What is this? Looks like a cross between Star Trek and GalaxyQuest trying to be funny & profit from the small screen absence of Star Trek.

It's Seth MacFarlane, so I'm willing to give it a shot for at least an episode or two. Hopefully the trailers don't contain all of the funny bits.

I'll be giving it a try.

I'll be giving it a try. Looks better than the Star Trek show coming out at least.

Looks like it has potential. I'll give it a whirl.

Spoilers - with an eye towards criticism first. Believe in delivering the bad news first...

Starts off with a Star Trek like intro. Then shows the captain to be the anti-Kirk (women cheat on him, he's not the 1st choice of not the best ship in the fleet).

Holodeck, with live action World of Warcraft.

Irreverent humor, a step beyond Galaxy Quest, speaking of which the ship looks a bit like the Galaxy Quest one. Informality for humor's sake blows past believably of command structure and ship's operations.

Star Trek style ship reveal of the Orville...

Chief of security looks sort of like Bellana Torres.
Science officer looks/sounds like a mix between C3P0 & Marvin the Paranoid Android (though it looks like he's a dude in a spacesuit and not a robot).

How does a spiral staircase fit into a tactical spaceship?

Admiral Halsey??

Ex-wife as XO... never saw that coming

And the Krill ship is Klingon green. Great... And they look substantially like the Jem'Hadar, minus the feeding tube.

General Motors seat belts on the shuttle craft Oh, wait, the seat belts came in handy.

The good:
Beautiful cinematography & makeup. Very nice creativity. Some humor is smile causing. As with the above it is very difficult to enter this genre without appearing derivative, and none of it, while juvenile, seems outright disrespectful to prior shows. It's nice to have a show of this general sort on TV again with a refreshing sentiment.

EDIT: Longer, professional review

And another

Looks like the reviewers online all see it about the same way.

Have to say I've actually started looking forward to the premiere of it tonight. Definitely more than the new ST show.

Also I believe one of the previews stated his 1st officer would be his ex-wife.

It actually looks to be fun and 1,000 times less preachy and full of self-importance that I detect in that new CBS Star Trek show that's coming.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
It actually looks to be fun and 1,000 times less preachy and full of self-importance that I detect in that new CBS Star Trek show that's coming.

Yeah, something tells me the producers behind The Orville don't care if Seth McFarlane says the words, God or Damn. Or even God damn for that matter.

Just watched it. A little slow and predictable. But worth viewing the next episode.

My only nit is that, for me, I couldn't get the female doctor's previous role on Castle to not distract me.

It was very derivative and mostly blah, but with good visuals and a few bits of McFarlane humor. I really hoped for more originality, but it just wasn't there. I'll probably give it at least another shot or two, but if Fox pulls a typical Fox move and cancels it like Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond, or Brisco, I really don't think I'll be disappointed like I was with those shows.

Firefly was much better

I wouldn't watch it even if you held me at gunpoint. Not interested in anything Seth McFarlane has to say these days, and that's not going to change. NASA needs to launch his ass into space so that he can scout some locations for his hilarious new show.

It's pretty meh so far. Will check out a couple of more episodes to see where it goes. I'm not quite sure who the intended audience is. Not consistently funny enough to be a straight comedy, not real sci-fi enough to scratch that itch particularly well, either. Not Galaxy Quest enough to supplant or even equal that favorite. Not Trek enough to be compared. No idea how they'll make it several episodes or more, but, hey, there is even dumber shit on television, so, who knows, maybe it'll be wildly popular.

And I like his stuff and most sci-fi.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 46and2,

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
Firefly was much better

Firefly was much better than ANY OTHER SCI-FI SHOW EVER MADE OR EVER WILL BE.

That being said, I liked it. Naturally, there are comparisons between this show and Star Trek/Galaxy Quest. It's almost impossible to make a show of this sort without comparisons. Basically, it looked to me (from the trailers) that this would be a Galaxy Quest show that has been re-imagined with different actors. Watching the show, I validated this theory (especially since the ships look so similar in design philosophy).

In a modern sci-fi show, you can't have any bad guy race WITHOUT people comparing them to Klingons, or Romulans, or Jem Hadar, or Borg. . . Every ship will be compared to the Enterprise. Every captain will be compared to Kirk (if he's an action guy) or Picard (if he's more of a diplomat) or Sisko (if he's more of a 'loose cannon'). Every exceptionally smart and/or dispassionate crew member will be compared to Spock or Data. Every doctor will be compared to McCoy or Crusher. Any chief engineer will be compared to Scotty or LaForge. The helmsman will be compared to Sulu. The tough, strong, warrior-race chief of security will be compared to Worf (or Tasha Yar if you are a really hard-core TrekNerd). Hey, at least they don't have any bratty 12-yr olds running around (they REALLY don't need a Wesley Crusher in the cast).

I liked it. It was funny, and since Star Trek isn't serious about making a new, original show, I'm glad somebody else did (don't even get me started on frakking prequel shows like Star Trek: Enterprise or the new prequel series coming out that I have very little interest in).

It's only been one episode, so it's not really enough material to base an informed decision on the entire show (ST: Next Gen SUCKED for the entire first two seasons). But, I'm hopefully optimistic. The cast seems to have good chemistry (especially the XO ). I'm going to watch and see how they progress with character development.

Oh, and I liked the model of the Wright Flyer on the captain's desk. Nice attention to detail.

quote:

Originally posted by StarTraveler:
It was very derivative and mostly blah, but with good visuals and a few bits of McFarlane humor. I really hoped for more originality, but it just wasn't there. I'll probably give it at least another shot or two, but if Fox pulls a typical Fox move and cancels it like Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond, or Brisco, I really don't think I'll be disappointed like I was with those shows.

Could not have said it better myself.

quote:

Originally posted by StarTraveler:
It was very derivative

I think that was kinda the point, no?

It's supposed to be a Galaxy Quest/Star Trek mashup that doesn't take itself too seriously.

I honestly do think that new Star Trek: Discovery series on CBS is going to flop from what I see and read of it. People just don't want to be lectured and preached to like it seems to want to do.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by StarTraveler:
It was very derivative

I think that was kinda the point, no?

It's supposed to be a Galaxy Quest/Star Trek mashup that doesn't take itself too seriously.

I suppose. I stumbled upon the show without reading a review or otherwise knowing anything about it until searching for reviews after the show was over. This was during the "shaking my head, wondering what I'd just watched" phase. It seemed to be very Trek-like (or Trek-lite?) with only a bit of poorly done Galaxy Quest thrown in for good measure. Chris Cabin's review that I read at Collider.com may have said it best:

"At this year’s TCA, Seth MacFarlane had a problem. Following screenings of the first few episodes of The Orville, his new science-fiction comedy for Fox, it was clear that the show hadn’t exactly bowled the audience over. Even worse, it seemed that they had quickly hooked onto a problematic truth: that MacFarlane and Fox had made a Star Trek show in everything but name, and set it to debut only a few weeks before CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery. MacFarlane denied the similarities to the iconic series with gusto, but the cat was irrefutably out of the bag."

Another review claimed it was supposed to be a "dram-edy," but it seemed very much like the parody that, according to the cast, it isn't supposed to be.

http://www.buddytv.com/article...dont-call-65971.aspx

Personally, I thought it was okay, but was somewhat disappointed that they didn't try to be at least a little bit original and make it so much better.

one giggle , 30 min. in is not going to cut it

From the short previews in I saw in between commercials this weekend, there is no way I'd waste my time to watch that show.