Best Sci-Fi series this season!
Like any good science fiction series, it starts with two episodes meant to introduce the characters. After that, you get some very interesting stories.
Capt. Ed Mercer is in some way a little bit like Michael Scott from "The Office US".
His Ex-wife and 1st Officer Cmdr. Kelly Grayson is very interesting. She's broken her husband's heart, but seems to still love him in some way. She's also very capable.
LaMarr and Malloy are a hilarious duo. They pilot the ship together and have incredibly funny conversations.
Bortus, who's got his husband in the ship, is a very dutiful officer with an interesting background and home life.
Kitan is a young bridge officer who only got the position as chief of security because people from her planet don't join the military often (she says so herself). She's extremely strong and can open any jar of pickles in the known universe (you'll get that after watching a few episodes).
Dr Finn has a humour as dry as Mars' surface. I'm surprised she's not British, she could very well be.
Isaac is the absolute Anti-Data. The president of his home world could be Skynet. His Android race considers any carbon life as inferior. And they don't mind telling you that. Isaac has taken the position on the Orville to study human behavior. Or their weaknesses. Like any artificial life form, he's got problems understanding jokes and slang. I like him and I don't fully trust him.
Last but not least, there's Yaphit, a jelly life form whose favourite hobby it is to annoy Dr Finn with his flirting.
So far, there've been great stories which got you thinking and had fun and action.
I can already see the potential for the development of more surprising and serious stories, running gags and maybe even some longer lasting story arcs.
You can see the love Seth MacFarlane put in this project. I'm not that often this enthusiastic about a TV series, but here, it's absolutely justified.
(No) Update after episode 6:
No need to update my review. The show just continues being great :-)
(No) Update after season 1 is finished:
This serial will become a TV legend like Star Trek TNG has become one. There'll be a time when fans will do fan fiction serials in the Orville's universe.
In a freeze frame on a screen Michael is working at, you can see some Stuxnet code. I get it! If the Star Trek franchise was the Internet, Discovery would be its Stuxnet. A fault confessed is half redressed :-D
I didn't like the idea of Transwarp spores and I even less liked the "Half Life 2 rhinoceros". Why? Just Why? Star Trek is science fiction and not... My Little Pony magic stuff.
I watch it, I confess. I will continue watching it, I confess. But it's like an accident where you can't look away. Or an Asylum movie, just with a whole lot more budget.
It's got to be said I smell a little Equinox in here. But the difference is... their story was a sad-one. A lose-lose-situation. Lost in the Delta Quadrant without Antimatter, Dilithium, food or a drive capable of more than Warp 6-ish. They committed crimes because they didn't see any other way. That's the sad thing. Later, they lost themselves completely. That was even more sad. But they knew they were wrong.
Michael doesn't consider being wrong at any given time. And so doesn't Captain 31. He seems to be the kind of guy who does things just because he can, not because he doesn't have any other way left.
I also smell a little bit of "Renegades ft. Axanar". The outcast of starfleet saves the federation from the war with the Klingons...
Yeah, I can see what you're doing here. Does the end justify the means or doesn't it...
And in a few episodes, it'll be shown Michael is more starfleety than Section 31.
In between, there'll be a little bit of "they do good" and a little bit of "they do bad". And a lot of weeping, crying, compunction, and asking daddy for instructions. Maybe Captain 31 even does something altruistic at some point. But an episode later, he'll be "back on track".
By the way, why is it mentioned every ten minutes Michael was a great officer? Why do they keep mentioning that in every f... situation?
She is not a great officer. I haven't seen ANYTHING that would justify this. She's good at the phaser... yeah, but so is every other redshirt...
In earlier days, nobody had to mention that Chakotay, Crusher, Scotty, LaForge, Reed, Torres or whoever was a great officer. We could see it!
I even dare to predict Michael will mutiny again in the season finale. It's just a shot in the dark, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was right.
