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lowkey13
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The Orville- My One Big Issue
I dunno. I find myself more eager for the next episode of The Orville than most other shows. The darned thing is just so much better than it has any right to be.
Define "height". What is "high"?
I think you might want to consider that it is not 1966! Nor is it 1987. We are a *half-century* beyond TOS. We are 32 years past TNG.
What counts as challenging to social mores has changed, and what counts as "family" viewing has also changed.
Consider, for example, that TOS had "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" in which they shoved the idiocy of racism in the face of viewers in 1969. When Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed less than a year before. Think about that for a minute, what they were challenging at the time, in context. How many parents of the age were *not* happy with "Plato's Stepchildren" in 1968, with its interracial kiss on screen. Do you figure that seemed like "family" viewing to everyone, at the time?
TOS is "family" viewing *now*, because of how much we have normalized many of the moral messages within it, so much that the ideas may seem campy, and thus non-threatening. But at the time, there was some challenging going on. Don't forget that.
Satyrn
First Post
I remember watching the first season of Criminal Minds several years ago. Well, the first couple episodes of the first season. I thoroughly did not enjoy the opening scenes of each episode, which just felt to me like the show was reveling in the sexual torture of young women. It was like, worse than porn, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
The show still lasted a long long time, I believe. I don't know what my point is. Just saying.
Oh! I know one point. I learned years later that Mandy Patinkin thought something similar and ditched the show, too, which means I have something in common Inigo Montoya. Just saying.
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lowkey13
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As Umbran pointed out, TOS explored racism in a way that would have been utterly shocking to some .americans when it first aired.
TNG had Picard interrogated by Cardassians in a way that explored torture. I would be surprised if that didn’t spark a few conversations about POWs and PTSD.
And like Kirk before him, Ryker was pretty...”friendly” with a lot of non-humans, including a hologram. (And he wasn’t alone in using the holosuites for adult purposes/romantic play-acting- see LaForge, Barkley, and Quark’s rentals.)
One of sci-fi’s strengths as a genre is to be able to hold up a mirror to society while removed from many of the contexts that make such stories uncomfortable. That illusory separation gives us enough space to start discussions.
TNG had Picard interrogated by Cardassians in a way that explored torture. I would be surprised if that didn’t spark a few conversations about POWs and PTSD.
And like Kirk before him, Ryker was pretty...”friendly” with a lot of non-humans, including a hologram. (And he wasn’t alone in using the holosuites for adult purposes/romantic play-acting- see LaForge, Barkley, and Quark’s rentals.)
One of sci-fi’s strengths as a genre is to be able to hold up a mirror to society while removed from many of the contexts that make such stories uncomfortable. That illusory separation gives us enough space to start discussions.
Attachments
You may want to table this post until after you watch Episodes 8 & 9 (Identity and Identity part II).
I honestly think these 2 episodes could easily belong with the best trek episodes out there - and are, frankly, better than even most of those.
Certainly better than anything Discovery has put forward.
I mostly agree, though some of the concepts the Orville has handled have been pretty complex, and they haven't been afraid to show consequences - something Star Trek has often shied away from.
So here's the issue I have.
ST:TOS and ST:TNG are great, amazing, wonderful family watch shows. Get the whole family together and watch it- and it's great for young minds, too. Get them thinking outside the box.
And the Orville is ... almost ... that as well. But ...
Well, in addition to the jokes (which, you know, whatever), sometimes you get ... more. I know Seth MacFarlane loves his jokes, and I'm happy that, for the most part, they are serving as occasional breaks instead of annoying distractions, but then you get episodes like S2E02, Primal Urges.
So, in a certain way, I understand the appeal of this episode from a classic science fiction standpoint- it's taking a current issue and extrapolating it into the future. I also know that the show is rated TV-14. And it's not like there isn't a lot of worse stuff out there on television.
...and yet, while I thought this was a good episode of the Orville, it was not necessarily the most enjoyable family watch ever.Two years earlier, and it could have been very, very bad.
But maybe that's just me. Does anyone else have thoughts on this? What I'm thinking about, by the way, is not whether or not the inclusion of more adult themes is "good" or "bad" per se, but whether or not this is good for the show in the future?
