Orville - Old Wounds

[Thaeri]

I think we can rush to some judgement. The new standard is be good from the start at least with more channels and streaming services.

I think there are different standards depending on what type of series you're looking at. I don't mean as in genre, but in the way they're produced and released.

1) Released on a streaming service, one season all at once. You get 8-13 episodes where each one is, like Chuck described it in his latest Discovery review, like a chapter in a book. Since the entire season can be planned out in its entirety, you have a lot of freedom in what things you put in what episode, and the production wraps up way before its released, it makes for very consistent quality throughout. You're also much more likely to remember the season as a whole rather than individual episodes, so it doesn't matter if the first couple of them were simply building slowly towards the juicy stuff.

2) Released on a streaming service or on cable, one episode a week. You still get equally short seasons that can be planned out and produced before they premiere, but the format is more episodic by necessity, which in turn means that the episodes are more likely to vary a bit in quality, and you're also more likely to notice the ones below average for the series.

3) Shows with short seasons on network television. They're often written and shot ahead of time, but for some reason it often takes them longer to truly come into their own... I suspect that the reason is that most of them start out as a single pilot and then the show itself doesn't actually get developed until it has been picked up. The Expanse on SyFy did get their entire first season greenlit without a pilot and it feels a lot more like one of those shows on streaming services that are released on a weekly schedule than anything else on that network.

4) Shows with regular-length seasons on network television. Not only do they start out with a pilot, they will be very far from done with a season when it first starts airing, not to mention how long it takes to actually produce such a behemoth. Good luck planning anything out in detail under those conditions, not to mention that you may actually need filler material instead of looking for ways to cut stuff that both is and isn't filler.

It's simply impossible to make a type 4 show to adhere to the standards of a type 1.

--------------------

Edit: Shows on cable can be either type 2 or type 3, I guess. I'm not American and at least 90% of the shows from your cable channels that make it over here are from HBO.

[Durandal_1707]

(I know pheromones were at work in that episode, but I'd really like to think a trained officer could rise above that).

He was literally drugged and you're blaming him? Nobody else under the influence was acting any better.

Uggghhhhh I'd really prefer not to be reminded of that date rape episode

[MixedDrops]

I find the characters generally very likeable. And any incompetence is played for laughs. I do think they take it too far sometimes, like the voting episode I mentioned but still.

Playing the incompetence for laughs is a complicated thing...it's hard to have it work without the show feeling like it wants to have its cake and eat it too. I know it's a bit of an unfair comparison, but Galaxy Quest's Sarris was a good example of how you can do the comedy without diminishing the menace of the villain. Compare that to something like the Krill episode where the threat of the Krill is deflated because the comedy is supposedly coming from how dumb Mercer and Malloy are acting but the Krill need to be made equally stupid so they don't notice how thin their act is. It's the serious part of the show coming into conflict with the comedy part of the show.

I have a similar issue with the characters. When they're written well, I like them fine, but when the comedy kicks in, a lot of times they go too far and a lot of them just come off completely unlikable. One episode will have Mercer acting like an assertive, decisive captain who makes the occasional smart ass remark and the next one will have him waffling around and acting immature for laughs.

Despite what the network previews wanted to make it seem, it's not a comedy. It has comedy in it, but that's not the primary focus.

I don't really buy that comedy isn't one of the primary goals; it was sold as a comedy, and jokes are thrown in there even when it feels like they were just added in after the fact. You certainly wouldn't judge it as a drama alone because it'd be painfully mediocre given some of the other Scifi shows airing right now. A thing I see pretty often is that people defend the absurd parts of the show saying "it's a comedy so you have to give it some leeway", but will also claim that comedy isn't the focus if you say you think the show isn't very funny.

He was literally drugged and you're blaming him? Nobody else under the influence was acting any better.

It was a sex pheromone, not a mind control drug (if it was the latter, it would mean none of the dramatic aspects of that episode work because none of what they're doing is in some way reflective of the person within, which would be a problem all in itself). It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the feelings Mercer and co. were having, this was a case where I would've understood him getting really emotional or shirking a couple of his duties, but as so often with the show they took it way too far. If it gets to the point they're willing to risk a war that will potentially kill countless people because they want to get their rocks off, it reflects poorly on them even with the sex pheromones running wild (It wasn't a case of Mercer not realizing the consequences of his actions either, since Darulio pretty much point blank asks him about it). Have you ever been so horny that you were willing to kill someone?

