setsuled | Entries tagged with the orville

Last night's new Orville, "Into the Fold", was the most Star Trek-ish episode yet--no surprise considering it was written by Brannon Braga and Andre Bormanis and the episode was directed by Braga. It felt very much like an episode of Voyager where Janeway or someone else, having crash landed on a planet, has to rely more on her wits than technology to survive but "Into the Fold" brings in the element of a single mother in an interesting way coming, I suspect, from the insight of at least one writer who's a parent. It also distinguished Isaac a bit from Data in that, while his business with the children at times felt like Data's awkward interactions with kids in episodes of TNG like "Hero Worship", Isaac seems much more like a parent's wish fulfilment; he's a character who's free to say those things an exasperated parent would love to say to kids but hopefully has too much of a sense of responsibility to actually say.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Braga was a showrunner on Voyager and also worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the character interactions, particularly between Dr. Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald) and her kidnapper, felt like something from 90s Trek in a very effective way. The way Finn deduces and acts on the kidnapper's attraction to her when she convinces him to go and get the first aid kit from the shuttle was nicely done. I like how much it trusts the audience to pick up on that subtext without directly explaining it. Mind you, I have seen a few people on the internet criticise Finn for shooting a guy who was just trying to help her, apparently choosing not to consider the significance of the fact that Finn was locked in a cell and not permitted even to use her communicator. It's nice that The Orville, isn't pitching for the lowest common denominator. I still have some hope that if you treat an audience like they're intelligent even the normally less intelligent might be inspired to improve.

I'm still not completely sold on Penny Johnson Jerald and I don't quite understand why I'm the only one who seems to find her a bit flat and unconvincing. Maybe she's a Robert Forster type, I didn't appreciate him at first either, specialising in playing a kind of low key, emotionally walled off person I'm not attuned to. But I loved Forster on Twin Peaks where I kind of got him as a Gary Cooper type, maybe I'll get to that place with Jerald, too. Certainly her character, Finn, shines in the episode being saavy and quick. She is a bit like John Wayne or Gary Cooper in a 50s western, able to draw and shoot on someone when she has to but remembering to teach her children to use stun when they can on principle.

I guess the nearest equivalent on Star Trek to Finn's relationship with her kids would be Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake on Deep Space Nine but never on Star Trek did you get the credibly messy rivalry dynamic you see between Ty and Marcus--not even in "Disaster" when Picard was stuck in a turbolift with a bunch of kids. Finn casually saying that she decided to be a single parent raises eyebrows when considering she has to corral these two and work as the ship's doctor. In a world where no-one has to work for money, such a decision doesn't make a whole lot of sense so it's a lucky thing Isaac (Mark Jackson) seems to have earned a place in the family by the end of the episode. I'm not a parent but I've had enough dealings with kids to get some catharsis when Isaac took Marcus' game and blasted it.

"Into the Fold" was co-written by Andre Bormanis who has serves as a technical consultant on The Orville, a job he also had on Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I suspect this is why the suspenseful shuttle crash sequence had a nice feeling of authenticity to it that helped create that tension.

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As wigs'll gallop past a polling steed.
As timeless tungsten clicks a hand.
A gripping cloud's a field of wheatless need.
Beside a river scythe's a deathless land.
The last in patchy jacket boxes smokes.
Above the seat a pack of cards'll plot.
Their newest suits include the wheels and spokes.
Collected stars insert a steward dot.
As stripes define the brown a shoe returns.
In closing, plaids absorb the light beyond.
A mountain claimed a ship's galactic turns.
With cookies lined for age the chips abscond.
Confusing saxophone conditions blurt.
Internal buses can the stomach hurt.

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A particularly entertaining new episode of The Orville last night, "Majority Rule", provided suspense, insight, and satire based on the idea of social media run amok. Like most episode concepts on The Orville so far, this one has plenty of precedent--I was reminded of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Justice", the Doctor Who serial Vengeance on Varos, and the Dave Eggers novel The Circle. But unlike those stories, the Orville leans more into the comedic half of its comedy/drama premise providing some of the best laughs on the series yet.

