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I still enjoyed it for sure; It's only a dud to me compared to the potential the show itself has, not compared to all network tv shows currently being made.  I enjoy it far more than anything being produced by the networks for sure

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Are you considering its potential for big space battles and lots of explosions, its potential for peeing your pants (no pun intended) outrageous comedy, or its potential for introspective evaluation of different alien races to examine human issues in a science fiction setting?

 

As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I can appreciate McFarlane's patience with #3 to set up characters we know better when it's time to kill them. I presume you just expect more of #1 and #2. 

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I love episodes that are focused on character building, I definitely don't need action and big guest stars every week.  I just didn't think this particular episode did the best job of character building, at least not for Ed, Kelly, and the new teacher guy, because that storyline was pretty lame.  It was good character building for Claire, Isaac, Alara, and even the other two guys with the dating D story

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I wonder if this episode may have not been shot during last season.. if you look at the insignia badges in the season 2 promos they are new (more metal looking and monochrome)... the ones in this episode were ones from last season (look more like a rubber with brighter colors from costumes)... just an idea but it would explain why it felt a little like a mid-season kind of episode... 

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Assuming you mean last night's episode, there's no need to wonder, it absolutely was.  I've already talked about it in this thread actually

 

 

On 12/5/2017 at 9:38 AM, Jay said:

they ordered 13 episodes, but are only airing 12 this year (episodes 1-11 and 13), saving the already filmed episode 12 to be a Season 2 episode next year

 

 

This year's season premiere was newly shot for season 2.

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2 minutes ago, Jay said:

Assuming you mean last night's episode, there's no need to wonder, it absolutely was.  I've already talked about it in this thread actually

 

sorry, @Jay My bad for not reading back further! 

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I knew there was an episode from last season bumper to this season, which made last season's emotional episode for Ed the finale, but I didn't know if they just kept it as #13 = 2x01, or pushed it to later. 

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I see the Season 1 soundtrack release is up for pre-order at Amazon😍

 

Says available Feb. 1st at Amazon, but Jan. 22nd at La-La Land.- here's their promo:

 

 

Really enjoying Season 2 so far (lol Bortus) - ready for some deeper character development of others hopefully on the way.

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2 hours ago, Stefancos said:

I'm told episode 2 of season 2 is another dud.

 

Yeah. Gay alien eroticism, porn addiction, child genital mutilation, alien viruses, and a splendid last minute Easter egg all add up to a dud. 

 

"Hi, I'm Dan." 

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The Orville 2x02 Primal Urges

 

I liked this one more than the season premiere.  Pretty funny stuff throughout, especially all the Bortus and his porn addiction stuff (especially the sexy moglins in the final simulation).

 

I can't even remember what the B or C plots were.  Oh well.

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They glossed over the fact that the naked penis-shaped jive-talking engineer created an illegal porn simulation containing a virus that nearly crippled a Union ship. I guess he used a personal computer instead of a Union terminal. 

 

Granted, it raised the stakes for the planetary rescue mission, but it also shows why many companies block their USB drives on company computers.

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That was a great episode tonight. Definitely the best episode of the season so far, probably one of my favorite episodes in the series so far. Definitely felt like a Star Trek episode. Wonderful story, a couple twists, and of course a beautiful score by Joel McNeely.

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Season 2 opener aired on the UK version of Fox last night, enjoyed it. Liking the overall concept of this show (basically, a funnier TNG) a great deal. And it isn't maybe always as obvious as you'd expect ... I fully expected Bortus' annual piss ceremony to be used as an opportunity for some fairly lowbrow comedy (something similar to the length of time it took Austin Powers to relieve himself after they 'defrosted' him) , but it wasn't.              

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I also liked how Primal Urges didn't take the route of harassing Bortus and his spouse for both being males. I don't know if any news outlets criticize the show for this aspect, or for casting two black men as the married couple as somehow being "gay" and thus either really good (blue states) or bad (red states). Since the species has only one sex, where female is the genetic anomaly, this argument is completely invalid. They say "accept it and move on" and then tell a different story about universally harmful aspects of the relationship (divorce, neglect, communication, etc.). 

 

Ep3 tonight on On Demand! 

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The Orville 2x03 Home

 

Yup easily the best ep of the season so far (though still nowhere near the heights of the best season 1 episodes).  I was thinking it should have been the season premiere in that coveted Sunday night showing it got to hook new viewers to the show until the ending, since obviously they had to air eps where Alara was still security chief before this one.  That somewhat explains why they kinda had no choice about what to air first no matter how it came out.

 

Great special effects showing off Alara's planet, they must have upped the sfx budget since last year.  Great music from McNeely, can't wait to hear this one on CD (hopefully we don't have to wait a full year for season 2 OST).


GREAT guest cast this week too.  Robert Picardo as Alara's dad!  Patrick Warbuton as the replacement security guy!  John Billingsley as the bad guy!  And Jason Alexader's bartender character returned too!  And Norm McDonald even got a line!  Sweet.

 

The home invasion scenes were kind of hard to watch, as you just wanted Alara to stand up and kick their ass but she just sat there hopeless.  The "twist" that Billingsley's neighbor character was the bad guy was obvious the moment he showed up, but that's fine.  

 

If there is any complaint about the episode it's that it wasn't particularly funny, though Warburton's scenes, especially when he was eating his lunch on the break, were awesome comedic relief.  The show has always flipflopped back and forth between how much comedy to instill in any given episode and I'm still not sure what the ideal way is.  So I guess the complaint is more about how they can't decide, so sometimes you go in expecting more comedy and don't get much, sometimes you go in expecting less and there's a lot.  I dunno.

