Seth MacFarlane goes retro-Star Trek in his new FOX series.
In his new FOX series The Orville, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane finally gets to fully scratch an itch he’s had for years -- and one that he has frequently demonstrated in his animated shows. I’m talking, of course, about his obsession with and love for sci-fi and Star Trek in particular. While his animated series characters have time travelled, recreated the Star Wars films, met the cast of Star Trek, and much more, with The Orville MacFarlane is now essentially making his own Star Trek in everything but name. For better or worse.
The series premiere of The Orville, "Old Wounds," quickly establishes a world that isn’t just an homage to Star Trek, and more specifically Star Trek: The Next Generation, but is very clearly an attempt to mimic the feel and look of that show. While The Orville is a comedy, it is not a parody of Star Trek and it does not lean as heavily into the humor as some may expect from a MacFarlane project. Indeed, the show can be as earnest, in its way, as TNG itself, and in fact former Star Trek producer Brannon Braga is an executive producer on The Orville. (David A. Goodman, who has written and/or produced for Family Guy, Futurama, and Star Trek: Enterprise, is also an EP.)
The show is set 400 years in the future, with MacFarlane starring as Ed Mercer, an otherwise regular-Joe seeming guy who is given command of the exploratory vessel the Orville. He gets the job not due to some Captain Kirkian feat of bravery, but because the Planetary Union just needs bodies. “The truth is, you’re nobody’s first choice for this job,” says a guest-starring Victor Garber as Admiral Halsey.
One reason Mercer hasn’t gotten a command earlier is because he’s kind of gone off the rails since he caught his wife cheating on him (with a blue alien) a year earlier. Adrianne Palicki costars as this ex, Kelly Grayson, who winds up serving as the executive officer on the Orville because… well, because one of the main dramatic cruxes of the series will be a focus on the pair’s broken relationship.
It’s interesting sitting down to watch this pilot episode, as there are maybe two jokes in the first five minutes, neither of which really land. By the time Mercer visits his old pal Gordon (Scott Grimes) in a holodeck-type-place (there are a lot of Star Trek-type-places in this show), The Orville does prove that it can find the right balance between humor and its setting. Gordon is sparring with a holographic ogre, but they take a break to talk with Mercer. The ogre turns out to be a chatty, friendly bro who is really psyched for Gordon that he’s been offered the helmsman job on the Orville. And then Gordon just cuts the ogre’s head off while a “You win” display lights up. Poor ogre.
But that balance isn’t struck very often in this first episode, which seems more interested than anything else in recreating the feel of TNG circa 1990. Written by MacFarlane and directed by Iron Man and The Jungle Book’s Jon Favreau himself, the pilot is shot, lit, costumed, and designed to look and feel like it’s set on another ship that was also flying around at the same time as Captain Picard… only we never saw it. Of the first two episodes I’ve viewed so far, there are shuttle craft, tractor beams, replicators, and, of course, foreheads of the week aplenty.
For fans of Star Trek, the result can be a kind of charming nostalgia trip. But certainly in the television landscape of 2017, where indeed a new Star Trek (Discovery) is also launching and doing its best to chart a new course that breaks that mold, The Orville can also feel… quaint.
Other members of the ship's crew include: Peter Macon as Bortus, a sort of Klingon type alien who hails from a single-gendered species; Mark Jackson as Isaac, a robot who thinks humans are lesser lifeforms; J. Lee as navigator John LaMarr; Penny Johnson Jerald (a Deep Space Nine vet herself) as Doctor Finn; and Halston Sage as the super-strong, super-young security officer Alara Kitan. Again, all familiar types… not that there’s anything wrong with that.
In the grand tradition of Star Trek, The Orville also asks questions about real-world issues through its storytelling, tackling the dangers of technology and animal cruelty in the first couple of episodes (with gender choice coming up in episode three). MacFarlane and his team’s approach in this regard tracks with the rest of the show in that it seems well-intentioned and yet somehow old-fashioned at the same time.
The Verdict
The Orville is, if anything, a testament to the power Seth MacFarlane wields at FOX. To be given the greenlight on a series that is essentially a throwback to a style of television that has gone the way of the dodo (or the whales if you’re living in Star Trek’s world) is a remarkable feat. This first episode is something of a shaky maiden voyage, but there are glimmers of how the premise can work, particularly when MacFarlane deploys his uniquely winking take on the mundanity of everyday life. If that means cutting a holographic ogre’s head off here or there, then so be it.
The Orville premieres on Sunday, September 10, on FOX.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire