This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---
THE "BACK" OF THE BOOK
Here's what the Publisher said about the book, anything I say will ruin the book (and not because it put me in a foul mood):

An original novella set in season three of The Orville—straight from the pen of Seth MacFarlane, creator of the beloved sci-fi TV show!

When Captain Ed Mercer and the crew of the U.S.S. Orville come face-to-face with one of humanity’s most vile ideologies, they must solve the moral conundrum of who to hold accountable for evil deeds real… and imagined. Occurring just after episode 308, this is the Orville like you’ve never seen it before.

THE ORVILLE
I watched all three seasons of the show this year, after putting it off since I started to hear positive things about Season 1. I really appreciated most of this not-Star Trek, although like the show it totally isn't ripping off,* it's not perfect.

* Wink.

One thing that The Orville surpasses its inspiration in is its sanctimoniousness. When this show gets preachy, there's nothing that compete with it. For the most part, I could endure those episodes, but a couple of them got pretty difficult. The last half of this book was pretty much one of those episodes. It's a lot harder to tolerate without F/X to look at.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?
There was almost nothing about this that made it an Orville story. Maybe others can describe this without giving everything away, but I can't. Sure, every primary cast member from season 3 is in the novella—and some characters from other seasons are mentioned—so it's technically an Orville story, but just technically. A good tie-in story should feel like a long or an in-depth version of the source IP. This couldn't feel less like an episode.

And the writing? It was clearly written by someone who doesn't do prose that often—scripts, sure. It was lazy writing, the descriptions of characters were clunky, the dialogue was iffy, and the pacing was poor. We don't see a single character from the show until the 50% point.

Would I read another novella set in this universe? Oh, absolutely. Even another one by MacFarlane. I like the universe enough to give it another try. I just hope it's a fun, SF adventure next time (maybe even with a touch of the condescension, it's what the viewers expect). The only thing that was clearly delivered was the message. ( )

The things I do for The Orville... First, they moved it from Fox to Hulu, and even though I'd sworn up and down I wasn't going to subscribe to any more streaming services, I went and got myself a Hulu account, after all. And I didn't regret it for an instant, either. Season 3 of The Orville (aka The Orville: New Horizons) was absolute top-notch SF TV, leading me to marvel all over again at just how impressively far the show had come from its goofier, more unfocused, less self-assured origins.

Then Seth McFarlane announced that there was one episode they had planned for the season but had been unable to film (I believe due to budget and covid-related factors), and that because he wanted the story to be available in some form and there was no guarantee of future seasons, he was releasing it as a novella. An ebook-only novella. Now, I have nothing against ebooks in principle, but for various personal, idiosyncratic reasons, I've avoided getting into them and had so far done all my book-reading the old-fashioned, papery way. Well, congrats, Seth. Your 25th-century TV show has now dragged me kicking and screaming into the 21st century, because this was the first ebook I ever bought.

And was it as worth it as subscribing to Hulu? Well, I admit, at first I wasn't at all sure. This is a really odd story. Hell, a couple of chapters in, I almost felt like I should check and make sure I'd actually bought the right book. Because here I was expecting a familiar spaceship and a bunch of familiar characters, and instead I got a story set in the 20th century about an abandoned baby who grows up to be a Nazi. So, y'know, cheerful stuff. Eventually, of course, our familiar characters do show up -- although not until halfway through -- and the relevance of this guy's story becomes clear. And then it gets really interesting. By that point, I had a bunch of possible ideas about what was going on. It turned out that none of them was quite right, but the real explanation of what I'd been reading this entire time was fascinating, and it gave rise to lots of complicated philosophical and moral questions, ones the narrative doesn't try to spoon-feed us easy answers to but leaves us to ponder on our own. This is thoughtful, intellectually provocative, socially relevant, humanist science fiction in the grand old classic Star Trek tradition, which means it's very much of a piece with everything else The Orville has been doing lately.

The writing, I should say, is really nothing at all special, but it does the job of bringing this lost story to its audience just fine, so I'm happy enough with it.

Mind you, I'd be happier if we got another season (which, if it happens, might possibly see this one brought to our screens after all, according to McFarlane). So, to that end: Hey! The Orville is now available on Disney+, as well as Hulu (in the US). The better it does there, the more like we are to get more of it. Go and watch it! Go on. I'll wait.

Are you done? See? Didn't that get great? ( )

I seriously thought I was reading the wrong book after getting through the first few chapters and had to check/double check to make sure I hadn't made a mistake. I kept thinking like, is this Orville or is it some kind of historical fiction about a guy???

I'd like to see this made into an Orville episode in the future if the series gets renewed. Most Orville episodes have hints of being an old Star Trek episode modified a little bit and have comedy elements added in.

This one actually felt like it's own story and not just an altered Star Trek episode (probably because about half of the story doesn't include The Orville). If this episode was influenced by a Trek episode, the only Trek episode that comes to mind is a recent Discovery one. Maybe that episode is what gave Seth MacFarlane the idea of how to introduce the character.

I was about to give up reading this until about half way in. I'm glad I stuck with it till I got to that point; overall,

3.5/5 I liked it. ( )