Serie - The Orville : Why you must follow this new and excellent sci-fi serie

Par Sedai, 01 octobre 2017

Let’s talk about The Orville, a new American science fiction drama series created by and starring Seth MacFarlane that premiered on September 10, 2017, with new episodes to air Thursdays on Fox during the 2017–18 season.

I don’t want to like Seth Macfarlane, and since Rolling Stone did an entire article about hating the guy. But at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, as I sat in the preview session for The Orville, Macfarlane’s latest TV show on which he’s creator, producer, and star, I found myself thawing. Just a smidgen, but after this many years of disrespecting the guy it felt like global warming.

For nearly two decades Macfarlane has ruled the roost as head frat-boy, his comedy always hovering somewhere around the lowest common denominator. Then, in 2014 he revived Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. And he pledged $1 million to the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign. What was happening?

At SDCC Macfarlane took one more step away from his standard reputation when he announced to the room that the show he’s always wanted to make is…a space opera? Yep, we heard that right. Apparantly The Orville is the show Macfarlane has been sitting on for all these years trying to find just the right home and just the right team. Based on early buzz nobody was quite sure whether that happened since nobody seemed to understand what the show was supposed to be. The marketing department was selling it as a comedy to the press. But bewildered writers couldn’t call it a straight comedy since it had stakes (low-stakes, but still) and since space isn’t supposed to be funny. At SDCC many fans tried to describe it as “kind of like Galaxy Quest, but not.”

Macfarlane was upfront about these problems when he previewed the series, simply defining it as a comedic drama. So, now that we’re a few weeks into the show, how well are they walking that genre tightrope?

Really well, actually. Forbes even called The Orville the Star Trek show fans have been waiting for. Like all TV pilot's the first episode starts a little rocky, as though the actors weren’t quite sure what to make of their show either. But the writers, producers, and consultants like Jon Favreau, who directed the first episode, have done a smart thing by highlighting just a few characters to feature during each of the early episodes. And while the series starts with a throwaway storyline for episode 1, in true Star Trek fashion we’re soon thinking about racism, sexism and cultural norms.

Will The Orville have the legs to get a second season? It’s way too early to make that call, especially since network drama shows often run more than 20 episodes in one season, but they’ve gotten a strong start. The Orville airs on Fox, Thursday nights in the US and is available for streaming on Hulu.

Synopsis:
The Orville follows the crew of a mid-size exploratory ship in Earth’s spacefleet some 400 years in the future. Macfarlane’s Ed Mercer is assigned to his first captain posting on The Orville, alongside his tough and clever ex-wife Kelly Grayson (Adrienne Palicki) as First Officer. Mercer’s best friend Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) serves as ship’s helmsman and great comic relief for the show. Penny Johnson Jerald is a whipsmart ship’s doctor, Halston Sage as chief of security, J. Lee as ship’s navigator and Peter Macon under pounds of prosthetics as second officer. Mark Jackson provides the voice of an android crewmember but as of the first few episodes it still isn’t clear how large a role he’ll play.

The Orville
Created by Seth MacFarlane
Starring Seth MacFarlane, Adrianne Palicki, Penny Johnson,Jerald, Scott Grimes, Peter Macon, Halston Sage, J. Lee, Chad L. Coleman
Voices of Mark Jackson
Theme music composer : Bruce Broughton
Composer(s) : Bruce Broughton, Joel McNeely, John Debney, Andrew Cottee
Executive producer(s) : Seth MacFarlane, Brannon Braga, David A. Goodman, Jason Clark, Jon Favreau (pilot), Liz Heldens, Lili Fuller
Running time : 43 minutes
Production company(s) : Fuzzy Door Productions, 20th Century Fox Television
Distributor 20th Television
Release Original network : Fox
Original release September 10, 2017 – present

Photos: Copyright FOX TV

Written by Sedai, October 1 2017