Upon first viewing of the trailer for FOX's new Seth MacFarlane series, The Orville, it might be easy to assume this is a straight Star Trek parody. But The Orville is actually a far cry from Family Guy, much closer to being Star Trek itself than any sort of parody.
For MacFarlane, a self-professed sci-fi nerd, that homage was intentional. With the rise of dystopian science fiction over the years, MacFarlane wanted to create something that was more of a return in the style and tone to the sci-fi shows he loved from the '90s and earlier, something he thinks is missing from the current television landscape.
"What's happened is it's left open a space that has been relatively unoccupied for a while in the genre. ... For me, it's a space that's kind of waiting to be filled in this day and age when we're getting a lot of dystopian science fiction," he said at the 2017 summer TV Critics' Association press tour. "This is sort of an attempt to fill that void in that genre."
Citing other shows beyond Trek, like The Twilight Zone, as inspiration, MacFarlane wanted to make a show that contained the optimism and hopefulness of earlier eras of science fiction, as well as explore the genre's parables and tropes as a medium of exploring the human condition. Each episode is framed more as a standalone instead of serialized story, with the construct of a beginning, middle and end. The characters' personalities grow and evolve, but The Orville is more concerned with the weekly adventures of its titular spaceship than any other galaxy-ending crisis.
"I think he's paying homage not just to the television shows, but to the great science fiction short stories and novellas and novels that were exploring morality plays, that were exploring allegories and parables that would reflect contemporary culture, but do it within the prism of an alien species or an extraterrestrial environment. That's really what Seth is excited about," said FOX President of Entertainment David Madden to IGN. "Seth, really, was making a love letter to that genre -- not even just the TV shows. Seth is really a stunt of science fiction literature."
That's not to say it isn't funny, but being funny isn't the focus. The trailer for The Orville basically strips out every joke from the hour-long pilot, and MacFarlane did admit concern to the promotion leaning a bit too heavily on the show being a comedy. Both The Orville's producing team and Madden were quick to say this isn't Family Guy, or A Million Ways to Die in the West, or even Galaxy Quest or Spaceballs. That's why the season is made up of hour-long episodes.
"If this were a half hour, it would be kind of cut and dry what this is. Because we're an hour-long show, the story kind of has to come first. It can't just be gag gag gag gag gag. There has to be some reality to where the comedy comes from," said MacFarlane. "We really do see it as a sci-fi comedic drama. We allow ourselves room for levity in the way that a traditional sci-fi show doesn't. We're trying to break new ground here."
Executive producer Brannon Braga, who also produced Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise, is welcoming the humor into the Trek-inspired space adventure. " We tried to be funny on that show, occasionally," said Braga. "It never occurred to me to take it to this level, comedically. When I read the pilot script, the first thought that struck me was, 'This was really original.'"
MacFarlane clearly misses the Trek shows of the '90s, and for all that a new direction has helped relaunch the franchise with the recent movies and upcoming CBS All Access TV series, he's happy to do things "a little more old school." "I’m tired of being told everything is grim and dystopian and people are going to be murdered for food. I miss the hopeful side of science fiction," he said. "Now things are very grim."
So is Star Trek Discovery's debut going to create a problem for the Star Trek-inspired The Orville? "I think there's room for two shows on a spaceship," said executive producer David A. Goodman. "I don't see us as competing with them because Seth is trying to create something new. It's not Star Trek."
Terri Schwartz is Editorial Producer at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
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