Or am I orville-thinking this? (HA! PUN!)
I agree, the not "family friendly" stuff just comes at you. That just seems to be McFarlain's thing - if you watch his shows you have to accept it. Season one had this same problem - "Cupid's Dagger" was not 11 year old friendly!
“Cupid’s Dagger” was not much more family unfriendly than something like A Midsummer’s Nights Dream.
Depending on the director's interpretation and presentation, A Midsummer Night's Dream may well be family unfriendly!
For that episode of the Orville, I was thinking of Alara walking in on Claire and Yaphit. Could be a bit awkward with young kids.
GreyLord
Legend
I probably wouldn't watch it with little kids, but S2E2 in my opinion was on the verge of one of the best episodes.
I heavily disagree on some of the ideas it pushed forward, but at the same time addressed a modern issue that concerns a LOT of far right Conservative Religious Americans.
They see it as a particular type of addiction (while REAL scientific studies I think have actually debunked it's a type of addiction at all, that substance and other types of addiction trigger different parts of the brain etc.).
It, however, does address the ideas of addiction and what addiction can do. It also addresses as to why someone might sink into addiction (to me, it would have been better to have it as alcoholism as it would seem that the reasons for the addiction as well as the results would be more closely aligned to what the show discussed).
I think it takes something that is modern and recognized (addiction in general and it's affects on someone and others around them) and addresses it a pretty good fashion.
It probably is not for the little kids to watch, but when discussing addiction I think it does it pretty well. If you are a far right conservative religious individual (especially American) that considers that topic of the episode...I'm not sure how well you could discuss it than the episode does itself. It makes strong hints as too what is involved but does not actually get into anything really explicit. You never really find out how an alien species actually performs something, and overall is discreet as far as the actual acts go. At the same time it discusses and makes very clear the problems that arise due to addiction.
I think it was an excellent episode (it's ironic, I've only actually seen three episodes yet and that was one of them that I watched). If it represent the other episodes that the Orville has I think the Orville is probably doing a better job at discussing modern problems through the sci-fi lense (something that the Original Star Trek did and the Next Generation attempted to do) than the real Star Trek (discovery) is doing (which is more of just a straight up sci-fi show in general).
PS: I agree it probably isn't a show for the entire family to watch, especially those families which are more conservative in the religious front, but then, the Orville while being an obvious copy of Star Trek, is not actually Star Trek and in many ways is it's own show as well.
I heavily disagree on some of the ideas it pushed forward, but at the same time addressed a modern issue that concerns a LOT of far right Conservative Religious Americans.
They see it as a particular type of addiction (while REAL scientific studies I think have actually debunked it's a type of addiction at all, that substance and other types of addiction trigger different parts of the brain etc.).
It, however, does address the ideas of addiction and what addiction can do. It also addresses as to why someone might sink into addiction (to me, it would have been better to have it as alcoholism as it would seem that the reasons for the addiction as well as the results would be more closely aligned to what the show discussed).
I think it takes something that is modern and recognized (addiction in general and it's affects on someone and others around them) and addresses it a pretty good fashion.
It probably is not for the little kids to watch, but when discussing addiction I think it does it pretty well. If you are a far right conservative religious individual (especially American) that considers that topic of the episode...I'm not sure how well you could discuss it than the episode does itself. It makes strong hints as too what is involved but does not actually get into anything really explicit. You never really find out how an alien species actually performs something, and overall is discreet as far as the actual acts go. At the same time it discusses and makes very clear the problems that arise due to addiction.
I think it was an excellent episode (it's ironic, I've only actually seen three episodes yet and that was one of them that I watched). If it represent the other episodes that the Orville has I think the Orville is probably doing a better job at discussing modern problems through the sci-fi lense (something that the Original Star Trek did and the Next Generation attempted to do) than the real Star Trek (discovery) is doing (which is more of just a straight up sci-fi show in general).
PS: I agree it probably isn't a show for the entire family to watch, especially those families which are more conservative in the religious front, but then, the Orville while being an obvious copy of Star Trek, is not actually Star Trek and in many ways is it's own show as well.
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lowkey13
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