Its first two seasons became one of the top 5 science fiction series of the decade. Airing from 2017 to 2019, The Orville was a refreshing approach to sci-fi TV, a drama, comedy, and parody in just the right mix, plus unrivaled special effects, makeup, and costume design. Delayed by the pandemic, the third season of The Orville, now named The Orville: New Horizons, has a new target launch date for this coming June, moving from Fox to Hulu.
Creator/star Seth MacFarlane is bringing the crew back, along with behind-the-scenes contributions from the creators of sci-fi’s past like Brannon Braga, Doug Drexler, John Eaves, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, André Bormanis, and more. And thanks to MacFarlane, we now have a first look at the incredible special effects coming our way in the season three opening scene. Take a look at this 4-minute introduction:
First previewed here at borg back in March 2019, the first comic book story from the universe of television’s The Orville read in every way like a script that didn’t get produced–an episode that fits nicely into the timeline of the show but didn’t get filmed. As fans await the third season of the series, The Orville: New Horizons, coming to Hulu March 10, 2022, Dark Horse Comics is publishing a two-issue story this fall, The Orville: Artifacts. Written by executive producer David A. Goodman with artwork by David Cabeza and colors by Michael Atiyeh, The Orville: Artifacts keeps the series alive with its unique brand of humor and science fiction design style. Readers will find Ed, Kelly, Gordon, and the rest of the crew looking just like the actors that play them, as they ready themselves for The Orville’s next TV mission. Take a look inside the first issue below.
If you missed the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, all you need to know is that the crew of the starship Cerritos specializes not in First Contact, but Second Contact, and it has the same brand of humor as The Orville. The first season is streaming on Paramount Plus (formerly CBS All Access) and the second season is now underway. It’s good, silly stuff, full of Easter eggs that should appeal to fans of Star Trek (all the series and movies) who also were fans of Highlights magazine or Where’s Waldo? as a kid.
The music is top-notch Star Trek, and the voices have all the vibe of any live-action Trek series. Spinning out of a concept from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of the same name, it also evokes the goofy humor of Kirk encountering Uhura while visiting her roommate in the 2009 Star Trek movie and the style of the original Star Trek animated series. Would you like to know more? You can view a trailer of the second season and preview the entire first episode of the second season on YouTube now (for a limited time).
Ten years! That’s ten years reviewing TV series in the decade that streaming services began to dominate TV viewing– and binge-watching was born as Netflix began releasing entire seasons at once in 2013. How do you pick the best series? As with yesterday’s list of movie recommendations, our theory from the very first day of publishing borg has been reviewing only those things we like, things we think are fun, imaginative, or just plain cool—because if we think they’re cool, maybe you will, too. What makes a great TV series? Great writing—great storytelling. Also we looked to difficulty level and technology innovation—TV productions tend to get a fraction of the budget of big-screen features, so what they do with their time and money is critical, and some television series in the past decade were all-out feats. The third factor we looked to is re-watchability—we’ll be watching the best series for years to come. The big difference between ranking movies and TV is the change between seasons, that force that inevitably causes most shows to decline with each season. So consistency is a factor. Finally, as with movies the most important factor is the fun—why would you devote so many hours of your valuable time if you’re not going to have a great time?
One more thing: Ten years is a long time so we narrowed the series we’re including to those recommendations that fall primarily within the ten-year window. We covered several fantastic, re-watchable series that cemented their status in reruns or syndication, many beginning before borg began publishing and finishing in the years after, including Burn Notice, White Collar, Warehouse 13, Leverage, House, MD, In Plain Sight, and three landmarks among the best pop culture-packed series of all time, Chuck, Psych, and Community. We were disappointed that some of the best series were canceled and left to only a single season, otherwise they may have gone on to fare better against our top recommendations, shows like Jason Isaacs’ psychological police procedural Awake, Sarah Shahi’s all-for-fun Fairly Legal, Lauren Cohan’s action/spy series Whiskey Cavalier, the Doctor Who spin-off Class, the adaptation of Max Allan Collins’ popular noir novel series Quarry, the slick animated series Tron: Uprising, and the cyborg future-world Almost Human starring Karl Urban, to name a few.
So here are the Top 40 series we recommend, spanning 2011 to 2021. These are our favorites. How should you use lists like this? If you like what we talk about at borg, you’re probably going to like these shows. If you’ve missed any, odds are you have some new series to take a look at. Let’s start at #40 and move our way to #1. As with everything borg, we’re stressing genre series. Title links are to one of our previous borg reviews.
