The Orville

[Derek Metaltron]

Second episode was probably better than the first! Was it my imagination or was the alien zoo keeper in that episode the guy who plays Quark? Maybe the race just reminded me of the Ferengi a lot. And ohhhh, nice cliff hanger. As said this is definitely more of a homage to Classic Trek, though probably more TNG era than TOS era.

[Qwerty]

Second episode was probably better than the first! Was it my imagination or was the alien zoo keeper in that episode the guy who plays Quark? Maybe the race just reminded me of the Ferengi a lot. And ohhhh, nice cliff hanger. As said this is definitely more of a homage to Classic Trek, though probably more TNG era than TOS era.

I don't think it was armin shimmerman

[Derek Metaltron]

Interesting thing was just pointed out in a video I saw, Alara has suddenly gained eyebrows between the first and second episodes.

[Nate Grey]

Great second ep. And good to see Chad Coleman again, albeit briefly (Bortus's mate).

[Jokerz79]

Second episode was probably better than the first! Was it my imagination or was the alien zoo keeper in that episode the guy who plays Quark? Maybe the race just reminded me of the Ferengi a lot. And ohhhh, nice cliff hanger. As said this is definitely more of a homage to Classic Trek, though probably more TNG era than TOS era.

It was definitely a nice nod to the cage down to Alien design.

[Za Waldo]

With any show or movie set in the distant future, I just assume that the dialogue is "translated" into something we can understand. It's the same way even with straight dramas like Star Trek... if you actually travelled 200-300 years into the future, you would probably have a hard time understanding people, just like someone from the 1700's would have trouble understanding us.

As for pop culture references, whatever the future version of YouTube is probably makes everything readily available. You can already see that effect today. Kids today are way more aware of pop culture from the 80's (30 years ago) than we kids in the 80's were aware of the 50's (30 years earlier). That's because of the Internet, mainly YouTube.

If you traveled 200, even 400 years into the past you'd likely have little to no problem at all understanding anything anyone is saying...provided you're speaking the same language anyways. At most you'd probably just not pick up on some references.

I totally disagree with that pop culture thing. If you were a kid in the '80s or '90s it would not be uncommon to watch tv shows from the '50s on network tv. **** like Lassie, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Zorro, Gunsmoke, and a number of other shows were things kids actually still watched. You could flip on Fox in the early '90s and the weekend movie could be some '70s or '80s genre film, it could be some '50s - '70s Godzilla movie or American giant monster movie, it could be Ray Harryhausen stuff, or it could be some Universal Monster movie; ****, at least once I remember them playing The Gold Rush. That's not the kind of thing network tv does anymore. It also wasn't uncommon for some network to play old cartoons like Speed Racer and Jonny Quest right along with the newer stuff. If you were a kid in the '80s and '90s is wasn't uncommon for at least a part of what you grew up watching to probably be the same stuff you parents also grew up watching; the days of that being a thing are basically gone now. The Little Rascal were still well known enough that kids knew who they were when the '90s movie came out.

[Jim Kelly]

Made me think of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.

One detail that didn't go anywhere was the cannabis brownie. That seemed like a Chekov's Gun--at some point that brownie needed to be consumed. But I don't remember anything being done with it, even though it was highlighted in a couple of scenes. Did it get eaten and I just forgot about it?

Maybe there was a scene that paid off that joke, but it got edited out. There were a couple of jumps in the story that seemed to suggest they had more show than they could fit in the time slot.

[Za Waldo]

Thought it was funny that one of the segments in the new episode of Rick and Morty episodes that same night was the same thing.

[Derek Metaltron]

Made me think of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.

One detail that didn't go anywhere was the cannabis brownie. That seemed like a Chekov's Gun--at some point that brownie needed to be consumed. But I don't remember anything being done with it, even though it was highlighted in a couple of scenes. Did it get eaten and I just forgot about it?

Maybe there was a scene that paid off that joke, but it got edited out. There were a couple of jumps in the story that seemed to suggest they had more show than they could fit in the time slot.

One idea I had was that they both would have eaten some of the brownie and that would have given them the ability to become aware that they were in a cage, because I found the fact they suddenly dropped the illusion of outside pretty weird and sudden.

I will admit in future set sci-fi it is weird how they never seem to have new fandoms or shows or things they're into. I suppose Star Trek at least had some reasoning for that in the sense they had the Eugenic Wars and the like in the 21st century?