And even if I accept the pheromone magically makes people complete dumbasses, I just...don't find that particularly good television. Not anymore than The Naked Now was, anyway.

[CharlesPhipps]

Everything about the sex pheremone is like the worst part of a typical Troi story x1000.

[Thaeri]

He was literally drugged and you're blaming him? Nobody else under the influence was acting any better.

It was a sex pheromone, not a mind control drug (if it was the latter, it would mean none of the dramatic aspects of that episode work because none of what they're doing is in some way reflective of the person within, which would be a problem all in itself). It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the feelings Mercer and co. were having, this was a case where I would've understood him getting really emotional or shirking a couple of his duties, but as so often with the show they took it way too far. If it gets to the point they're willing to risk a war that will potentially kill countless people because they want to get their rocks off, it reflects poorly on them even with the sex pheromones running wild (It wasn't a case of Mercer not realizing the consequences of his actions either, since Darulio pretty much point blank asks him about it). Have you ever been so horny that you were willing to kill someone?

And even if I accept the pheromone magically makes people complete dumbasses, I just...don't find that particularly good television. Not anymore than The Naked Now was, anyway.

Some animals really do get that horny when they can smell the pheromones of someone compatible in heat, even very intelligent ones. Having some alien's pheromones work as a drug in that department isn't actually that far-fetched in a space-opera setting.

If you want somewhat harder SF, there are two obstacles. The first one is compatibility, unless the alien is a genetically engineered human there simply will be none, and thus the human won't react to it. The second is that humans mate all year round, so even though we do have our own pheromones, they don't elicit the same response as they do in for example deer.

I agree that it was pretty lousy television though. They could have made the point that maybe Kelly was date raped when she cheated on Ed in a much more subtle and poignant way. Or they could just have made both characters own up to their mistakes, which would have been even better.

[aawood]

Despite what the network previews wanted to make it seem, it's not a comedy. It has comedy in it, but that's not the primary focus.

I don't really buy that comedy isn't one of the primary goals; it was sold as a comedy, and jokes are thrown in there even when it feels like they were just added in after the fact. You certainly wouldn't judge it as a drama alone because it'd be painfully mediocre given some of the other Scifi shows airing right now. A thing I see pretty often is that people defend the absurd parts of the show saying "it's a comedy so you have to give it some leeway", but will also claim that comedy isn't the focus if you say you think the show isn't very funny.

I (finally!) signed up to the forums to discuss this exact thing, and this seems like a good place to dive in!

Having watched the whole first season, I do think it's a comedy (at least as much as it's a drama or sci-fi)... But I don't neccesarily think it wants to be. My weird pet theory is that it's mostly done this way for legal reasons.

The show is so like Star Trek in so many ways, way closer to TNG than any other none-Trek show I can think of, that it feels to me as though the show they wanted to make would probably be the focus of legal action... The fact it has Braga behind the scenes and Kasidy Yates as the ship's doctor really undercuts the idea that it's a completely original concept. There're references and relabelled concepts all over the place. But there's a legally protected way to reference an existing property without actually paying for the privilege; parody.

Now, look, in all probability you're already getting ready to type out the reply, "The Orville is not a parody, come on". But save your fingers; I agree. It's not. But that's how Fox marketed it at first; you can quickly find dozens of articles from shortly after the first few episodes arrive with titles like "Orville isn't a Star Trek Parody, but a Love Letter" or "The Orville isn't the spoof that Fox promised". My conspiracy theory here is that Seth wanted to make something played pretty much seriously (I mean, probably pretty light-hearted, just not opening-with-an-alien-sleeping-with-the-captain's-wife silly), but between Seth MacFarlane being know pretty much universally for comedy, and the need to find a way to make it without getting sued by CBS, they decided to go for the tone the show now has, and point to "parody" if the lawyers get involved... even if it doesn't really apply.

This seems to show up more the further the show goes along. Later episodes feel like they allow themselves to go longer between the gags where they want to... and the jokes that are there wind up feeling more out-of-place for it. Even the very first joke of the series, the alien infidelity, is undercut later when you know about the pheromone (and, yeah, I'm not going to touch that concept any further than that). Or the early episode with Bortus' child... I won't say more until Chuck covers it, but that episode felt like it really wanted to examine an important, contemporary theme, but still had to jam in the yucks here and there.

