The Orville: Seth MacFarlane's new Star Trek spoof TV series

[Old Gold Tooth]

The jokes are bafflingly mild and also just plain baffling.

"I'm going to go read in the bathroom!"
"What was that?"
"Elvis' last words. All I could think of."

I mean, I sort of get it. But it doesn't really work on any level, does it? Especially not with Macfarlane's monotone delivery and crash test dummy face.

[eddiecurry]

I really want one of those things that transports cake into my living room.

[Alberon]

I've just watched the third episode (as the series has moved to it's permanent home of Thursday nights). The intended jokes are fewer in number again, but still stick out oddly in an episode which is otherwise a total clone of that old Trek standard - a trial episode.

Mr Not-Worf and his mate have had a child who turns out to be female, which is almost unheard of on a planet which is almost totally male. Not-Worf is converted into not wanting a sex-change for his kid by being shown an animated story about Rudolph the Reindeer. But his mate still does so it ends up in a tribunal down on Not-Worf's home planet. The first officer leads for the defence and shows that Alara is stronger than any male around and the pilot is stupider than the females in the cast. At the end the captain tracks down the one other female native alive on the planet (who just turns out to be the planet's greatest writer). The tribunal retires to decide its verdict.

And the one area where the episode shows any originality is where their verdict is to give the sex-change to the kid and actually go ahead and do it. I think Trek would usually have found some fudge to avoid that.

So less attempts at humour, but an even more slavish attention to detail in copying mid 90s Trek than the previous episodes. Maybe that will work for it. It is a network show rather than a cable or online one so the audience is different. In a world where Law and Order, CSI and Hawaii Five-O rehash the same plots week after week and year after year, maybe, just maybe, a light-hearted copy of a Trek format twenty years dead might work.

Now it is in it's usual mid-week slot the ratings will start to show the true level of the show.

[Shit Good Nose]

Is it possible/probable that the intention for this is to go head-to-head and rival the new Star Trek series?

If they're gradually toning down the comedy (I've still not seen it), and with the new ST starting on Netflix...

[Bad Ambassador]

Is it possible/probable that the intention for this is to go head-to-head and rival the new Star Trek series?

If they're gradually toning down the comedy (I've still not seen it), and with the new ST starting on Netflix...

Only the first episode of Discovery is being broadcast. After that it moves onto the CBS All Access platform in the US and Netflix everywhere else.

[Blumf]

Mr Not-Worf and his mate have had a child who turns out to be female, which is almost unheard of on a planet which is almost totally male.

All seems too sudden to rush into an arc about the xenological particular of an alien race we've barely had any exposure to. Not that it's conceptually mind blowing or anything, it's standard ST fare, just that dramatically, we've seen next to nothing of Mr Not-Worf, never mind his other-half, or his people, so why should we care?

[Alberon]

Star Trek Discovery gets its one and only broadcast on Sunday which is the day the Orville has just been moved from. So, if anything, it looks like the Orville has been moved to avoid Trek.

Though, I don't know how relevant going head-to-head is in these days of catch-up TV.

[Ignatius_S]

Star Trek Discovery gets its one and only broadcast on Sunday which is the day the Orville has just been moved from. So, if anything, it looks like the Orville has been moved to avoid Trek.

Though, I don't know how relevant going head-to-head is in these days of catch-up TV.

Moving it to a weeknight slot was always the plan. By putting in in a post-football slot on Sunday, the show gets a considerable boost to its ratings and when the show moves, Fox hopes that people will follow it. Sci-fi, comedy or otherwise, often struggles on TV and the Sunday slot pretty much guaranteed that people, who usually would have taken a pass, give it a go.

The Orville's scheduling was announced back in June: http://deadline.com/2017/06/fox-fall-2017-premiere-dates-empire-marvel-the-gifted-seth-macfarlane-orville-1202118456/ (This was basically a couple of days after Star Trek Discovery's premiere was announced).