Spoilers after the screenshot

The concept of a world with parallel evolution, where the species and civilisation on an alien world resembles our own, is an old one, often used on Star Trek without any idea of convincing the audience that it's plausible (despite the TNG episode "The Chase" coming up with an explanation for it). The point was to provide a scenario where the futuristic crew could interact with a version of Earth's past where some aspect was exaggerated, whether it was the idea that the Nazis had won World War II or that the Roman Empire was still around in the 20th century. Hopefully audiences aren't too wise ass to accept the concept here, especially since the episode is lampooning wise asses.

I was also reminded of the Next Generation episodes "First Contact" and "Who Watches the Watchers" and, like the latter example, "Majority Rule" is about anthropologists on the planet who have gotten into trouble. The crew of the Orville are tasked with finding and saving them despite the fact that very little is known about the culture--presumably that's why the anthropologists were there. One could knitpick and say the Orville's level of technology should allow them to send down cloaked probes or something but then you'd be shifting the subject of drama and comedy in the episode into the realm of exposition so such knitpicks miss the point of this kind of fantasy.

In a funny conversation about the appropriate level of grinding one should expect in a dance partner, John (J. Lee) obnoxiously demonstrates his technique on a statue of a folk hero, netting him thousands of "down votes" when the locals of course catch him on camera. This turns out to be a real problem because ten thousand down votes mean he'll be lobotomised.

The episode in a way picks up where The Circle left off. You might be unaware of the fact that a film version of The Circle was released this year starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. "What?" you say. "Did you just make that up?" No, no, it was a real movie--see, here's the Wikipedia entry. John Boyega and Karen Gillan were in it, too, and it was Bill Paxton's last film. How did you miss it? Probably because, if you were one of the few who saw an ad for it, it was too generic for your brain to register. But the studio sure didn't seem eager to promote it. It's an unremarkable film, curiously with a message in almost direct ideological opposition to its source novel which criticises the potential corrosive culture that might be created by social media run rampant. The novel and film end just as the kind of voting seen in "Majority Rule" are about to take over the world but the book spends a lot more time exploring the psychological impact on characters than "Majority Rule".

But the episode does have a few moments that explore what this environment is like for a variety of people. One woman can't even order a cup of tea because the cafe doesn't serve people with over 5,000 down votes. She's forced to explain to the barista that it's because of mistakes she made in her youth--in this world, even the barista is an arbiter on your life history. A nice scene on the Orville later has that barista, Lysella (Giorgia Whigham), discussing her culture with Ed (Seth MacFarlane), Bortus (Peter Macon), Isaac (Mark Jackson), and Alara (Halston Sage). It's a polite conversation that lets anyone watching in on the problem in what Ed calls "absolute democracy"--Lysella doesn't sound crazy when she asks what about all the voices that go unheard in a merely representative democracy. Bortus and Isaac offer the statements "Voices should be earned" and "I think you're confusing opinions with knowledge" politely enough but it would have been nice if they'd elaborated more. Anyone criticising the show for not being original here, though, ought to be reminded that some things definitely bear repeating.

In one of the funnier parts of the episode, a man angrily approaches Alara because she's inadvertently worn a hat belonging to a culture or belief system she doesn't know about. His level of anger at her innocent cultural appropriation is hilarious and, unsurprisingly, some reviewers have no sense of humour about it, including a reviewer from The A.V. Club who puts the blame on Alara for incident. So while the message of "Majority Rule" might not be new, it's certainly not obsolete.

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Last night brought "Krill", the first episode of The Orville not written by Seth MacFarlane and the first written by someone who used to write for a Star Trek series, David A. Goodman. Having worked on four episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise as well as having been a writer for Family Guy and Futurama--the famous Star Trek parody episode--Goodman seems ideally suited for The Orville and "Krill" was pretty good, featuring genuinely tense action sequences, some thoughtful moral dilemma, and comedy.

