Although this has been a controversy this year as both shows debuted, each which their own fresh take on the basic Star Trek model of a showing following the adventures of a future Starship from Earth — and many old time Star Trek fans have found they have a great liking for Seth McFarland’s The Orville — the fact of the matter is that at it’s core The Orville is nostalgic retread of past ideas and past plot lines rather thinly disguised as a parody, which it isn’t, in order to avoid a copywrite infringement lawsuit, where as Star Trek:Discovery is a bold and courageous leap forward for the now aging franchise into new directions and new ideas.
And in this post I intend to prove that.
The first and most pressing question has been: Is Star Trek Discovery fit within existing canon?
The first thing about Discovery that has been both an asset and a liability is that this show is to your grand daddy's Trek. Although it is set 10 years prior to the first official meeting of Spock and Kirk about the U.S.S. Enterprise, we don't immediately see the same old primary color tunics, with black pants on boots that we are most familiar with in the original 60’s show. This show is different in every way, from switching from steady-cam to hand-held, vastly improved special effects and lavishly details sets.
On the The Orville you actually do get the primary color top with matching badges and black pants as we’ve also associated with classic Trek. While many of Discovery’s ship board sets are dark, the sets on The Orville are bright and bathed in White. The effects are impressive and many of the spaceflight scene are actually done in the old school method of using fully sculpted models rather than mostly with CGI effects.
One of the major complaints about Discover is that by changing so many things visual the show has violated documented “canon” within the established Star Trek Universe. The J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies which have come out of the last decade also implemented similar visual upgrades, but the fact is that behind the scenes there are contractual limits on how much of the original shows look can be duplicated — hence the show has essentially been forced to take a middle path, including far more visually updated elements and style which are largely similar to the Abrams films, but without fully committing to be within the alternative timeline that was created in the first Abrams movie where a Romulan mining ship is sent back in time to 25 years prior James Kirk taking command of Enterprise where his father is killed while taking Acting Command of the U.S.S. Kelvin while p battling the Romulans.
Discovery doesn’t exist as part of the Abram’s timeline, but it does match films visual style of those films placing in both half-way in and half-way out which many fans find puzzling or just annoying. It defies expectations.
In updating the visuals Discovery has for example used modern technology that didn’t exist while many of the previous shows were made to explore the use of holograms for 3D communications, 3D screen displays and battle simulations. Many fans argue this technology didn’t exist on the 1960’s show and therefore it shouldn’t exist on a program that is set 10 years prior to the events on that show — however both the last broadcast show Star Trek: Enterprise and the Star Trek: The Animated Series did feature rudimentary hologram projection systems that match up very much with those shown on Discovery, and which were much more thoroughly explored using full tactile forcefields to give the projections physical form and weight on shows which take place another 90 years in the future such as Star Trek:Next Generation, Star Trek: DS9 and Star Trek: Voyager.
They also greatly changed the look and style of the Klingons, although they’ve changed before, and they haven’t given a simple clear explanation as to why — but then, that isn’t because they don’t have one, they’re just taking their time getting to it.
Things like have apparently enraged fans — even though their limited view is factually wrong about the development of holotech — they have hammered on points such as these to argue that the Discovery show runners simple don’t know their canon, when in fact they do.
None of that bothers me, it’s a matter of cosmetics and costuming, not anything substantive. What matters in both shows,the’s what beneath the hood — not how the paint job is done.
In the case of the Orville many classic Trek fans have found the show highly familiar and reassuring in it’s fairly clean optimistic presentation of the future. It’s episodes are largely light story with some occasionally weighty edges and a ample dose of humor to give it again a thin patina of being a parody, however it’s not in any way an actual parody as was the movie Galaxy Quest which followed the story of a set of washed up Hollywood Actors who had been on a Star Trek-like show that had gone out of production and they remained somewhat forced to continue working with each other on the fan based convention scene — even though they really can’t stand each other. As the plot progressed a set of actual aliens appear who, thinking their shows was a set of historical documents have built a full-sized fully function version of their fictional spacecraft come seeking their help against a real space despot seeking their destruction.
This movie is a farce. The humor comes out of the ridiculousness of the situation they find themselves in, and their reactions to the naïve earnestness of the aliens who actually are in dire need. They play nearly all of the cliched tropes of the old Star Trek show to gut busting effect.
The Orville doesn’t do this, it doesn’t pretend to do this. It’s humor is not based within the plot, or even within the characters other than a couple of the characters, including the Captain happen to be shallow, clueless jerks prone to childishness that is little more than poop and dick jokes. The humor is tacked on and tacky, obvious and clumsy. Some people find it funny, I don’t.
And if you think i’’m being harsh abut the poop and pee jokes — I’m not. It happens at 00:35 in the following trailer clip.
The other thing is that everyone on the show speaks in modern day colloquialisms, I mean exactly modern day. Like in memes and phrases that are taken directly off someone twitter and Instagram feeds. It’s simply not plausible.
