šŸ¦‡ The sci-fi, fantasy and capeshit thread

Iā€™ve seen the first episode of The Orville.

Itā€™s almost precisely what I was expecting, which is Seth McFarlane actually concentrating on something. When he does that, heā€™s rather good, so The Orville is consequently, rather good.

Itā€™s got a better first episode than any Star Trek series to date, but thatā€™s not surprising. Galaxy Quest, which treads similar ground, is probably the second best Star Trek movie, and itā€™s just a spoof.

What Galaxy Quest was to TOS, The Orville is to TNG. Every fucking shot tells you Seth McFarlane lurves TNG. Which is cool, because I loved TNG too. Glad to see it back in some form.

And now Iā€™ve just seen the second episode of The Orville. Iā€™m upgrading my assessment. Itā€™s excellent, and I cannot quite express how excited I am about the rest of the series on the basis of these two episodes.

McFarlane has clearly grasped what it was that made Trek decent, and also knows what made it crap. The humans on the show are very contemporary, cracking wise and expressing their sentiments like we would, not the somewhat stilted future humans we got in Trek. Most of all, theyā€™re flawed in ways that the TNG crew was not. It makes a universe of difference.

The second episodeā€™s main plot beats could have been lifted from a number of Trek episodes. Crew members get abducted, so the rest of the ship has to get them back. Itā€™s the execution thatā€™s handled so well.

I hope Star Trek Discovery is decent, but as long as The Orville maintains this level of quality, it can crash and burn and I probably wonā€™t care.

I guess Orville ainā€™t on Netflix or Amazon Pap?

I must add that the ST DISCO trailers and stuff Iā€™m seeing do look awesome.

Guess it may take a while to "fall in love and am dying to see how Harry Mudd can be in both TOS & DISCO 100 Yeats apart

Premiere seems to have gone well only a long bank hissy here to wait.

Ascension is pretty sure btw

Rene Auberjonois FTW

Good call @pap , loving it and Iā€™m only 15 mins in.

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Star Trek Discovery.

NO SPOILERS

As much as the bright illumination of Enterprise was annoying, so is the ā€œExpanseā€ style darkness of Discovery.

It is also very "Orange.

The music nods towards TOS but during the actual show maybe misses the drama of TOS or TNG.

But for all that, wow. It starts with a DS9 quality battle and the characters already have more depth the Enterprise and some cohesion.

It didnā€™t blow me off the sofa (but then neither did Encounter at Far Point). It does show great promise.

I did like the little touches, the BEEPS and whoops on the bridge from TOS.

MY ONLY TRUE COMPLAINT? Why did they have to accentuate the alien-ness of the Klingons even more? Unrecognizable from the "non ZPC Hispanic look of TOS but tbh even less like a Klingon than Worf. Equally having sub-titles means we are reading rather than looking at the epic sets on screen. Makes it slightly detached tbh

Itā€™s gonna be a hit and I will love it. Eventually.

Right now?

Itā€™s fucking awesome sci-fi

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Star Trek has landed on small screens, or at least the expansive flatscreens that dominate our living spaces and send information back to Mr Oā€™Brien :lou_sunglasses: When he gets the latest deposit from the homestead on the Flowers, heā€™s going to have footage of a very happy boy, because Star Trek Discovery really sticks the landing.

I know folk, including Phil, will moan about the Klingon look. Donā€™t. Youā€™re pandering to the same spotty geeks that demanded an explanation as to why 1960s Klingons looked different to 1979 onward variants. Itā€™s called a fucking makeup budget, you fucks! TOS didnā€™t have much of one, they spunked shitloads on the first movie, and worked out how to replicate that cheaply enough for TNG! These are nits I did not pick. If the Klingons are supposed to be the embodiment of the warrior culture, you can have no complaints with the way theyā€™ve been done here. They are warlike, scary and awesome - yet still steeped in the concepts of honour and glory that we saw developed so well in TNG.

Unlike every other Trek that has gone before it, Discovery focuses on a single character. Itā€™s not only a bloody wise move. Itā€™s also how most other fiction seems to work. Previous Treks never really revealed the universe through the eyes of one protagonist, preferring to spread the attention across the entire crew. Viewers eventually got to know them, but early episodes of previous series didnā€™t engage as well as Discovery does. It has the confidence to build a character and write a show around her.

And everyoneā€™s going to love Michael Burnham, the human raised on Vulcan that the writers have chosen to make their fulcrum. Two episodes in, she has already gone on quite a journey. Iā€™m looking forward to seeing where she goes next.

Some may also remember me wondering how Discovery was going to do in a post-Expanse world, another fantastic show that has been setting the sci-fi standard. Itā€™s not the ā€œdarknessā€ that Discovery is nicking from the Expanse. Itā€™s the momentum. Two episodes in, weā€™re not where we are at the start, and we can never go back. Warp speed, full ahead.

