The Orville Marathon

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/orville/orvilles1.php

Chuck continues his look at Trek by way of Seth MacFarlane

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Orville's not actually canon btw.

[CrypticMirror]

Orville's not actually canon btw.

It is to me. It has the thing that STD lacks, heart. It might be an affectionate Trek parody, but at least it is affectionate to the franchise and (episode 9 exempted) the viewer; something that STD is very much not. Discovery seems to hate its viewers, its characters, and the very fact that it has to fit into a pre-existing franchise. I'll take The Orville as new Trek canon over that any day of the week.

[Darth Wedgius]

I think STD and at least the first two Kelvinverse movies aren't aimed primarily at fans of TOS & TNG -- if I remember right, the guy playing Lorca said we'd watch it anyway, and even dared us not to. I think they want to build a new, younger audience. Naturally, canon isn't going to be as important when their intended target vaguely remember something about Captain Kirk seducing the Borg.

I think Orville is meant for fans of those series, by fans of those series, so naturally it has a better chance to appeal to people watching this site.

And it does a lot of things right, besides. I've heard from multiple reviewers how STD has been sparse in the characterization of anyone who isn't Michael, where the characters of Orville were established pretty well IMO.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

How standard are single arc 13-episode seasons now? Those certainly don't leave much in the way for side character drama that you have in the 26 episode seasons.

[G-Man]

One thing I wonder - did Seth MacFarlane get approval for his show through some sort of blackmail? That might explain why they let him have things that seem odd (like him playing the main character). Let's remember, he suggested that Kevin Spacey was... doing inappropriate things several years back, and his Oscar show poked at Harvey Weinstein. I wonder whether he knows a lot of secrets that he could reveal.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

One thing I wonder - did Seth MacFarlane get approval for his show through some sort of blackmail? That might explain why they let him have things that seem odd (like him playing the main character). Let's remember, he suggested that Kevin Spacey was... doing inappropriate things several years back, and his Oscar show poked at Harvey Weinstein. I wonder whether he knows a lot of secrets that he could reveal.

What I read was that they read from an exhaustive list of everything CBS deems off limits from a prior copyright case and just made star trek but without those specific things.

[G-Man]

By "getting approval" I did not mean how he avoided copyright issues, I meant how he got someone to take a risk on a show that was designed at least partly as a vanity/fantasy project (I want to be a starship captain!)

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well he is a talented guy.

[RobbyB1982]

By "getting approval" I did not mean how he avoided copyright issues, I meant how he got someone to take a risk on a show that was designed at least partly as a vanity/fantasy project (I want to be a starship captain!)

Family guy and its related spinoffs have made the networks a lot of money, for nearly two decades now. Whatever your opinion on those shows, their current quality, or how little McFarlane does or doesn't actually have to do with them any more, that's still serious clout which will let you get a few projects rolling.

See also the South Park guys being able to make a puppet movie, and the Beavis and Butthead guy being able to make King of the Hill (which turned into a longer runner than B&B itself), and J.J. Abrams constantly getting work.

Success allows people to get funding for projects, vanity or otherwise.