Remember when Star Trek was good? Back before special effects and "mainstream" influences took over the franchise and slowly bled the heart out? When they could launch a fourth spin-off and propel a second TV cast to the big screen based solely on themes of humanity and it's betterment? You know, twenty to thirty years ago when you had to sit through commercial breaks and listen to five minute long opening credit themesongs in order to see the latest breakthroughs in forehead prosthetics? Remember, "Make it so," and "Number One" and "Shields up! Red Alert!"? (Bonus if you remember which crew member is "fully functional") Well, so does Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy (and various other shows and films), and he just happens to feel like going down Nostalgia Lane with us to reminisce about the good old days of television sci-fi. He's clearly a Trekkie at heart and he's filled his crew behind the scenes with much of the same talent that brought us the old Trek. So is this some kind of a joke? Or is he trolling CBS/Paramount for a copywrite lawsuit? Just what the heck is The Orville supposed to be? The first episode just came out on Sunday and as my blog has always been titled "Captain's Blog" it should come as no surprise that I would check this out and share my thoughts. It'll be a good pallet cleanser before the new Star Trek Discovery comes out later this month (and you can bet I'll be reviewing that too). The Orville is airing on Fox but if you're like me, you'll find it on the internet somewhere.
We open on blue skies. A clean New York City, four hundred years into the future, full of hovercars and green trees embedded in the shining glass cityscape. Good old fashioned Utopian Modernism. Remember that? The ships, the shuttles, the uniforms, even the architecture and furniture perfectly mirror the modernistic aesthetic pioneered by Star Trek and The Next Generation and all the other futurist science fiction popular before dark, angry dystopianism took over the genre. It's kind of nice. A nice place. A nice world. Until Seth MacFarlane (I forget his character's name but he's basically playing a pretty normal version of himself, here, nothing weird, so we'll stick with Seth) walks in on his wife having an affair with a blue alien, then promptly walks out. A year later he randomly gets his chance at captaining a starship named -- you guessed it -- The Orville. His ex-wife gets assigned as his first officer and his best friend is the pilot. Add a small cute alien female. A large, angry-looking alien with shallow emotional expression, a robot, a female doctor and a black guy with a French name and you basically have your Next Generation stand-ins. Thankfully no Wesley Crusher. They go on a mission. The generic bad-guy aliens show up and they resolve the plot at the last second. Standard fan fiction. But does it work? Right off the bat the humor is quirky and odd in the usual Seth MacFarlane way. Fans of his may find it immediately familiar but I found it a little forced and unnecessarily weird. Then again, I did find myself laughing unexpectedly at the blue alien sleeping with his ex-wife or the pleasantly friendly ogre in the holodeck. Outside of these few gag moments, the show is riddled with something resembling mumble-core. Everyone says, "Hey, man, what's up?" and "How ya doing?" and they talk like they're a bunch of casual Gen-X'ers hanging out at the GAP rather than members of some sort of intergalactic space fleet. It reminds you not to take things too seriously, which is odd, because the show is surprisingly serious. It's like, about things, and stuff. As much as Star Trek ever, was, this show is actually trying to be about something every week. In this pilot episode, I get a redemption vibe. Both Seth MacFarlane and his buddy pilot have bad reputations as slobs and degenerates, but this is their one chance. MacFarlane wants nothing but closure on his ex-wife, but gives her another chance anyway after a successful mission working together. The obnoxious humor, the mumbling dialogue, the gratuitous gimmicks are all just set-dressing for what is a far more sincere Star Trek rip-off than they want to admit. So is it a good Star Trek rip-off? Good Star Trek rip-offs looks like... I don't know... Off the top of my head? Babylon 5. Battlestar Galactica (both versions). Firefly. Even Galaxy Quest is as successful at repeating the Trek formula as it is at satirizing it. The Orville? Not yet. Not quite. It's not funny enough at it's core, nor is it structured to be so, in order to succeed as a straight comedy. It's not deliberate enough in its homages to be a good parody or satire either. The relationships are still too generic for there to be any drama. And it's not socially savvy enough to be as insightful as Star Trek originally was (at its best). So in conclusion, whatever The Orville is trying to be, it's not quite that yet. As a mish-mash collection of components from various influences, does it have the potential to be something new? Some original concoction that hasn't taken form yet? Maybe. The robot is deliberately dumb-looking and purposely cheap, like it was transported out of a low-budget 60's B-movie. The aliens are either boringly basic (funny noses, funny ears or funny foreheads, not to mention colorful) or needlessly nonsensical CGI creations (like the pile-of-jello alien on the floor). The dialogue far too consistently subverts expectations. I get the impression that they know this cliche sci-fi stuff has always sorta been stupid (hence why it was never very popular in the mainstream until JJ Abrams took over) and they want us to know that they know. Because under all the stupid names of alien races and the stupid faux-militarism and the stupid set designs and make-up effects is a genre that they unabashedly enjoy, and they miss it. They want to go back to those good old days, stupid as they might be, and have a little more fun there while they still can. In that regard, I can kinda see where they're going with this, and even though I wouldn't say I had that much fun just yet, I'm willing to give it a couple more episodes to see if they find their groove. There might be something here. Probably only for some die-hard, old-school Trekkies like me, but something to simultaneously laugh at and roll my eyes over and secretly, perhaps a little nostalgically, still enjoy. Bonus: Go click on the link hidden in the name Wesley Crusher, above. Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Star Trek Discovery Don't forget to Like and Subscribe!
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