The Orville Was Created On A Star Trek Lie

Written by Jonathan Klotz | Published 37 seconds ago

Seth MacFarlane is perhaps still best known for his animated shows, Family man and My father is AmericanBut in 2017, he released his magnum opus, Orvillea science fiction series that began and was marketed as a parody of Star Trek. Fox’s marketing for the series relied heavily on the first episode’s jokes, which include the introduction of Moclans, a species that urinate only once a year, but as longtime viewers of the show know, what seems like a joke ends up being great character moments.

This is what makes MacFarlane’s series the greatest hoax yet: it’s not a parody; It’s a loving homage, and as the series progresses, it becomes darker and more serious, perhaps even better than modern Star Trek.

Better versions of the worst TNG episodes

In the first scene of Orville In the pilot episode, we see MacFarlane as Captain Ed Mercer, entering his home to find his wife in bed with a blue alien and its blue secretions. Star Trek Captain James Tiberius Kirk has a reputation for being a womanizer whether he’s a human, an Orion, or even a few in between.

By starting with Ed at his lowest point, drunk, disorganized, and in danger of losing his job, MacFarlane’s show makes it clear that he takes things less seriously than Star Trek ever did. The second episode makes this even clearer, showing macho Mucklan Bortus asking who Kermit the Frog is before announcing that he’s incubating an egg, and the diminutive security officer, Alara, saving the day thanks to reality TV.

Orville The first season includes episodes that make fun of social media (“Majority Rule”), which is one of the worst episodes Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Naked Now” episodes in “Cupid’s Dagger,” and concludes the season with “Mad Idoltry,” a reminder of why Star Trek’s Prime Directive exists. Star Trek: Into the Dark It played with the idea of ​​a primitive species seeing the Enterprise taking off and beginning to worship it.

“Mad Idoltry” went all the way with a planet going in and out of the universe, forming a religion based on First Officer Grayson (Adrienne Padalecki, Ed’s ex-wife). It’s a ridiculous premise and something every Trek fan starts thinking about at some point, considering how many alien civilizations Starfleet encounters, so it’s fun to see it happen, and it’s clear by this point in the season that MacFarlane is a huge Star Trek fan.

In fact, Seth MacFarlane is such a huge fan of Star Trek that instead of creating a comedic version of the classic series, he wanted to make another Trek series and used the comedic angle to Orville The first season as a Trojan horse to get what he really wants. And it worked.

Season 2 ditches the sillier plots of Season 1 and replaces them with character-driven drama, including once again an over-the-top version of the TNG episode with “A Happy Refrain,” which does to cybernetic Isaac and Dr. Finn what “In Theory” did for Data and Jenne. The difference is that In Theory was a one-off, but A Happy Refrain not only paid off a year of character development, but also served as a permanent turning point for the characters.

From comedy to emotional sucker punch

On Rotten Tomatoes, The Orville season has a perfect 100% rating among critics, and for good reason, because even though it remains funny throughout three seasons, MacFarlane delivers low-stakes, character-driven episodes better than any writer today. Season 3’s “Twice in a Lifetime” is one of the best episodes in the series, combining time travel with a callback to Season 2 to create an emotional ending that most sci-fi shows today can only dream of achieving. If you start watching the series and find it difficult to follow the first few episodes, stick with it, because if you know where the crew starts, it makes it that much more satisfying when you see where they end up.

That’s what makes it in the end Orville A work of mad genius born from a love of Star Trek but not beholden to the lore of the franchise. while Star Trek: Discovery He was struggling to find an audience, and Seth MacFarlane was there with his tribute The next generationwhich quietly featured the most vivid, deep, and surprisingly emotional writing of any sci-fi series in the past decade.