Star Trek: Disco vs. The Orville
Let me preface by saying that I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I watch an episode of one of the various series nearly every day.
But, I would argue that The Orville is more of a descendant of the Star Trek legacy than Disco.
I enjoy Disco. Totally disagree with Jim'Ron's take on Tilly. I think she's fantastic. It's a very good show. But, I think it's a bit too West Wing walking/talking scripted and visually stylized. The visuals are tremendous - beautiful to look at but feels very sterile.
As a contrast, The Orville tells real Star Trek-type stories. The last episode I think could be the best of the series.
The Orville is embracing the Star Trek legacy while Disco I think is trying to move on and, in doing so, is losing some of the heart of the series.
That said, I am encouraged by the Disco premiere. When Pike tells Burnham than we are "going to shake things up and ruffle some feathers", it felt like show notes from Season 1 to start to have some more fun. So, I'm encouraged.
I'm just a bit shocked that The Orville, which I thought in the beginning was just a parody, is (minus the less-frequent low-brow humor) this good.
But, I would argue that The Orville is more of a descendant of the Star Trek legacy than Disco.
I enjoy Disco. Totally disagree with Jim'Ron's take on Tilly. I think she's fantastic. It's a very good show. But, I think it's a bit too West Wing walking/talking scripted and visually stylized. The visuals are tremendous - beautiful to look at but feels very sterile.
As a contrast, The Orville tells real Star Trek-type stories. The last episode I think could be the best of the series.
The Orville is embracing the Star Trek legacy while Disco I think is trying to move on and, in doing so, is losing some of the heart of the series.
That said, I am encouraged by the Disco premiere. When Pike tells Burnham than we are "going to shake things up and ruffle some feathers", it felt like show notes from Season 1 to start to have some more fun. So, I'm encouraged.
I'm just a bit shocked that The Orville, which I thought in the beginning was just a parody, is (minus the less-frequent low-brow humor) this good.
Comments
I have heard people call The Orville TNG's successor but I like to think of it as the Star Trek series that should have been in-between TOS and TNG. Half camp and half serious.
The guy is a real multi-talent. The Orville is drifting away from that type of humor and ST:Disco is sneezing green snot in people's faces.
I don't know what's happening.
That is why it sucks and is a disease on the Star Trek franchise.
Seth MacFarlene understands and loves Star Trek.
That is why it is great and a successor to Star Trek.
Its pretty simple as you can see, You don't need to over think it.
CBS rebooted Star Trek only so they could sell their streaming service CBS ALL ACCESS. Horrible shmucks.
As far as the Orville, I haven't seen it and I won't. I detest Seth McFarlane with the heat of a thousand suns and I really don't think Gene Roddenberry's successor is the guy who sang "We saw your boobs" at the Oscars.
Every Trek has had someone who’s annoying, someone to take all the neg viewership. And every Trek also has someone who’s the unabashed open heart/conscience. I think Disco combined the 2 in Tilly. My only minor thing is that so far it hasn’t had truly stand-alone full episodes, which for the other iterations was a huge plus in re-watching. In the “extras” on all-access though, there are very good short clips that have the old stand-alone dna...I hope that signals where the show is going.
When my free sub runs out I’ll try to keep up with it elsewhere; especially if they can get past the single season-long plot lines to a true discovery mission.
They said when they started there would be no contact with TOS but the Euro buyers wouldn't renew for this season unless they had the Enterprise and Spock so guess who won...
I gave The Orville a pretty whole-hearted endorsement.
I always thought the rumor was that Nimoy wouldn't do the movie unless they killed off his character. After that they talked him into the 3rd movie by letting him direct it.
On the topic of Discovery, watched the season 2 opener and while it looked pretty amazing for TV, I just didn't feel very engaged with the story? I liked season 1 fine enough but just didn't seem to care what was happening. Most interesting character was the engineer/emergency doctor keeping all those people alive. Hope to see more of her.
And what was up with the Enterprise? At no point did they say what was wrong with the ship or why it couldn't be used. Nobody even asked. All they said was they had just got back from their 5-yr mission, but why was it broken? Someone mentions how hard it would be to disable the Enterprise, but no follow-up? I'm guessing the answer is "Because then we'd have to build the sets", but still...
episodic shows in general seem to be in this loop of
- episode 1: find out there's a new Big Bad™ for the season.
- episode 2-11: decide you can't find said Big Bad™ and do some other non-related adventure, but shoe-horn in weird conversation about Big Bad™ completely out of context.
- episode 12: find and defeat Big Bad™
Essentially the CW shows...I'm interested to see what happens with the episodes toward the end of the season when they had apparently run out of budget for the show... Probably a few "OMG, were trapped in a shuttle craft for the whole episode" or "OMG, were trapped in this small underground cave for the whole episode" episodes...
On the issue of Enterprise's disabling, there was a bit of explanation--massive systems failure (except life support) when they set course for the coordinates of the red burst. I've been talking with a friend about this and we've decided that Spock himself disabled the Enterprise to stop Pike from following him on whatever journey he's taking now. It makes sense if you do a close read of the dialogue in episode 1 and you're familiar with the TOS episode The Menagerie, where Spock kidnaps Pike and commandeers the Enterprise so he can bring Pike back to Talos IV. (And considering some fans' reactions to the new Klingons, can you blame them for not showing much of Enterprise?)
Might also have to do with how they had to make the Enterprise different for legal reasons too
https://io9.gizmodo.com/star-trek-discoverys-version-of-the-enterprise-had-to-1825276401
One issue that is apparent is that Discovery is trying something newer for Star Trek (extremely serialized) while the Orville is essentially a retro-Trek pastiche - surprisingly well done, but so far quite retro......
Discovery is an attempt to refresh and reinvigorate the series.