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I was, I admit, deeply suspicious of The Orville when I heard about it. Created by Seth McFarlane (he of the endless crass humour) it seemed doomed to be a lame, intelligence-insulting mess. In fact, I wasn't planning on watching it at all. I was literally going to skip it.
Then I watched Star Trek Discovery's pitiful pilot. After being bored and irritated by that, I decided things couldn't get much worse and I might as well go ahead and watch the pilot of The Orville.
I expected to be further annoyed and prepared to pour scorn on it in this review. I even got a little notepad and a pen to jot down all the things that I felt were sure to get on my nerves and make me grit my teeth.
So when I finished the pilot episode of Orville and found to my dismay that not only had I made not a single disparaging comment on my notepad, but that I had in fact forgotten about it entirely, I knew something utterly unexpected had occurred. I had liked what I had seen.
I had enjoyed the first episode of a show by a man I generally consider to be not worth my time immensely. It was quite the shock, let me tell you.
The Orville isn't Star Trek. However, it is as close to Star Trek as we are likely to get these days when the "real" Trek is reduced to being little more than an episodic clone of the Abrams' movies.
I won't pretend it has the same production values as Discovery. It doesn't. But what it does have is a very big heart and a clear affection for the source material it draws heavily from. McFarlane has crafted something here that shows his love for Trek quite openly and loudly, and the series is all the better for it.
That isn't to say there isn't humour. Sometimes that humour is a little crass. But it isn't the greatly expected toilet humour or Man-Child nonsense that you might expect.
Granted, the pilot had more of that than the later episodes, but it still wasn't as commonplace as I expected, and that is a good thing.
All in all, The Orville is a decent replacement for Star Trek until the powers-that-be get their collected heads out of their fundaments and remember that Star Trek isn't (nor was it ever meant to be) about flashy explosions and "Pew-pew! Die, Alien! Die!"
SUMMARY: A very decent light-hearted take on Star Trek that is more Trek than the current actual Trek. Some lame humour, but done with a lot of heart that makes it worth watching week on week. Recommended for Trek fans who miss the "good old days". Well done Seth McFarlane! Well done!
score 7/10
Rob_Taylor 6 October 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3824330/ |
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22-11-2019 07:42:45