This episode hasn't revealed anything that I hadn't guessed by the teaser. Michael gets on the Discovery because she's "sooo special", they've got some special equipment onboard and we see a few known faces there.
The revelations in this episode were as thrilling as the question who the murder was in an episode of Columbo.
-The Two Universes-
The storyline with the two parallel universes is, in my opinion, a story killer.
You lose the feeling of "This could have gotten real!" as soon as you see "our world" is still there. It would have been a lot more interesting and threatening if our would wasn't there anymore.
If you take the multiverse approach, then it's no surprise there are a few universes where the Germans won...
"Our universe" is only used by Tagomi to analyze the errors he's made in his life. Or in his other life. You don't need a German New York and a Japanese San Francisco to do a story like this. It's almost completely unrelated to the escalating conflict between Japan and Germany.
In another life... Even Katy Perry sang about that.
OK, Tagomis visits to the other universe prevented World War III because he brought the Nuke tape. Nevertheless, this appealed to me like an excuse for his lengthy visits to our universe rather than a surprising twist.
-Errors-
I'm German. And I'm annoyed by the bad accents most of the actors have when they speak German. Aren't there any Germans in the USA who can teach the actors a proper pronounciation?
Just get a better pronounciation! I don't ask you to learn our grammar ;-)
And many words and names are just wrong.
In Germany, the Nazis renamed each and every little village that had a French name. But the German part of America is called "Greater Nazi Reich"? It shouldn't have an English name at all. And the Nazis never called themselves Nazis. If the German America had been an (more or less) independent country with an own name, it would have been called something like "Deutsch Amerika" or just "West Amerika".
And the Nazis in this series often greet each other with "Sieg Heil" when it should be "Heil Hitler".
Actually, I doubt they would use "Sieg Heil" at this point at all. "Sieg" means victory, they have already won. No need to invoke the victory anymore.
There are more errors like these in this series which a historian could point out better than I can.
But some of them already suffice to take the "realism" out of the series.
-The Interesting Part-
Nevertheless, there are also some things in this series that are remarkable. John Smith's story actually is very interesting. And Rufus Sewell's acting is great. What happens in his family is way more gripping than Juliana Crane's desoriented search for the truth about the tapes.
In general, I like multiple universe stories very much. But in this case, I just don't.
A series just about John Smith being a Nazi who's betrayed his ancestors ideals would have been more compelling. A look inside the life and mind of a terrible opportunist who isn't even sure whether to kill his son for the Reich or not. A series with a truly bad person in the centre. That would've been it!
Nevertheless, the way the story is made, John could at one point meet his "other self" from our universe. This would also be interesting and I bet this would be a great episode! But I think the first to meet herself will be with Juliana, which should be boring, because they don't differ that much in the two universes.
-Summary-
2/3 of the series miss to show where fascism leads to. These parts deal with shenanigans about parallel worlds (the tapes and Tagomi are just boring) and already-seen-on-TV resistance stories.
The stories of Frank, Juliana and Joe could have happened in any occupied country. Just exchange "misterious tapes" for "military secrets" and you get quite an ordinary war story you've already seen a Gazillion times.
The other third is absolutely worth watching, new and very, very dark.
John Smith is someone you haven't already seen on TV.
Great episode!
I loved the end very much when Lethbridge-Staward didn't die due to the Doctor sending him to when the Christmas Truce happened. So much Doctor-y!
[ Is Doctor-y a word? Who cares, no it is one ;-) ]
Absolutely impressing goodbye of the 12th Doctor!
But as usual, whenever I heard German (except when they sang Stille Nacht), it sounded terrible. Is the BBC not able to hire some pronounciation trainer?
It's really distracting if the "German soldier" speaks German worse than some 8th grade exchange student from Manchester who has learned German for six-ish months.
Although that's just a production problem, the scenes in the crater themselves were great.
The first woman to be the Doctor presses one button, blows up the TARDIS, AND loses it? Are you beeping kidding me?
