# Why is The Orville so good? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted\ **Created:** [October 13, 2021, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427 "2021-10-13T15:00:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr.E](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.e/32/8932_2.png) [@Mr.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.E)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/21 "2021-10-13T18:33:43Z")
Disco and Picard are both trying to do Star Trek with a different tone, which I appreciate even if I don’t personally like it. The Orville and Lower Decks both have a tone more in line with Star Trek as it was in the TOS and TNG eras, with an extra layer of humor on top to make it feel fresh again. Can the original Star Trek tone work today? I think so, and I hope Strange New Worlds tries to be closer to what TOS was than Disco has been. Episodic science fiction still has a place, TV shows that don’t raise the stakes to interstellar destruction each season still have a place. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/22 "2021-10-13T18:36:34Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > As a bit of a Trek fan, I think I have to say that The Orville has the _heart_ that seems to be often lacking in the Star Trek franchise. The Orville concentrates on the characters first and foremost. Even the outside scenarios are explored primarily through how the crew is affected by them, not in some sort of later Trek style of having the event/solution be the focus, and the crew being a part of that. The humor, banter, pranks, etc. are all part of that focus on characters. They actually give each other a hard time; you never saw Barclay giving Geordi a hard time for making a mistake, or anything. Or Riker teasing Worf, or anything like that at all. You saw a _little_ on Voyager between Kim & Paris, but it was more bro stuff, not the way that long-time co-workers tease and joke with each other. Even Enterprise just flirted with it; Trip was the only half-realistic character, and he seemed overly chatty/goofy by comparison with everyone else. It’s like Star Trek thinks people are going to be _so_ professional in the future that they’re not going to joke around, etc… But we got it with Gordon and John right out of the gate. And between Mercer and Grayson. And between the two of them, and Gordon & John. And so on, and so forth. And Bortus’ total obliviousness is funny in its own right. I guess what I’m getting at is that a lot of the comedy isn’t just comedy for its own sake; it’s as much to develop the characters and their relationships as anything else. I think that’s maybe what you’re getting at by “heart”, or that’s how I’d interpret it. I’m not thinking the actual sci-fi or anything like that is particularly great on The Orville, although I’ll say another endearing thing about it is that they do two things that Trek never did. One, things DO end badly on The Orville, and the characters have to deal with the fallout (again, that character focus), and two, the writers are less heavy handed/obvious with the social commentary, maybe because it’s about the characters’ responses to the issues, rather than explicitly using the episode as a method to preach a point of view to the audience. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/23 "2021-10-13T19:15:04Z")
> [@bump](#): > > And Bortus’ total obliviousness is funny in its own right. Holy crap Bortus and Klyden are funny. “The night is ours!!!” [![](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5f2a575acde4a2fc36d660933f3f2a1b/tumblr_pqa26xwDtv1wf4baho1_500.gifv) ](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5f2a575acde4a2fc36d660933f3f2a1b/tumblr_pqa26xwDtv1wf4baho1_500.gifv) My favorite Bortus moment is this one though: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/wmzGfSDeqME/maxresdefault.jpg "The Orville - Bortus Cake Scene") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmzGfSDeqME) To me that’s a perfect example of the humor on the show. You can relate because anyone who has ever been to a work party with cake has seen that play out, why wouldn’t it happen in the future in space? And the way that the ultra-serious alien insists on having a good piece just makes it so much funnier. No laugh track, no rimshot, just played straight and natural and that’s what makes it work. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/24 "2021-10-13T19:50:48Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > I would go so far as to say that The Orville is not a parody at all. It’s just an attempt to recreate a show from the '90s with some additional jokes I would disagree with both of these points. I appeared to me that The Orville was originally intended as a parody, but they found out that this show captured the spirit of the original (not 90’s) Star Trek much better then the Orville was a parody, and started to develop it more as a ‘Star Trek’ type show and only throws in a few lines now and again to be able to claim a parody. