Spectrum has an OP length limit, so here is the full review https://dowlphinblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/the-orville-and-star-trek-discovery-comparative-review-meta-commentary/ and I will split the second part of this off into a reply here. If you want to reply, just do to the original thread posting please. I will give a virtually no-spoiler review of each one and then a comparative conclusion, based on my current view and understanding and in contemporary context of the shows emerging; what role they play, what influence they might have. So it's highly colored by sociology; very meta, if you want to use that term. I will also look at The Orville in light of the obvious Trek knockoff it tries to be. The reviews might jump around key points a bit since I wrote these from plenty of notes I took during my watching of four episodes of The Orville first and then three episodes of Star Trek Discovery. The Orville _____________ The overall story writing is OK and relatively enjoyable. That's like a crucial basis that one needs to get right or everything else suffers from it. The problem is, it suffers a lot from the details as well as its agenda. This show knows exactly what it's doing and it is showing. The humor is relatively natural and doesn't go too much into tryhard territory, although it can be borderline at times. It's just the characters being their slightly quirky way, although the show tries a dissonant mix of wanting to be serious and believable but then throwing that out the window. Characters are basically not at all different from people of our time. This can be seen as a strength but also as a weakness, because it means that the sci-fi setting is nothing but window dressing. This could work just as well in any other setting. There is no inspirational factor that has something to do with the future, and some references (usually attempted humorous) to our times in fact test the suspension of disbelief of the show happening any time in the future, and that's not the only factor in that. Sometimes the show pretends that there is a professional qualification to serving on board a starship and that it is still embedded in a military context, but then again all too often the Orville seems more like a privateer ship with a family sitcom going. One detail that I had to facepalm about - one of those things - was when a fly-by of the Orville featured dirt specks on the screen, as if it was being filmed by a camera. This stuff bothers me all the time. There is a lot of standard-recipe at work. It's a show like many others. If The Orville wasn't sci-fi, it would need more quality to make up for that space-filler. Watching it feels like someone thought: "Hey, let's make a show that looks like Trek, but with low-brow humor and hitting home our progressive message in a way that everybody gets what we're trying to tell them, but while at the same time making it not too obvious; throw some seeming self-reflective tendencies in there for intellectual self-congratulation, but make sure the outcome is right." A show absolutely emerged from our times. In detail the show's entertainment value suffers a little to a lot from not well thought-through events (gross logical flaws, seeming continuity errors, just not explaining HOW some outlandish things are supposed to work or why people do the weird things they do, generally dissing the actually potentially intelligent part) and bad action scene choreography and such. Too often I find myself thinking that something really doesn't make sense, regardless of the sci-fi setting, but that I am witnessing lazy writing. This is like what Star Trek TOS would sometimes have, too, but in Orville it doesn't quite work as an homage thing. TOS was a bit cheesy, another age of sci-fi TV, and had some really good things going for it to compensate, while The Orville features an abundance of such writing while at the same time trying to give it a STTNG paint job. Why make a sci-fi show when it's not backed by interest in actually exploring science? The script just says something magically works and that's it? Makes me assume the writers would even have difficulty explaining the stuff we can do today. It's not entirely comparable to Abrams Trek (because the storytelling is not ridiculous), but they do pull some Red Matter maneuvers in The Orville. The show features old themes with a new paint. Some people might claim this show is exactly what the world needs, but I would posit that its thinly veiled proselytizing is exactly not what the world needs, is not making any difference, because it is a mere reflection of the two-sides-of-the-same-coin issue that has gained traction over the years. This show provides zero enlightenment over what we had decades past. It is unimaginative in that there is no interest conveyed in envisioning anything new. It is purely designed for social commentary, with the most basic construct created to deliver a narrative, no love for making it work for an intelligent audience, and mixed with light comedic entertainment. It's like someone didn't quite understand the franchise they're trying to so closely base the show on, or didn't care to. If you just keep doing the same formula for every new generation, at best you're standing still, but more likely it's like that saying: If you're not making progress, you're going backwards. The Orville thinks it's progressive, but it's just totally trendfollowing the road to hell. Trek was thought-provoking. In The Orville someone has already done the thinking for you and is now portraying the results. Again, there is certainly some overlap with TOS if you consider that one in the context of its time, but then you also have to realize not just the similarities but also the difference of that time to now. In TOS and Trek in general the spirit behind it seemed a bit different, more tied into the idea of a naturally more advanced future society, more of the positivity that is lacking in The Orville. TOS dealt with the same kind of themes as The Orville, so I am quite sure I am not just imagining the crucial difference. The Orville is pretty much a product emerging from our increasingly disturbed and polarized times, i.e. making it potentially less of an inspiration than TOS. The thing I am sensing is that the show is reflecting the elaborate mind's idea of heart, the best a mind can do in terms of an imitation, without actually containing its energy. And there is the great social divide. If you need an example of what I'm talking about: Firefly got what The Orville hasn't. Hell, even My Little Pony with its relatively simplistic writing, plenty of plot holes and strong messaging that it shares with The Orville has it. You just gotta consider that Joss Whedon is a feminist and then realize how that totally didn't bother us in Firefly. And there you have that elusive but crucial difference I am pointing at. That which cannot be imitated, cannot be faked. You either got it or you don't. To use the show's language and add my spin, The Orville is a self-content artificial ego system. (continued in reply)