I asked this question sometime ago on The Orville’s subreddit, and surprisingly got mixed responses. I assume most here however, are going to prefer Star Trek, specifically TNG that its aping from. For the record I do prefer TNG as well, but rewatching The Orville, after you get past its kinda sucky first season, I really enjoyed the show and feel it’s a very good successor to TNG just with added humor and levity which I think is a good thing. And there are elements I find better in The Orville. And now that Lower Decks is back (a show I’m now a fan of after dismissing it for so long), I felt the need to return to The Orville and see if I still liked it. I’m really hoping it at least gets a fourth season. Anyway, what do you guys think?
Yea, in a way, that’s The Orville’s ultimate legacy … while Trek is being rebooted and prequeled and sequeled in the new-Trek era, The Orville is sitting there saying, hey, there’s still plenty of work to do in Trek’s original and essential “utopic adventure sci-fi morality play” space … it’s not as though we live in a utopia already, so how about we just keep on going with the original mission and not worry too much about milking the past and nostalgia for as much money as we can, TNG sure as hell didn’t do that.
And in the end, as I think about it now, The Orville is right, and probably stands as the best critique of new-Trek that we ever could have hoped for and which we most certainly do not deserve … just optimistic and progressive Trek … no critique necessary.
Damn, very well said. The rejection of a utopian setting in NuTrek, even in shows like SNW which pays lip service to it, is a major turn off for me because Trek was always good as utopian sci fi. And yeah DS9 challenged it, but it didn’t outright reject it either. The new shows totally dismiss it, whereas here’s The Orville dialing it up to 11.
I always thought DS9 simply asked what happens at the fringes. Is Kira the terrorist justified? What else are you supposed to do with Cardassians and shapeshifters? Can one “live with it”?
Well it also tested the Federation by putting it on the breaking point with a galactic war. Which I approve of and think was very interesting, but it wasn’t saying things like replicators are made from recycled shit or that poverty still exists on Earth like NuTrek did.