10 Ways The Orville Is Better Than Modern Star Trek

I'll go against the grain here a little bit. I like The Orville, but I've never been able to make myself love it. I am not a fan of Seth MacFarlane's animations or of Ted, and even his Cosmos reboot felt oddly thin, but The Orville is my favorite project of his, and it's clearly his love letter and wish fulfillment for 90s Trek. I think it's got more issues than people like to let on, and it gets a pass because for so many folks it compares favorably to much of nuTrek.

Some gripes:

Many of the scripts show their age as slush pile retreads from 90s-trek. Generally they were treading old ground and not any better than the ST shows that inspired them. There were also a lot of pretty uninspiring settings suitable to filming in LA's thirty mile zone.
The VFX got to be pretty decent, but the set design, costumes, and prosthetics were weak for its entire run; it often just looked bad, and the bright, clean aesthetic showed it off that much more.
The humor almost always falls flat for me, and it is frequently distracting in a show that's otherwise trying to be more than a silly pastiche. Maybe that's just on me, not being a fan of Family Guy, Ted, etc.
Many of the scripts present an interesting moral conundrum, but then they generally feel a need to pick a side and hammer it hard, whereas Star Trek would be a little more nuanced and often let the consequences of a character's or planet's choices speak for themselves. I can watch The Orville and just about visualize 20-something Seth shouting at the TV that Picard was ignoring the simple solution to problem X.
The Orville has some of the worst acting I have ever seen on network TV. Seth is not great, his girlfriends were worse, and Scott Grimes and J. Lee just seemed amateurish. Penny Jerald and Adrianne Palicki generally elevated their material, as did the three Moclans, even through the clumsy latex. Still, large stretches of the show are filled with people who broke my suspension of disbelief JUST with their line readings.
Descending dangerously close to personal pet peeve, the heavy reliance on pop culture references and humor also really highlighted how obsessed Seth is with the 80s and 90s, and maybe early 2000s. How many life lessons and "ancient earth stories" do we need from MacFarlane's specific formative years? Also... Avis?

Now, lest people think I'm just hating, here's a few things that I did like:

The Bortus family arc was presented with sensitivity and nuance, and is a credit to the show in the best spirit of Trek.
Palicki actually did great with the stresses of using her position to make up for personal mistakes and the dynamic that created with Seth worked better than it had any right to.
It was obvious the people making the show were enjoying it, and that sort of heart makes its way into the show. Some of the awful acting (but not all of it) could be brushed aside by sheer earnestness.
The world building was treated more seriously than I originally thought it would be. As time went on, I could see their Union as a real place.
The sort of Squidward meets TNG aesthetic for the Union ships really grew on me over time.

Like I said, I like the Orville. Despite my grousing, it's more than the sum of its parts. I just don't think I can agree that it's much better than decent runs of nuTrek. For me, Lower Decks is better, SNW is better, and Picard S3 is better. Prodigy, Picard S1, and parts of Discovery, at least when not in the Mirror universe and when Michael is not whisper-shouting at me, are about as good. I just think The Orville gets overpraised because it was clearly an homage to people's favorite Trek shows.

I'm 100% in agreement with just about ALL of this. Are we the same person? (I guess not, since I haven't watched Lower Decks or Prodigy.)

I especially agree about much of the humour falling flat, but like you, I'm just not a fan generally of that brand of humour. But I do think The Orville shines brightest when it's playing things straight, rather than for laughs.
I would agree with most of this if you just look at season 1. Then i saw season 2 and was like "wow, they really took it more serious this season". And then i saw season 3 and was like "This is the kind of storytelling i want to see in new star trek series". Season 3 just blew me away, i was impressed :).

And regarding the acting/costumes/prosthetics, won't really comment on that. It was all perfectly ok for me, no complaints, but i can get if for some people that's not the case.
- It took me a while to get through Season 1 because the issues were more pronounced, and I can buy the narrative that it was sold as more GalaxyQuest than Star Trek, and then Seth and team pivoted with or without permission.
  
  I am completely on board with the fact that it improved significantly. I can also see how if that type of storytelling is really important to your enjoyment, the Orville was the place. For me personally, the execution made it so that it never got past the point of "very flawed, but interesting and quirky and still pretty good."

I’d argue Lower Decks is the best Trek around right now.

I'm a little confused why people are downvoting this thread (and some of the others in this group). I'm guessing folks are using the downvote to mean 'I disagree', but if I'm not mistaken, the effect it actually has is to reduce the likelihood of the thread showing up in the 'All' front page of both the local and remote instances, and hence potentially harms the growth of this magazine/community.

Even if you don't agree with the premise of the thread, that doesn't mean the discussion itself isn't worthwhile. And if you don't agree, maybe post your comments as to why, rather than just downvoting?

Personally, I think downvoting should be a tool to say 'this doesn't belong here at all' rather than just 'I disagree with you'.

Thank you for saying this. I'm keen to see /m/scifi succeed so I'm concerned we avoid what made /r/scifi such a dreary place. You're raising some great community-based questions and concerns and I hope people are paying attention.
- You're welcome!
  
  I was genuinely surprised to see the downvotes, especially when I can see the effort you're putting into trying to promote activity and discussions here.

For those who haven't found it yet, there is a major Star Trek instance startrek.website

[email protected]e

Not sure what’s going on, but when I click the instance name is takes me to a kbin 404 page. Any suggestions?
- Kbin doesn't use the exclamation points. Remove that, and the link should work.

I dont think the orville deserves the praise it gets, personally I think there are only a few ep that stand out.. The tone of the show is all over the place.. Seth might be the worst actor to ever play a captain of a star ship. The biggest thing for me is it fails the rewatch test, I enjoy rewatching some star trek from time to time and just cant seem to rewatch the orville. I think lower decks blows it out of the water, and I would even take one season of strange new worlds over all of the orville.. To each there own but to me. I just dont get the love, its an ok show that never really found its footing

SNW season 1 is what people imagine and build Orville in their heads to be....although so far s2 of snw has not hit home I have only seen 1ep

It’s always pretty refreshing to see Seth MacFarlane and Scott Grimes in real life after seeing them for years in American Dad

Only ten?

With the possible exception of picard, nothing star trek since the revamped movies has been real star trek, it's all been a half-assed "gritty" version that only shares names with the core of the previous parts.

The Orville captures everything that modern trek has thrown away, despite a little cheese here and there.

The Orville is closer in spirit and execution to Roddenberry's Star Trek. Post-Roddenberry Star Trek is a different type of entertainment that isn't trying to accomplish the same goals. Applying "good" and "bad" to either is counterproductive and subjective. They serve different purposes and it's fine to like or dislike either.

It's such a great show, I really hope for another few seasons.

I literally cried at one point in the first few episodes. It felt so real, so "classic trek" and I just needed that SO BAD I didn't even realize how starved I was for it. I'm not going to sit here saying its the greatest thing ever, but it is exactly what I need right now after years (decades?) of my favorite franchises getting shat on by studio execs.