this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Discovery gets more hate then it deserves, but The Orville is certainly more of a Star Trek show. I'm glad I stuck out the rough start (which is on brand for a Star Trek show lol)
I think the problem is the writers clearly had a show that they wanted and for some bizarre reason they decided that it was also going to be a Star Trek show even though they clearly didn't actually want it to be Star Trek.
If they just made it its own thing it would have been fine, but all this Star Trek lore kept popping up and then they had to come up with some hand wavy explanation for why their particular vision doesn't fit established canon, and the whole thing just didn't work as a result.
I would have been totally down for a "magic exists alongside the sci-fi technology" show. There's a lot they could have done with that concept, but then for some reason they kept trying to introduce Klingons into it.
Ones with a third different head shape, no less!
Fourth. You forgot about the "Kelvin timeline" Star Trek films.
Wouldn’t that be 5 then?
Interesting point! Had to look up some screenshots, but it does look like they were maybe trying to "bridge the gap" between the TOS and TNG-era Klingon look in that film, which I am going to be watching again after this meeting in order to verify.
Even if it's an intentional transitory look, I'll agree that it's still unique, and therefore counts. Great call.
I'd say there are up to 8 designs, depending on how much you want to nitpick:
Enterprise also had slightly different looking Klingons and IIRC addressed why (a genetic disorder or disease IIRC)
In Enterprise, they made an augment virus that went wrong, and to avoid going the way of the Illyrians, they made a cure, that basically turned them human/into the TOS Klingons.
And in Ds9, when they went back in time they questioned worf why they looked that way
This is starting to feel a bit too nuanced.
Yeah, like I say, it's pretty nitpicky. I'd probably collapse everything from TSFS to Kelvin into one, if I were being more lax. I don't find the Kelvin design to be all that different from what came before, but I do find TMP to be really distinct in comparison. But I know some people who seem to be the exact opposite on that, so 🤷
Enterprise gave an arc why the Klingons looked a certain way in tos, they were affected by a virus
I recall, but I don't think it was in TOS, because Worf noted that it was not mentioned to outsiders in the DS9 tribble episode, a line used to hand-wave away the makeup change.
that was the time travel episode, when the defiant crew went back, and they were trying to find the tribble that was disguised as a bomb.
Yes, I know.
Not sure why I thought "TOS" when you wrote "Enterprise," I do recall the virus explanation given in that series.
im guessing the enterprise had a way to jump in on the virus arc, because bashir said in ds9"what is a virurs?"
They know what viruses are, Janeway fought a giant one
I remember right before Discovery aired they showed a few behind the scenes pictures and one of them included the Klingon uniforms.
Me and a lot of other people started saying “Did they steal those from the Abrams movies?”
And not even abrams klingons, they always reminded me of Krall from Beyond
Yes they did, the lighting the angles, the warping, scenes.
And long drawn out subtitled scenes for some reason.
In TNG when Klingons are talking on a Klingon ship I don't think they're actually speaking English. I understand they are speaking their native language and it is being translated for me. I don't know why Discovery thought this was the place to go for "realism".
And made it all dark lighting in season 2, by hiding how terrible they looked
Agreed. It's a decent action scifi show that is hurt by trying to fit the IP. It did do some interesting things with the mirror universe, and some of the latter season parts where it takes nonsensical one off TOS concepts and completely seriously says "that's canon, let's build a plot point on it" were entertaining, if not good.
But it just doesn't get Star Trek and it says something that I tell people getting in to the shows not to watch it.
I'd argue that it was hurt by specifically trying to fit TNG-era Star Trek, or people expecting that of it.
It would have worked perfectly fine as a TOS/TAS show, since they never really shied away from there being unexplainable magic with the science out in the universe. Witches, wizards, and the devil are all real, and one universe away, so too is actual magic.
Whereas TNG and post-TNG would always try and hammer that into the work of a godlike entity such as a Q, or some grounded science. Q abilities are the work of highly sophisticated subspace interactions that have yet to be technologically replicated. There are particular neurotransmitters, psychology, and brain structures involved in telepathy, and it's not simple ESP/psionics.
And people wanted the latter. This is most notable with the cause of the Burn. People hated it because the idea of a child being able to psionically disrupt dilithium galaxy-wide would have been silly in TNG, without them being a child Q, or something like that.
But as a TOS/TAS plot, it fits in fine. Lazarus briefly caused the entire universe to blink out of existence, and Charlie X, due to the powers bestowed upon him needed to keep him alive, could explode ships with his mind, and would have destroyed the Federation if left unchecked.
TL;DR: It worked as Trek, but people basically wanted TNG and got TOS.
I find that's a fairly reasonable assesment of 'science' versus 'magic' sensibility, but the main thing for me is that the arc concept due to the modern "binge" sensibilities is rough.
