Science Fiction

"oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna make my own Star Trek, with black jack and hookers. "

• Seth McFarlane

I watched the first 2 seasons. The "sitcom in space" parts work quite OK, Kaylon's concept was somewhat interesting, space battles are well animated, particularly in the 2nd season which clearly got more budget, but...

Whenever the scripts stray away from "personal drama of the week" and dumb jokes about starships it becomes uninspired and shallow. It's clear to me that MacFarlane tries to "dunk on both sides". Sadly, his attempts at political/social critique look like "enlightened centrist" reddit rants which don't try to think about broader consequences and context of points being made. To the point of some stories being somewhat problematic when dissected.

I watched the first episode of the third season to see where does the series go. It took a highly sensitive topic, again reiterated high-school philosophy arguments and made this potentially hard and relatable for viewers subject into an awkward bedtime conversation. I decided the rest of the season is not worth my time.

Luckily Strange New Worlds premiered soon after and I never looked back. SNW beats Orville on all measures.

It felt way more like Star Trek than the Star Trek being made at the time (primarily Discovery). Though I do like Strange New Worlds and think it's more in the right direction, The Orville still feels way more like TNG-era Trek.

Now we just need a Galaxy Quest / Orville crossover to really confuse everyone.

what modern star trek should be

I expected the Orville to be a funny homage to Star Trek. For a short time it was just that. Actually a randy one with too much toilet humor. But then suddenly they became serious SciFi. Which I consider a bold move and mostly but not utterly a successful one. And in hindsight, it would have been hard to deliver good SciFi-Humor for more than one Season except if they went the Futurama-Path.

The part of the funny homage to Star Trek nowadays has been taken by Lower Decks. Humorwise it beats everything Orville had ever offered.

Orville is good. Not great but worth watching. They had some AMAZING episodes with depth and ideas among the best ST-Episodes. But they also had a lot of mediocre episodes. Still Better than ST-Discovery for sure. Even surpassing ST-Picard. Which is something Seth can be proud of.

Orville started when there was no Startrek and no serious Soap-SiFi at all (The Expanse is something different).

For me it is "Startrek when Startrek wasn't" and basically revived the Franchise it wanted to make fun of.

I like it.

Always thought the whole parody aspect was just a means to get funding to just make a regular star trek series in disguise. If someone would just give the man money for exactly that we would have an awesome star trek series.

The Orville is my favorite Star Trek franchise. It's canon - you can't deny it. The Orville revived the Star Trek Franchise and gave it a pulse. It's like blockchain. You can say it doesn't belong, but it will always be there and nothing can change that. It has great attention to detail and decent story writing with that original "there's a moral in this episode" that endeared ST in our hearts, something the newer ST franchises lack.

It was the best Trek we had in ages. Held me over until we got SNW and Lower Deck.

I loved it because it had all the eye candy and high concept stuff I'm looking for but they didn't take themselves too seriously.

I didn't mind the acting or the incongruent personality quirks. I actually found most of it pretty endearing in a little relaxing. He probably should have broken the fourth wall a little more often.

Overtime the formula got a little too predictable. With the exception of an episode here and there are the story arcs were getting tired.

I enjoyed watching it, I wouldn't mind seeing more, but I have no urge whatsoever to go back and do a rewatch.

I really liked it.

The early seasons were less serious than later ones. But overall, it did well with serious social issues and addresses some very relevant topics.

The storyline with Topah was absolutely amazing. At every step, each character was portrayed well, and respectfully. It's rare that there is a story like that that still has conflict without having a clear villain.

The time travel episode with Gordon was also especially brutal with some great performances from everyone on screen.

There were a few misses. I found the Isaac / Doctor relationship... forced, even if it did bring us the best line in decades ("As I am incapable of stuttering, I must conclude that you heard me."). I also don't think I'm alone with disliking the Charlie character in season 3.

I love it, the gags and semi-coherent plot in the first season pulled me in and I was hooked after that. I understand Seth's humour can put some people off, that's fine too but I think the show is strong enough and has matured enough to stand side by side with modern Trek and hold its own.