The Expanse, The Orville and Star Trek Discovery all on at around the same time. Itā€™s a good time to be a space opera fan.

Agree with all that Pap.

The Klingon reboot is a niggle not an annoyance imho. My annoyance was the sub titles.

Yes it adds a feel to the show but their dialogue is quick so we missed the grandeur and detail of the sets.

FFS couldnā€™t they clone Hoshi ? :sunglasses:

Next few days are already dragging tho waiting for the next instalment the Producers already talking about S2 having a broader scope. Jeez 1st 2 episodes started at late DS9 level and they want to go bigger?

Follow Trek Core on Twitter for good behind the scenes and back story stuff

Ah, you can watch it again, Phil. I might over the coming days.

An interesting aside; Netflix allows Klingon subtitles! Qaā€™pla!

The opening credits reminded more of Fringe than TOS

vs

Meh, maybe not

Caught the latest episode of The Orville yesterday.

Iā€™ve said before that itā€™s a love letter to TNG fans. Itā€™s also capitalising on memories that viewers will have of older Trek shows. Weā€™re only four episodes in. More than once, Iā€™ve had a massive sense of familiarity with many of the beats of a few episodes. You think you know whatā€™s going to happen. Expectations set to low.

This was the most Trek like episode so far. The crew encounter a huge ship drifting in space, roughly the size of New York City. On boarding, they discover a contained eco-system, complete with artificial skies and people, who donā€™t know theyā€™re on a ship and live under a dictatorial theocracy. That sense of familiarity kicked in big style on laying eyes on the interior. The locations and people looked as if they were plucked straight from a TNG script, using TNG production values. The Orville generally looks fantastic, the characters much more contemporary. This was a conscious choice, made to subvert expectations.

What The Orville does very well is land the ending of each show. No spoilers, but as things unfold, those low expectations set when you thought it was just a TNG with dick and fart jokes get blown away, as per. Iā€™m amazed I still fall for it.

I enjoyed Discovery so much that I wondered if crewing up with The Orville might seem underwhelming. Not a bit of it. They are both their own shows, and weā€™re lucky to have them both.

OKā€¦saw 1st two episodes of tā€™new Star Trek.

Love that itā€™s narrative rather than episode based.

Seriously not sure about the Klingons thoughā€¦

Fucking A otherwiseā€¦

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Iā€™m intrigued to what weā€™ll see in the third episode, which has been described by the writers as a show reset. Weā€™re going to see the Discovery. Will it keep the Expanse style momentum, I wonder?

Just enjoyed the first season of The Punisher on Netflix. This incarnation of the character originally appeared in the second season of Daredevil, proving popular enough to warrant his own show. Though Iā€™m sure they had this show in the back of their minds then, this one wasnā€™t one of the four plinths of the Defenders, the eight part crossover we got this summer.

That I found it a little underwhelming to begin with is perhaps unsurprising. The Punisherā€™s appearances in the other shows have been more explosive on a minutes spent on screen basis. Building a wider world, the show has to develop its own mythos around the Punisher, along with a cast of supporting characters.

It does that pretty well. Frank Castle quickly buddies up with a computer hacker that has faked his own death. Between them, the pair attempt to take out a shadow private military corporation, headed up by a former squad mate of The Punisher, Billy Russo, another character the show spends a lot of time on.

Slow burning in many respects, but extremely satisfying by seriesā€™ end.

Had a look at Black Lightning last night, the new capeshit show on Netflix.

From the look of the first episode, it looks like it might be pretty cool. The titular hero is a middle aged dad of two girls that resumes a superhero career after a nine year hiatus.

Itā€™s interesting that one little change, such as the heroā€™s age, can bring about such a tonally different show,

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I watched that too pap! I went in cold, Iā€™ve never heard of Black Lightening, but I thought it was a cool name so I gave it a try.

I quite enjoyed it. I mean, it was dumb. There were quite a few bits I thought was dumb. I dunno how the mc secret identity survived the first episode, for example. I thought it was more interest than the other marvel tv shows though, and one of the daughters was Fit.

Iā€™m also watching Asian show on Netflix called Erased. Itā€™s kind of like Quantum Leap crossed with Stranger Things. Itā€™s a bit weird and the dialogue is very on the nose (which is often the way with these Asian shows, I spose thatā€™s how they like it) but Iā€™m getting something from it.

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Just watched Black Lightening - Capeshit of the highest order. ClichƩ ridden, just how I like it!

:smiley:

By the time this season of Star Trek Discovery ends, a new season of The Expanse will be out.

Life is good, space opera nerds. Life is good.

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