It works well enough for me, the show does enough that I like that I can accept the weird tonal shifts. Totally can't blame anyone that feels differently!

[PlasmaHam]

One of the big problems is that the show has a hard time determining if its a comedy or if its a space drama. For a lot of episodes it seems to want to be a space drama, but then insist on throwing in jokes where they aren't needed. Its trying too hard with the comedy, simply put. I think some episodes, like the one where Issac and the Finn family get stranded on a remote planet, handles that well.

Of course I may be a bit bias since I'm not that big of a fan of Seth McFarlane's style of comedy.

[Ghilz]

I'm not as harsh as Chuck on the humor, it's not great (Though the "Now can I come to work in shorts now?" joke actually did get me laughing). I won't say the humor works - especially for me the more sit com esque bit. "They are exes, but they must work on the same ship" feels trite, and tends to make Mercer look petty.

I will agree that McFarlane is a really bad lead for this show though.

But on the topic of tone, the show I think about when watching the Orville is Stargate SG1. Stargate was WAY sillier than Star Trek, but not to the point where the show undercuts its drama so much, and I sort of feel that its a point the Orville could stand to aim for.

[CrypticMirror]

I must admit, I totally grok The Orville. I do. The way I explain it is to talk about my grandfather. When I was a little girl I would sit with him and watch war movies, he liked naval ones. The Gifthorse, The Cruel Sea, Enemy Below, you get the idea. His absolute favourite though, and mine too, was Operation Petticoat. It is theoretically a serious war movie; at one point a party of celebrating sailors and civilians get strafed by a Japanese fighter squadron, but it is also a movie where Tony Curtis steals the wall of an admiral's office, smuggles a pig in the officers head, and they save the day by flushing a bunch of lingerie out a torpedo tube. That latter part; it is because they are being depth charged by a friendly vessel which has not recognised them and that attack is treated as a real threat.

On tv we used to watch "gritty" cop shows that I was entirely too young to be watching. There was The Sweeney, The Professionals, well, much the same thing. Lots of violence and adult themes. I don't remember what my Grandfather's favourite cop show was at the time, but I do know what mine is now. It is New Tricks. It deals with really nasty murders, some of children, which are dug up by a cold case squad composed of retired police officers from the 70s and 80s. And they play pranks on each other, set up gags, someone gets their tie stuck in a chocolate press or after a visit to a hypnotist clucks like a chicken. They also deal with police corruption, institutionalised racism, the aforementioned brutal murders, and the team's recovering alcoholic falls off the wagon over the course of an entire series and is forced to rehab at threat of divorce.

I grok the Orville because I grew up with movies where comedy and drama both coexisted in the same entity. And that is how I see The Orville, and I do not feel ashamed of that. I think it works, and my favourite episode of the series is the one which everyone picks on as the worst, the Social Media World episode, because I can see that while there are jokes there is also a real nasty streak of darkness in that episode which is ever more reflected in the real world now.

Anyway this episode? It is Standard Season Opener #1. It introduces the cast, the ship, the world setup, and it includes some action and jokes as it goes. It is fine. It does its job. I liked the redwood tree ripping the much bigger and meaner ship apart, that was an awesome visual, much better than a lot of the more militaristic SF shows approach of blow it up or technobattle out of it, and reasonably well set up. I enjoy this show as a good comedy drama show.

As far as the Trek part goes, yeah, these are not the top of their game people. These are the just good enough at their jobs to avoid getting fired people, and if it were a Trek episode these would be the guys who Kirk and co were called to rescue at the start of a Trek episode. They are not getting on the fleet flagship, and they are not getting fleet flagship level duties, they are getting the scutwork; and we all know people like that at our own workplaces.

[Darth Wedgius]

Just putting this out there. Seth MacFarlane has said that season 2 of Orville will be heavier on the sci fi and lighter on the humor, which will make a lot of people happy (but will probably lessen my enjoyment of Bortus as a counterpart to the silliness).

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/seth-macfa ... the-sci-fi

I don't mind silliness mixed in with seriousness -- my favorite fantasy series by far is Discworld, which does that a lot. But few writers have as deft a hand at it as Sir Pterry did.