[Chriddof]

I've not seen this show yet, and I'm not sure if I can actually be bothered to, but to me the basic idea of the Not-Worf plot in the latest episode has some very unsettling undertones reminiscent of this real life tragedy:

David Peter Reimer (August 22, 1965 – May 4, 2004) was a Canadian man assigned male at birth but reassigned as a girl and raised female following medical advice and intervention after his penis was accidentally destroyed during a botched circumcision in infancy.[1]

Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer's realization he was not a girl crystallized between the ages of 9 and 11,[2] and he transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the "John/Joan" case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practices. He later committed suicide after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage.[3]

I don't think that the writers intended this, but it's the first thing that came to mind once I'd read the synopsis above. I've not seen the episode, of course, so maybe it plays out differently on screen.

[Alberon]

As expected The Orville's ratings dropped on moving to Thursdays. From Deadline -

Clearly, the Seth MacFarlane-created and -starring sci-fi series was going to take a hit once it was deprived of the NFL lead-ins that opened its first two episodes. And it did, with last night's Orville falling a hard 50% in the demo from the final numbers of September 17 show, which started at 8:48 PM ET due to NFL overruns.

That has to hurt for Fox, who have made the show a high priority. However, at the same time, The Orville did rise 10% among the 18-49 from its lead-in. Also, Live+3 viewing for the MacFarlane series' September 17 airing drew a 2.8/9, the first non-sport show to beat the Emmys since 1997 —  that's a chest beater for Fox.

That's just overnights of course. The final figure taking catch-up into account is more important.

[kidsick5000]

It's still watchable but it does ask the question, is this really the show they wanted to make.
It's similar to that porn parody video from a few years back where someone edited out all the sex scenes, revealing it to be a really faithful fan-version of a TNG episode in disguise.

[Steptoes_Son]

I know it's got its detractors on here, but it does strike me as strange that Red Dwarf is the only sci-fi sitcom that has had any kind of real success, when such a genre seems ripe for really inventive ideas and humour.

[Alberon]

There haven't been that many attempts at an SF sitcom to be fair and most shows don't hit so I think it's more down to the small number of attempts more than anything else. Red Dwarf just got it right and, back in the day, had the right balance between inventive SF situations and funny characters and jokes. In the UK the only others I can think of off the top of my head are Hyperdrive, Astronauts (from most of the Goodies team) and Come Back Mrs Noah (which has a label of one of the worst UK sitcoms ever). Does Hitch-Hikers count as a sitcom? That's more a straight comedy isn't it?

As to the Orville I think MacFarlane just wanted to do a direct Star Trek copy (I mean, he hasn't even filed the serial numbers off) but was pushed to stick jokes in as the network thought that what would bring the most viewers. But, only three episodes in, we've already seen a steep decline in the number of jokes attempted.

[Shit Good Nose]

Does Hitch-Hikers count as a sitcom? That's more a straight comedy isn't it?

Either way, am I right in remembering that it wasn't received that well by either critics or viewers on its original airing, and it was only with the repeats a few years later that it started to really pick up fans?

[Alberon]

The TV series wasn't the hit the radio and book had been and was probably quite expensive for its day.

Wiki says this on a second series

A second series was planned at one point, with a storyline, according to Alan Bell and Mark Wing-Davey, that would have come from Adams' abandoned Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen project (instead of a TV version of the second radio series). However, Adams got into disputes with the BBC (accounts differ: problems with budget, scripts, and having Alan Bell and/or Geoffrey Perkins involved were all offered as causes), and the second series was never made.[9][10] The elements of the Doctor Who and the Krikketmen project instead became the third novel, Life, the Universe and Everything.

I suspect if it had been a bigger hit then execs would have more room to solve these difficulties.

[Shit Good Nose]

Yeah, I know it had "other" problems when the second series was mooted, but a(n older) friend of mine, who is a massive Adams fan and loved the radio show, to this day hates the TV series, and has always maintained it didn't go down that well on first broadcast.  I was only 2 at the time (so don't know anything first hand), and didn't get to see it until it was first repeated (on BBC2 on Tuesday nights if memory serves) in the late 80s.

[Malcy]

I like it. I think I'd rather less humour than more. It feels very TNG and I like that about it. Decided to look up some of the cast. I have a rapidly developing thing for the one who took command last week and didn't realise that Bortis's partner is Tyres from The Walking Dead!

[Blumf]

There haven't been that many attempts at an SF sitcom

I think there is a strong case for American Dad being classed as a sci-fi sitcom. It may not be all space and lasers, but the show has both an alien and a mind-swapped human/fish as two main characters, plus all the CIA gadgetry giving us everything from VR holidays to time travel.

