The new season of Orville has been outstanding.

nice, assuming i can just jump right in and not wade through rest of the early stuff i didn't find interesting?

did they do a big send off for norm macdonald's character?

You know, I've been kind of disappointed in The Orville, but not because the new season has been bad in any way; it's because they did away with most of the humor. So instead of both an homage and a loving spoof of Star Trek, now it just seems to me to be sort of a rip-off of it. It's basically a straight sci-fi show with a few jokes thrown in. I still watch it though cuz it's a good show in its own right; it's just not something I'm looking forward to each week as I was with the first two seasons.


No, because Norm completed all of his voice work before his passing. Theyn did dedicate the premiere episode to Norm.

Strange New Worlds proves Star Trek works better as an episodic show. After only a couple of episodes I felt like I knew the crew better and liked them more than after four seasons of Discovery.

Ds9 has some amazing storylines imo.


My biggest problem with things like discovery were the attempts at making every storyline more and more epic. Focus should be on the characters and problemsolving.

ds9 was my favorite trek by a mile - but... when they went into a lame story line it tended to stick around and re-appear periodically - the nice thing about the planet of the week format is the bad ones just go away and never return

Discovery seems to make the fatal mistake of making the crew not people you want to spend time with. I watched S1 and it was ok, and bailed after S2 because I just didn't want to see where it went (the Pike + Number One was the only really good stuff in it imo), but I'm giving it another go, as I've heard it finds its feet proper in S3

The only one of the shows I listed I have no knowledge of is Prodigy, other than it's more a kid's show.

I might rewatch Lower Decks too, though I've already watched it. It will be even more fun now I've just completed TNG

Ds9 is my favorite and was hoping that was next, especially since it's completed as opposed to the ones you listed which are still ongoing. It's going to be years before you get to it at your normal pace lol.

I always assumed The Orville was Fox's way of saying thank you to Seth McFarlane for making them billions of dollars over the last 2 decades with his shows.

Agreed that the Discovery and Picard crews are not people I really want to go out of my way to spend time with. That's the appeal of all my comfort food shows. TOS, TNG, Seinfeld, Fraiser, whatever. I'm not sure if they completely dropped the ball in the casting of Discovery/Picard or it's just the serialized format and end of the galaxy stakes that causes lack of focus on the characters. In Picard season 1 every character is basically depressed and at a low point in their life. So despite the talented actors, I didn't find the characters very appealing.

I watched the first 3 seasons of Discovery. I'd say that they make slight improvements each season but it's not radically different. I started season 4 but it still didn't gel with me and I gave up for now.

This so much, you could literally skip one of those entire episodes. Clearly where going for their best Naomi impression of un watchable.

You weren't kidding. First episode I have turned off and decided I'd just finish it later. I'm glad the episode was made, but unfortunately the writing and execution of it just aren't there.

I won't do an episode by episode breakdown of Strange New Worlds, but instead just talk about the whole season once watched. But episode 1 was pretty great.

Happy Star Trek Day

Rewatched:

Picard S1 - fun but a bit all over the place
Discovery S1 - better than I remember it, but not really very Star Trek
Discovery S2 - the story is just not engaging at all. It's still worth watch cos Pike is captain, and Ethan Peck just gets better as Spock as it goes on. But weak

New Watches:


Star Trek Prodigy S1 part 1 - this really is Star Trek doing Star Wars Rebels, though pitched for an even younger audience, and not as good. It's ok for kids, and the Star Trekness grows much stronger in the second half of the 10 episodes. I quite like how they got Janeway as a character. 5/10

Strange New Worlds - Excellent Star Trek, highly watchable and very enjoyable. Pike, Spock and Number 1 are particular standouts. Maybe only 1 weak episode in all 10. I give it 8.5/10

Moving on to Picard S2, Discovery S3+4, and The Orville S1-3 next.

Picard S3:

[Spoiler]OMG. Dr Beverly Crusher has had a son even more annoying than Wesley. Jack is an incredibly smarmy git. It's going to be hard watching this twit for a whole season. Hope he gets thrown out an airlock.[/spoiler]

picard season 1 was bad but kept me coming back

picard season 2 is as bad as the made for syndication xena/beastmaster/hercules stuff of the 90s but with a high budget and some high profile actors

got a few episodes in before quitting

is it worth sticking with? season 3 any better? it seems that each season is self contained so considering just bailing season 2 and trying out 3

S2 was quite bad and should be skipped for your sanity. S3 has been better so far and hasn't yet referenced anything that happened in S2. Some characters permanently left the show in S2, so when watching S3 you don't have to worry about what happened to them in S2.

Would have laid long odds that S3 Picard > S3 Mandalorian, but here we are.

What I liked about Picard was it really took it's time to bring the old cast back, and when they were introduced into the story they were all given something important to do that was very consistent with their character. The performances overall were very good - Frakes performance in particular was so much better than TNG Riker.

Gripes were fairly minor. I still didn't like Stewart's performance as an older Picard, he just seems to have forgotten (or is no longer able to to translate) what made the character great. There was a little too much fan service, but even this was done pretty well. The pacing was also a little show at times - Felt like it could easily have been cut down to 8 episodes.

Overall a pretty enjoyable trip down memory lane.

Looking forward to watching Picard S3.

I am still watching Trek, finally started on DS9, but not great so far (about 8 episodes into season 1)

Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds are the best at the moment (bearing in mind havent watched Picard S3 yet)

Picard S3 probably leans a little too much into the nostalgia for my liking, but pulls off the decent send off to the TNG cast.

The big mastermind reveal was... not shocking, and otherwise a solid season, minor niggles not withstanding.

I just watched this through with the missus. She loved it; I liked it a lot. I preferred the early episodes as they had more humour than later episodes. I found Season 3 in particular just wandered into far too many Star Trek episodes and ideas I had already seen before, and more often done better.

Also, Seth is a poor leading actor and the constant attempts to pair everyone up in romantic relationships got tiresome.

Still, as most people itt have observed, it's still a lot better than any Nu Trek (bar S3 Picard).

Oh I totally forgot about the Orville. I'll probably zipper seasons of DS9 with seasons of the Orville


Better than Strange New Worlds, would you say?