[Official] The Orville

[Brys]

4 minutes ago, George P said:

Well that didn't take long, already messing with time travel. 

I think star trek tos brought time travel in after about 4 episodes too

[Louisifer]

Time travel and science fiction go hand in hand, i dont think i've seen any that havent used it.  

[Steven P. Administrators]

4 minutes ago, Louisifer said:

Time travel and science fiction go hand in hand, i dont think i've seen any that havent used it.  

[+Warwagon MVC]

I wish they would have used practical effects for the starship like they did in Star Trek TG ..it looks more real than the CGI ship.

[Jazmac]

I find I like the show myself. Its cheesy in some places but on the whole, I'm going to watch.  Maybe its been said already but it wasn't until I watched the last one that I discovered it Orville is directed by Jonathan Frakes of Next Generation fame. 

[George P Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, Louisifer said:

Time travel and science fiction go hand in hand, i dont think i've seen any that havent used it.  

Yeah but it doesn't have to be used so much is all I'm saying. 

[techbeck]

1 hour ago, Louisifer said:

Time travel and science fiction go hand in hand, i dont think i've seen any that havent used it.  

Yea, I just hope it is not overdone.   Like The Flash.

[techbeck]

Good episode tonight.  

Spoiler

Avis jokes were pretty good.

 

[George P Global Moderator]

8 hours ago, techbeck said:

Good episode tonight.  

  Reveal hidden contents

Avis jokes were pretty good.

 

Spoiler

There was a hunger games drop to, also the line about humans worshiping Hertz was a nice touch.

 

[FloatingFatMan]

So far, for me at least, The Orville is more traditional Trek than Star Trek Discovery is... Even with the humour and pop culture references...

[Son_Of_Dad]

Agree. It's quite a good watch. Imagine what it would look like if it also had an 8M budget per episode!!

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Orville is one of the best Star Trek series ever!

 

I was really pleasantly surprised by MacFarlane's restraint. I really expected more of his satire, but the jokes have been really restrained and actually well timed and written. Maybe he has learned his lesson?

 

One thing they are doing well with not having is the transporter technology. Yea they're messing with time travel, but the transporter has just always been a huge crutch in ST, at least to me. When they had to make transporters not available to make an episode dramatic was always very cheesy.

 

Don't really like the ship design (exterior), practical or CG. It doesn't look great and it makes absolutely no sense. The docking bay is inside the three spirals of the engine for some reason?

 

And I also don't like Bortus. Some of the character development paths are looking to be kinda difficult; the characters have a thin definition, which gives them more latitude but also makes it harder to find depth. The 6 or so episodes we have so far isn't enough to really tell where they will be going.

 

1 minute ago, Son_Of_Dad said:

Agree. It's quite a good watch. Imagine what it would look like if it also had an 8M budget per episode!!

I hope it never gets that. What works in Orville is mostly the writing, and they aren't hurting for acting.

[T3X4S]

I miss Eureka - what a great idea (only watch the 1st 20 or so episodes)

As far as Orville, I am giving it a chance because of Seth's talent.
(Too make it great, they should make it R-Rated)

 

[FloatingFatMan]

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Orville is one of the best Star Trek series ever!

 

I was really pleasantly surprised by MacFarlane's restraint. I really expected more of his satire, but the jokes have been really restrained and actually well timed and written. Maybe he has learned his lesson?

I think it's a combination of that, and MacFarlane being a huge Trek fan and wanting to keep his version as true to his love as he can.

 

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

 

One thing they are doing well with not having is the transporter technology. Yea they're messing with time travel, but the transporter has just always been a huge crutch in ST, at least to me. When they had to make transporters not available to make an episode dramatic was always very cheesy.

 

 

I agree. Transporters have always been a large crutch in Trek, and that's the main thing I really liked about Enterprise. Transporters were very new and not used a lot for human transport.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

 

Don't really like the ship design (exterior), practical or CG. It doesn't look great and it makes absolutely no sense. The docking bay is inside the three spirals of the engine for some reason?

 

I dunno. It looks kinda pretty to me, but would definitely look better as a real model instead of CGI.

 

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

And I also don't like Bortus. Some of the character development paths are looking to be kinda difficult; the characters have a thin definition, which gives them more latitude but also makes it harder to find depth. The 6 or so episodes we have so far isn't enough to really tell where they will be going.

 

Bortus is just a huge lampooning of Worf from TNG/DS9.

