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Post #1112755

Author
m_s0
Parent topic
All Things Star Trek
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1112755/action/topic#1112755
Date created
30-Sep-2017, 11:30 AM

TV’s Frink said:

I didn’t even know what you guys were talking about with Orville. Now that you mentioned Seth Mcwhatever, I realized it’s that show I keep seeing commercials for that looks like an awful ripoff of Galaxy Quest. Also it has Seth Mcwhatever sitting in a captain’s chair.

I seem to remember someone claiming that it’s much better than the commercials would lead you to believe, but I’m too old and (therefore) too close to death to waste time on anything Seth Mcwhatever is involved in.

That’s exactly what I thought. And I wasn’t convinced by the first episode, either, even though it wasn’t what was teased in the promos/trailers (i.e. the usual painful Family Guy-esque fare). I caved in and watched the second episode and got hooked from there on. The Orville still has some of that trademark ‘humor’, but it’s not a comedy show and above all, it’s VERY serious in its dedication to old school Star Trek, and to the idea of an intelligent episodic sci-fi show - with a lighter twist.

MacFarlane really is trying here, and, what astounds me the most, is actually succeeding to a large degree. I never thought I’d be praising anything MacFarlane’s ever done, but here we are: The Orville is a good show… that will probably get cancelled soon, because people expected Family Guy in space.

Discovery - so far - is a complete chore to slog through. It’s not prime, even though that’s what they’re calling it, it’s not Kelvin, even though it clearly is modelled after those movies. And after two episodes we’ve yet to see anything resembling a pilot. Way to pad out a few minutes of backstory into two episodes which are supposed to be epic in scope, but which really seem to be of little consequence to anything in order to sell your service, CBS. It made me feel sad and tired. Poorly written, badly shot, incoherently put together (pointless overuse of dutch angles, sense of space was appalingly confusing throughout the episodes - non-existent, basically, etc.).

Worst of all, Doug Jones is just about the only decent character in there, and I am truly dreading spending another second with the boneheaded protagonist. I get where they’re taking her, but the viewer needs to care to follow her arc - otherwise this is, at best, an uninteresting exercise in writing an unsympathetic character. And even though the writers spent two entire episodes on her, they established less about her than a third-rate comedian was able to establish in a single (not very good) scene introducing the entire main cast. Wow.

tl;dr: not too impressed by ships going ‘pew-pew’.

doubleofive said:

This was the prologue to the larger story. We didn’t even see the Discovery for gods sake. This is going to be a redemption story for Burnham. I believe we’re not supposed to like her yet.

I’d say the issue goes deeper - it’s not just that she’s unlikable: she’s utterly uninteresting, and we’re getting beaten over our heads with her as if she’s supposed to be. This doesn’t gel well with the overall impression that all we’ve gotten so far out of two episodes is a lot of bad action and even more padding.