Spoilers after the screenshot

The episode begins with one of the funnier moments on the series so far as crewmembers are delighted that Bortus (Peter Macon) seems able to eat any and everything. Mostly, though, the comedy was one of the weaker aspects of this episode--Gordon's (Scott Grimes) references to 20th century car rental companies not being particularly funny, though I don't necessarily think it's an anachronism. Who's to say 20th century commercials aren't considered classic art of some kind in the future? Despite this, I really enjoyed the chemistry between Ed (Seth MacFarlane) and Gordon.

The Krill actually remind me of the new Klingons on Star Trek: Discovery--they both seem more like vampire Cardassians than Klingons though the vampiric angle is a little more literal on The Orville with Gordon actually calling them space vampires. The differences in the shows' budgets is clear from this similarity; the ships, costumes, and makeup for the Discovery timeline Klingons being for more beautiful and intricate. But as in other points of comparison, The Orville outstrips Discovery with better writing and the Krill's motives are much clearer, being a religious crusade founded on a belief in racial superiority. I'm still not clear on what the Discovery Klingons expect to get from war with the Federation.

Ed's moral delimma is much clearer, too. By the end of the episode, he asks the very natural question, what the hell else was he supposed to do but wipe out the whole crew who were bent on destroying a defenceless human colony? Yet the point that the children he went out of his way to save are likely to grow up hating the Union goes to show that a victory to-day puts the ultimate goal of peace that much further away. This may have been what Discovery was trying to say with Michael killing the leader of the STD timeline Klingons.

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In silent thought the pocket watch debates.
As steeping tea observes automatons.
A molten tide in labs in truth abates.
Solutions sleep within the arced batons.
Without a further car the train relents.
In facts escaping out the spout was steamed.
No celery the sortied troop laments.
Or salary o'er metal wig the dreamed.
To-night the frosted window breaks the page.
Untimely ink reforms to blackest sheets.
The linking numbers walk for love and rage.
The rhythmic heart returns on reddest beats.
The hour pins describe an arcing day.
A lantern lit in green illumes the way.

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Last night brought the best episode of The Orville yet and not just because Charlize Theron was in it. Director Jonathan Frakes brought his A game, particularly when it came to action sequences, the episode's plot was more inventive than I thought it would be, and it was the funniest episode I've seen so far.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I expected the episode to be a bit like the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and to some extent it was. The Captain, Ed (Seth MacFarlane), falls for a beautiful guest star who isn't what she claims to be. Pria's (Theron) true identity as a time travelling thief of historical artefacts makes her a bit like Vash from Star Trek: The Next Generation, too, something that makes me wonder if we'll be seeing her again. Theron has certainly been vocal about her fondness for MacFarlane so it would hardly be a surprise.

And she's good in the episode in a role that naturally becomes a focal point because she's subject of a debate over whether or not she can be trusted. It seems pretty clear from the beginning that she's going to betray the Orville crew at some point but Theron still makes the most of scenes where we're invited to scrutinise her, seemingly having a lot of fun.

My only real complaint about the episode is that I wish Ed had given some new insight in his pillow talk with Pria regarding his relationship with Kelly (Adrian Palicki). Saying he was too focused on work is starting to sound like a broken record.

But that accounts for only a moment. I enjoyed Kelly and Alara (Halston Sage) investigating Pria's rooms and I really loved Isaac (Mark Jackson) and Gordon (Scott Grimes) playing practical jokes on each other. Frakes uses the right understated wide shot when Isaac walks onto the bridge with the Mr. Potato Head gear.

And gods, the leg business. It's the first bit of humour that really felt like Family Guy but still didn't feel like parody. It's the right amount of sudden over-the-top when the shot begins making you think it's going to have something to do with Gordon's alarm clock and suddenly, nope, his whole leg is gone. Gordon's anger and then grudgingly admitting that it was a great joke were also perfectly played.

