Can I just say how Orville grew from a hard to place comedy into a really amazing sf show in its own

Never heard of this Orville.

I don't see anything hidden. Am I dumb :P?

Edit: Ok I found that sneaky thing but I have it already :)

2 first episodes of Orville second season are terrible, anyway show is still much better than ST Discovery and I'm ST fan (TNG and original series was much better, Enterprise too)

So I decided to give the series a try after this thread and the Orville has now become my go-to show for my morning commute which is just long enough to pack an episode. I've made it to Season 2 Episode 7 so far. It is surprisingly good. The comedy works more often than not, which is in itself actually kind of surprising given that the jokes by themselves aren't really that good, but still just manage to not fall flat on their face. Yep, I even laughed a few times. At first I thought some of the weaker episodes and plot holes could just be glossed over because of the fact that this show was supposedly comedy and thus not to be taken seriously. But the stories improved in quality as the show went on, and now I feel the show can stand on its own without using comedy as a crutch to fall upon or excuse its weaker moments. It's proper good stuff more often than not.

The obvious parallels and contrast to Star Trek are the big elephant in the room, and it's quite interesting how the Orville has chosen to deal with this aspect, now more than ever that the former has its own Discovery series going on at the same time. I had come to enjoy Star Trek: Discovery, despite its many faults, but the mixed hyper-serialism approach à la Game of Thrones combined with the weekly standalone episode balance that Discovery is aiming for has a lot of problems, resulting in a fair share of filler episodes with nothing going on, or just an unconvincing, middling story arc that fails to satisfy. (Although Season 2 is much better than Season 1 in that regard). The Orville has chosen to go for the more traditional TNG-era episodic approach, and it has managed to pull it off very well. It's no wonder that Trekkies of old will find this approach appealing, and with TNG alumni like Brannon Braga as executive producer, the nostalgia is very palpable.

Apart from choice of storytelling format and approach, the throwbacks to TNG are obvious. You even see it in the lighting of the show, which pretty much mimics the TNG-era Enterprise D "hotel in space" ambiance. Contrast this with Discovery's super "cinematic" dark/bright ultra contrasty look and lens flare mania (not to mention choice of 1:2.35 aspect ratio), which is pretty striking. We have some obvious character parallels in Data doppelgänger Isaac and Bortus the Worf-clone, but they actually manage to stand as their own thing quite well. Speaking of Bortus, I like how the Moclans are basically gay Klingons (in a pretty brilliant subversion of the latter's hypermasculinity trope), and how such a societal structure gives rise to problems that are dealt with in an interesting and thought provoking manner - and this despite the show's general comedic tone. On the other hand, the comedy angle probably facilitates tackling sensitive and hard to talk about things like porn addiction - try imagining Star Trek dealing with that one, I can't.

All in all, I'm glad I gave the Orville a chance and I'm impressed - even touched at times - by what I've seen so far. Although I'm already missing Alara Kitan - she was a cutie :( I look forward to seeing where this show will go from here.

I love The Orville. Doesn't matter that it's corny, the writing clumsy and the science often bad and naive, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy every time I watch it and that's what matters!

Liked this weeks episode approach (although not a fan of the "Star Wars music").

Just noticed this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096200/The_Orville__Interactive_Fan_Experience/

View attached image.