Just watched the second episode of The Orville. I thought the first episode was pretty rough, but it's already enormously improved. The most striking thing is that MacFarlane and his co-writers clearly love Star Trek *deeply*. The show isn't actually a Trek parody so much as an homage that happens to have jokes - the humor isn't at the expense of Star Trek, it's just there for its own sake. You could cut most of it out and what you'd be left with is a story that would be right at home playing out in a TNG episode. It honestly feels like MacFarlane pitched a new Trek series he would've played straight (because Paramount wouldn't have done it as a comedy), got turned down, still really wanted to make it, and said "fine, I'll take my idea, file off the serial numbers, add jokes back in (because that's what the networks will want out of me), and shop it around as its own thing."
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