michael is great too but totally agree.
my top question: does he really swing his arms like that in every scene or is there some cg going on? ( whatever the case it surpases foreheads by a mile. he really lives in that character )
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If you want me to watch videos on your website stop autoplaying ads, at full volume, hidden at the bottom of the feed, that then hide the volume toggle and then re-start, at full volume again, after you find and mute the volume.
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I have no idea about the arms. Doug Jones knows a thing or two about acting under heavy prosthetic makeup/suits. So maybe?
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This is such a good word I’m going to replace “parody” with it. Thank you!
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It was BoingBoing that finally made me install an ad blocker.
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That is still a word that has negative connotations to me. Ones of slight incompetence. But that might just be me.
Recycling an idea that’s decades old. Even in the Star Trek Franchise, where it was shown that cultural “contamination” is a thing in “Piece of the Action”, that ancient aliens inspired human religions (“Who Mourns For Adonais”.)
“Blink of An Eye” was also TOS, aliens living in a faster time frame. But again, not really new.
Perry Rhodan had an entire universe running 72,000 times slower than ours in 1962. (Actually, it’s complicated. The rate varies, roughly 3,000 years later the other universe runs faster.)
The complete back Fast Forward with human watchers and alien primitives overtaking them goes at least back to 1980: Dragon’s Egg is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by Robert L. Forward.
The Cheela go from having invented writing to leaving humanity (which did start beaming then an encyclopaedia) far behind in terms of technology within 24 human hours.
Edit:
I just remembered an ever older instance. ON THE SOAP BUBBLE, from Kurd Lasswitz, probably written in the 1880s.
Two protagonists visit the world of a soap bubble, adjusting their time frame to that of the bubble.
“It is written in the most ancient scriptures of the Thinkers that the world was blown from the mouth of a giant, named ‘Rudipudi’.”
I was engulfed in hot steam and a burning pain shot through me, and — I was sitting next to Uncle Wendel at the garden table. The soap bubble still floated in the same spot.
“What happened?” I asked, in surprise and shock.
“One hundred‐thousandth of a second. Nothing has changed on the Earth. If I had not moved the adjusting screw at the opportune moment, you would have been boiled in glycerine. Hmm… Should I still make public my discovery of the microgen? Well? Do you think, still, that they would believe you? Then just explain it to them.”
Uncle Wendel laughed, the bubble burst — and my little son blew another.
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There’s two things I love about the Orville.
Firstly that it imagines a better future, like Roddenberry, where we’ve moved beyond racism, poverty, and pointless wars- And yet that doesn’t mean we have to abandon our crass, silly side that appreciates farts and shallow pop culture.
Second, the way they use that to tackle the more complex issues with nuance and complexity. I was expecting the Moclans to be a constant stream of dick jokes- and we got that, but we also got a lot of hard questions about misogyny, trans rights, toxic masculinity, and whether we can or should challenge another culture’s norms.
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Yeah, the Moclan story line specifically was where I was like, “Wow. They are living up to ToS Trek here. I came for a lighthearted exploration of space with some fart jokes, but they are tackling current social issues just like they were in the 60s.”
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It also touches on a thing I think about a whole lot, which is the degree to which we can or cannot enforce our own values on other cultures, and their right to self-governance as they see fit versus human rights as we understand them.
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It can have a negative connotation, but in my experience it depends on the context it’s used in.
Here a Star Trek pastiche would mean something outside Star Trek that has a look and feel of Star Trek, which would not be negative as long is it’s done well. The Orville in my opinion has both the pastiche of a Star Trek (specifically TNG) series, and the substance, with enough of it’s own style to not be purely derivative.
On the other hand a Sci-Fi pastiche would imply something taking elements of the genre without managing to be in the genre, it implies some level of failure or inauthenticity. I can’t think of an example of this for Sci-Fi, but you see it often with Film Noir where someone does some stark lighting, films in black and white and adds a film grain effect and calls it Film Noir without any of the story trappings that defined the genre, that is the pastiche without the substance.
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He always has been, including getting to act in Enterprise. I’m a huge Trek fan, and Orville scratches all the right spots. He’s doing well with his show.
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true, the problem with a lot of shows, and this looks like the same, is that the challenge has to be bigger every season, it hapens with books too, dresden files went from magical detective, to magical war, to bigger and bigger bads. Same with most post tos shows, the kazon in voyager were not enough so the hirogen cam, then they went for the krenim etc, ng had a bit of a run with the romulans but then went to the borg.
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It is an important question, but I think it’s dangerous to assume that culture is an entity/subject/actor on its own. Ultimately, it’s a social construct, a non-physical tool.
And it becomes further muddled by Star Trek and other popular franchises dealing in humans with some extra prosthetics. Klimgons, for example. Or Vulcans. Genetically compatible with humans, ergo humans.
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Obviously, I’d think. Just look at Galaxy Quest. It clearly makes fun of both the show and their fans, but it’s the values that save the day.
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To me, one of the main features of science fiction is its ability to make social commentary in a context that’s just far enough removed from our own that we can examine those issues without our emotional baggage or preconceptions.
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Shoulda’ taken that left turn at Albuquerque!
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So, Parody is taking elements of a work of art to critique that work, while pastiche is taking elements as a form of praise - like a lot of fan art - much of which is not making any strong comment at all - hence the idea that pastiche is a lesser form of art. A lot of pastiche gets called parody because parody is protected by free speech laws as a legitimate form of commentary.