I generally dislike the typial Mc Farlane type of comedy and I don´t think it fit´s particularly well in a Star Trek like show. Beside that, The Orville is a really good show, way better than Nu Trek (with the exception of SNW). When watching The Orville I feel like I can tell that the people who made it actually like and even respect classic Star Trek - which is the opposite of how I felt when trying to watch DIS and PIC.

After the first season, which was an obligatory “Star Trek Type Show Finds Its Feet” season, it really hit its stride to become the best Star Trek since DS9. Not in name, but certainly in spirit. So earnest, with a great message throughout. Sure it had some mediocre jokes here and there but so did TNG, let’s not forget. I was sitting around just the other day thinking how I missed watching The Orville

It's the best Star Trek show since Next Generation.

Kidding. I actually liked DS9 and Voyager

It's on par though.

I thought it was a parody at first, and it certainly treated itself as such in the beginning, but in the later seasons, it took itself more seriously, and I found it a more "realistic" take than star trek.

Star trek is awesome, don't get me wrong. But the captains were kind of "perfect", basically. Captain Mercer and his crew are all flawed people, in their own way. They make poor decisions sometimes, out of selfishness, pride, or whatever, and it's fun to see them deal with the consequences.

I loved it. So much sci if these days focuses more on world building than character development. Orville felt like it struck the right balance between the two and gave us characters that are easier to empathize with.

It was a breath of fresh air after the disappointment of Discovery and proof that there are people who still believe in Star Trek's optimistic vision of the future. I think for that reason I and many other fans gave it a pass for a lot of it's flaws.

My biggest problem is that I feel the social commentary is rather poorly done. I've gotten into some nasty fights on reddit for saying so.

I'll start by saying what I think it does well. It's good at humanizing people who live in an oppressive society and portraying their point of view.

But the ideas it discusses aren't especially original or insightful. The world building doesn't exist to support them. The Moclans might be a fine allegory for trans and intersex issues, but they only work as an allegory and make no sense at face value. And they're portrayed inconsistently to allow whatever kind of episodes the writers want.

I feel like one issue is that McFarlane does not share the ideals of Star Trek. I don't get the impression that he sees the value of non-interference, for example. But nevertheless, the Union believes in it because the Federation does. Politically, he's a more conventional thinker than the classic Star Trek writers.

It is the best Star trek show on right now even though it is not Star trek. Loved it. It reminds me of Firefly

Absolutely love this show. The bf and I still yell "PREPARE FOR THE SEXUAL EVENT" at each other when the moment calls for it.

I loved it. Reminded me of my beloved farscape

I thought it was the best comedic Star Trek until Lower Decks dropped. It's still the best modern Trek show as a regular Trek show, albeit a lot more goofy than it needs to be since it's made as a comedy first. I watch it because it's actually about as good in the drama and set design as TNG was, but the humor, being driven by McFarlane, is just not my thing anymore. He's just got too much shit that's all over the place and I'm tired of it, not that it's bad in and of itself.

It was the Star Trek we needed before SNW and Lower Decks. Seth and the Orville are not universally appreciated but I doubt the Orville escaped the notice of the writers and producers at Paramount. The Orville charted a sometimes difficult and uneven course to the golden age of Start Trek we are currently enjoying and along the way made some excellent episodes and introduced some good lore and characters.

I enjoyed it at first, but I think season three was when the balance between comedy and seriousness made it fall apart a bit. Are we doing fart jokes or serious drama here?

Couple that with Seth driving off actors or elevating them to be main cast because he's sleeping with them, and my wife and I just couldn't get in to season 3. Thoroughly enjoyed the previous two light-hearted seasons with a touch of drama and trekiness.

Put me in the "like it don't love it" camp. It is very clearly Seth MacFarlane's love letter to 90s trek, pulled some good ideas from that era's writers, and has more heart than it seems in the first couple of episodes. Some of the character work is actually quite touching, and it seems like they're having fun with the show, so it's rarely a slog. Overall though, it is way too uneven to be great or even really good.

