Spence

Regardless of how one feels about a direct democracy system, The Orville has used the premise to tell an interesting science fiction story with a touch of allegory. 
 
In other words, pure Star Trek.

Or,...... you may all be overthinking it. 
 
Orville is not supposed to be serious science fiction.   I am watching it with the same mindset as I do Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the show is only getting better. 
 
Turn off the forebrain and use the hindbrain instead and you'll have a blast

They had a Prius with an "alien" license plate parked on the street. Now I know what my car will be for Halloween.

I hear ya. The thing is, MacFarlane has decided, for better or worse, to continue the Trek tradition of social commentary disguised as sci-fi adventure. And just like Trek, sometimes it is heavy-handed, and sometimes it is more subtle.
 
But I feel that if he wants it to not be overshadowed by the sheer stupidity of the characters' decisions and actions, he's going to have to steer the humor away from "Look what dumbasses we are! And they even gave us a ship and a mission, can you believe that?" to something a little more sophisticated. I mean, that style of comedy definitely has its audience, and aiming for that audience is fine, I'm just saying that it is undermining his other obvious agenda, which is to be an affectionate Star Trek send-up, serious social commentary and all.

Truth? Hell, most of the time social media doesn't even involve verifiable facts.
 
(BTW, I'm pretty sure "unbiased truth" is a redundancy, which sorta denudes the snark factor a bit there, Spence.)

That's kind of my place; its one more cost I don't see a point to and I'm kinda tired of Star Trek by now anyway.  For this to justify its production cost and be the tentpost that holds up the network its got to be a home run, not a weak dribbler to third you managed to run out.

Found it. 
But it doesn't really mean anything, we've seen shows green lighted for a second season before they ever even aired half the first season, just to have it killed before it was actually released.
 
It is possible that Netflix (who funded season 1) see's the ability to make it elsewhere.  I wonder if the "Rest of the World" is being fed the same line about it being Prime Timeline or not.   If they aren't having smoke blown up their keister, they may be watching it as a unique stand-alone.  

Well for myself I think the biggest issue for CBS is they need to fire everyone associated with promoting the series due to stupidity and outright lying.
 
Even the thickest dunderhead can easily see STD (I still get a chuckle out of that title blunder) is not even close occurring in the prime timeline between ENT and TOS.  Even if it was presented with fingerprints it would completely fail as a direct inline show.  This is not a question of movie/TV production methods/technology.  It is a question of story/plot/script/design and everything else in a Trek show. 
 
Is CBS has said
 
"We are making a Star Trek series that will take place 10 years before the Original Series.  But due to both technical issue and our vision for the show, it will not be actually in the Prime Timeline itself. Instead it will be heavily influenced and inspired by the Prime Timeline while being a unique and standalone universe."
 
Instead they said:
"STD is in the Prime Timeline and set 10 years before the Original Series" even when it is obviously not.
 
Which immediately translates to: "No, you are wrong it is Prime Timeline and you are all idiots.  It. IS. THE. SAME! old Trek, F-bomb you all".
 
A Civic is a good car that is really good at fulfilling its role as cheaper transportation currently MSRP new at $18k.  But if they called me and promised me a new luxury sedan for only and then rolled out a Civic, I'd be pissed.  Not because a Civic is a bad vehicle, but because a Civic is not a luxury sedan as promised.
 
STD might be good or even great SciFi.  But it is not Prime Timeline Star Trek, which is what they keep claiming. 
 
And I do not believe it is doing that well because if it was they would not be hiding the stats, they would be shouting them from the rooftops.
 
After the last weeks episode the local morning radio show (a CBS owned station) spent allot of time talking up STD.  But the primary "cool think" that they centered on was the F-Bomb.  Really?!  Out of the entire show all the had was "Trek now cusses".
 
They still have time to save it, but it would require them to come clean and stop the institutional dishonesty. 
So I expect it will die on the vine....

Went and saw The Foreigner, the latest Jackie Chan movie. Was not what I expected. Was very good. More Political thriller then your typical Chan movie. I enjoyed it a lot. Spoilering the impetus for those who wish to see it:
 
 

Because it's fun

Same here.  I was 8 when WWW went off the air.  I think it was syndicated, as I seem to recall watching reruns after school when I was a bit older.  Then again, that was a long time ago, I don't remember.  I loved it like crazy.  Land of the Giants was another one I liked a lot, as well as Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, and a short-lived high-tech spy show called Search, but WWW was the coolest of all.  I didn't know it was on Netflix.  I'm almost afraid to watch it again...but I'm going to.
 
Also, I know that Ross Martin missed a few episodes to film The Great Race (I should post that in the Lesser-Known Movie Recommendation thread, it's a lot of fun).

Trapped in the literary desert of "nothing interesting" I have reread Vorkosigan novels that actually feature Miles. 
I have also reread the first five books in the Honor Harrington series.

Grew up watching Wild Wild West. And other shows like The Invaders, The Fugitive, The Saint, Man fron Uncle and so on. There were a lot of great series in the spy or scifi action arena too.
 
