      I don’t watch much TV these days, but in recent weeks I’ve been positively giddy about the two new Star Trek shows to hit the air this fall.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Two, you say? But CBS only put out Star Trek Discovery on September 24.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Ah, but there’s already been three weeks of Fox’s The Orville, created and starring Seth McFarlane. And if you don’t think it’s the same universe, you’d be wrong.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The Orville is a parody, or spoof, or satire. I’m not sure which. Maybe all three? But it’s awesome. And if there had been no Star Trek, there would never be The Orville. Maybe they might not meet each other in some neutral zone, but they share a common heritage, nonetheless.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The show has an awful lot of the look and feel of 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), which, for many people, is truly the heart of the franchise, even moreso than The Original Series (TOS) starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The aesthetic for The Orville (the name of the ship in that series), is very much like TNG. It’s all bright and cheery, with large, wide open spaces. Compared to the grittiness seen in almost all sci-fi since the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, The Orville is clean, fresh and crisp.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And in the traditions of the best Star Trek, it’s tackling sensitive issues head on, except with some pretty gutsy humor.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So far we’ve seen the captain and first officer, who are divorced, but working in the same office, bitch and natter at each other like divorced people do. We’ve seen infidelity and its consequences, work absenteeism, pulling strings, affirmative action, gender reassignment and gender politics, and all in three weeks.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Star Trek: Discovery’s unfortunate acronym, STD, might not work well for most people. Maybe it’ll be called DIS, like Star Trek: Voyager became VOY.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Anyhow, Discovery looked simply amazing. Its aesthetic was pulled right from the recent movie series, the first two which were directed by J.J. Abrams and started in 2009. Visually, it’s orders of magnitude beyond The Orville. And for $6 million an episode (or more, I’ve read), Discovery should look pretty spanky.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý As much of TOS was an allegory to the Cold War, with the Klingons standing in for the Soviets, already some people are suggesting that Discovery is an allegory to current geopolitics, except this time, the Klingons represent the hermit kingdom of North Korea.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Xenophobic to the extreme, the Klingons unite in their fear and loathing of outside civilizations and are willing to do battle to preserve their perverse culture, even starting a war to be a unifying cause.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Sound familiar?
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’d think perhaps they were pulling directly from events in recent weeks, but Discovery was actually years in the making, and the script for the pilot episodes took over a year to write, apparently. Kim Jong Un’s been working on his nukes for a while now, so maybe it wasn’t so hard to see the current state of affairs coming.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Curiously, our 10-year-old, Spencer, positively loves The Orville, and even my wife, Michelle, gets a good laugh out of it. But she had no interest in watching Discovery, and Spencer walked away 40 minutes into its first episode, just before the action started. Apostates, both, I say.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý CBS is betting big on Discovery. The first hour was broadcast on TV. But everything else, including the second half of the two-hour opener, has to be accessed by subscribing to CBS’s new All Access streaming service, akin to its own Netflix, if you’re an American.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý If you’re Canadian, you can watch it on Space, which also streams it (but not if you’re a SaskTel Max customer, dammit). You can bet I changed my channel lineup this weekend to bring Space back into the lineup, after a year of having dropped it.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But will enough Americans do the same, and essentially pay just for Star Trek on All Access? After all, there’s only so much CSI reruns one can take!
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The rest of the world will see Discovery on Netflix, as it should be.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m hoping Discovery gives us some real sci-fi drama. I’m hoping The Orville gives us the laughs. And I hope both live long and prosper.
