Discussion Series / TheOrville

I would've dumped it into Scary Dogmatic Aliens, but as there's already an entry there, at most it would need a brief mention that they're vaguely reptilian.

Yeah, that's a pretty high bar. I can't think of any characters in The Orville that would qualify. The recently deleted examples were full of phrases like "very similar" and "like" and "close to", but the examples shared only superficial similarity. They don't reach the level of an expy.

From a legal perspective, no character from "The Orville" should attempt to qualify as an Expy. Star Trek is Paramount's intellectual property... so an unambiguous and deliberate copy of another, Paramount character is copyright infringement.

I've come across a few reviews of "The Orville" by people who wrote for TNG, DS9, and Voyager that have commented on the brilliance of MacFarlane positioning "The Orville" as a parody instead of directly calling it an "homage".

A parody has greater latitude regarding "fair use" of characters, situations, and settings and gives MacFarlane the wiggle room he needs to create a really good "Trek-homage" series without drawing as much legal scrutiny from Paramount. It certainly helps that "The Orville" has been so well received because it helps boost Paramount's "Star Trek" mindshare.

However, it's going to mean that "The Orville" will always be presenting characters or races that are maddeningly similar to something in Star Trek, but will never quite qualify as an Expy.

I kind of feel like the crew setup is an expy to Star Trek: The Next Generation's. While not a perfect fit, the structure of the main crew seems to parallel that of the initial bridge crew's compliment. The main difference is that Riker and Troi got combined into Kelly, with her having a former relationship with the captain, and Gordon who doesn't really have any counterpart on the original crew, unless we want to call him the Wesley of the series.

Probably, since it's all a Star Trek expy.

There is certainly no arguing that The Orville is an homage to TNG and as such the characters have similarities in personality that invoke warm remembrances of the TNG crew. However, as far as tvtropes defines an Expy, they aren't because an expy has to be "an unambiguous and deliberate copy of another, older character."

It would be as if you'd literally pick Troi off the bridge of the Enterprise plop her on the bridge of the Orville, maybe change her hair or eye color but otherwise she'd be a obvious copy of Counselor Troi. The show The Orville can't do that because it would be copyright infringement of Paramount's intellectual property.

What it can be is what it currently is... a respectful homage to TNG operating as a "parody" which has Orville characters that embody various personality traits that remind us of the TNG characters we know and love.

To expand on rva98014's point, I think that considering the bridge crew of one show to be an expy of the bridge crew of another show, just because the same roles appear within both bridge crews, is more an example of Truth in Television or perhaps People Sit on Chairs, not an example of an expy. Yes, bridge crews have certain roles that must be filled: captain, first officer, navigation, communication, etc. Naturally, any show that involves a large vessel of some sort is going to have characters that fill the roles of a bridge crew.

You're right, it's not an expy but an homage. I get them confused.

My personal argument, mcgrew, is that it's more than just coincidental the various similarities the bridge crew has to the original cast. Most ships will have a tactical officer, yes, but both crews having Proud Warrior Race alien take that spot? A bit suspicious. A robotic character as the science officer? Getting a little more suspicious. Expanding outward, there are surface-level similarities of the two crews, but I admit they are distinct enough that the Orville cast is its own entity. Not sure what trope, if any, this would be classified as.