Was it really only two years ago that we were meeting the cast and crew of The Orville at their first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con? Take a look back here at borg if you missed it (director/executive producer Jon Cassar and producer/editor Tom Costantino gave us some cool swag and let us take photos with props from the series and we chatted with the cast wearing our custom-made The Orville uniforms). This year you won’t want to miss a few features for The Orville at SDCC 2020/Comic-Con@Home, including the reveal of new The Orville Starship Collection of miniature ships from Eaglemoss and some great behind-the-scenes images.
This year we found one series that could easily sweep most of the categories–a single television series that had everything: compelling story, a full range of emotions, great characters, tremendous action, a sharp use of humor, all kinds of genre elements that were satisfying and left viewers feeling inspired. Richly detailed sets and costumes. An impossible feat to replicate. No drama came close. No other visual effects spectacle could touch it. And its audience is everyone. A truly epic addition to television viewing, that series is The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the greatest television series to come along in years. If you love genre like we do, this was as good as it gets. And like icing on the cake, along came The Mandalorian at year end.
But we’re not going to ignore the other good things that happened on the small screen this year.
Our borgBest of 2019 list continues today with the best in television. If you missed it, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2019here and the best Kick-Ass Heroines of 2019 here.
Without further ado, this year’s Best in Television:
Best Borg Series – Doom Patrol(DC Universe). With this year’s series Doom Patrol we got a look at two borgs, DC Comics’ Cyborg, an update to Martin Caidin’s original Bionic Man from the 1970s, and an older borg created before the word was even coined in the 1960s, Robotman. Both characters revealed a glimpse at what life might be like with significant cybernetic enhancements (when brought together by a modern Dr. Frankenstein). For 2019, it was the way to get your borg fix on the small screen.
Best TV Series, Best New Limited TV Series, Best TV Fantasy, Best Writing for TV, Best TV Costumes/Makeup, Best TV Soundtrack – The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (Netflix). It was worth the wait. Jim Henson’s seemingly impossible to replicate artistic vision was successfully achieved thanks to his daughters and the company he founded. The kindest heroes, the darkest evil, a truly epic, legendary story for the ages. Everybody is cranking out CGI extravaganzas, but how many are creating artistry so fundamentally real, with so many individual artists and artisans contributing and achieving so much? Even that wouldn’t be enough if not for the layered mythology and epic adventure story. Add great humor, high stakes, emotional impact, an all-star voice cast, Daniel Pemberton and Samuel Sim’s imaginative musical score, and those puppets and all that go into them–it adds up to a rare thing–a Henson masterpiece.
Best TV Sci-fi Series, Best TV Drama – The Man in the High Castle (Amazon). Amazon Studios could not have adapted a series more faithfully, making changes for the medium and the times, than its take on Philip K. Dick’s most celebrated novel. The use of science fiction to tell a deep and twisty level of subplots and unique setting all came to a perfect conclusion in the series finale. Exciting, intelligent, frightening, and the most thought-provoking series this year, it was also different from its sci-fi competition. Honorable mention: The Mandalorian (Disney+)–but only if we allow space fantasy since the series is not true science fiction, The Orville (Fox)–for its two-part epic movie-worthy space story, “Identity.”
Best New Ongoing TV Series, Runner-up: Best TV Soundtrack, Runner-up: Best TV Costumes/Makeup – The Mandalorian (Disney+). Not a lot needs explaining with this series, which in only its first two hours we rated it closer to the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back than anything with the Star Wars label on it since. The Western motif is still alive, not all that hidden here in space fantasy garb. And we won’t get started on the impact of The Child (aka Baby Yoda) on the genre-loving world and beyond. Credit Jon Favreau’s visible enthusiasm and love for the original movies for the success of this surprisingly awesome arrival–the series is proof Star Wars is far from over.
First previewed here at borg back in March, the first comic book story from the universe of television’s The Orville reads in every way like a script that didn’t get produced–an episode that fits nicely into the timeline of the show but didn’t get filmed. Dark Horse Comics is publishing four issues this summer, two two-part stories written by executive producer David A. Goodman with artwork by David Cabeza and colors by Michael Atiyeh. Fans of the show who haven’t already picked them up will want to find the two issues already in comic shops and add the next two to their lists. The feel of the characters is spot-on, every side glance among Ed, Kelly, and Gordon looks like actors Seth MacFarlane, Adrianne Palicki, and Scott Grimes–unusual when sci-fi adaptations these days often don’t feature the drawn characters looking like the actors behind them.
Both stories for Dark Horse’s first foray into The Orville take place between the first two seasons. The first two-issue story, “New Beginnings,” presents some things not necessary for the TV show, but still interesting to see play out, including the rapid growth of Bortus and Klyden’s child Topa, and how that relates to Kelly encountering her new love interest, Cassius, after walking away from Ed at the end of Season One. As fans know, Cassius took on a bigger role in the second season of the show.