[olliebean]

ATM there's also People of Earth, Ghosted starting next week (episode 1 is already "available"), and arguably Last Man on Earth. The Tick probably counts. Recently cancelled were Making History and Powerless. In the UK we've had Cockroaches quite recently. I'm sure there's been a few others I can't remember the names of.

Oh, and Kinvig, of course.

[Brundle-Fly]

Not forgetting Out Of This World, Holmes & Yoyo, My Favourite Martian, 3rd Rock From The Sun, I Dream Of Jeanie (<at a push)?, and if we're being silly, in cartoon land, The Jetsons, Astronut, The Space Kidettes, The New Schmoo...


Strictly not a comedy sci-fi but the intro to Space Academy is priceless. Pure Serafinowicz/ Popper!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ufw2YdGJsw

I could watch these intros to canned U.S. sci-fi shows of the 70s/80s all night. Or for at least, fourteen and a half minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfZerhRy8lc

[Brundle-Fly]

didn't realise that Bortis's partner is Tyres from The Walking Dead!

'Tyreese' is in The Walking Dead. 'Tyres' is in Shaun Of The Dead.

[Alternative Carpark]

Yeah, I know it had "other" problems when the second series was mooted, but a(n older) friend of mine, who is a massive Adams fan and loved the radio show, to this day hates the TV series, and has always maintained it didn't go down that well on first broadcast.  I was only 2 at the time (so don't know anything first hand), and didn't get to see it until it was first repeated (on BBC2 on Tuesday nights if memory serves) in the late 80s.

Depends on what is meant by "going down well" really.  While I don't have access to any ratings information, they did repeat it three times within the next six and a half years, and it won several awards, so it doesn't seem to have been considered a flop anyway.

[Ambient Sheep]

a(n older) friend of mine, who is a massive Adams fan and loved the radio show, to this day hates the TV series, and has always maintained it didn't go down that well on first broadcast.

I was 13 in 1978 when the radio series (which many people -- not you, I'm sure -- seem not to realise was the original) went out.  I and my friends all adored it; copies of off-air C60s of it being semi-clandestinely swapped in the playground.

The animations and Simon Jones aside, we all thought the TV series sucked huge great donkey balls.  The woeful mis-recasting of Trillian, the overacting of the recast Ford Prefect, and the Zaphod animationic fail (it looked like something we might have knocked up ourselves) being particular lowlights.  Oh, and the lumbering Vogon guard that had me cringing through my 16-year-old fingers, I mean, I could go on...

As you can gather, I thoroughly agree with your friend.

[Ambient Sheep]

...and it won several awards...

Best Use of the Word "Belgium" in a Humorous Screenplay?

[Ambient Sheep]

ATM there's also People of Earth, Ghosted starting next week (episode 1 is already "available"), and arguably Last Man on Earth. The Tick probably counts. Recently cancelled were Making History and Powerless. In the UK we've had Cockroaches quite recently. I'm sure there's been a few others I can't remember the names of.

Tripped was quite entertaining (basically "dopeheads do Sliders with a touch of Highlander") and I'm rather annoyed that it looks like there won't be any more.

[olliebean]

Amazed nobody's mentioned Mork and Mindy yet.

[Brundle-Fly]

Amazed nobody's mentioned Mork and Mindy yet.

Of course!  And Alf too.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Futurama, surely?

[mothman]

I watched the first episode and it just left me cold. There's nothing original about it. A lot of comparisons to Galaxy Quest have been made, but all I keep thinking of is the John Scalzi novel Redshirts. It's set in a future Trek-like universe and follows the adventures of a bunch of junior crewmembers on a starship, who start to notice they have a very low life expectancy, especially when they accompany the command staff on missions - while the captain and/or first officer, doctor, engineer and security chief always miraculously survive. Then it gets even weirder.

[olliebean]

The animations and Simon Jones aside, we all thought the TV series sucked huge great donkey balls.  The woeful mis-recasting of Trillian, the overacting of the recast Ford Prefect, and the Zaphod animationic fail (it looked like something we might have knocked up ourselves) being particular lowlights.  Oh, and the lumbering Vogon guard that had me cringing through my 16-year-old fingers, I mean, I could go on...

Still better than the film, though.