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/25 "2021-10-13T20:01:37Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > I think that’s one of the things that makes it so good. The humor is organic and comes from characters acting like real people. And it’s weaved into everything rather than taking away from it. So much this. Like asking the boss if you can bring sodas onto the bridge. Or the gossip between coworkers as they are working. It’s sci-fi, but it also feels very real. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/26 "2021-10-13T20:03:02Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > To me that’s a perfect example of the humor on the show. You can relate because anyone who has ever been to a work party with cake has seen that play out, why wouldn’t it happen in the future in space? And the way that the ultra-serious alien insists on having a good piece just makes it so much funnier. No laugh track, no rimshot, just played straight and natural and that’s what makes it work. And there was the episode with his and Kelly’s birthdays, where he kept making the point that he didn’t want a joint party. I have a birthday that’s close enough to Christmas that it pretty much always gets subsumed by all the Christmas business, so I know how he feels. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/27 "2021-10-14T00:38:35Z")
> [@Mr.E](#): > > Disco and Picard are both trying to do Star Trek with a different tone, which I appreciate even if I don’t personally like it. Star Trek can certainly be done with a different tone, and it has been; “Deep Space Nine” was a grittier version, and Lower Decks is a comedy. Neither Discovery nor Picard work because, to be honest, they just aren’t well written. Picard, and Discovery after season 1, just don’t have enough plot to fill the minutes, and such plot as there is is often incoherent and self-contradicting and lacks consistent, logical character actions, often seeming as if the writers of one episode didn’t watch the previous episodes. Discovery, of course, suffers from its emphasis on Space Christ, while Picard doesn’t really have anything in the way of characters at all. If you put a different skin on those shows - same stories but you changed the character names and other Star Trek names - they would still be really, really bad. I doubt either would have survived Season 1. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/28 "2021-10-14T08:30:02Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Neither Discovery nor Picard work because, to be honest, they just aren’t well written. Picard, and Discovery after season 1, just don’t have enough plot to fill the minutes, and such plot as there is is often incoherent and self-contradicting and lacks consistent, logical character actions, often seeming as if the writers of one episode didn’t watch the previous episodes. Discovery just kept me feeling like there was a continual sense of things being completely out of control. It took me a while to realise that this wasn’t a sense that the world depicted inside the work was one that was out of control, but rather, the script itself was out of control. I feel like the writing process might have been a bit like that scene in Airplane, where everyone just gets in line to have a go. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/i0GW0Vnr9Yc/hqdefault.jpg "Airplane panic attack") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GW0Vnr9Yc) ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/29 "2021-10-14T09:51:49Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Remember Quark? Of course not, no one does. What in the name of the Great Material Continuum are you talking about, hu-mon? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/30 "2021-10-14T10:04:15Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > I would go so far as to say that The Orville is not a parody at all. It’s just an attempt to recreate a show from the '90s with some additional jokes. And I can’t fault the writers of Enterprise or Discovery for not wanted to do “more of the same”. Sure, you can’t fault the writers, but you can certainly fault the studio or network that commissioned them, since there’s very clearly a big audience that is indeed clamouring for “more of the same”. The success of _The Orville_ is proof that this demand exists. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/31 "2021-10-14T10:19:43Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I just got as far as the episode where Malloy falls in love with the simulation of a long-dead woman. Pretty certain I’ve seen that story, or something like it, done before at least on STTNG, possibly elsewhere and it was just weird and awkward. The Orville episode went in a completely different direction and sort of brought a little lump to my throat. Yeah, the phone episode really stuck with me. Part of it is that Scott Grimes is an excellent actor, but the aforementioned “heart” applies to that one. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/32 "2021-10-14T12:46:24Z")