That's like having the first Asian Doctor crash the TARDIS into a rice field thereby killing a dog or the first black Doctor crash it into a cotton field... Terrible idea!
Couldn't you just have let out that button press? The TARDIS could've just hit some satellite while the Doctor was still disoriented because of his regeneration. Then the TARDIS could've started to burn and the Doctor could have fallen out of it. Same thing, but without any woman can't drive cliché.
I think some "The doctor shall not be a woman"-guy has hacked the BBC and cut some sketch from next week's Saturday Night Live into this introduction scene. That's the only reasonable explanation for this scene having been shown like this.
At some point when she's established as the Doctor, a scene like this wouldn't have hurt her audience's picture of her. But not during her introduction. Things like this are like farting. It may happen at some point in a relationship without any consequences. But on a first date... Better not!
Nevertheless, I really hope this introduction scene was like a fart on a first date. Not intended and just an accident.
I'm still looking forward to the new episodes with Jody Whitaker!
I wasn't happy with this episode.
There's pros and cons:
Pro:
I liked it very much to see a younger and more dynamic incarnation of the Doctor after the more thoughtful and self-doubting Capaldi-Doctor (who I liked very much, too). I like the new doctor. The companions seem to be interesting, too.
Cons:
The story. It had an awful lot of plot holes.
Why did the alien let the doctor and her friends live after placing the DNA-bombs in their bodies? There's absolutely no point to that.
How did the doctor find the ball-thing on the roof? How did they suddenly get there?
Why is the doctor suddenly a magic alien who can reprogram a mobile faster than it would unlock? Without additional tech?
I know, you can't take sci-fi too seriously. But there's a line. And it has been crossed more than once in this episode.
Imposition-of-hands-programming really is too much.
By the way, how do you survive a 80 km fall? Even as a regenerating Time Lord... nah...
"You just do!" is the only answer we get. Yeah... interesting...
Does every episode in this season end with a "you can't survive that!"-situation? I hope not...
I don't know how to describe it. There are stories, where different subplots connect in an interesting way. And there are stories, where just everything seems magically to fall in place, deus-ex-machina-style. This has been one of the latter-ones.
The story felt to me more like "Adventure Time" than "Doctor Who". A lot of things happen and you smile once in a while.
The Doctor was like that dog in Adventure Time. When a skill is needed, she suddenly has it. No thinking required.
She built a frickin' sonic screwdriver with 2018 tech! In like an hour. The ONLY good thing about that was the Sheffield-Steel-joke.
I am not an author, I don't know much about writing stories. I am just a viewer. But in my opinion, this was just a bad story. There was not a single "Wow, I wouldn't have thought that!"-moment. And that's what I liked most about Doctor Who. Not to know how an episode is gonna end after the first 10 minutes.
First episodes always are a complicated thing. Getting the new companions in place, a confused Doctor...
That can be an excuse for a slow story. But not for plot holes.
The first Ecclestone-episode also wasn't the best episode ever to hit the screen. It got way better in episode 2.
I really really hope that's the case with Whittaker, too.
What I hope episode 2 will not be like:
Opening title.
The doctor and her companions are suddenly in safety. The crew of a spaceship which accidentally happened to be near them beamed them in. The Ship maybe is called "USS Deus-Ex-Machina". They shake the space dust off their clothes, Ryan says: "That was close", Doctor says "That was fun", Graham has accidentally been healed from cancer. They fly to the planet where the TARDIS is. There are a lot of bad guys who get defeated with off-screen-magic.
I think I'm right with this prognosis. In the trailer, they leave some spaceship I don't recognize and get shot at a lot.
What I wish episode 2 would be like:
Opening title.
We've been fooled. They've not really been in danger, the doctor calculated the coordinates almost correctly. They've beamed onto a planet where mysterious sciency things go on which can be compared to Fringe events. It was just night when they landed. And gravity was a bit off.
