Monday, I talked about Star Trek: Discovery. Today, I want to discuss the show giving it a run for its money, except you can watch The Orville for free on Fox. The Orville is not the Star Trek spoof Fox originally advertised it to be. It’s much more. While the different Star Trek series did not contain a great deal of humor, many of the original Star Trek movies did. The Orville, created by and starring Seth McFarlane, has all the wonder of alien races and science fiction that Star Trek is known for, but also has the humor that was present in the movies. When The Orville premiered last year, many critics feared it would be Family Guy in space. That, it was not. Yes, some of the humor is a bit sophomoric, but the science fiction is first rate.
The Orville has the comedy and drama of the original Star Trek movies. While it does have the comedy, it also has true drama. When a same sex couple from a planet of all males has a daughter, there is serious issues to be considered. Then there was the ship of religious fanatics or a planet ruled by social media. These are issues that may not directly connect to the world today but the lessons in the episodes are real. The original Star Trek series dealt with real life issues head on as well. It broke down race barriers and even had a Russian on the bridge. In many ways, The Orville is what Star Trek tried to be, with a little humor added in.
So as excited as I am about Star Trek: Discovery, I am just as crazy about The Orville. If you’re a Star Trek fan, you don’t have to compare the two, though there are good comparisons in my opinion. The Orville is a show that can be enjoyed by science fiction fans in general. It’s a good show and if you’re aren’t watching it, you probably should be.
Joe
The Closet Professor 
March 20th, 2019 at 9:06 am
I love The Orville, but it is not available for those of us who don’t get our tv via cable or satellite. 90 percent of the broadcast tv shows we watch are on CBS, so we subscribe to CBS All Access and get Discovery as a bonus. NBC and ABC stream their broadcast shows a day late and with commercials, but at least their shows are available. FOX does not do that. Fox requires viewers to have a provider, i.e. cable or satellite, so we see no FOX shows. We don’t even have the option to subscribe to FOX the way we do with CBS.