Science Fiction

I'll go against the grain here a little bit. I like The Orville, but I've never been able to make myself love it. I am not a fan of Seth MacFarlane's animations or of Ted, and even his Cosmos reboot felt oddly thin, but The Orville is my favorite project of his, and it's clearly his love letter and wish fulfillment for 90s Trek. I think it's got more issues than people like to let on, and it gets a pass because for so many folks it compares favorably to much of nuTrek.

Some gripes:

• Many of the scripts show their age as slush pile retreads from 90s-trek. Generally they were treading old ground and not any better than the ST shows that inspired them. There were also a lot of pretty uninspiring settings suitable to filming in LA's thirty mile zone.

• The VFX got to be pretty decent, but the set design, costumes, and prosthetics were weak for its entire run; it often just looked bad, and the bright, clean aesthetic showed it off that much more.

• The humor almost always falls flat for me, and it is frequently distracting in a show that's otherwise trying to be more than a silly pastiche. Maybe that's just on me, not being a fan of Family Guy, Ted, etc.

• Many of the scripts present an interesting moral conundrum, but then they generally feel a need to pick a side and hammer it hard, whereas Star Trek would be a little more nuanced and often let the consequences of a character's or planet's choices speak for themselves. I can watch The Orville and just about visualize 20-something Seth shouting at the TV that Picard was ignoring the simple solution to problem X.

• The Orville has some of the worst acting I have ever seen on network TV. Seth is not great, his girlfriends were worse, and Scott Grimes and J. Lee just seemed amateurish. Penny Jerald and Adrianne Palicki generally elevated their material, as did the three Moclans, even through the clumsy latex. Still, large stretches of the show are filled with people who broke my suspension of disbelief JUST with their line readings.

• Descending dangerously close to personal pet peeve, the heavy reliance on pop culture references and humor also really highlighted how obsessed Seth is with the 80s and 90s, and maybe early 2000s. How many life lessons and "ancient earth stories" do we need from MacFarlane's specific formative years? Also... Avis?

Now, lest people think I'm just hating, here's a few things that I did like:

• The Bortus family arc was presented with sensitivity and nuance, and is a credit to the show in the best spirit of Trek.

• Palicki actually did great with the stresses of using her position to make up for personal mistakes and the dynamic that created with Seth worked better than it had any right to.

• It was obvious the people making the show were enjoying it, and that sort of heart makes its way into the show. Some of the awful acting (but not all of it) could be brushed aside by sheer earnestness.

• The world building was treated more seriously than I originally thought it would be. As time went on, I could see their Union as a real place.

• The sort of Squidward meets TNG aesthetic for the Union ships really grew on me over time.

Like I said, I like the Orville. Despite my grousing, it's more than the sum of its parts. I just don't think I can agree that it's much better than decent runs of nuTrek. For me, Lower Decks is better, SNW is better, and Picard S3 is better. Prodigy, Picard S1, and parts of Discovery, at least when not in the Mirror universe and when Michael is not whisper-shouting at me, are about as good. I just think The Orville gets overpraised because it was clearly an homage to people's favorite Trek shows.