Language changes over time, we today don’t speak in the same rhythms and cadences of those from 100 years ago, or 200 years ago. If you would read letters by Civil War troops or from Revolutionary Soldiers you can tell the difference. Many of the people who nitpick Discovery to death of their new presentation of Klingons and having them speak in the actual Klingon language while talking entirely to each other seem to have no problem with the Captain Ed Mercer on The Orville screaming “Holy Crap!” as a shotgun is aimed at his head, or their Navigator responding to their Worf-Clone character when — as shown in the above clip — they overhear a domestic argument between the Captain and his ex-wife who is now his second in command:
Bortis: “Perhaps we should not be talking about this.”
Lt: “Oh, we’re talking about this. This is a thing!”
The Orville includes literally hundreds of modern day cultural asides, just as do many other Seth McFarland projects, but at the same time it’s not really a parody — it’s a serious SF adventure show which also has stories about religious fanaticism, gender association, social stigma in a hyper media environment, racial terrorism and other not that humorous subjects.
It’s just unfortunate that in many cases other Star Trek shows have had nearly the exact same plots and stories, sometimes almost scene for scene a noted below in this debate between the typical Star Trek:Discovery hater fan and another fan who actually knows a lot more than he does, and proves it.
Fan1: I watch Star Trek:Discover and I feel worse. I feel worse about myself, I feel worse about where I am in life.
Well, it’s all about YOU then isn’t it
Fan1: I watch the Orville and i go “ah, that was fun.” It’s kinda like diet fun. They want desperate to be Star Trek but there’s something missing.
Fan2: One: It feels like Seth McFarland playing TNG.
Fan1; That’s exactly what it is.
Fan2: You’re rich enough, you have enough influence, you have the money. ‘I’m Seth McFarland, I’ve had successfully television shows, I wanna play TNG!’ But you’re Seth McFarland you gotta have some dick jokes!
See, it’s not just me!
Fan2: I’ve watched five episode of The Orville and I can’t watch anymore.
Fan1: (Laughs)
Fan2: Because I watch it and my brain goes haywire. Cuz right in between these ears is a Star Trek Encyclopedia, and I’m going “They lifted that from this, they lifted that from this.” and my brain starts short-circuiting and smoke comes out of my ears. So I’m like “wait stop! I’m enjoying the show. I’m enjoying the show: these are all recycled ideas.” And that’s fine, and I have a list of them.
Fan1: The Cage?
Fan2: The Cage. Hold on, let me stop you. (grabs papers).
(At 8:32) Fan1: Y’know what it is, it was Star Trek The Motion Picture when they go into shuttlecraft and they tour the Orville on the Captain’s first visit to the ship. That’s Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Fan 2: A space ray that speeds up time [from the Orville Pilot], and the episode of [TNG] when the characters get aboard a Runabout for the one and only time, and they encounter pocket off space that accelerate or slow the passage of time, When Diana Troy freeze, and Captain Picard goes to grab the bowl of rotten fruit and his finger nails grow real long. Ok. Recycled ideas.
And then we have the Space Zoo when Commander, er, Captain Ed Mercer his first officer.
Fan1; Haley Gracen.
Fan2: Then end up in a space zoo, which is the The Cage.
Fan1: The Menagerie also.
Fan2: The Most Toys, examples of different species. And the biggest one, the big Eco ship.
Fan1: That was lifted directly from the Original Series.
Fan2: Right, the episode is called “For the World is Hollow and I have touched the sky” Where there’s an eco system on an asteroid and nobody knows they’re not on a planet, as they’re hurtling towards doom.
Fan1: And the powers-that-be are trying to keep the people from even realizing they’re on a ship.
Fan2: And the same with a concept of a culture that’s evolving from some bullshit, like the book about Chicago gangsters, or the most fucked up TOS episode ever when a Starfleet Admiral is on a planet and he thinks the Nazis had a really good efficient system...
Fan1: (Laughs)
Fan2: You and I know that all those original episode exist because they had costumes from another show and sets.
Fan1: “We got all these props, let’s have an episode that takes place on a Gangster Planet.”
Fan2: “We got lots of Nazi uniforms from that WWII picture they’re shooting down on Lot B. This guys want to have a Nazi planet. We’ve got this haunted house set, let’s make Catspaw.” There’s a giant cat. All those episodes are iconic and memorable. Oh did I talk about the Dyson Sphere?
Fan1: You did not talk about the Dyson Sphere. It’s a giant intergalactic space ship with a sun in the center and an echo system on the core. There’s the Star Trek:Voyager episode where Special 84612 are living inside that dome, where they’re training to infiltrate Star Fleet.
So basically if you like repackaged versions of old recycled Star Trek plots — now with added Dick Jokes — The Orville is for you.
They do point out that there is a time-loop episode on Discovery that echoes the TNG episode Cause and Effect but since they are part of the official Star Trek world, the fact that something like that happens more than once to a Starfleet vessel is less of a stolen idea, than history repeating itself.
McFarland has explained on panel discussions that he quite specifically wanted the old episodic feel of the older Star Trek series, which is something they started getting away from with DS9. Old TV had single story episodes largely because if they were picked up for syndication they might not be broadcast again in their original order, so if you tried to build a multi-episode narrative with characters who gradually changed as they had different experiences, and they made mistakes and learned from them so that by the end of the story they basically aren’t the same person by the end of the season… having the episodes play out of order would drive you up the wall.