John Debney's score for the episode was a real standout during the effectively taut tension of the shuttlecraft escaping from the asteroid, in the dark matter storm, and in the wormhole sequence. This was some of the most effective sci-fi action I've seen in years.

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Current Location: 日
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You travel through space, sooner or later you're going to run into one of those whole civilisations who don't know they're living on a space ship or a robot or a giant slug, until you need to tell them they're going to collide with a sun or something. It's happened already to the Orville in the fourth episode of Seth MacFarlane's series, once again an episode written by MacFarlane, and once again a pretty entertaining one.

It was only a few months ago we saw another new iteration of this plot, in the season finale of Doctor Who where it was one of a bunch of concepts thrown in as window dressing for the main conflict between the Doctor, the Master, and the Cybermen. Of course it wasn't the first time Doctor Who has used this kind of plot--it's not unlike The Ark from the First Doctor era, or Underworld from the Fourth Doctor era. And of course it's happened on Star Trek more than once, the most obvious model being the concisely titled "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky".

Spoilers after the screenshot

The Orville episode, "If the Stars Should Appear", presents a less complicated version of the concept than the one shown in the recent Twelfth Doctor finale, allowing the crew to gradually learn about this society and its totalitarian theocracy headed by the menacing Robert Knepper as the villain Hamelac.

The scene where he tortures Kelly (Adrian Palicki) for info is one of the scenes that highlight exactly how the show is distinguished from Star Trek--we may have seen scenes like this dozens of times, but Kirk, Picard, or Spock would never say the people the torturer seeks were last seen having sex with his mother and high fiving. A lot of the humour on this show feels like MacFarlane was watching Star Trek years ago, wishing dialogue would be pushed just a little further. Now that he's doing it it is refreshing.

At the same time, the simplicity of his presentation of this well used concept is intriguing. As good as that Doctor Who finale was, it's nice to see someone saying these old stories are worth stopping and dwelling on rather than using them as wallpaper. Because ideologies preventing us from confronting our self destructive treatment of the environment certainly haven't gone away. One might think it's too transparently talking about climate change, but it's about the same level of subtlety Gene Roddenberry was aiming at in the 60s.

Of course, if it'd been more like Star Trek in the 60s, Ed (Seth MacFarlance) would have at least one make out session with a native. As it is, there's some indication that Alara (Halston Sage) is starting to get a crush on her captain. This might go over better if it's handled by writers other than MacFarlane, but I'd certainly like the show to explore other relationship issues aside from one partner complaining the other spends too much time focusing on their career.

The scene between Bortus (Peter Macon) and Klyden (Chad Coleman) at the beginning of the episode was cute but it would have been better coming before last week's--it's hard to settle into a little domestic scene when the memory of Klyden forcing their infant to get a sex change is too recent.

Otherwise, though, I enjoyed the action sequence and LaMarr's (J.Lee) "Boom, bitch!"--another moment of Star Trek dialogue being pushed into something just a bit more down to Earth--and I liked Isaac (Mark Jackson) puzzling over the inferior humans. Liam Neeson's cameo at the end of the episode helped lend the story just the right amount of gravity, too.

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Current Music: "Monkey to Man" - Elvis Costello and the Imposters

There shouldn't be any mistaking The Orville for a parody now, though I'm sure people still will. Last night's new episode, "About a Girl", is the third written by Seth MacFarlane, making that three more episodes written for The Orville than MacFarlane's written for Family Guy in the past ten years. It presents the kind of issue episode that has been absent from television since Star Trek and while I have one or two quibbles about it I'm mainly excited to see it. The Orville even goes some places Star Trek never dared to go.

The modern trend in television to present season long arcs has led to some wonderful story telling but it makes it difficult to tell the kind of story seen in "About a Girl". Bortus (Peter Macon) and Klyden (Chad Coleman), a couple who belong to an all male species called the Moclan, give birth to an incredibly rare female infant. The mostly human crew of the Orville are shocked when they learn the two wish for the child to undergo a sex change operation.