Seth is not a great actor, and several members of the cast are MUCH worse than him, like "low-end dinner theater" bad. The set design, costume, and prosthetics are pretty weak, and Seth's sense of humor just doesn't work for me, so in a context where he's trying to find the right balance with a Star Trek show, it hits even more awkwardly. It's also very specifically SETH MACFARLANE'S love letter to Star Trek, so there's way too much emphasis on 1980-2000 American pop culture, and I say that as someone who's only a few years younger than him. It's distracting how narrow the set of references are in a show that traffics in them so liberally.

There's also something just a bit off about the messaging of many of the more serious episodes, like Seth feels a need to come down on a definitive answer to the moral questions that come up. I dunno, I am having trouble recollecting specific scenes, but it's a lingering feeling I have. I almost imagine 20-something Seth in a dorm room at RISD screaming at Picard that he should have just shot that Romulan!

Seth McFarland fixing his lonliness in space. Or Seth McFarland and the girl of the week.

I liked it at first, but felt the constant story lines about Seth and his love life to be a bit much. Tone down on that, give me more space exploration and less broken heart lonely man stories, and I might enjoy it more.

For me after DS9, The Orville is (to me) the next canonical Start Trek series. Everything after is, from what I've seen is trash that exploits the name for an established fan base. Now I haven't seen everything, but like, how many times do you need to be kicked in the nuts to know that you don't like getting kicked in the nuts and you just stop!

I loved, FUCKING LOVED, TNG. Honestly, that show shaped a lot of who I am, especially since I didn't have a good father figure growing up.

The Orville isn't perfect. Seth for better or for worse tries some jokes and some of them really don't land. But to his credit he tries. And it felt like as the show went on it got more refined in what it wanted to be.

The people who are in charge of modern Star Trek can shove it up their ass. You can't tell me a single one of them ever sat down and ever actually watched Star Trek. TOS, TNG, VOY, and DS9 I'm here for it all. Everything after, Jesus Christ, just awful. I'd rather watch Dr Crusher get it on with a ghost repeatedly than sit and watch modern Star Trek.

But the Oroville like a breath of fresh air.

I wanted to like it, but didn’t get through S1. I found the humor so uneven that it made the whole thing almost uncomfortable. Is it an irreverent parody, sci-fi, slightly crude comedy, or is it Star Trek? It’s all of those things, and I’m happy folks enjoyed it. I’ll try to revisit at some point, but for now I’m so happy that Strange New Worlds is as surprisingly excellent as it is. For me, it nails the mixture of lightheartedness, sci-fi adventure, and earnestness that I like in Star Trek.

The Orville is what would happen if the offspring of Star Trek and Galaxy Quest married Lexx and had a baby.

It actually has a lot of the same style social commentary that really Trek ToS and TNG had, combined with the absurdity and humor of GQ and periods of no-punches-pulled raunchy. I mean, go Yaphit and we all know kinky shit happened in holedecks too but it's something else to see on screen.

I am very much looking forward to the next season. It's actually one of the very few sci-fi movies I've gotten my wife to watch with me that she enjoyed

@Izzy true fact: Seth McFarlane developed the show after his friend and collaborator Ahmed Best (of Star Wars) pitched him the idea of a comedic Star Trek clone. It was called "The Nebula." I know because I was personally pitching the sizzle reel for the pilot to branded entertainment clients in 2009.

It counts as Star Trek in my personal canon. Really hope season 4 happens.

As a long time Star Trek fan, I love this show. It really is better than a lot of modern Trek. Reading all these comments makes me want to engage in the watching event.

Edit: spelling

Orville season 3 has a few episodes that are easily up to par in the top 10-20 star trek episodes of all times.

Entertainment wise, I find it to be very fun to watch and am always engaged while I have it on.

Thematically, I think it has either a bad or watered down argument sometimes, but other times I think it really hits. Either way though, I find the way it approaches certain ideas very interesting and compelling to discuss with my SO while we watch it, so even when I don't agree with the thematic intent of the episode, I find it worthwhile to interact with.

That said, it did make me cringe a little bit for the first 2 episodes. They're still worth watching for context instead of skipping them, but don't make any judgements on it until episode 3.

All in all, I give it a 8.5/10 personally but a 7/10 critically.

Absolutely LOVE it. I've lost count of how many times I've watched the series and I am currently on another go thru of it. It's definitely a joke in the beginning and some jokes miss, but I love how they get into some good topics halfway through.