Well, watch the first two by all means, just don’t pass judgment till you get further.
But if your goal was to wait until late in the season to decide whether or not to watch it, considering we’re now like halfway through, and most of the aired episodes are excellent, it would take a pretty precipitous turn toward the absolutely terrible to make me judge this season harshly overall.
Watch the first three. It’s not as bad as I first thought, akin to watchable B-grade TV from a decade ago. You’re not going to worry too much if you miss it either.
Watched last night’s episode, SO FUN.
It’s fun - in contrast to STD it’s got something of the feel of TOS and satisfies the Trekky itch better than STD (although I quite enjoy STD as well, but more because of it being just a high modern production values s-f show - it’s not really got much more than a veneer of the Trek vibe otherwise).
I think they haven’t quite sorted out the balance between humour and seriousness in this show, and sometites the pacing is jerky, but the stories are good, the characters likeable. The last couple of episodes have been very good.
We are blessed with loads of good telly at the moment.
They really didn’t think things through on the naming of Discovery, did they? Plenty of synonyms that don’t involve the abbreviation STD.
That’s where the trekky itch comes from.
I’m enjoying this, though I can’t get over the feeling that the writing is just a little below par. The characters do seem to be hitting a groove. I loved in the last episode when Gordon was stabbed in the leg and he said something like “ hey I just got that!”, referring to the previous episode where Isaac cuts his leg off as a practical joke.
So basically we have tones and themes patterns present in the show now. So far we have dealt with issues like:
Is documentation of our outrageous primate behavior intrinsicly valuable? What is entertainment exactly?
Should infants undergo circumcision, and other gender assignment surgeries? Should they be able to choose that as an adult?
How much of a duty do we need to respect other cultures? How innocent and fordained to future “evil” are the children of cultures that seem savage to us? What is the price of cycles of violence?
I think if this show provokes any discussion on these, if qualifies as science fiction, Chekov style.
And by Chekhov I mean Asimov and P.K. Dick influence, not Russian space pilot guy.
You’re giving him too much credit. He thinks on a very superficial level. His themes are more like:
Remember, this guy’s claim to fame is writing a cartoon that’s like South Park but more juvenile. You can’t expect him to be a Serling or a Roddenberry.
I can’t believe I’m putting myself into position to defend him, because I hate some Family Guy humor too, but he’s done more than that.
For instance, he created the new Cosmos (along with Druyan and Tyson obviously), championed it, produced it, promoted it, etc. That was pretty superb. Also American Dad, which still has easy jokes but also a lot better tone than Family Guy. I think Stan Smith may be one of the only funny conservatives on TV.
Also, ummm… classy Christmas album or whatever that Sinatra like thing was he released. No barf jokes I don’t think.
Having just caught back up, I will say that this was another episode where I felt the humor was a significant detriment to the story. Say what you will about the degradation of military decorum amongst the Union itself, but these two guys in the midst of a life-or-death infiltration mission can’t maintain seriousness, or attempt to develop a useful backstory, or basically do anything at all a halfway intelligent person might do to not die horribly in that scenario is just mind-boggling.
I mean, I get it, they’re not infiltration experts. But I’m a big goofy cowardly dolt and I’m pretty sure I could have managed to not make a “tramp stamp” crack in response to a crazy zealot’s religious inquiry.
Aside from the humor, loved the ep, though. But goddamn this should would be perfect if it weren’t a comedy.
Man, I knew there had to be some reason I was digging this show!
I watched the first few episodes. Now I’m just rewatching TNG. The “humor” bits are just so painful. I do like that SMacF is trying this, though. Good endeavor.
There’s no new episode this week?! Is that right?
Probably because of baseball.
God motherfucking damnit.
Yep… Sports consistently ruin TV viewing experiences.
I gotta say it does slightly annoy me that I will not get my Orville fix this week.
Well, considering it is running a short season ( I believe it’s only 13 episodes ), you had best get used to it. The season is already pretty much halfway over.
I actually prefer when season has 10-13 episodes. Usually results in less filler and higher quality. I would hope they will preserve this amount for future seasons.
There are 2 episodes if you haven’t been keeping up. :)
So the Charlize Theron episode was great. She is blue chip after all. This show loves its space flight pr0n. So good.
1 more to go for me tonight. :D