Posted by I am a mega huge trek nerd, I love all the series for different reasons, and I don’t seem to be able to get enough of it. I love most things Trek spoof as well, with Galaxy Quest being one of my favorite movies that still makes me smile the 15th time watching it.
I sort of like Seth McFarlane, I used to watch Family Guy all the time back in high school, I think it could be considered my first ‘adult cartoon’ that wasn’t The Simpsons. Since then though I’ve sort of drifted away from it, actually preferring American Dad to Family Guy but still not watching either all that often.
I know that Seth is a big space and trek nerd, he was a big part of bringing back Carl Sagans Cosmos recently, so I know he has a passion for what he’s trying to parody.
The show centers around Seth, his character is named Ed Mercer, and he’s recently been assigned a captains position of an exploratory vessel. He’s a down on his luck kind of guy and he’s being given his last chance to make a career for himself in the Union.
You meet the crew and so far they are pretty good, you’ve got a mix of aliens, AI and humans like in Trek.
The humor was hit and miss for me as is typical of Seths work – the beginning starts out with some dick jokes that weren’t terribly funny, but there are some moments I found really funny. The holodeck warrior Orc who’s named Jeff with a bubbly amicable personality is my favorite bit of humor they’ve done so far.
The plot for the first episode is okay, they go to deliver some stuff to a science station and are told when they arrive that the shipment was a front, and that really the scientists called them there for protection because they’ve made a huge discovery.
Overall this was okay, it wasn’t anything great, but I think I’ll continue to watch unless the quality goes down substantially. There were moments that felt very Trek like, and moments that felt too familiar to Seths previous work – thankfully the random bits of humor weren’t really there. The random cut-aways and random humor that Family Guy is famous for doesn’t really do it for me anymore.
For right now, based on just 1 episode I’d give this a 7.5, with huge potential to go in either direction from here. I feel this is a show that could go really well or really poorly depending on the execution. I hope to see more serious moments and moments of heart that I’ve seen Seth do in the past with certain episodes of Family Guy and American Dad – Seth in my opinion is best when he tones things down a bit, reigns in the toilet humor, and takes more care with a lighter touch of humor backed by real issues.
I’m not sure what to think of this. I love TNG and I love that someone is making something like The Orville. But Seth’s humor generally doesn’t work for me and the SF element of the show is incredibly mediocre.
This is basically how I feel as well, I have hope since Seth LOVES space and genuinely has a passion that it will shine through. We’ll see though, for now i’m cautiously optimistic with the realization it could turn into total trash