I was expecting the episode to get more flack for using "gender" and "sex" as synonyms though I haven't seen it yet in nitpicky reviews of the episode. I have seen some anger that these people in the future apparently aren't up on the same sociological literature as some viewers. One could argue that the crew of the Orville ought to be using state of the art terminology but maybe this is an area where a comparison to Star Trek isn't appropriate. The Orville isn't the flagship and it's crewed by at least two people we know to have had troubled careers. So instead of the best minds of the Federation tackling these issues, we have some mostly adequate minds of the Union muddling through.

In this way, the show actually turns some familiar, illogical plot devices of Star Trek into somet more feasible and even thought provoking prompts. It didn't really make a lot of sense that the Enterprise bridge crew were constantly being drafted as lawyers in courtroom episodes, for example. Here, I can believe that Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), with only one year of law training, is the most qualified person available to defend Bortus when he decides he doesn't want to allow his baby to receive a sex change. And we also get some instructive demonstrations of why certain arguments about sexual equality, while satisfying, might not be very effective in getting the point across.

It's satisfying watching Alara (Halston Sage) beat Bortus in a boxing ring and it's funny hearing Gordon (Scott Grimes) on the stand demonstrating that men can be intellectually inferior to women. But virtually all of Kelly and Ed's (Seth MacFarlane) evidence is anecdotal and nearly all of it relies on aliens. No-one who pays attention to this episode will come away thinking men are superior to women, the flaws in Ed and Kelly's arguments are useful to get people to think about what doesn't work when you're engaging with people of an opposite opinion. I really like the fact that what brings Bortus around is watching Rankin/Bass' Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which demonstrates the unexpected power art can have.

The episode is somewhat similar to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Outcast" about a member of a sexless species, the J'naii, who becomes female. The Moclan differ from the J'naii in that everyone is male rather than neither male or female, which should raise a question. How does one define sex or gender in the absence of any other? And of course we find out that the Moclan aren't single sex at all, that the prevalence of male Moclan is at least partially the product of misogyny endemic to the culture. Biological females have been effectively bred out of the populace, something that doesn't seem far-fetched for a technologically advanced misogynist people.

Like "The Outcast", one of the nice things about "About a Girl" is that by recontextualising so much it introduces new ways of thinking about issues and highlighting abstract connexions that might not have even been consciously considered by the writer. It introduces the concept of a basically liberal people allied with a culture that fundamentally rejects more socially liberal values, though at the same time, Bortus and Klyden are a same sex couple in the main cast, something Star Trek hasn't managed to do on television yet, though a same sex couple is apparently forthcoming on Discovery.*

In fact, my only real complaint about the episode is that I wished more time had been spent developing Bortus and Klyden's relationship before getting to this story. The conflicts here would probably have been a lot more interesting portrayed late in a second season. But that's a minor quibble compared to my delight that there's a thought provoking show, willing to engage with issues, that has an enormous number of viewers.

*The relationship between Dax and a former lover's symbiote in a new female body on Deep Space Nine was close but not really the same thing.

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The curling shoe was like a thunder clap.
As winds are bending trees to castle ears.
In just a moment dripped from wooden tap.
The final court arranged a time for beers.
Uncopied eyes arrange around the monk.
A dragging stone arrives atop the game.
The worth of weight was not in how it sunk.
The waiting paint absorbs a shrinking frame.
As sparking space enclosed the ship they watched.
Although the canvas blinked it caught the sight.
Beneath the dime in time to wrench the botched.
In ordered stakes the bet amends the light.
A sign regressed to shell amid the head.
Ideas append the tort remained unsaid.

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Current Location: A shuttle
Current Music: "I Do, Do You?" - Dinah Shore

Many people seem to feel that the second episode of The Orville, "Command Performance", which aired last night, is an improvement over the first episode and in some ways I agree. It had the first moment that really made me laugh thanks to a cameo by Jeffrey Tambor and Holland Taylor as Ed's parents. The scene takes the fractious relationship between Deanna Troi and her mother and pushes it to the higher comedic pitch Orville allows by having them discuss Ed's colon over the main viewer. Yet even this scene doesn't sabotage the reality of the story as a similar moment in a parody might--I believe Ed might have parents who embarrass him this much. And this represents what might be really interesting about the show if it can get through some growing pains, though I might settle for it becoming more of a straight forward space opera--that stuff tends to land more on the show than the comedy stuff does.

