In Space noone will hear you laugh
This week the new episode of Seth McFarlanes new Scifi Comedy Series "The Orville" has aired.
And it was pretty decent scifi material although it did not really get into the funny side of things before the last five minutes.
A lot of time was wasted on Exposition, the Ship and Crew had to be introduced after all and the main storyline was that Captain Ed Mercer finds himself forced to take on his Ex-Wife (who cheated on him with an Alien in the cold opening of this pilot, whom Mercer later calls "Papa Smurf") as First Officer or he won't get a command of his own, as the Divorce has thrown him into disarray and turned opinions in the Fleet Command against him.
As I already said, the SF parts were well made, not quite on Star Trek Niveau, but Still way beyond "fanmovie", which for a comedy series is already exceeding expectations.
And once the whole Introduction stuff was out of the way, they made good use of the various characters to tell their story, working the sadly a bit cliché ladden figures well as a team and to change between more humorous and more serious parts of the action.
The most exciting scene was the Arrival of the Ship at "Science Base Epsilon"... which was played by the same San Francisco Area Water purification Plant that already served as TNG scenery in many episodes...
I strongly hope, that these things (the not too exciting pacing, the lack of really funny jokes, the somewhat wooden characters that get introduced by the Captain reading their personnel file while all stand at attention and makes comments about their unique talents or quirks...Seems McFarlane doesn't like "show don't tell"... as in the second half of the episode he does a much better job using all these badly introduced bits in a more organic way, why then have the "cliffs notes" version in the first place?) are just a consequence of the Pilot being used as "proof of concept" and that the series will grow a lot more funny over time. Else it may not be the worst Scifi to grace our screens in 2017, but it won't have a long life either.
Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber known as part of Firestorm from Flash and Legends of Tomorrow)
The Spacedock where everything starts, the ships are the small thingies inside the big forklike structures
Captain and Helmsman on their way to the new Ship in a Shuttlecraft
The Second Helmsman doing his "thing" on the bridge
The Orville in her full glory
The Quantumdrive directly before going FTL
Captain Mercer and his security Officer Alara (superstrong alien species with a rubbernose)
The humorless alien Bortus from a species with only men (which wheezes only once per year)
Isaac - A racist cyborg/robot from an isolationist alien species that was sent as "intern" to the Orville to improve intercultural relations and now is Science Officer
And it was pretty decent scifi material although it did not really get into the funny side of things before the last five minutes.
A lot of time was wasted on Exposition, the Ship and Crew had to be introduced after all and the main storyline was that Captain Ed Mercer finds himself forced to take on his Ex-Wife (who cheated on him with an Alien in the cold opening of this pilot, whom Mercer later calls "Papa Smurf") as First Officer or he won't get a command of his own, as the Divorce has thrown him into disarray and turned opinions in the Fleet Command against him.
As I already said, the SF parts were well made, not quite on Star Trek Niveau, but Still way beyond "fanmovie", which for a comedy series is already exceeding expectations.
And once the whole Introduction stuff was out of the way, they made good use of the various characters to tell their story, working the sadly a bit cliché ladden figures well as a team and to change between more humorous and more serious parts of the action.
The most exciting scene was the Arrival of the Ship at "Science Base Epsilon"... which was played by the same San Francisco Area Water purification Plant that already served as TNG scenery in many episodes...
I strongly hope, that these things (the not too exciting pacing, the lack of really funny jokes, the somewhat wooden characters that get introduced by the Captain reading their personnel file while all stand at attention and makes comments about their unique talents or quirks...Seems McFarlane doesn't like "show don't tell"... as in the second half of the episode he does a much better job using all these badly introduced bits in a more organic way, why then have the "cliffs notes" version in the first place?) are just a consequence of the Pilot being used as "proof of concept" and that the series will grow a lot more funny over time. Else it may not be the worst Scifi to grace our screens in 2017, but it won't have a long life either.
Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber known as part of Firestorm from Flash and Legends of Tomorrow)
The Spacedock where everything starts, the ships are the small thingies inside the big forklike structures
Captain and Helmsman on their way to the new Ship in a Shuttlecraft
The Second Helmsman doing his "thing" on the bridge
The Orville in her full glory
The Quantumdrive directly before going FTL
Captain Mercer and his security Officer Alara (superstrong alien species with a rubbernose)
The humorless alien Bortus from a species with only men (which wheezes only once per year)
Isaac - A racist cyborg/robot from an isolationist alien species that was sent as "intern" to the Orville to improve intercultural relations and now is Science Officer