The Orville

Off Topic!!!
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So. I saw the first episode. I thought the comedy was a TAAD over the top, and kept on WISHING it was star trek…but I liked it. sad thing is, things I like usualy don’t last long, so I waited. Now that it’s on Season 3, I decided to go back to it.

My god. why did I wait? epsidoe 2 ws a VAST improvement. Without getting to political here, LT.Allara would have been written as ‘the bestest eva’ like Rey ‘skywalker’ and would be totally unlikeable. Here?

She’s written as a real person, and reacts as anyone of us would have reacted with given a serious responsability without being properly trained for it. she pukes in an office!

This character is instantly likeable, and has Saiyan like strength considering her planet has a higher gravity than normal. So, there is an explained reason for that as well, it just doesn’t happen.

The third episode. My god. Written by the likes of Kurtzman, this would have been insufferable. But, I found myself glued wondering what would happen.

Bortus and his mate are fun to watch. and even his significant other seems to have a change of heart at the end. you can see both sides of the argument, and considering the aliens society, you can almost agree with it.even if it goes against earth standards.

Perhaps my favorite scene, is how seriously Bortus took this movie :slight_smile:

Pure undeniable genius.

How is it that the most star trek we’ve ever gotten, is from a comedy series directed by seth freakin’ mcfarlane? I can’t wrap my head around it, but this is star treks true successor.

I only hope the series holds up.

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I’m way behind on this… not even sure where it’s airing now. I do know they started backing away from broad comedy and more towards real sci-fi stories.

The arc about Isaac’s homeworld and people was worthy of anything Star Trek ever did.

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I absolutely loved The Orville’s first two seasons, but it’s been so long that I feel like I need to rewatch them before the 3rd season so I remember what’s going on and who’s who.

And considering I am at least a season behind in six other current shows, I dunno when I’ll get around to it.

Not to mention all of SeaQuest is streaming on Peacock and I’m like “Oooh, rewatch!!”

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I think, for all his comedic stylings, MacFarlane is a very sincere guy. His love of classic musicals and old-school Tin Pan Alley songs…it’s difficult to distance yourself “ironically” from that stuff, and impossible to do so while styling yourself after Sinatra and Garland, etc.

Update: N.B.

American Dad - written-by credits ONE episode (out of 332!)
Family Guy - written-by credits THREE episodes (out of 390!)
Orville - written-by credits FIFTEEN (out of 36!)

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Agreed that once it found its feet, The Orville often seemed more like Star Trek to me than contempoary offerings for Star Trek itself. (albeit with some cruder humor in.)

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I liked the comedic aspects a lot, but there was some hefty stuff. It gave me whiplash and I just gave up.

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I came looking for a The Orville #off-topic thread because of how *wow!* season 3 (“New Horizons”) has been on Hulu. The bonus for fans, and probably not so good for new viewers, is that much of these so far has been set-up by previous episodes in the series. Please don’t let this be the last season.

I started watching The Orville (season 1) on broadcast TV, because: space, sci-fi. Sure, it looked like it was trying to be a “The Office” in space. But the effort they put into the “space” part beautifully created (to me) a very Roddenberry-esque setting that I hadn’t seen/“felt” in decades. I became a fan at episode one for that reason. As long as I got good (or at least well-intentioned) stories in that great universe, it was super easy to ride out the jokes and pranks.

Over the seasons, the show seems to have weaned itself off of “The Office”, maybe despite itself, and grown into the great sci-fi series I always hoped it would become. Now, is it a Star Trek “clone”? In broad strokes absolutely, but it’s the type of Star Trek that Paramount maddeningly refused to make for so long (until Strange New Worlds). Now I have two amazing space sci-fi series to watch, similar but distinct, and I’m loving every minute.

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Yeah, The Orville is like Star Trek without a pole up its butt.

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I’m not a fan, every episode is a bottle episode, they’re just sorta shuffling around doing not very much.

At least Season 3 hasn’t had 20 Bortus episodes!

It’s still close enough to Star Trek for me to watch every episode though.

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I’m usually not much for MacFarlane’s humor, but I love Orville. Like it says in the original post, I was skeptical after the first episode, but it just kept getting better. As with Galaxy Quest, sometimes the best of Trek is the stuff it inspires. Orville is good fun, but it gets deeper as it goes. Season three has been outstanding. And, like Trek, it’s not afraid to get political. Especially now that it’s on Hulu.

Last week’s episode (where they find the Kaylon on a dead planet) was painful, I’ll admit. I’m not a fan of the sitcom cringe humor that’s the background for the first half, and the second half was just emotionally heavy.

But I’m loving the series. I was almost as excited when I heard it was back as I was about MST3K, and, like MST3K, the new season, unfettered thanks to the new platform, has exceeded my expectations.

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Notice some of the music resembles not only galaxy quest, but classic star trek as well. they even requisitioned some of treks sound effects. episode 4 had the caretaker’s ‘speed up energy transfer’ sound as the elevator lift effect.

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Watching the first episode of The Orville, gave me the same feeling that the first episode of Enterprise. That there was something there but that it wasn’t fully pulling me in.

In the case of Enterprise, if felt like there a forced seriousness and after a few episodes I found myself losing interest. I would eventually just not worry about it, catching episodes here and there, following where the storylines were going but it just didn’t catch my attention as the prior Trek shows.

In the case of Orville, the forced aspect was the humor, almost like Fox execs saw the first draft and thought “Hey Seth, where’s the Family Guy laughs?” that after they got the green light, they were able to pivot from what the boardroom wanted to what the writers room wanted. The humor has remained, but more balanced and fits with the stories.

I was very happy to find that I could get Season 3 on Disney+ up here, and the direction they have gone this year has really shown Orville can stand on it’s own. It may be trek in spirit, but it’s not standing in Treks shadow.

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I only watched the first few episodes of Season 1 because the poor attempts at humor put me off, but I thought I’d try the first episode of Season 3 yesterday. I thought it was excellent, except for MacFarlane’s acting. The lame attempts at humor were gone.

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case in point, the sleeper ship in ep 4. No arguing a bout the prime directive. Captain says 'open the star doors…and they do. refreshing change.

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Now that it’s on Disney+ in the US I rewatched a bunch of season 3 to see if it looked any better since it’s listed as UHD on D+. But I don’t see any difference vs. what is on Hulu.

Everyone should watch as much as they can on D+ if they have it, maybe the big mouse will do a season 4 if enough people stream it on their platform.

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Watched every episode for Season 3, and really enjoyed it.

Was a bit taken by “Domino” but I fully understood why things went that way. (round of applause for Ted Dansen)

The season ender surprised me from the get go, as I knew a planned return, but was completely unaware of the other return. If this episode does become the series finale, I fell content with this as the spot we leave this crew, but based on the strength of this episode, I really hope for D+/Hulu to keep things going whether shows/movies, please just give us more in this universe.

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Yes, I like that they sort of did 2 ending episodes, the big action finale and the touching personal finale. I laughed a lot during the last episode, probably the best use of humor in the entire series, it was so organic and naturally funny.

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