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Seth MacFarlane’s answer to comparisons between The Orville and Star Trek was not that the shows had nothing in common. In a May 26, 2022 interview with Gizmodo’s io9, he acknowledged Star Trek’s influence while saying he believed The Orville had its own tone and identity: an optimistic space adventure built around flawed characters and the freedom to make its own rules.
Why The Orville was compared with Star Trek
The Orville premiered in 2017, around the same time as Star Trek: Discovery. The timing, along with the shared premise of a crew exploring space aboard a ship, made comparisons almost inevitable. Early io9 coverage even called The Orville a “Star Trek spoof”—a description of the show’s early reception, not MacFarlane’s own label or a definitive account of what it became.
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MacFarlane described Star Trek as the first series to turn the long-running “ship in space” setup into serious storytelling: “Star Trek was really the first to take it and turn it into something that really mattered and was a serious form of storytelling.” His comments recognized an influence rather than denying the resemblance.
MacFarlane’s distinction: optimism and tone
MacFarlane said he wanted The Orville to bring an optimistic, uplifting sensibility to a genre he felt had become unusually dark, dystopian, grim, and cautionary. “And the optimistic, uplifting part of that genre is something we haven’t really seen in a while,” he said. That was his view of the science-fiction landscape, not a measured assessment of the genre as a whole.
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Asked about the show’s place alongside Star Trek, MacFarlane said, “I think it’s safe to say that we’re still occupying our own space this year.” He pointed to the series’ tone, structure, and scope as distinctive, while leaving it to viewers to decide how well that distinction worked. The interview appeared before The Orville: New Horizons premiered on June 2, 2022; MacFarlane did not present it as a final verdict on the third season.
Grounded characters, not space heroes
Executive producer David Goodman identified the characters as another intended difference. He said the series began with flawed, grounded people, using their awkward, funny, and serious interactions as sources of both comedy and drama. “But I think the difference for us is that our characters are flawed, real people,” Goodman said. He added: “They’re not space heroes.”
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That description helps explain why the show’s comedy is not simply a layer of jokes over an adventure premise. In Goodman’s account, humor and drama emerge from how imperfect people deal with one another and with the situations they face.
Freedom from an established canon
Executive producer Jon Cassar said The Orville could establish its own rules rather than work within Star Trek’s accumulated continuity: “From our point of view, we’re who we are. We’re just The Orville. We get to sort of make up the rules ourselves and follow our own rules.” Co-executive producer Brannon Braga agreed, describing that freedom as “a certain blank slate that’s been fun.”
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Braga contrasted that starting point with later Star Trek productions, whose creators had a large body of existing material to take into account. He rounded that history off as “a thousand episodes”; that is his wording in the interview, not an independently verified episode count. The comments describe the producers’ creative perspective, not proof that The Orville has no continuity or that Star Trek’s canon prevents every kind of experimentation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the series is described today
Hulu Press describes The Orville: New Horizons as the U.S.S. Orville crew continuing its mission of exploration, and identifies MacFarlane as the series’ creator and a writer. That concise description captures the familiar space-exploration framework; the 2022 interview explains how MacFarlane and the producers said they wanted to make that framework their own.
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Distribution information is time- and region-dependent. Disney announced in July 2022 that all three seasons would arrive on Disney+ on August 10, 2022, while streaming would continue on Hulu. That announcement establishes the plans at the time, not a current catalog guarantee for every country. Check the services available in your location for present availability.
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Sources
- Cheryl Eddy, Gizmodo/io9, “The Orville’s Seth MacFarlane on Those Star Trek Comparisons,” May 26, 2022.
- Hulu Press, “The Orville: New Horizons”.
- Disney Plus Press, “The Orville” Ventures Into New Territory On Disney+, July 23, 2022.
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