I think one of the reasons this episode represents an improvement is actually the directing--surprising given the first episode was directed by Jon Favreau. Robert Duncan McNeill, who played Tom Paris on Star Trek Voyager and who directed several episodes of that series, brings even more of a Star Trek feel to The Orville. The beats at the beginning especially, with an establishing shot of the ship followed by a low momentum scene in Ed's office felt exactly like the beginning of so many Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Next Generation episodes. This episode was again written by Seth MacFarlane and it made me even more eager to see how the show might be with a teleplay by a Star Trek writer.

"Command Performance" combines two relatively familiar plots--humans getting caught in an alien zoo and someone taking command for the first time--you could cite TOS's "The Menagerie" and Data's subplot in TNG's "Redemption" along with many other examples. In this case, the human zoo plot is used to put Ed (Seth MacFarlane) and Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) in a locked room together to hash out some of their relationship issues. It was a nice scene, it helped Kelly feel like more of a character, especially thanks to a nice, open, conversational performance from Palicki, and it really gave a sense of the two of them having had a relationship. The story about the opera and Ed being so high he believed he would be paralysed if he sat still too long was funny in a fairly authentic way.

The other plot centres on the ship's security chief, Alara (Halston Sage), who has to take command in the absence of Ed and Kelly because the normal third in line, Bortus (Peter Macon), has laid an egg and must sit on it for twenty one days, an idea which sounds like it'll be explored more in the third episode. I liked Alara's plot, especially the scene where she rushes down to the shuttle bay after an accident that's ripped an impressive hole in the deck. I found myself really caught up in her anxiety about responsibility and there's also a nice conversation between her and Dr. Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald) about the burden of command.

Maybe this means I'm getting old but I wish Alara was played by an older actress. I think in the first episode it's established that Alara's species matures faster but I would have liked to have seen some evidence of this in the episode. Her taking the tequila shots from the replicators was a nice bit of humanising but it would have been nice if she'd had a moment where she really showed there was an older mind inside that body. I think there've been some complaints about a young actress being in this role purely for sex appeal. I don't have anything against sex appeal myself, even if it stretches credibility--it is fantasy, after all. But it would have been nice if I could buy into her character a little more. On the other hand, maybe I'm thinking of this as too much like Star Trek--this isn't the flagship so maybe a really young security officer isn't far fetched at all. Halston Sage does a decent job in the role--I found her halting delivery a little distracting but I think she's doing it to sound alien.

Less impressive is Penny Johnson Jerald as Dr. Finn. Jerald is actually a Star Trek veteran--she played Cassidy Yates on Deep Space Nine, but unfortunately I'm only reminded of how boring I thought that character was, largely because of Jerald's lacklustre performance. But I don't know, maybe she'll grow on me. I liked her reference to Obi-Wan Kenobi, I only wish the name had slid off her tongue a little more naturally. I'm still looking forward to the next episode.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: The bridge
Current Music: "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" - Elvis Costello and the Attractions

I've been kind of fascinated by the extreme gulf between critical and audience reaction to The Orville, the new Sci-Fi adventure comedy that premièred on Sunday. Rotten Tomatoes currently says the show's scored 22% positive in critical reviews but the audience score is 90%. It's not just on Rotten Tomatoes I see this divide--nearly every online review I've read is negative, some downright vitriolic, while in the comments section I see mostly people puzzled and somewhat taken aback by all the negative reviews. The general consensus among the comments I've looked at seems to be that while the pilot episode is flawed the show's not bad at all and has a lot of potential. This is basically my feeling after having watched it.

