I
wasn’t really interested in watching either of these shows because, well, the
trailers made them look bad. I’ve now
watched the first 2 1/2 episodes of The
Orville and the first two episodes of Discovery,
and while I may watch more in the future, I really have no plans to do so.
After
I watched the first episode of The
Orville, my thoughts were that it was the first draft of a sub-par Star
Trek episode that instead of doing revisions to tighten the plot, develop the
characters more, or punch up the dialogue, they just sprinkled in bad “jokes.” And
I say “jokes” because that’s what they are.
For example, in the first episode they arrive at this science outpost
and they call up the director. The
Captain and First Office talk with the director for a bit, then go down to meet
with him. While this is going on, in the
background of the director’s office is a dog licking his balls. Nobody says anything about this, and for a
moment I wondered if it was going to be like Airplane where some of the movie’s best humor is the unexplained
bizarre shit going on in the background.
But once the Captain and First Office leave to go down to the planet,
the camera pans over to two other characters who go, “Did you see that dog
licking his balls?” “First thing I saw.” Having to call attention to the “joke”
is as bad as having to explain the joke.
So
if I’m not impressed with the humor of The
Orville, how about the scifi bits?
They’re basic and not that interesting.
I mean, the second episode was your Basic Plot #156c, where a character
is unexpectedly thrust into command and they make the wrong decisions and
everyone things they can’t handle it, but in the end they dig deep and win over
everyone and the day is saved. It’s
something we’ve seen a thousand times before, and there wasn’t anything making
it a unique version.
And
I only watched the second episode because I saw a bunch of things on Twitter
and Facebook about how great the third episode was. The third episode does deal with an important
issue, but I’m not a fan of ham-fisted social commentary. And it felt like I was being beaten by a
whole pig.
Now
about Star Trek: Discovery. First off, the Klingons. I don’t care for the reimagined
Klingons. I’m sure I had seen a few of
the Original Series episodes as a kid, but I grew up with Star Trek with the original movies and The Next Generation. So I’m
used to the TNG Klingon design. I
understand that the reason the Klingons changed was that they now had a budget
for the makeup. Fine. There was no need to “explain” the
difference. Then came “Trials and
Tribble-ations” where someone didn’t recognize the Original Series Klingons and
Worf just said something like, “It’s not something we talk about.” If they had
just CGId forehead ridges onto the old guys, or inserted new Klingons in place
of the old ones, people would have complained, but it wouldn’t have been an
issue. Instead, it just made a
mess. Like, weren’t there videos of the
Federation and Klingon Empire signing treaties or something that would be shown
in schools? You’d think such a major
change would have been … noticed. It’s
like if during the 1960’s the Russians spoke Portuguese. It would be an odd bit of trivia that would
be the basis for a thousand YouTube videos.
Anyway,
Enterprise explained the change as
some genetic mutation, or something, which … good enough. It was a shitty situation, but they made the
best of it. So what’s with the new
Klingons? It feels like if they had gone
with the Original Series Klingon design, the old fans would have applauded them
for keeping the continuity, but the “Powers That Be” were worried that the
general public would look at them and go, “That looks stupid.” So they made
demon Klingons to be “scary.” It would be like if they made Vulcans eight feet
tall and purple, just to make sure people knew they were aliens. And then they claim this is still in
continuity, and I’m like, “Bullshit. You
painted yourselves into a corner, and then shot yourself in the foot. You did something stupid, and I don’t have to
like it.”
So
other than that, what did I think of the first two episodes? Meh.
It was like, “Wow, the people behind this generic scifi action shows are
running a risk of being sued by the Star Trek people for using Klingons,
Vulcans, photon torpedoes, etc. Wait,
this is Star Trek? You mean, like bad
fanfic Star Trek, right?”
What
did I actually think of the story? Um,
contrived. I mean, what exactly was
Klingon guy’s plan? We’ll damage this
relay, then when a Federation ship arrives to fix it, we’ll just stay cloaked
for hours doing nothing, waiting for one of them to fly out in a spacesuit and
clumsily kill one of our guys and then wait several more hours until, wait,
what? I mean, what would have happened
if the Shenzhou had just fixed the
relay and left? Would they have had to
damage it again? It would have made more
sense for the Klingon guy to set off the beacon when the Shenzhou arrived so that tons of Klingon ships would show up and have
the shit hit the fan. But then we
wouldn’t have had the all-important Burnham flying through space scene.