Meanwhile Ed and Gordon take off in a shuttle to attend a conference. Gordon is bored with mundane ship tasks, specifically investigating a Magnitar. And Ed can’t get Kelly out of his thoughts. As they learn, sometimes it’s better to be bored. They end up crash landing on a primitive planet, providing readers the adventure and exploration the show really excels at. All the while writer Goodman carefully picks up that banter between Ed and Gordon that provides the backbone of the humor for the show. All told, “New Beginnings” is a great start that will hopefully mean many more years of tie-in comics.
Take a look at a preview of the story, plus a sneak peek at the cover art to Issues #3 and #4, courtesy of Dark Horse Comics:
Planet Comicon Kansas City wrapped its 2019 convention yesterday, another great show this time highlighting the event’s 20th anniversary. We snapped several photographs of sights we’re sharing today as we wind down our coverage of this year’s show.
I snapped some photographs of a family in front of this great fire-breathing dragon. Whenever I see a person taking photos of their family I offer to step in so everyone can be included. How many people have photos of everyone in them except their mom? This was another success.
We also caught up with several authors at the show, including…
… our pal Jason Arnett, writing and signing his books Evolver and A Map of the Problem.
And we met up with Geoff Habiger and Coy Kissee, enjoying their second year at the event, highlighting their books Wrath of the Fury Blade and Unremarkable.
As usual, there were lots of cosplayers at the show, especially compared to the first years of the show back in the 1990s when cosplay was a rarity.
Fox’s television series The Orvillegets to explore a new world as it comes to Dark Horse Comics this summer. TV series executive producer/writer David A. Goodman(Futurama) will write the series, with artwork by David Cabeza and colorist Michael Atiyeh(Tomb Raider). The four-part series The Orville Season 1.5takes place between TV seasons one and two. Dark Horse Comics has revealed the first cover by Cabeza (below). Check out the details from the press release for the comic book series below.
As great as the first season of The Orville was, the three most-recent episodes of the series have met or surpassed the best science fiction episodes of any classic or modern science fiction television series. The Orville has been serious science fiction since its inception, and many critics and new viewers are at last taking notice. Beginning with the two-part episode “Identity,” viewers got to see the very best planetary environments and sequences of space battles in the history of sci-fi television. That’s right, the effects are that good–detailed, realistic, sweeping, and all-out fun. And forget about comparisons to television shows, the second part of the story arc displayed an exciting, epic space battle on par with the best galactic assaults and dogfights from the Star Warsuniverse, comparable to the final assault in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Sci-fi fans can’t ask for anything better than that. Thanks to executive producer and episode director Jon Cassar, The Orville reset the bar for compelling television sci-fi in this two-parter. From story and surprises to production design and execution, the often lighthearted series drops plenty of drama on viewers–gut punches in contrast to the laughs–proving The Orvilleis the real deal.
Taking the journey forward immediately after the effects of the battle with the Kaylons, in last night’s episode “Blood of Patriots,” Norm MacDonald’s marvelously realized gelatinous Kaylon battle hero Yaphit is celebrated by the crew, and we meet genre-favorite actor Mackenzie Astin giving a compelling performance as a gritty warrior-soldier, the kind you’re not likely to soon forget. The balance of the science fiction concept of reflecting the present with fictional stories of the future takes on new meaning with The Orville,as the writers deftly weave not just a single issue, but more than a half a dozen into each new episode. The result is much-watch television that surpasses decades of programming that preceded the show. From a character standpoint, it’s great fun to see Scott Grimes’ Lt. Gordon Malloy put forward as the ship’s hero-to-turn-to this season, a flawed man whose quirks and foibles reflect the kind of human you’d find today and in the future as part of any kind of actual fighting force.
Look for a more cinematic, episodic second season of The Orvillecoming your way, beginning tonight on Fox. All the crew members are back, Seth MacFarlane as Captain Ed Mercer, Adrianne Palicki as Commander Grayson, Penny Johnson Jerald as Doctor Claire Finn, Scott Grimes as Lieutenant Gordon Malloy, Peter Macon as Lieutenant Commander Bortus, Halston Sage as Lieutenant Alara Kitan, J. Lee as Lieutenant Commander John LaMarr, and Mark Jackson as Isaac.
These series was nominated for and won several awards for its first season, including Best Original Score for Television from the International Film Music Critics Association for the music by Bruce Broughton, John Debney, Joel McNeely, and Andrew Cottee, and a Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Television Series.
You’re going to want to set your DVR to record the before and after shows tonight and throughout the season to avoid missing episodes getting bumped by football coverage.
Here is the latest preview for season two of The Orville:
