They should have had Jay sit in the middle looking bewildered and not say a single word the whole video.

No Country For Old Nerds

Mike has a habit of predicting the future. Must be the spice.

“It‘s early January 2018, and life couldn‘t be better.“ Oh, those innocent sweet old days, I want them back.

Comics aren't for me, anymore. Star Wars isn't for me, anymore. Star Trek isn't for me, anymore. I'm finally free.

It's not just "old people" who cling to the old Star Trek style. I'm in my early 20s and I have no interest in a dark, moody, violent Star Trek show. Plenty of my friends who are under 30 agree. I don't think it's a "changing of the guard" as much as it is selling out to the lowest common denominator, which is a thing that's always existed.

It's so weird how the people running all these huge properties, from Star Wars to Star Trek to comics, have collectively decided they hate the current fan base and want to drive them away and replace them.

Star Trek Discovery is neither over-written nor under-written; instead, it is simply poorly written.

"It made me die a little inside" - Rich Evans (box quote for Star Trek Discovery)

Rich indulging Mike in his need for 'Star Trek' therapy is really kind of beautiful.

"Captain Lorca's a secret asshole. Captain Lorca's a secret mirror, mirror bad guy." Slam. Dunk.

Quark, no room for growth? That root beer speech alone is one of the high points of that entire show for me.

I think it’s really great that they let Mike and Rich have their little show so they can talk about space tv. After all, the nursing home can get lonely and Mikes dementia keeps getting worse by the day.

The Last Jedi has really damaged Mike. He can't go one video without becoming even more disgusted by it. I don't even think the prequels effected him this bad.

The Orville may have borrowed heavily from TOS and TNG, but at least they're trying to be Star Trek. That's more than you can say for Discovery.

Lol, Rich is so Milwaukee. His first idea of a high class fancy meal is chicken parmesan.

To quote Rich in TLJ review: "I'm sorry, you've wasted your life and your fandom." The haunting irony...

Yoda dancing in a bikini bottom: next Mandela Effect.

22 mins in I haven't learned anything about Discovery but I've learned tons about Star Trek and I'm definitely going to start watching the Orville.

Rich was 100% bang-on about the Orville. It got so much better in seasons 2 and 3.

I am shocked at how much life there is in Mike's eyes when he talks about Star Trek

"I have a list of them" Pulls out an actual fucking list.

I love Mike's theory that this season is taking place in the Star Trek Mirror Universe, but that's WAY too smart an idea for this current batch of Star Trek writers. They'll never go there.

Both of you know why people like the Orville and not Star Trek Discovery you made the point before "The Oroville is an optimistic view of the future" and Discovery is one that you cringe at

Love seeing Mike talk about something you can tell he legitimately loves.

I can't wait for the Tarantino Star Trek to feature aliens with big feet, aliens with small feet and aliens with feet where their sexual organs should be.

God could you imagine, like, Wesley, telling Picard how "fucking cool" something was? Incredible.

The first gay kiss on tv was on DS9, but not the Mirror Universe episode. It was a Dax episode when a former girlfriend of Curzon visits her...and they kiss.

I'm 100% convinced that the comedy aspects of The Orville have been included in order for it to be categorised as a parody and be exempt from copyright litigation, leaving the makers free to just make more episodes of TNG. Comparing the volume of jokes between the pilot and the second episode is like night and day, and they're slowly eliminating them to the point where I expect there'll be one token joke per episode. I imagine the lawyers would have just stopped watching episodes after a while, like this pair of hack frauds.

Holy moly, Mike's proposed twist to Discovery would be amazing

"It's early 2018 and life couldn't be better" "Sure it could" That pretty much sums up how I feel these days

The Orville understands the concept of escapism in entertainment.

finally mike breaks the silence and talks about star trek for once!

For Dune, those are actually humans who have consumed so much spice they've become physically/mentally transformed. They can see all paths into the future so they can pick a space route that doesn't end up with the ship crossing paths with a celestial object and exploding

“It’s 2018 and life couldn’t be better” You cursed us Mike. Thanks.

Well, apparently STD did steal their ideas, and the way the characters look, from a computer game called "Tardigrades" and are trying to prevent a lawsuit by saying: "They are common sci-fi tropes - you know, giant blue tardigrades enabling space travel. That's just such a common theme that you can't call it copyright infringement." I'd rather watch The Orville, even if they recycle old plots, than a big cooperation fucking over some independent creator. At least they do it out of love for the original.

"We will do what old Men do; we will just rewatch our old stuff and complain about them Kids and there New Stuff. And than we will just die." I'm not even 20 yet, and I already feel the Same.

The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. Travel...without moving.

The Orville. The not Star Trek respecting Star Trek more than any "Star Trek" that CBS is dishing out.

People-who-don't-know-they-are-on-a-spaceship story is even older than Star Trek. Robert Heinlein published a story called Universe in 1951 with that plot.

The creature in dune is a person who took a shitload of spice. This could be your future, Jay.

Do a re:view of Dune, holy shit

"Discovery mid-season review" turns out to be 20 minutes about Orville...and it's the best part of this whole video. They'd so clearly love to talk about Orville being "second-rate fanfic rehash" Trek than to discuss "not at all Star Trek" Trek.

"is he a secret klingon in disguise?" wow, how'd you figure out that absurd plot point?

Yoda twerking was the best part of The Last Jedi.

I don't even like Star Trek.. I just watch these so I can be soothed by Mike and Rich's gentle purrs...

Mike and Rich always downplay it but they are legitimately good at predicting stuff. Mike called the Lorca Mirror Mirror-twist, Ash Tyler being a Klingon in disguise, and the ending where they get a transmission from Captain Pike and the Enterprise. Rich called that The Orville was stuck in kind of a TNG season 1 phase and that they would tinker with it and turn it around (seasons 2 and 3 of The Orville are way less comedy and more sci-fi adventure/drama, similar to what TNG became at its peak).

I'm rewatching this and it's surprising just how much time they spend talking about The Orville in this STD review. That really says something about STD, now does it?

yoda twerking is canon to me

Really, Star Trek is about... Family.

"Dour, broken people wallowing in how broken they are" describes 90% of the creators of and characters in modern big-budget media.

So cute to go back to 2018 and see the speculation that Discovery would get "salvaged".

I think by far the biggest problem with modern star trek is this bizarre need to CONSTANTLY DO PREQUELS. like holy shit, the end of DS9 the alpha quandrant is wrecked, there's a bunch of cool technology floating around (at least voyager brought some interesting *stuff* back with them), it would have made for a super interesting setting with plenty of room for the dark srs stuff people seem to want so badly now. but for so many years now they just need to do prequel after prequel after alternate-timeline-prequel. knock it off already and MOVE FORWARD

A re:View of Dune would be wonderful!

man rev watching this in 2021 is sad, seeing how hopeful mike is, and knowing what happened...

*MIKE CALLED IT*

"Dune is a nightmare" I swear to God everything Mike says is hysterical.

MacFarlane has said that he intends Orville as a sort of Deadpool for Star Trek. It simultaneously is making fun of super hero movies but also is a super hero movie. The reuse of ideas is very much intentional and I don’t think it would work as a riff on Star Trek without that. I dig it personally

You know, despite 90's hair and some terrible forced humour, all this just makes me admire Bablyon 5 more and more. You got characters who were well established at the start and who, through organic gradual character progression, were almost unrecognisable by the end. Take Londo Molari, lovable and cheerful soul-of-the-party ambassador. An insecure yet good-hearted man who's grieving for the fallen glory of the once mighty Centauri Empire, and finds solace in gambling, drinking and womanising. And look at who he is by the end of the show, one of the darkest, doomed characters and yet one you still feel for because despite all the death and misery he's caused, and all the power he's amassed, he clearly wishes that he was once again a powerless joke of an ambassador, buying drinks for everyone at the bar. I'm a big STNG fan, yet I can't help but feel that the problem with these young shows today for all their edginess is that they're incapable of showing a compelling vision of a dark world as they take that as their departure point, and just desperately try to find ways of piling on the misery, rather than take something hopeful and optimistic and thrillingly put it through the wringer, having us on the edge of our seats as we pray that our beloved characters don't fall into that well of despair and violent expediency and instead manage to save what's good. But you know, I'm just an old man waving my walking stick and waiting to die, or something. And oh God despite it being wrong I just love David Lynch's Dune, so help me.

To me, the Orville is clearly a love-letter to Star Trek ToS and TNG, and while yes, I agree that the humor doesn't always land, what I like most about the show is how real the characters feel. You touched on that a bit in this, but I think one reason why so many people like The Orville is because the setup is essentially putting real people into the Star Trek roles and seeing what happens. I think the show is more successful for that.

I really respect your depth of Star Trek knowledge. I've been in my field for 20 years and I still don't know as much about my job as you do about Star Trek. That is impressive dedication. fscking nerds

I just couldn't seem to get past the violence of Discovery. One minute your characters are trying to joke around or raise their voices to levels that aren't horrendously monotone, and the next minute two admirals are getting their throats slit my a couple monsters that are calling themselves Klingon. All the while, your captain is looking like a super villain as he stares out the ship's poorly-lit rooms with foreboding music accompanying him. There was actually a part in the series where I felt more sorry for the Klingons than I did for the main characters... that's a bit of a problem...

the orville bit with the robot not understanding humor ends with the robot cutting a guy’s entire leg off, it’s stupid but they take it in a vastly different direction than tng did

To be fair a lot of these 'lifted' stroyline ideas are also generally well known sci-fi tropes, particularly from short stories .

I could listen to Mike talk about Star Trek for hours

The battle at the binary stars looked extremely dense. Soooo many things were going on!

As someone who is almost 30, I would very much like to clarify to any producers watching that it is not just the "old guard" that care about classic TOS and TNG style Star Trek... TNG reruns is just about the only Star Trek think I will actually watch in this day and age because the rest is, if not outright awful, does not represent what Star Trek is to me. Star Trek does not mean "High Stakes Space Adventure" to me, it never did. If I wanted to watch an emotion fueled space opera about a clash of ideals and heavy conflict, I would watch Star Wars.. that is what Star Wars is about. Star Trek, for me, is an intellectual's shows... a show about an optimistic, yet expansive and unknown future and the mysteries that lie within, mysteries and situations that often force us to reexamine our ideals and either change or fortify them in the pursuit of both self and outward discovery. That doesn't mean EVERY episode of Star Trek has to have a core, moral or ethical issues at its center, but I do like for Star Trek to make me THINK... Star Trek at its best does exactly that, make you think; - Think about ethics - Think about the future - Think about an unsolved mystery - Think about a complex obstacle or issue the characters have to overcome - Think about the repercussions of a character(s) actions or decision making The characters in Star Trek often have to outthink and outmaneuver their way out of their situations or to attain their goals.... not stab it to death or blow it apart with a phaser. "The West Wing" and "Game of Thrones" are also both excellent examples of shows that make a viewer THINK as opposed to being swept up in mindless action. GoT might have a lot of action sequences, but each of those action sequences arise out of a bigger picture and unraveling plot that is fuels by its character's carefully considered actions.. and The West Wing is a show entirely about solving big governmental problems and the challenges therein, but told realistically, and not where President Bartlett can secure the votes he needs from Congress by shoving a knife into the chief speaker's chest...

"Dune is a nightmare of a film" Yes and I love it

Seth should probably hire Mike

See, new things are cool and all...but "new/subversive" obviously doesn't automatically equate to "good." Which, for whatever reason, seems to be the basic error in logic a lot of people are making. Watched some Orville with my dad and I genuinely wasn't expecting much- but, hey, it wound up being a relatively light-hearted and enjoyable omage to Star Trek. It filled a gap in shows nowadays that's just missing.

25:20 Mike just predicted the big plot twist in the last episode.

Wow, good call on Lorca.

Im a trekkie and really love Orville-- but i take it as a spoof story that is elevating itself above what spoof comedies usually entail. i don't complain that spaceballs has things ive seen in star wars already-- that's the point. with Orville by being funny and fun while also taking on higher scifi and star trek concepts i think it creates its own cool niche.

Star Trek is about peaceful exploration of space. Everything else you can change. But not that.

re:View: The Orville

It’s so sad to see when you still had hope for this show I loved the mirror universe idea

My problem with Star Trek Discovery is that in 2018 it would actually be more daring and innovative to make a show that IS optimistic about humanity's future like TNG. Comparisons to The Last Jedi, which is just "it's time to let go of the past and have new adventures!" fall flat. There ain't a fuckin broom boy in Discovery.

Mike's so excited about doing an RLM project where he can blabber on about his knowledge of Star Trek - happiest he's been in years!

Them talking about the Orville ironically ended up being more interesting than them talking about Discovery. 🤣

Wow! You guys called it.

Why did I even watch this whole video? I haven't seen a single one Star Trek episode

So basically it tries to be 2000's Battlestar Galactica and fails miserably.

26:53 the first didn't happen in season 7 DS9 mirror episode. it was an earlier DS9 ep with Jadzia Dax being tempted to reassociate with a former host's spouse. 27:30 the nickname "Smiley" for mirror Miles was coined by Sisko... were THEY lovers too?! was he just a big man-sIut without Keiko? (tbf: the actors for O'Brian and Bashir had great chemistry, they could have played lovers in the 50's flashback episodes and add another repressed groups to be represented in that group of sci-fi writers)

Thank You RLM... You have kick started my Star Trek journey. I've begun watching Star Trek: TNG, my first foray into Star Trek. I guess you could say it's my Star Trek discovery.

Navigators in Dune are mutated humans.

The difference for me is Orville come from a place of love and Discovery comes from a place of hate. To me Trek is sanguine at it's heart and I'll take a copy that carries that feeling over a prequel that discards it.

Lower Decks re:View when?

"Smiley" was O'Brian's nickname from Evil Major Kira from way back in the first Alternate Universe episode of DS9

Startrek is supposed to be inspiring. Not war war war.....

Mike's concept of what Discovery turns out to be is too pure for this world.

So, apparently Lorca was in fact the evil version of himself from the mirror universe... How about that?

I've always enjoyed David Lynch's Dune despite what most people say about it. It's definitely a ambitious and memorable sci-fi movie, despite its shortcomings. And, it had Sting in it. The novel was great and had a large influence on sci-fi, in general. Some have suggested Lucas borrowed several elements from the novel to create Star Wars.

I gotta side with Rich on this one -- I gave up on ST:Discovery early on but I'm OK with Orville and have a lot of hope that it will really come together in Season 2. IMO the humor has been the weakest link on Orville and I find myself yearning for them to adopt more of a Stargate SG1/Atlantis style humor if humor is to continue to be a part of the show. I also disagree with Mike on the "Foundation of Orville" not being sustainable. I would argue that it is ST:Discovery that has the poor foundation (Can't see it going beyond 3 seasons) and Orville could actually come together if they can mature it and maybe take a bit more of a DS9 + SG1 approach going forward.

The episodes of Orville after Mike stopped watching have even less humor and more drama. The instinct that the humor was tacked on for the network is probably spot on - and the longer the Orville is successful, the more Fox is going to be comfortable with it being a drama and not a dicks and farts comedy, and it will be the Trek show we were waiting for. Rich is right; the only thing that could save Discovery is a twist of the magnitude Mike suggested.

27:00 Hey, what about that episode with Jadzia and the Dax symbiote's former host's wife, who also had a symbiote, which is in another woman's body now. Goddamn, that's a difficult thing to explain simply.

I'd love more videos like this. When Star Trek is the focus of the video and we know that going in, listening to Mike ramble is incredibly fun. The twinkle that Mike gets in his eye when he's ranting about Star Trek is just magical.

Rich is looking much better, keep it up little buddy

Star Trek Discovery mid-season - re:View "Talks mostly about The Orville"

Holy shit if only they had done the reverse mirror twist, that's pretty cool

It exemplifies how much of a problem Discovery is that they are discussing it and the Orville with such equivalency. The Orville is *supposed* to be a joke, and has risen beyond that, but Discovery *is* Star Trek, but is falling so short.