 

The ending where Alara actually left was surprising, I wasn't expecting that since they kind of shows tend to have a reset button approach and less of a serialized one.  Now I'm off too look up if Alara was written off because of the actor's availability or if she'll still be on every week in side stories on her planet.

 

EDIT: It seems she was filming a movie and its production overlapped with Orville season 2 filming, so she'll miss the middle of the season but will be back before the end.

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Yea the pickles was a great ending.


She'll return, I explained it at the end of my post, the one that's immediately before yours.

 

On 1/11/2019 at 2:23 PM, Jay said:

It seems she was filming a movie and its production overlapped with Orville season 2 filming, so she'll miss the middle of the season but will be back before the end.

 

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16 minutes ago, Jay said:

Yea the pickles was a great ending.


She'll return, I explained it at the end of my post, the one that's immediately before yours.

 

 

Yes, I've read your explanation, but that's just an assumption on your part. We don't know if she'll return after that ;)

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What made Star Trek great was Roddenberry's persistent optimistic humanitarian philosophy while challenging moral questions like self sacrifice and imposing your moral views on others despite the impact on them (prime directive during cold war).  Orville is strange because it relies on Star Trek tradition but ignores what made it great just like the JJ Abrams reboot did by avoiding moral questions. Still enjoyable though.

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3 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

Yes, I've read your explanation, but that's just an assumption on your part. We don't know if she'll return after that ;)

It's not an assumption.  The article I read said she'd miss the middle of the season and would be back before the end.

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Well, here's a new article saying she's gone for good. 

 

'The Orville': FOX Confirms Halston Sage's Exit

 

It's either massive misdirection to hide that she'll be back eventually, or she's really gone for good.... Which certainly seems more likely now. 

 

Oh well. 

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Oh yea it's way too early in the shows run for there to be any real emotion behind characters leaving like that. Especially when everything they run into is treated with a layer of comedy. 

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I can't help but compare her departure to that of Tasha Yar's (Denise Crosby) death in the final third of the first season of Star Trek TNG. I didn't watch the show during its original run (my introduction was the fourth or fifth season) so I don't know the extent of its emotional resonance. 

 

It sure as hell does when revisited during Yesterday's Enterprise. 

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The Orville 2x04 Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes

 

Hulu still uses the bit of Alara knocking down the door as their intro that plays before episodes.  Guess they didn't get the memo.

 

Another good episode this week!  Any fears the first season was a fluke are abated.  The weakest link in the show continues to be Macfarlane's acting.  He's really just not a good actor, at all.  So episodes like this where he gets the A story suffer a bit because of that, though everything else was done so well this week it doesn't really bring it near bad episode territory or anything.

 

I actually thought the actress playing his love interest was a pretty bad actor too, although in light of the reveal that she was a Krill in disguise, I suppose you can write that off as intentional, since she's pretty good as the Krill.  Much like last week, the "twist" that she was really a Krill was obvious so many minutes before it was "revealed" it can leave you feeling like they are wasting time dragging out something so obvious, but that's another minor quibble I suppose.

 

AWSOME SCORE by McNeely this week!  One of the best of the whole show so far.  Wonderful suspense and action music throughout, the highlight being the great action cue when the new bad guys attacked the Krill ship and they had to escape to the planet.  It was great!  It featured a nice homage to Belly of the Steel Beast from Last Crusade

 

I hate Billy Joel, though 😛

 

Weird fact of the week: IRL, Scott Grimes (Malloy) is engaged to Adrianne Palicki (Kelly).  How about that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Orville 2x05 All the World is Birthday Cake

 

Another good episode!  Sure, the logic of the main plot falls apart if you think about it at all ("birthdays" being treated as having the relevance it does across planets and star systems) but that doesn't matter, it's all just setup for another fun adventure and exploration of different sci-fi ideas.  I enjoyed the whole episode.


I don't really get why they made Alara's replacement another female of the same species.  Her personality seems different enough I suppose, but I'll miss the humor Patrick Warburton brought because she wasn't really funny at all.  In fact I find her acting a bit strange, something was off but I can't put my finger on what it was.  Maybe she'll ease into the role.

 

Ted Danson as an admiral?  That came out of nowhere.  What happened to Kelly Hu and Victor Garber's Admiral characters?  How many Admirals does the Union have?

 

Debney's score was AWESOME!  That highlight cue when they fly to the planet and land was a great homage to Horner's Krull and Wrath of Khan sound, good stuff!

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It stands to reason that the Union has more than two admirals, especially since we have seen a dozen or more different races serving aboard the Orville. They also do not all need to be shown as human. They're just talking heads to give Ed orders and advice. The show can just keep rotating guest actors to depict a large navy. 

 

Star Trek TNG also showed a lot of admirals that were seen once or twice, then never mentioned again. 

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The Orville 2x06 A Happy Refrain

 

Great episode!  Funny and touching.  It's actually quite nice and refreshing to watch a show with optimism and romance amidst all the usually bleak prestige dramas made these days.

 

The main A story that covered 90% of the episode was really good, and the B story of Bortus's moustache was absolutely hilarious, I wish he had kept it!  

 

The funniest moment by far was the Norm MacDonald cameo though, that was brilliant!

 

I think my favorite minor character on this show is Dann, the alien in engineering voiced by Mike Henry (voice of Cleveland Brown from Family Guy)

 

Extremely short score from Andrew Cottee this week, no surprise considering most scenes were unscored and most of the ones that were were scored by source music.  

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