Posted by Jonathan Klotz | Published
Seth MacFarlane is probably best known for his animated films, Family Guy again American Dadbut in 2017, he presented his greatest creation, The Orvillea sci-fi series that originated and was marketed as a parody of Star Trek. Fox’s marketing for the show relies heavily on the humor of the first episode, including the introduction of the Moclans, a species that only urinates once a year, but as longtime viewers of the show know, what sounds like a joke, ends up leading to some great character moments. That’s what makes MacFarlane’s series the greatest trick to date: it’s not a parody; it’s an ode to love, and as the series goes on, it gets darker, more serious, and maybe even better than modern Star Trek.
Better Versions of Worst TNG Episodes
In the very first scene The Orville’s the pilot episode, we see MacFarlane as Captain Ed Mercer, entering his house to find his wife in bed with a blue alien and his blue secrets. Captain James Tiberius Kirk was famous for being a womanizer if they were human, Orion, or a few in between, which is why, starting with Ed who is very low, drunk, smart, and in danger of losing his job, MacFarlane’s show did. it’s clearly taking things more seriously than Star Trek ever did. The second episode makes this even more clear, as it features muscular Moclan Bortus asking who Kermit the Frog is before announcing that he’s hatching an egg and a diminutive security officer, Alara, saving the day for the sake of reality television.
The Orville Season 1 includes episodes mocking social media (“Majority Law”), one of the worst Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, “The Naked Now,” to “Cupid’s Dagger,” and closes the season with “Mad Idolatry,” a reminder of why Star Trek’s Prime Directive exists. Star Trek: Into Darkness played with the idea of classics seeing the Enterprise take off and starting to worship it, but “Crazy Idolatry” went well with the planet going out into the universe, forming a cult based on First Lady Grayson (Adrienne Padalicki). , Ed’s ex-wife). It’s a ridiculous premise and something that every Trek fan starts to think about at some point, considering how many alien civilizations Starfleet encounters, so it’s fun to see it play out, and it’s clear at that point in the season, MacFarlane is huge. Star Trek fan.
In fact, Seth MacFarlane is such a big fan of Star Trek that instead of making a comic version of the classic franchise, he wanted to make another Trek series and use a comic angle The Orville Season 1 as a trojan horse to get what he really wanted. And it worked. Season 2 takes the most absurd episodes of the first season and replaces them with character-driven drama, including, again, a heightened version of the TNG episode “A Happy Refrain” for the cybernetic Isaac and Dr. Finn what “In theory” does for Data and Jenne. The difference is that “In theory” was one thing, but “The Happy Refrain” didn’t just pay for a year of character development, it marked the permanent transformation of the characters.
From Joke to Emotional Sucker
On Rotten Tomatoes, The Orville Season has a perfect 100 percent rating among critics, and for good reason, because even though it’s still funny during its three-season run, MacFarlane does character-driven episodes with lower quality better than any writer today. Twice in a Lifetime” from Season 3 is considered one of the best episodes in the show’s run, combining time travel and flashbacks to Season 2 to create a heart-pounding finale that most sci-fi shows today can only dream of achieving. If you start watching a series and find it hard to get past the first few episodes, stick with it because if you know where the team starts, it’s much more satisfying when you see where they end up. /
That’s what ultimately does The Orville the work of mad geniuses born out of a love of Star Trek but overlooked by corporate culture. While Star Trek: Discovery was struggling to find an audience, Seth MacFarlane was there with his respect The Next Generationquietly produced some of the sharpest, deepest, and most surprising writing of any sci-fi series of the past decade.
The Orville currently streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Source link
