Greetings from the Planetary Union!

It's just a TNG-era Star Trek with a different coat of paint.

This is why I found it so boring. Not only was it full of tired McFarland humor but the storylines were just rehashes of old Star Trek episodes. I peaced out around half way through season 1.

I think they spent way too much time on Ed getting over his divorce with his XO Kelly, but after that he’s fine.

He gets over Kelly at some point? I can't remember if I watched 2 or 3 seasons but one of my problems with the show is how cringey and toxic he consistently is towards her. "The only way to stop me from dating this younger clone of you we came across is if you date me instead" was pretty late in the series.

I like the rest of the cast, but the captain is grating.

That's a reassuring bit of info. If the in-universe explanation is that he isn't the best captain, I might give it another shot.
As my initial reaction was "has McFarlane just made himself kirk?"

I've enjoyed her talents, no matter how small the part or scene, in several TV show prior to the Orville. Such a range.

Both Picard and std was bad. Picard's execution of the series couldve been better, if they dint follow the same plot as std

It's an attempt at rectifying the 2 series, but it's also though

SNW is great. It is such a pure distillation of Star Trek

I don't really like the gorn plotline, but it's the show I recommend as a first for new Trekkies

People cringed when they used prime universe In the show, it was the line. And people said yea it came from the wikis

I'd argue that it was hurt by specifically trying to fit TNG-era Star Trek, or people expecting that of it.

It would have worked perfectly fine as a TOS/TAS show, since they never really shied away from there being unexplainable magic with the science out in the universe. Witches, wizards, and the devil are all real, and one universe away, so too is actual magic.

Whereas TNG and post-TNG would always try and hammer that into the work of a godlike entity such as a Q, or some grounded science. Q abilities are the work of highly sophisticated subspace interactions that have yet to be technologically replicated. There are particular neurotransmitters, psychology, and brain structures involved in telepathy, and it's not simple ESP/psionics.

And people wanted the latter. This is most notable with the cause of the Burn. People hated it because the idea of a child being able to psionically disrupt dilithium galaxy-wide would have been silly in TNG, without them being a child Q, or something like that.

But as a TOS/TAS plot, it fits in fine. Lazarus briefly caused the entire universe to blink out of existence, and Charlie X, due to the powers bestowed upon him needed to keep him alive, could explode ships with his mind, and would have destroyed the Federation if left unchecked.

TL;DR: It worked as Trek, but people basically wanted TNG and got TOS.

I'm so sick of Klingons.

but then for some reason they kept trying to introduce Klingons into it.

Ones with a third different head shape, no less!

Agreed. It's a decent action scifi show that is hurt by trying to fit the IP. It did do some interesting things with the mirror universe, and some of the latter season parts where it takes nonsensical one off TOS concepts and completely seriously says "that's canon, let's build a plot point on it" were entertaining, if not good.

But it just doesn't get Star Trek and it says something that I tell people getting in to the shows not to watch it.

Just read your edit yeah...about a girl is so fucking facile, it's a massive piece of shit. I hate that episode.

They revisit the plot hook later though and it is spectacular

I found the first three eps "okay" ish. Something to watch.

Then ep 4 landed and oh shit we got trek here boys. Then you got Pria, Krill is still my go to introduction ep because it starts with a crewmember being dared to eat a cactus but ends on a damning note about cycles of violence. Keeps going from there, ep 4 (If the stars should appear) is the growing of the beard.

The best way that I found to think about The Orville is that Seth MacFarlane had to shoe-horn jokes into the first few episodes to satisfy the execs who expected him to make a comedy and then gradually that tapers off to become a really solid Star Trek-type show (that still has humor, but it’s more organic, workplace type humor).

The Orville is a weird show. It hews very closely to the format and production design of 90s Trek (including a lot of budget-conscious decisions), and many of the creatives have a Star Trek background going back that far. Frankly, I think a lot of the scripts were from the TNG slush pile. It's clearly a love letter to those shows.

However, it's also clearly Seth MacFarlane's love letter. He gets to be the captain. His friends and lovers get to play major parts despite sometimes not really having the acting chops for it. The characters are all obsessed with the cultural touchstones of white American Gen-X'ers. In the early going, the Family-Guy/Ted/etc. sense of humor is front and center, and while that gets much better, it never fully goes away. One can also just about imagine 20-something Seth and his buddies screaming at the TV that there is no moral ambiguity in a given ST episode and that Jean Luc needs to just pick a side.

In some ways, it can be pretty rough, but then, mostly because it is such an earnest homage, it's greater than the sum of its parts. I never fell in love with it the way many have, but after wading through the first few episodes and getting a feel for what it was and wasn't, I grew fond of it. I'd say it's worth watching, but you don't have to apologize for not fully buying in. TBH, I feel fairly similar levels of tempered fondness for Disco, though for very different reasons.

wjrii hit the nail on the head. If you categorically don't like the vibe it might not be for you. Like any true Trek show it takes time to find its feet. The plot is coarse and hamfisted (as a trans person, the trans allegory episode was hard to get through) but eventually turns around to be a good example of scifi for contemporary social commentary. The humour (both quality and balance) improves but it doesn't stop being a Seth MacFarlane show. I value its earnesty, but it's pretty far down the list for my suggested "Star Trek" viewing order.

The problem with s3 wasn't the seriousness - we had plenty of that everywhere else - it was the missing small moments. Those little filler moments they slipped into the episodic serials that picked out little threads here and there and brought such a very very heartwarmingly humorous and human element to the show. Bortus’ moustache. The random Karaoke. Talking shit in the mess, finding out a crewmember can eat anything and Gordon promptly producing a cactus and a dare. Latchkum!   Shit that made you invest in the characters.  The reminder that even in utopia we're still batshit humanity

Admittedly I haven't exactly been keeping up with the news but it's been radio silence for a few years now so I am kind of sceptical.

The fact that they didn't immediately go into season 4 after finishing season 3, which is what most shows do, kind of implied that the studio at least felt done with it. Which personally I think was short-sighted. You don't leave large gaps like that because it increases the likelihood that the actors are going to go off and get other gigs. It's not like they're being paid in the interim so they kind of have to.

apparently https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18158340

you want me to what? I am a dominar! A dominar!

I wish Enterprise had skipped the whole temporal cold war storyline and skipped straight to the part where it got good: the events that led up to the foundation of the Federation.

Also, gimme your finger nails!