this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Discovery gets more hate then it deserves, but The Orville is certainly more of a Star Trek show. I'm glad I stuck out the rough start (which is on brand for a Star Trek show lol)
Now I'm thinking I should give it another try.
I gave Discovery half a season, I have the Orville 2 or 3 episodes and while it was funny it didn't really click for me. I just lost interest after a few episodes.
The best way that I found to think about The Orville is that Seth MacFarlane had to shoe-horn jokes into the first few episodes to satisfy the execs who expected him to make a comedy and then gradually that tapers off to become a really solid Star Trek-type show (that still has humor, but it’s more organic, workplace type humor).
Yeah, it follows a lot of the "futuristic parallels to modern day issues" that we saw with ToS and TNG, while at the same time adding in humor that ranges from tongue-in-cheek to outright raunchy. I can't imagine a TNG episode that would address "holodeck sex addiction" but Orville actually manages to do a pretty good job of stradding seriousness of that issue along with humor.
For the more serious stuff: imagine an alliance when it's discovered that one of the members has done (and is still doing) some stuff that's pretty strongly against the morals of the rest. If called on it they threaten to pull out. While all are in the middle of a war for survival. And they're also one of the biggest weapons suppliers
That's pretty close to some issues today while also being years old.
The Orville is a weird show. It hews very closely to the format and production design of 90s Trek (including a lot of budget-conscious decisions), and many of the creatives have a Star Trek background going back that far. Frankly, I think a lot of the scripts were from the TNG slush pile. It's clearly a love letter to those shows.
However, it's also clearly Seth MacFarlane's love letter. He gets to be the captain. His friends and lovers get to play major parts despite sometimes not really having the acting chops for it. The characters are all obsessed with the cultural touchstones of white American Gen-X'ers. In the early going, the Family-Guy/Ted/etc. sense of humor is front and center, and while that gets much better, it never fully goes away. One can also just about imagine 20-something Seth and his buddies screaming at the TV that there is no moral ambiguity in a given ST episode and that Jean Luc needs to just pick a side.
In some ways, it can be pretty rough, but then, mostly because it is such an earnest homage, it's greater than the sum of its parts. I never fell in love with it the way many have, but after wading through the first few episodes and getting a feel for what it was and wasn't, I grew fond of it. I'd say it's worth watching, but you don't have to apologize for not fully buying in. TBH, I feel fairly similar levels of tempered fondness for Disco, though for very different reasons.
wjrii hit the nail on the head. If you categorically don't like the vibe it might not be for you. Like any true Trek show it takes time to find its feet. The plot is coarse and hamfisted (as a trans person, the trans allegory episode was hard to get through) but eventually turns around to be a good example of scifi for contemporary social commentary. The humour (both quality and balance) improves but it doesn't stop being a Seth MacFarlane show. I value its earnesty, but it's pretty far down the list for my suggested "Star Trek" viewing order.