 

7 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

 

I hope it never gets that. What works in Orville is mostly the writing, and they aren't hurting for acting.

A little more cash per ep would be nice, but yeah.  Don't wreck it by giving them TOO much money. They story is more important than the sets.

[Son_Of_Dad]

18 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

I hope it never gets that. What works in Orville is mostly the writing, and they aren't hurting for acting.

I was referring more to upping the level of the CGI and sets

18 minutes ago, T3X4S said:

I miss Eureka - what a great idea (only watch the 1st 20 or so episodes)

But then you miss James Callis terrible American accent

[Son_Of_Dad]

11 minutes ago, FloatingFatMan said:

I dunno. It looks kinda pretty to me, but would definitely look better as a real model instead of CGI.

If it gets a second season (fingers crossed) I'm hoping the ship has to be sacrificed an he gets Orville-A being a much better ship, this one is meant to be a bit of a tub that was in need of a captain but Ed is showing himself I think to be more capable than his superiors might have been expecting.

[redfish]

On 9/20/2017 at 1:29 AM, George P said:

It seems to me, over the years, that trek fans are some of the most annoying high and mighty know it alls out there.   Maybe I'm just old enough to remember, and due to there being no internet at the time, Trek fans were hating on TNG before the show even aired.  They're doing it yet again with STD based off of trailers, because trailers are a perfect indication of how a show/movie is going to turn out, really guys?

 

Cry, moan and overall complain as much as you guys want, the fact is, you so called "die hards" aren't enough to keep a damn trek TV show on the air anymore.  Where were all the fans when Enterprise needed it?  Instead it got canned.   Voyager had to resort to the old trek crutch known as the Borg to keep it going, even introducing Borg v2 and upping the action, the only "exploration" was the fact they were stuck in the delta quadrant just because the writers knew that way when they were starting to run out of ideas, and oh boy did they, they could always just drop the Borg in, boy did that make you guys happy, right?  

 

And for all the praise DS9 gets, what did it end up doing?  We went down the path of war with the dominion, nice action and battles, exploration and peace?  ha!   Something that Paramount and CBS has known for quite some time, and a fact some of you can't seem to come to terms with, the fanbase is small, the core trek fanbase that's been around since close to the start, it's small.  There isn't enough fans out there to support it the way it was back in TNG, scifi costs too much period.  And as far as this show goes, it's another sci-fi show on fox, FOX, of all channels, where scifi goes to die after one season.   Enjoy it while it lasts guys, because with fox's track record on scifi shows, this one, even if it's good, probably won't last long.

Hmm...

 

No, even though I agree with your premise that die hard fans can be annoying, I don't agree with your view that nobody ever watched Star Trek except die hard fans, or nobody watches sc-fi in general except die hard fans...

 

Just starting with Star Trek, Nielsen ratings proved otherwise. The TNG finale, which earned an Emmy nomination, was No. 1 in its time slot, and so was the DS9 series premiere. Most episodes din't reach that mark simply because the shows were in syndication and people relied on watching re-runs. Voyager and Enterprise suffered from quality problems and Trek fatigue. DS9 was weak in the first few seasons so a lot of people stopped watching and many didn't come back when it got better.

 

I think a lot of sci-fi btw suffers from quality problems, and its the quality problems combined with the costs that doom it as "too risky" moreso than public disinterest in the genre as a whole. Sci-fi is actually a huge genre that has included low budget shows that don't require a lot of special effects like X-Files, which also was popular, and really expensive shows like just recently Westworld -- which was both extremely popular and critically acclaimed (which I can't disagree if you would characterize it by saying it cost too much, just that the cost was worth it apparently, because the quality of the show garnered a lot of attention).

 

I don't quite get your pessimism about sci-fi viewership at all.

[George P Global Moderator]

5 hours ago, redfish said:

Hmm...

 

No, even though I agree with your premise that die hard fans can be annoying, I don't agree with your view that nobody ever watched Star Trek except die hard fans, or nobody watches sc-fi in general except die hard fans...

 

Just starting with Star Trek, Nielsen ratings proved otherwise. The TNG finale, which earned an Emmy nomination, was No. 1 in its time slot, and so was the DS9 series premiere. Most episodes din't reach that mark simply because the shows were in syndication and people relied on watching re-runs. Voyager and Enterprise suffered from quality problems and Trek fatigue. DS9 was weak in the first few seasons so a lot of people stopped watching and many didn't come back when it got better.