When Babylon 5 and DS9 did arcs, they did so carefully embedded in generally episodic series (people couldn't "binge", maybe you would tape it if you felt like it, but people weren't always that engaged, so you catered to people that may miss some of your airings). So you had nice, digestable pieces and the underlying big thing plays out a bit at a time sometimes taking over for 2 or 3 episodes, but generally letting other smaller stories take the foreground for the episode.
But with "binge mentality", there's an inclination for showrunners to go nuts. Picard and Discovery produce a season that is pretty much just one story. The story doesn't have enough meat to really drive that much runtime, but they make the pacing pretty torturous to fill the time. Also, with episodic, if you don't like a particular story/execution, you kind of forget it because there's a whole new story with new execution the next week. When you have a season you don't like, well that's harder to overlook.
I'm so sick of Klingons.
People cringed when they used prime universe In the show, it was the line. And people said yea it came from the wikis
Strange new worlds is legit though
SNW is great. It is such a pure distillation of Star Trek
I don't really like the gorn plotline, but it's the show I recommend as a first for new Trekkies
It's an attempt at rectifying the 2 series, but it's also though
Now I'm thinking I should give it another try.
I gave Discovery half a season, I have the Orville 2 or 3 episodes and while it was funny it didn't really click for me. I just lost interest after a few episodes.
Edit: just finished episode 3. Now I remember why I didn't keep watching. I should have just read the plot breakdown and skipped the episode. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
The best way that I found to think about The Orville is that Seth MacFarlane had to shoe-horn jokes into the first few episodes to satisfy the execs who expected him to make a comedy and then gradually that tapers off to become a really solid Star Trek-type show (that still has humor, but it’s more organic, workplace type humor).
Yeah, it follows a lot of the "futuristic parallels to modern day issues" that we saw with ToS and TNG, while at the same time adding in humor that ranges from tongue-in-cheek to outright raunchy. I can't imagine a TNG episode that would address "holodeck sex addiction" but Orville actually manages to do a pretty good job of stradding seriousness of that issue along with humor.
For the more serious stuff: imagine an alliance when it's discovered that one of the members has done (and is still doing) some stuff that's pretty strongly against the morals of the rest. If called on it they threaten to pull out. While all are in the middle of a war for survival. And they're also one of the biggest weapons suppliers
That's pretty close to some issues today while also being years old.
The Orville is a weird show. It hews very closely to the format and production design of 90s Trek (including a lot of budget-conscious decisions), and many of the creatives have a Star Trek background going back that far. Frankly, I think a lot of the scripts were from the TNG slush pile. It's clearly a love letter to those shows.
However, it's also clearly Seth MacFarlane's love letter. He gets to be the captain. His friends and lovers get to play major parts despite sometimes not really having the acting chops for it. The characters are all obsessed with the cultural touchstones of white American Gen-X'ers. In the early going, the Family-Guy/Ted/etc. sense of humor is front and center, and while that gets much better, it never fully goes away. One can also just about imagine 20-something Seth and his buddies screaming at the TV that there is no moral ambiguity in a given ST episode and that Jean Luc needs to just pick a side.
In some ways, it can be pretty rough, but then, mostly because it is such an earnest homage, it's greater than the sum of its parts. I never fell in love with it the way many have, but after wading through the first few episodes and getting a feel for what it was and wasn't, I grew fond of it. I'd say it's worth watching, but you don't have to apologize for not fully buying in. TBH, I feel fairly similar levels of tempered fondness for Disco, though for very different reasons.
wjrii hit the nail on the head. If you categorically don't like the vibe it might not be for you. Like any true Trek show it takes time to find its feet. The plot is coarse and hamfisted (as a trans person, the trans allegory episode was hard to get through) but eventually turns around to be a good example of scifi for contemporary social commentary. The humour (both quality and balance) improves but it doesn't stop being a Seth MacFarlane show. I value its earnesty, but it's pretty far down the list for my suggested "Star Trek" viewing order.
Just finished ep 3. it was definitely the forced gender assignment on a baby episode that did it...
Yep that's the one. For what it's worth, it doesn't come up again for a while, and when it does it's actually quite well done.
I found the first three eps "okay" ish. Something to watch.
Then ep 4 landed and oh shit we got trek here boys. Then you got Pria, Krill is still my go to introduction ep because it starts with a crewmember being dared to eat a cactus but ends on a damning note about cycles of violence. Keeps going from there, ep 4 (If the stars should appear) is the growing of the beard.
Just read your edit yeah...about a girl is so fucking facile, it's a massive piece of shit.
They revisit the plot hook later though and it is spectacular
I respectfully disagree, discovery is a truly awful star trek installment. However I respect your opinion.
It got the hate it deserved