Well, Discovery is that show.
Many people have complained about the initial episodes because they don’t like the characters that much. They don’t like lead character First Officer Commander Michael Burnam because she makes some pretty radical and devastatingly bad choices — and upon just meeting her we don't really understand why. We don’t even see the actually ship U.S.S. Discovery itself until the third episode where we have a new Captain to deal with Gabriel Lorca, and he’s an odd duck with lots of schemes and intrigue and he’s making strange odd choices too.
The difference is that none of the choices by the show runners was accidental, or lazy. They were all quite deliberate create to take these characters and this story through and extended rollercoaster ride that will put them all, old characters who are killed, yet appear again in different circumstances, new characters and crew members who don’t even show up until episode 6 because increasingly pivotal, several people are not even close to who they appear to be when we first meet them.
This is a literal journey of discovery, not just through the known universe — and sometimes beyond it — it’s a personal journey of the characters going through pressures and discovering who they really are and what they’re capable of, step by step. This show is about taking risks, they’re doing that as creators and they’re asking that of fans and viewers — with the chance that that risk will pay off, big time.
Having watched all but the last episode, I suspect that risk just might pay off — and it just might be enormous. It’s true they might miss the mark in the end, but I’m going to give them all the credit in the world for trying rather than doing a TNG Fanfic show — with dick jokes.
I’ve noticed that by the time we get to Episode 10 people that have basically sighed in exasperation over the show when it started are grinning with anticipation for the what will happen next.
This show is not so much of a TOS prequel as it is a sequel to Enterprise which showed Star Fleet at it’s infancy reaching out and slowly building the alliances that would form the Federation in it’s final episodes. In Discovery we’re seeing Star Fleet at it’s adolescence, it’s immature, over-confident and impetuous — the people on the crews are far from perfect and they make mistakes, lots of them, because no-one has ever done this before — it’s facing it’s largest and most deadly challenge yet with their first serious encounter with the Klingon Empire.
Discovery is about Star Fleet growing up, falling down, getting back up again and stumbling forward again through a dark difficult time while slowly becoming the hopeful, optimistic Federation we eventually see with Kirk and Spock on the Enterprise.
It doesn’t go how anyone thinks it’s going to go, not at first.
Character growth that is challenging, ongoing and potentially profound, is not what your going to get from The Orville and a I dare say we haven’t seen done well in SciFI television since Ron D. Moore’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica. You might even think of this show as Star Trek:Galactica.
Next Sunday the final episode of season one will be broadcast on CBS: All Access. It’s possible to sign up today and if you like cancel after that episode airs and basically watch the entire season for free — however I strongly recommend that you also watch the second show #After Trek that is a live post episode broadcast featuring a review and interview of each episode with the shows Producers, Writers and Crew who explain a lot of their behind the scenes thinking and planning as give you far more perspective as to why they’ve made the choices they made and give you glimpses of where they’re headed without spoiling everything.
And if you want Star Trek: Dick Jokes… Season 1 one is available on Hulu and it’s been renewed for Season 2 also.
Monday, Feb 5, 2018 · 7:35:26 PM PST · Frank Vyan Walton
[Spoilers]
To get into story specifics many people get upset about the first episode setup where Commander Michael Burnam chooses to defy the direct command of her superior officer Captain Phillips Georgiou while trying to implement the suggestions of her foster father Sarek, who had raised her after her parents were killed in a Klingon attack.
Michael was raised and trained in the Vulcan custom of suppressing her emotions even though she’s a human. The problem this presents for her is that only after joining Georgiou’s crew on the U.S.S. Shenzhou is she ever allowed to actually express and deal with her long suppressed emotional baggage.
It takes several episodes before we get the further backstory of the secondary trauma that Burnam endured in her feelings of deep shame and failure to meet the goals expected for her by Sarek, which in turn explains why in the first episode she makes a coldly logical, but also highly irrational decision, to override Georgou and is ultimately convicted of Mutiny.
Escaping the brig just before it’s destroyed by incoming fire Burnam rejoins Georgiou where her sins are temporarily ignored due to the arrival of a huge Klingon fleet which has destroy the flagship of the sectors commanding Admiral. Which the battle mostly over they plot a counter-attack and attempt to capture the Klingon leader which goes horribly sideways ending in Georgiou’s and that leaders deaths.
In episode three her prison transport is pulled aboard U.S.S. Discovery commanded by the mysterious and potentially dangerous Captain Gabriel Lorca who seems to have his own specific plans and design for Burnam while he seeks to implement a whole new technology for fighting back against the Klingons, but his plan go far deeper than they seem on the surface.
….
All of these element, regardless of how people may feel about them not seeming like traditional Star Trek — are all critical to the events 14 episodes later after a raucous rollercoaster trip, in which the final scene setting up for the finale left me shouting “OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK!!!” about 40 times according to my wife.
It’s a serious mind frack, and the past is very definitely prologue in multiple dimensions.
You don’t get to something like that result doing single episode stories. It’s not possible. This isn’t just a random set of stories slammed together, this is a novel and the final chapter is coming quite soon.