I finished watching The Orville, it was a masterpiece from the hands of Seth Macfarlane.
Here, they showed some exchange between admirals and the main ensemble cast quite often, but watching these certain scenes made me compare them to Star Trek admirals. I personally think all admirals in The Orville are great captains who got promoted to the rank of admiral as opposed to Star Trek admirals who are just dumb politicians where our main cast captains keep dealing with their nonsense.
Of course, there are a few reasonable and competent admirals we’ve seen throughout the franchise, but most of them I’ve seen reflect real-world politicians that never even had sat on a captain’s seat.
In retrospect, we haven’t had much in terms of badmirals in the streaming era.
Discovery had Admiral Cornwell, but when she’s presented with alternative solutions, she hears them out.
Prodigy maaaaybe has Admiral Jellico… but his bad-ness was “Don’t start a war with the Romulans”.
Strange New Worlds has April, who is barely a presence.
Picard has Admiral “Sheer /bleeping hubris” Chancy which… can you blame her?
Arguably, the only proper Badmiral we’ve really had is Buenamigo in Lower Decks.
Indeed, this is one of the areas where Star Trek has consistently fallen short of its “Utopian future” ideal. I understand that it’s often done for storytelling purposes, but Orville shows how that’s an unnecessary shortcut - it’s still possible to write compelling stories and have the hero be a hero even if his superior officers are actually competent and in his corner.