At Comic Con this year, I was already hearing a lot of jabs at Orville on panels, more than one person calling it a rip-off of Galaxy Quest, which it certainly isn't. The film Galaxy Quest is a spoof centred on the actors on a Star Trek style show while Orville is clearly not a parody at all but an earnest attempt to create a space opera with heavy homages to Star Trek but with a more comedic tone. This might have been close to the Galaxy Quest series that has been in development for a long time but at best I'd say it's two shows in the same genre. If you're angry at Orville for being too much like Galaxy Quest you might as well swear off Deep Space Nine for being too much like Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica for being too much like Space Battleship Yamato.

The pilot of the Orville is directed by Jon Favreau and shots of the ship in dock and leaving it are nicely done, clearly loving homages to shots of the Enterprise leaving dock in the first two Star Trek films and I really, really love the idea of wanting to create that sense of awe at the sight of a starship again. Seth MacFarlane in the lead role as Captain Mercer and Scott Grimes as helmsman Gordon Malloy in the approaching shuttle craft have comedic dialogue about drinking too much the night before; it's silly but it functions within the reality of the show. I found this moment, like many others in the episode, not laugh out loud funny but amusing and in its way it enhances the coolness of the space stuff by the contrast.

One of the things that makes the show different from Star Trek and many other space operas is that the Orville and its crew are by no means top of the line. It's not the flagship, it's not an awesome prototype, it's just a nice ship. The helmsman and the navigator, John LaMarr (J. Lee), take the usual buddy dynamic seen between LeForge and Data or O'Brian and Bashir and dial it to something more low brow, though Malloy is supposed to be a great pilot and one of the surprisingly effective parts of the climax is that his "Hugging the Donkey" manoeuvre is actually pretty cool and you can see how it might be genuinely effective and difficult to pull off. These two guys might just be exceptionally regular but I also like the idea of there being some real assholes among the crew--which was sort of Alexander Siddig's initial idea for playing Bashir; you can see he's intentionally playing unlikeable in the DS9 pilot. Even Jayne on Firefly ended up having a heart, though. It would be nice to see one of these shows sustain a real jerk but I don't think MacFarlane intends to go that route.

I think one of the reasons critics hate him so much is the ironic humour on Family Guy has gone so stale. I kind of suspect MacFarlane's sick of it too. What I took away from watching Ted is similar to what I picked up on from Orville--MacFarlane, at heart, has a real, sincere love for the old formulas in sitcoms and dramas. So there's nothing really ironic about him throwing Ed and his ex-wife, Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), together as captain and first officer. He wants a chemistry like the leads on Cheers or Who's the Boss much as he wants to invoke the milieu of Star Trek--not to roast it but to truly keep this kind of storytelling alive. I'm never been a fan of sitcoms like that but I find something endearing about MacFarlane's sincerity, especially since he gets so much shit for it.

That said, I would like Kelly to be developed more. Her motivations in the pilot are entirely based on Ed and I would like to hear more about her motivations that have nothing to do with him. Why did she join the fleet? Did she also dream about being an officer on a ship since she was a kid? The show has several Star Trek directors slated to direct episodes, including Jonathan Frakes, I hope it brings in some Star Trek writers, too.

I do like MacFarlane in the lead. There is something Shatnerian in his unabashed hamminess though he doesn't project authority as much as Shatner does. But I can see as much potential in that being a distinction for the show as a drawback. Time will tell.

Twitter Sonnet #1033

A cup emerged between the lily pads.
A draught impressed in steaming rooms at night.
The other side survived on higher rads.
The blue of sea contained the vessel tight.
Too many veg'tables are on the moon.
A secret book confirmed a fever dream.
In smi'ling Play-Doh men you'll find the boon.
The fitting shapes of blocks aren't all they seem.
In transit apes are caught inside the wall.
Prepared in sight the pudding fell to plague.
The walking voice proceeded down the hall.
The agent's shining limbs are somewhat vague.
The dice replaced a drink within the cup.
The birds of fortune turning home to sup.

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