The plots have shallow TNG ideas - interesting as setups, but never go far enough for me - and low key McFarlane humour (which actually sits fine by me, but to call this a "comedy" is stretching). Episode 3 is a kind of a litmus test for me. If you think this is a good episode, we won't meet our minds at all. It's a terrible episode with an incredibly good setup. It just executes it very badly at the end. However it has been hailed by many trekkies as a great episode that puts Orville in this great place amongst TNG stuff. It doesn't. I agree with The_E that it is about the same par as TNG season 2, which is... a bit odd given we are in 2017, not 1989.
Episode 4 was completely predictable from beggining to end and just screamed TNG cliché plot. Worse than that, there is apparently very little moral consequences. This must come from Seth himself, the kind of out-of-nowhere violence (there's a guy who gets killed), but then, apparently, there's never a moment of self-reflection or a condemnation happening at the end. It's as if whatever wrongness happened, it's excused and forgotten because, you know, it would break the simple plot or whatever. In TNG this would never happen, there was a certain kind of gravitas that is absolutely void in here, substituted rather by a deadpan delivery of some sort of cynical comedy.
Good points though: its characters are more fleshed out than in Discovery! They are actually interesting! Even though the first episode was the worst, I did enjoy the divorce dynamics between the captain and the XO, a kind of a first in these sorts of space soap operas. I like the chief of security, she's a good character! Isaac is good fun. Etc.
As it stands, I foresee good banter between characters that are enjoyable to watch amongst terribly predictable and clichéd TNG style allegories that are not even as fleshed out to the bone as the originals were. Which, if you think about it, it's exactly the opposite of what you'd say about Discovery on this point: unappealling characters (except for Saru) with no banter at all within a "IDK what is happening next" kind of interesting environment!
I give it a 6/10 so far, which is really something way beyond the abysmal 20% rotten tomatoes score amongst "critics" that it has been having. I have *no* idea what these morons are watching. Meanwhile, the fans give it a 90% approval rating.
it took me about four seconds and then I realized where the music came from. I just loved that.
Hadn't noticed it before, but it's great indeed. They do show good taste in their scores references.