 

I think a lot of sci-fi btw suffers from quality problems, and its the quality problems combined with the costs that doom it as "too risky" moreso than public disinterest in the genre as a whole. Sci-fi is actually a huge genre that has included low budget shows that don't require a lot of special effects like X-Files, which also was popular, and really expensive shows like just recently Westworld -- which was both extremely popular and critically acclaimed (which I can't disagree if you would characterize it by saying it cost too much, just that the cost was worth it apparently, because the quality of the show garnered a lot of attention).

 

I don't quite get your pessimism about sci-fi viewership at all.

It's not pessimism,  I'm bringing up facts,  scifi shows, on primetime TV like FOX have been canned very quickly.  Just look at the past 5 years, if not longer.     Costs is something I bring up as a factor, and the only way you overcome the cost issue is with high ratings, many scifi shows just don't get that.  You talk about quality, sure, but quality in what area?  The look of the show in question?  The CGI?  The writing overall?    You bring up shows like X-files, that's not traditional scifi, it has some scifi mixed in sure, but it's a mix of other things in a procedural, you know, procedurals that everyone seems to like doing now and get most of the big ratings?  I'm a huge X-files fan, don't get me wrong, but scifi is not what made the show great, it was the two leading characters and their chemistry that did.  Also back then FOX was a new network channel and it had nothing else to show, once X-files started to become a hit there was no stopping it, also nothing else on TV at the time but sitcoms.

 

Westworld, well you know, HBO,  they're going to make a good show, the writing and the budget are all there.  While it's a scifi show, it's not in your face scifi like others, it doesn't so much rely on it to move the plot and story along.  You're not scratching your head at technobable in the middle of an episode.  In fact the show just uses some scifi to toss philosophy at you, and what is real/alive and so on, with dabs of moral questions and so on.  

 

My contention and point, when it comes to trek and it's "fans" is that most of you that are complaining are stuck asking for the same old formula from TNG or the later part of DS9 to be given to you yet again, over and over.   Why?  And is it exactly a surprise that trek, until the 2009 reboot movies hit, was on a downward trend?   Each TNG movie after First Contact, which, come on, had to use the Borg yet again (gotta love that Borg story crutch), to make it interesting.   All the others are just bad, making less and less, people, heck even some trek fans, started to ignore it.     Without actually running the numbers I'd say it's safe to assume the newest 3 trek movies have made more than all the TNG movies put together.   All that says to me is that the formula needed to be shaken up or you're not going to bring in new viewers.    The Orvilles been good, don't get me wrong, but it's new, even if it feels like trek to people, the comedy sets it apart, and it's got Seiths name attached to it, so you get viewers interested anyways.   If it gets a 2nd season or not, I don't know, the fact is that right now, FOX is where scifi shows go to get killed after one season.  That's not just my opinion, it's a fact.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I'm really enjoying this show. I was initially afraid that they would overdo the comedy but it's been a pretty nice balance. I especially liked the two of them trying to come up with alien names on the shuttle. Really funny. I really get a TNG feel from this show which is probably why I am so endeared to it already. I think Discovery is some of the best TV on right now, but Orville has it's place for sure.

[margrave]

I'm really liking it still. I'm pleasantly surprised.

[redfish]

5 hours ago, George P said:

It's not pessimism,  I'm bringing up facts,  scifi shows, on primetime TV like FOX have been canned very quickly.  Just look at the past 5 years, if not longer.     Costs is something I bring up as a factor, and the only way you overcome the cost issue is with high ratings, many scifi shows just don't get that.  You talk about quality, sure, but quality in what area?  The look of the show in question?  The CGI?  The writing overall?    You bring up shows like X-files, that's not traditional scifi, it has some scifi mixed in sure, but it's a mix of other things in a procedural, you know, procedurals that everyone seems to like doing now and get most of the big ratings?  I'm a huge X-files fan, don't get me wrong, but scifi is not what made the show great, it was the two leading characters and their chemistry that did.  Also back then FOX was a new network channel and it had nothing else to show, once X-files started to become a hit there was no stopping it, also nothing else on TV at the time but sitcoms.

 

Westworld, well you know, HBO,  they're going to make a good show, the writing and the budget are all there.  While it's a scifi show, it's not in your face scifi like others, it doesn't so much rely on it to move the plot and story along.  You're not scratching your head at technobable in the middle of an episode.  In fact the show just uses some scifi to toss philosophy at you, and what is real/alive and so on, with dabs of moral questions and so on.  

 

My contention and point, when it comes to trek and it's "fans" is that most of you that are complaining are stuck asking for the same old formula from TNG or the later part of DS9 to be given to you yet again, over and over.   Why?  And is it exactly a surprise that trek, until the 2009 reboot movies hit, was on a downward trend?   Each TNG movie after First Contact, which, come on, had to use the Borg yet again (gotta love that Borg story crutch), to make it interesting.   All the others are just bad, making less and less, people, heck even some trek fans, started to ignore it.     Without actually running the numbers I'd say it's safe to assume the newest 3 trek movies have made more than all the TNG movies put together.   All that says to me is that the formula needed to be shaken up or you're not going to bring in new viewers.    The Orvilles been good, don't get me wrong, but it's new, even if it feels like trek to people, the comedy sets it apart, and it's got Seiths name attached to it, so you get viewers interested anyways.   If it gets a 2nd season or not, I don't know, the fact is that right now, FOX is where scifi shows go to get killed after one season.  That's not just my opinion, it's a fact.

Sci-fi is not what makes any show great, its always the ability of a show to transcend its genre and create something compelling to watch. But I think people did watch the X-Files for the sci-fi elements; the chemistry between the characters worked as long as they focused on the sci-fi, and when the show got too much into Mulder and Scully's personal life, it got tedious real fast. People also watch Star Trek for the sci-fi, and when writers go overboard in focusing on interpersonal relationships to the expense of great sci-fi storytelling, this harms the shows. It was one of the quality problems with Voyager. I didn't care about the relationship between Torres and Chakotay, or between Paris and Kim, for godsakes. It was dull and uninteresting, and not why anyone would tune in to watch the show. And I would definitely disagree with you that Westworld isn't in your face sci-fi, or that it didn't have what you'd refer to as technobabble in the Star Trek context. References to QA testing, bulk apperception, and other stuff that had meaning to the technical world of the show and were mainly used to deepen the relationship between the show and its fictional sci-fi reality.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there are things that can be tweaked with the Trek formula, and if I were rebooting Star Trek, I'd tweak things around myself, but a lot of the movies and shows had quality problems that went way beyond just keeping the formula the same. I think "canon" is bunk. You keep things that work, and throw out things that don't work. There's a lot of "canon" in Voyager that I think Trek writers should just pretend never existed. To further prove my point, I don't think JJ Abrams movies were bad and I like a lot of his updates, though in general I also think he also proved that from a sci-fi perspective Trek always worked better on the small screen, because it has more room in serial format to do thoughtful stories.

 

But just as there's some resistance to changing things up by fans, there's also a tendency of some to be overly negative and critical of the original formula in the sense that they'll come up with overreaching theories about why it failed (often blaming the fanbase) and go overboard with changes -- which often end up going against the spirit of the show and not even working out in the end. I see it not only with Star Trek, but other franchises, not just movies and TV shows, but also games. The bottom line is people want to watch quality shows, and you need quality writers and directors with some sort of vision to produce a show and not just lean back on cliches. But completely changing things in a way go against the original spirit of the series is just desperate -- not creative -- and is destined not to work out. I haven't watched Discovery yet, so I'm not judging it, but just looking at what I have seen, there's a combination of this kind of bad change and more general lackluster quality that doesn't draw me in to watch. I think producers can create a Trek series that attracts both die hard fans and a larger audience if they put together a team of writers and set directors who actually have talent, and thread the needle. Its not a zero sum game where you have to pit fans against a mass audience, and have one group lose and one group win.

 

I haven't seem much of The Orville, either, just part of one episode, so I'm not going to get into that too  much either. 

[T3X4S]

One of my teammates @ work was telling me Ep05 was classic.  It was this episode alone that made him a fan .  Watching it tonight.

[techbeck]

booooo, no new episode tonight.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Tonight's episode teaches us the dangers of downvoting. Neowin, take heed. 

 

The thing I like about this show's comedy is the timing. The joke is rarely the center of the scene, it is just some off the cuff comment that people would make in real life. A few are a bit cheesy ("Bustin Jieber") but then, jokes are lame sometimes.

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

OK, we finally got caught up. Have to say, We're liking this more than ST:Discovery - and I never thought I'd say that...