Orville is good because its not Star Trek and its written by Star Trek fans. Its clearly Star Trek-inspired but its not hemmed in by it. It can grow, organically. ST Discovery’s second-biggest problem is that it _is_ hemmed in by canon. Making it a prequel series was a bad idea, ENT had already shown the limitation of that concept and it at least had the excuse of being made during the unfortunate turn of the Millenium prequel craze. With ST DISCO, there was absolutely no reason for it to be set in the past, the entire first season could have just as happily been set a decade and a half post _Nemesis_, which was real-world elapsed time at the start of production. Hell, even the spore drive could have been seen as a logical extension of the super-fast travel technologies brought back by Voyager, they encountered at least 4 such super fast means of propulsion if memory serves, and the Klingon War, as Korean War to the Dominions Wars WW2. Even the Burnham-Sarek connection could have been explained away as her being Sarek’s ward, a survivor of the Cardassian wars (maybe Setlik III, which O Brien fought in). Its biggest problem is that it was written by a committee. _Picard_, has been treated with derision by some, most notably @RickJay, but I think comparing it to ST DISCO is misplaced, while _Discovery_ is abysmal, _Picard_ is merely disappointing, it has some genuinely good bits, the Troi-Rikers episode, the La Siena crew, the flashbacks. And, unlike DIscovery, who have doubled down, _Picard_ producers seem to have understood fans feedback, its season 2 trailer shows a story in the style of episodes like _Tapestry_ and _Encounter at Farpoint, Journeys End_. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/oUhBOmtFYr8/hqdefault.jpg "Star Trek: Picard | Season 2 Star Trek Day Trailer | Paramount+") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUhBOmtFYr8) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/33 "2021-10-15T00:17:38Z")
More grimdark Star Trek. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/34 "2021-10-15T00:27:56Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I feel like the writing process might have been a bit like that scene in Airplane, where everyone just gets in line to have a go. That is not all that far from the truth… except in terms of producers. Watch the credits and count how many producers there are. It’s 20 or 21, depending which episode you’re watching. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/35 "2021-10-15T00:34:44Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > What in the name of the Great Material Continuum are you talking about, hu-mon? > **[Quark (TV series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series))** > > Quark is a 1977 American science fiction sitcom starring Richard Benjamin. Broadcast on Friday nights at 8:00–8:30 p.m. on NBC, the pilot aired on May 7, 1977, and the series followed as a mid-season replacement in February 1978. The series was cancelled in April 1978. Quark was created by Buck Henry, co-creator of the spy spoof Get Smart. > The show was set on a United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, an interstellar garbage scow operating out of United Galaxy Space Station Perma One in the year... Totally unrelated to Quark the Ferengi. It only ran for a month and a half as a satire of sci fi (particularly Star Trek) which is why it was compared to The Orville (which many assumed was satire). Quark wasn’t successful (only 8 episodes including the pilot that had aired the previous year) though it did get an Emmy nomination for costumes in one episode. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/36 "2021-10-15T01:02:20Z")
Agreed with every word. I much prefer character-led fiction and The Orville really does treat the characters as fully-rounded characters, with faults (sometimes major ones), a sense of humour, real relationships, etc. I ended up liking everybody, not necessarily as a person I’d want to meet, but as a character that’s interesting to watch. The baby episode was the one that first really drew me in by genuinely taking cultural differences seriously. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/37 "2021-10-15T02:39:46Z")
Yes. What I loved was that they has they hearing and……the procedure went ahead anyway. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/38 "2021-10-15T02:40:28Z")
There wasn’t really a season 2 episode that smart, which was a shame; I hope the much delayed Season 3 brings us back to that sort of thing. ---
**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 15, 2021, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/39 "2021-10-15T02:41:17Z")
FYI, the third season is scheduled to be released on Hulu on March 10. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427/40 "2021-10-15T02:46:33Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Yes. What I loved was that they has they hearing and……the procedure went ahead anyway. Yup. Because the humans don’t get to decide what’s moral and what’s not moral. And sometimes parents have to choose the practical decision rather than making a stand that could make their child an outcast, especially if one parent is in favour of that and the other isn’t. I really have no idea how the creator of Family Guy, which I loathe\*, could come up with something so nuanced. \*Had to watch it for work. Had waaay more rape jokes (and at least one actual rape played for laughs) than anything I’d ever watch by choice and seemed to overall be built on hate and an extremely negative view of the world. Nothing like the Orville. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-orville-so-good/952427.md?page=3)