Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. It was pretty warm out, but not as hot as it was last week. Today I'm here to talk about the first season of one of my favourite shows, The Orville. I had originally planned on putting this review out on Saturday since my sister and I finished the season on Disney+ (yes, it's on Disney+ here in Canada) on Friday. I decided to take the weekend off though, it being a long weekend here in Canada. There might be some spoilers in this review, so you know the drill by now. If you haven't watched the show yet and you plan on watching it, don't read this review until you've seen it. So let's get into it.
When The Orville was first announced back in, I wanna say, early 2017 or mid 2017, I was pretty skeptical. I mean it was being produced by Seth MacFarlane, which meant heavy raunchy satire. I'd stopped watching Family Guy and American Dad years earlier because I felt both shows were pretty offensive and I'm not into that kind of humour. But, being a fan of Star Trek I decided to at least watch the first episode when it aired. I did, and while it was edging towards being offensive, it never crossed that line. It was also more humour centric than the rest of the season was.
When my sister approached me with the idea to rewatch The Orville, I immediately jumped on it since I hadn't seen the majority of the first season since it initially aired back in the 2017-2018 season. Though I had bought the pilot and the season finale on iTunes last year with the intent of buying the entire season, along with season 2, on there eventually. Surprisingly I remembered more about the season than I thought I would, having only seen it once, when it originally aired. Though there were still a number of smaller details that I had completely forgotten about or if I did remember them I forgot what episode they took place in. For example, I forgot that the prank war between Isaac and Gordon which somehow ended up with Isaac cutting off Gordon's leg as retaliation for Gordon sticking Mr. Potato Head pieces on Isaac's face, happened in Episode 5, "Pria". But I remembered Episode 7, "Majority Rule" extremely well.
The thing that completely immersed me in this show is the characters. Unlike most of MacFarlane's work, these characters have depth to them. Even the background characters like Engineering officers, Dann and Yaphit, Chief Engineer Newton, and Bortus's mate, Klyden. I mean both Dann and Yaphit are mainly there for comedic purposes, but somehow they managed to grow beyond those purposes. Even the main characters have more to them than the main characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation did in that show's first two seasons. Watching The Orville feels like meeting up with friends for an hour every week because that's how much like real people everyone is. They aren't just stereotypes.
My favourite characters have got to be Bortus, Alara and Ed. The entire cast of characters are amazing, but these are the three that I like the most. Bortus is fascinating because his race are almost entirely male, though they still reproduce and learning about the Moclans in the first few episodes of the season was interesting to say the least. And Alara's race, the Xelayans, are also interesting as they have super strength in normal Earth gravity, due to them coming from a world with much higher gravity. And Ed is just a fun captain. Pretty stubborn, as pretty much every captain on Star Trek is, but still pretty fair as captains go and fiercely loyal to his crew. He's also pretty hard on himself when he makes a mistake or something wrong happens. The rest of the bridge crew is pretty great though. Kelly Grayson has to be my favourite first officer of all time, along with Commander Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Speaking of Star Trek, three members of the show's cast have been on Star Trek before. Penny Johnson Jerald, who plays Dr. Finn on this show, played Kassidy Yates on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for three seasons, Seth MacFarlane, who plays Ed, played Ensign Rivers on Star Trek: Enterprise in the season 3 episode, "The Forgotten" and the season 4 episode, "Affliction", and Scott Grimes, who plays Gordon Malloy, appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation in the season 3 episode, "Evolution" as a teenage friend of Wesley Crusher, played by Wil Wheaton. Oh and Chad L. Coleman, who plays Klyden, appeared in season 5 of Arrow as Tobias Church, about a year before The Orville premiered.
It's really hard to pick a favourite episode because they're all so good. There isn't an actual bad episode in this entire season. Though I will say that the pilot is pretty weak compared to the rest of the season. It's not unwatchable though. Just different. Probably the best episode though is the third episode, "About a Girl" where the crew goes to Moclus, the homeworld of Bortus and Klyden, in order to decide the fate of their child, who was born female, and due to Moclan prejudice against women, must be surgically altered to be male, despite her being a child. For the show to do something so heavy and worthy of a Star Trek series, so early in the show's run, elevated this series above it's comedic roots and put it on the level of any Star Trek show that has ever been produced. Also, "Majority Rule" is a hard hitting episode too. Both were written by Seth MacFarlane himself, and both were amazing episodes. Especially this early in the show's run.
Overall revisiting this first season was awesome. It was fun getting to watch it with my sister this time around since I watched it by myself when it first aired back in 2017. If you've never seen The Orville before I highly recommend you do so. Especially if you're a Star Trek fan. It's on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ here in Canada.
Alright, I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'm not sure what else I'm going to be posting this week. I'm pretty much ready for my Disney VHS review series that I'm starting next week. Otherwise the season finale of The Hardy Boys is airing on YTV this Friday, so I'll definitely have that review up on Saturday. Also, I'm going to probably watch Tron on Disney+ on Thursday night, so I'll have that review up on Friday. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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