Tonight was the 4th episode, “If The Stars Should Appear.” I thought it was pretty good… it would have made a perfectly cromulent TOS episode. There were a few bits that made me laugh out loud – Lt. Lamarr’s response to Commander Grayson’s enthusiasm about “Isn’t it exciting to be out here on the edge of the unknown,” for instance. The unforeseen Liam Neeson cameo. But the part I liked best was actually part of the music: early on, they discover a truly vast alien spacecraft, several hundred square miles in cross section (an odd way to answer the “how big is it” question, to be sure), and they send an away mission over to it in a shuttlecraft. The music that plays as they approach the door leading to the interior? Taken *directly* from the score for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” specifically from either “The Cloud” or “Vejur Flyover” bits. And if you are going to steal some Star Trek music, you could hardly do better than the ST:TMP soundtrack. Which is one of the most awesome soundtracks ever put together. Jerry Goldsmith knocked that one directly out of the park.
“The Orville” is not the show we were promised, but it’s really starting to grow on me. I shall be quite annoyed when it is inevitably cancelled in a few weeks…