Though Wild Wild West does occupy unique niche.

The Adventures of Brisco Country Jr. series was as close to the Wild Wild West feel a couple of decades back.

Especially the last two years of DS9.  The Dominion War really perked things up.

Yeah, that was a fantastic story line. I actually grinned like a fool when you saw the collected might of the Federation ready to take the station back

Cool
 
for me it is more of the only game in town. Orville is the only "non-grim scifi in space" show on TV that I know of.

So I watched STD. I actually found it to be less Trek'y than Orville. It's a first episode so I wasn't looking for season 3 polish. But the first episode of Star Trek is the "Oops we are starting a war"?
 
The Klingons were....different. Too glitzy. Over time they might grow on you.
 
But the Klingon ships are "huh? They look like a bunch of scrape yard boxes thrown in at the last second.
 
All in all, there is potential. But not enough for me to subscribe to yet another service. Normally I'd just wait for it to come out on disc or Netflix like I do for GoT. If I won't pay HBO for one or two shows a year, why do they think I would for one on a CBS stream?

Thanks to 60 minutes, I saw maybe half of this, tops.
 
Good (But not great)  things...
The Captain we start with is actually pretty cool. I can respect the hell out of her. However, this ends though, I suspect she won't be with us for the series. So... crap.
 
Some of the banter is good. Not great, but good.
 
kind of like Commander Saru. I'm okay with a 'new species' as long as it seems plausible (The galaxy is huge)
 
In between things
 
Michael Burnham...our protagonist. Mixed bag indeed,, Well acted. But the character hits all the components I equate with a Mary Sue fan ficiton attempt. Attached to popular character ...boom, Spock's adoptive sister Kinda sorta! Tragedy in Childhood. Boom. And named in away that catches attention for no particular reason except eyepatches and scars would be called on it. Mind you, I've been guilty of this myself, but it makes my hairs stand up warning wise. Still, well acted.
 
Terrible, just... terrible
 
Klingons
I'm sorry, this was a mistake. It does not 'make sense' it does not fit. You can argue all day about how it's just a visual change but frankly it's comparable to having CGI smurfs delivering the lines, it's just that jarring and takes me out of it. You want to make a group of religious fanatics for Klingons? Okay I guess since they don't mention gods (Which they killed ) but okaaay. Honor and conquest in its culture was enough before but fine. But that AND the 'hey we don't look like Klingons and you can't blame us for touching it up when we got some' . As a new species they might have worked (Though I wish then the time line was different). 
 
 
So, from what little I saw, more good than  bad, but nothing GREAT
 
 
If this had been a brand new Sci Fi Series, without Trek attatchment I think I would like it better. 
As a trek, it's maybe a 6 out of 10 and that's generous to compensate for biases and the fact I didn't see the whole pilot
 
But is it good enough for me to spend money on CBS all Access? 
 
Hell to the no. That's like an automatic -2 on any score so that 6 I gave it? Actually a four.
 
 
My suggestion? If you have Netflix in some part of the world where you can enjoy have at if you've got time to kill, go for it.
 
If you're in the USA... let this one go until next year and see if it's finally on Netflix by then. CBS shouldn't be rewarded for a cashgrab that doesn't really honor the canon despite it's protests that it is 'prime timeline' (And that term has as much legitimacy here as Corporations that promise you 'Real Cheese')

Every production company envisions their own network with millions of subscribers getting content exclusively from them and rolling in money like Scrooge McDuck.  The problem is, buyers only really have so much money to spend, so they aren't going to subscribe to 18 different outfits.  If it gets too expensive or obnoxious, they'll pick one or two, then steal the rest.  If/when Disney pulls all Marvel comics content off Netflix, people aren't gonna bail on Netflix and sign up to Disney, they're going to stick with what they like and watch the disney content another way, not subscribe to more and more content.

You put the word spoiler before the section you want to mark and /spoiler after the section, and you wrap spoiler and /spoiler in square brackets [ ]. (Ignore the colored words below, must be some kind of syntax highlighting applied with the code tag.)
  [spoiler]Spoiler protected text. [/spoiler]  

Part 1 of the pilot will air on CBS in the US, and Part 2 of the pilot will be available immediately after on CBS All Access. So, really, you're only getting half a pilot unless you subscribe.
 
Edit: It also looks like the limited edition Thinkgeek pin and $25 CBS All Access credit combo is still available. So, they weren't able to get 1000 folks to buy yet.

Wonder Woman--I enjoyed it in the theater, but it's definitely better with a second viewing. I *might* have had the volume a touch too loud on the surround sound, as the cat decided not to stick around during the "no man's land" fight.

I've been reminded that I also wasn't much impressed with the first episode of Babylon-5, and I thought that turned out pretty darn good. Series pilots can be, um, rough. A friend also said he'd read a review saying the first two eps were nuthin' special but the third was thought-provoking. So I'll stick around for three episodes. Then we'll see.
 
Dean Shomshak

I actually liked Powerless, another show that wasn't all dark and depressing.....