[David Walton]

400 years of pop culture is a lot to process. I can only assume that the material has become increasingly available in the future, and humans have a lot more time on their hands. Otherwise people tend to favor material that falls within a certain range of their own lifetime. After you put in a full workday, there's only so much time left, and most of us gravitate toward material that we remember from our childhood or current television and film. And yes, it wasn't unusual in the 70s, 80s and 90s to catch stuff from the 50s on tv, but that window is rapidly closing. I remember when Nick at Nite used to be shows like I Love Lucy, now it's Full House.

But I would think they probably have thousands of channels in the utopian future, maybe even devoted to specific years instead of decades. Also, I tend to think the work week isn't as long, and a lot more time is devoted to leisure.

[Za Waldo]

Maybe copyright laws are even more insane in the future, and companies leverage their properties even more than now creating a situation where they're basically stuck in an endless loop of things based on stuff made now?

[MichaelC]

With Star Trek, you could make a case that humanity had simply gotten boring as they became enlightened. Leading to their entertainment being a lot of period pieces. With the Orville, though, humanity really doesn't seem to have changed as much. So the dependence on period pieces seems even odder.

[AndrewCrossett]

If you traveled 200, even 400 years into the past you'd likely have little to no problem at all understanding anything anyone is saying...provided you're speaking the same language anyways. At most you'd probably just not pick up on some references.

I totally disagree with that pop culture thing. If you were a kid in the '80s or '90s it would not be uncommon to watch tv shows from the '50s on network tv. **** like Lassie, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Zorro, Gunsmoke, and a number of other shows were things kids actually still watched. You could flip on Fox in the early '90s and the weekend movie could be some '70s or '80s genre film, it could be some '50s - '70s Godzilla movie or American giant monster movie, it could be Ray Harryhausen stuff, or it could be some Universal Monster movie; ****, at least once I remember them playing The Gold Rush. That's not the kind of thing network tv does anymore. It also wasn't uncommon for some network to play old cartoons like Speed Racer and Jonny Quest right along with the newer stuff. If you were a kid in the '80s and '90s is wasn't uncommon for at least a part of what you grew up watching to probably be the same stuff you parents also grew up watching; the days of that being a thing are basically gone now. The Little Rascal were still well known enough that kids knew who they were when the '90s movie came out.

Most average people today would not understand most of what was said to them if they traveled back that far in time. Most people can barely make heads or tails of a Shakespeare play until they've gotten used to that language. Even if you could get the gist of what was being said it would be very distracting. It would be like listening to a word-for-word adaptation of the Clockwork Orange novel without having the glossary to refer to.

I was a kid in the 70's and 80's. Yes, there were a few 50's shows like I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver on TV in syndication. But most of what we saw of the 50's was stuff like Happy Days... not a very accurate portrayal, at least according to my parents. And even the real 50's shows didn't dwell very much on current events or pop culture of the time... mostly because they were written by middle-aged men who grew up in the 20's and 30's and had no idea what these damn beatnik kids today were doing. The idealized "Ozzie and Harriet" depiction of the Middle Class Suburban White Family of the 1950's was a fiction created by networks, not a reflection of reality.

I see the same thing today. That 70's Show was clearly written by people who didn't remember much about the 70's. Stranger Things is a good show, but its depiction of the 80's (I was 17 years old at that time) is not very similar to what I remember.

In the 70's and 80's and on into the 90's we had open syndication, when any local TV station could buy a syndicated package of some old sitcom and show it during the day. But that ended, and now we're stuck with god-awful infomercials and judge shows and crap like that... it's not even worth faking illness to stay home from school anymore. But in its place, today we have YouTube where you can see just about anything from past decades. Any 15-year-old today can instantly go and watch the same videos I watched on MTV in 1983. That's a resource we didn't have when I was a kid.

[Jokerz79]

A scene like this would be funny.

Person 1: Everyone knows Harrington Singh is the definitive Superman.

Person 2: Bullshit he starred in a Reboot of a Remake of Superman Extinction a 200 year old storyline.

[Midvillian1322]

Just watched episode 2 and i suprisingly love this show. Though its hard to take seth serious when they attempt it. His voice is ingrained in my head as a moron though in real life hes a smart guy. I just hear Peter/Ted/ or the ******* mouse from Sing. Weirdly enough i find the Ted movies hilarious(dumb but funny) and liked Sing but hate Family guy...