to indicate they do. Hawking is probably right in saying it’s not cool to advertise our presence.
