A no Spoilers review of the first episode of Seth MacFarlane's The Orville.

So first I need to say I am a massive massive fan of Seth MacFarlane, I like family guy, I am a huge fan of TED, a massive fan of his work in general. Take that on board and then take on board the fact that I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad. I have seen all of the original series of Trek all of the Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise, I have read books both stories and tech manuals so yeah I am a Seth MacFarlane loving Trek loving Geek.

 So I just watched the first Episode of Seth MacFarlane's new show The Orville. Seth is a fan of Star Trek in fact he appeared in Enterprise in a short cameo and what he has made here is pretty much his own version of Star Trek a version with a comedic flair to it. Its not just a funny rip off though, its made with such love that you can tell that it is made with the deepest affectionate for Star Trek, its full of little head nods and well it basically felt to me like it was a Trek show just a Trek show with more realistic dialogue, more realistic people and well humour. As a kid you watch Trek and you take it for normal that these crew members all just sort of do there jobs and are largely happy with it, that everyone turns up on time and does what there supposed to do but once you have worked in a few different jobs you realise that works not like that at all, when your at work people chit chat, people talk shit about each other, pass rumours on, there is that person who is always late, that person who got suspended for doing some dumb shit, if you watch this opening episode of The Orville you will see that in some ways I think it shows a more realistic view of what that kind of work in space would be like. If your in to Trek this show so far has the same kind of action the same kind of technobable, the pilot episode with a few little changes very much could be used as a Trek script, so even if your not usually in to comedic stuff I would still say to give this show a go.

I found this opening episode a pleasure from start to finish, I think that it felt very much like Trek, it was funny at times but I do think that MacFarlane really reined in his comedic skills, he made sure that the jokes did not come at the expense of the story or the character development, they just served as the chocolate powder on top of the cappuccino. The show is a sci fi drama with comedic trimmings or at least that's the way I would describe this pilot episode. I think as a first episode it did a really good job of setting up the world and beginning to let you get to know the characters to show some of there traits. I found that at the end of the episode I wanted to know not only what they would get up to next but I wanted to see more of these people, I wanted to know more about the, I had questions, questions that I know will bring me back to the show. So far critics don't seem to have been very kind to this show but I totally disagree with them and I would have to say that I think this could be the start of something wonderful.