I get the feeling that doing a sci-fi drama was a passion project for MacFarlane, but Fox just sees him as “Family Guy $$$” dude, so they marketed it as a comedy to get eyes on and forced jokes into the first episodes. There seem to be fewer ‘jokes’ each episode, and turning into a genuine Trek style show.

It’s definitely not a comedy first and foremost. The all drama version of the show would literally only need to cut about five minutes per episode. The all-comedy version would need to be re-written and refilmed from the ground up. The plots are straight drama; the comedy bits are all added on.

I’m not sure you should categorically ignore all critics based on a sample of one. ;) But the disconnect between critics and viewers is sufficiently stark that I get where you’re coming from. It’s just baffling.

It’s funny- because these days it’s hard to say that the NY Times, CNN etc DON’T have a liberal bias- their coverage of the president and congress is so overwhelmingly negative- it’s like, with Trump, Fox and Brietbart have actually created the Liberal media they’ve been complaining about all these years.

The idea of the “Liberal Media” has always been predicated on the idea that Harvard and Yale are really far-out leftist hotspots.

This was shocking to me too- and then I remembered that the “liberal media” doesn’t really exist and never did.

The ads don’t make me want to see this. I kinda hope it’s good, but I have a sick feeling that not only will it fail, it will take Agents of Shield down with it. Which just ain’t fair.

When Joss Whedon decided to combine Chinese and American cultures and hire no Chinese actors.

Wow, he’s wrong on a lot of things.

It’s actually funny, cause a century ago, women consistently scored lower on IQ tests than men. Then we started formally educating women and they entered the paid workforce, and their IQs shot up. They are now consistently a touch higher than mens’ IQ scores.

Thus answering the question I didn’t realized I had, “if you put a sociopathic technocrat in a a room with nothing but a word processor and the sound of his own voice, what would he write?”

Also: bless this show for constantly plundering Victor Garber’s filmography for jokes. That Titanic bit is solid gold.

Just in case this needs reiterating (HA!) to any of those people who think the idea of The Doctor being a woman is some act of retconning by Moffat or RTD or the BBC or whoever, please remember that the series co-creator Sydney Newman was floating the idea of a gender swap regeneration in 19-frigging-86.

You just *know* that the studio really wants a white guy. And that all this “we can’t find a guy after 2000 auditions” is just cover for when they announce that Aladdin will be played by Hugh Jackman.

I assume Jake Gyllenhaal is busy?

The core of Supernatural is the brother’s bind and the fact that the leads have UNREAL chemistry.

A lot less is riding on The Orville. That’s just another Fox show and if it gets cancelled, who cares. But CBS is banking on Star Trek to rescue them as broadcast continues to circle the drain, by ramping up their streaming service subscription numbers. They are probably very nervous about all this, and are…

I don’t have any data to back it up, but I strongly suspect that The Orville faced less road bumps because Fox is more confident in Seth MacFarlane’s ability to deliver than CBS is in Star Trek’s.

I love GoT (and ASOIAF) but I fucking hate prophecies. Prophecies are the very laziest plot device ever invented. They’re most often used in lieu of a real and believable character motivation or as a shorthand way to make characters and events seem more important than they are/need to be.

Like hating gays before you kid becomes one.