The Orville: Season 2

The USS Orville remains on the frontier, investigating threats to the Planetary Union and defending against the encroachment of the Krill. However, a much greater threat is lurking in deep space, one which the Union alone cannot stop.

The first season of The Orville was an interesting, if variable, show which saw "Seth MacFarlane do Star Trek." The results were initially unappealing, with non-sequitur toilet humour intruding into dramatic scenes, but the show gradually improved over its length until it became surprisingly effective in its role as a Star Trek: The Next Generation cover band.

Season 2 takes the solid growth shown in the first season and dramatically improves upon it. The characters all get better, stronger arcs, the writing is definitely a step above what it was in the first season and the show is both dynamic and more ambitious, driven by some fantastic visual effects (the space battles near the end of the season leave all the over-stylised and barely-discernible battles in Star Trek: Discovery and Picard comfortably in the dust). Apparently cheesy storylines - like Dr. Finn's relationship with the android Isaac - are surprisingly played to the hilt by their talented actors and play a key role in the season's over-arcing plot.

The show even takes the biggest misstep in the first season - the very clumsy handling of the issues raised in the episode About a Girl - and uses that mistake to drive the plots of several episodes, exploring the relationship between Bortus, his mate Klyden and their child, Topa and expanding more on the worldbuilding of the Moclan culture. It's great when a show realises it's made a mistake and course-corrects in a constructive way that leads to better stories.

There is a regrettable departure early in the season: Halston Sage's character, Alara, was not given a lot to do in the first season but by the end of the season and in the first few episodes of this, she gets some great material. Her showcase comes in Home where she has to investigate a mystery and overcome disabilities imposed by her homeworld's cripplingly high gravity, which she rises to with aplomb (with excellent performances by Star Trek: Voyager's Robert Picardo and Enterprise's John Billingsley). Unfortunately, she had to leave the show in this episode for scheduling reasons, which is a shame. Her replacement, Jessica Szohr as Lt. Talla Keyali, is a great character as well, fortunately.

The show also continues doing it's thing of finding Star Trek-ish episodes and making good stories about them: All the World is Birthday Cake is a surprisingly effective take on old-school Star Trek warnings about superstition trumping reason. Lasting Impressions takes on the old issue of people getting addicted to the holodeck but comes at it from a completely different angle, and finally gives the underused Scott Grimes a really good acting showcase.

In fact, there isn't really a bad episode in the batch. Deflectors and Blood of Patriots are both a bit predictable, but not too bad. The season does offer up two formidable two-part stories: Identity is The Orville trying to do a story with the epic scope and gravitas of The Next Generation's The Best of Both Worlds and if it can't quite match that, it gets surprisingly close. The two-part finale, which riffs on the original series' City on the Edge of Forever and TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise, remixes standard SF tropes into a fairly gripping new mixture.

A few problems persist even in the better episodes. MacFarlane is better this season, but still arguably the weakest link in a very strong cast. The reduction of comedy in favour of character drama is welcome, but occasionally it feels like the team felt they had to remind everyone they are something of a comedy show, resulting in the odd non-sequitur gag (usually falling completely flat) slipping through the lines and feeling even more out of place than in Season 1. But these are relatively few and far between.

Season 2 of The Orville (****½) is a hugely impressive step up from the much more variable first season, establishing real stakes, evolving the characters well and telling an over-arcing story with considerable aplomb. It may be the best project Seth MacFarlane has ever been involved with. The season is airing on Disney+ worldwide and Hulu in the United States. The much, much-delayed Season 3 is due to start airing in June this year.

The Orville: Season 1

2419. The Planetary Union is exploring the galaxy, but it has three thousand ships and not enough experienced captains. Despite some doubts over his fitness for command, the admiralty place Captain Ed Mercer in command of the mid-size exploration and scientific cruiser Orville. Mercer's idiosyncratic crew slowly gel and turn into an effective team as they take on various threats, including being trapped in two-dimensional space and repeated confrontations with the villainous Krill.

The Orville is something of an odd show. It's a very, very earnest retread of early Star Trek: The Next Generation, getting as physically close to that show as it can without being sued into oblivion by CBS/Paramount. Concepts, characters, worldbuilding elements, technology and even individual story and character arcs feel so close to Star Trek that at times it gets a bit bemusing, and the presence of former Star Trek writers (Brannon Braga), directors (Jonathan Frakes, James L. Conway, Robert Duncan McNeill) and actors (DS9's Penny Johnson Jerald as a regular, Voyager's Robert Picardo in a recurring role) makes it clear that showrunner Seth MacFarlane is less playing homage to Star Trek then pretty much just remaking it.

This makes The Orville often feel like Star Trek: The Next Generation circa Season 2, with earnest moralising, sticky ethical conundrums and character interplay that sometimes works very well and sometimes is pretty poor. The show has to overcome several key weaknesses, including creator-writer-producer-star Seth MacFarlane's limited range (he is the weakest link in the cast) and the decision to front-line the show's most morally complex, issue-led episode About a Girl and then make a major hash of it. After the first three episodes, viewers would be forgiven for checking out.

However, the show then begins a long improvement drive. The fourth episode, If the Stars Should Appear, features the Orville encountering a massive generation ship and getting into the kind of interesting, high-concept based stories that TNG would have excelled at if it had the budget. Majority Rule overcomes a key weakness of the show - many of these stories or at least premises have been tackled before on 700-ish episodes of Star Trek - with an enthusiastic cast and just the right dose of humour. New Dimensions, in which the ship visits a two-dimensional universe, is a particularly good example of how the show can tackle Star Trek ideas with modern production values at a point when the actual Star Trek shows seem more interesting in tackling epic, darker storylines which the franchise is arguably not well-suited for.

The cast gels together quite nicely, Adrianne Palicki delivering on the underused potential she showed on Agents of SHIELD, and Deep Space Nine veteran Penny Johnson Jerald brings all her experience of dealing with weird aliens into play. Halston Sage is more enthusiastic than skilled as Lt. Alara Kitan, but develops into a much stronger player over the course of the first season and gets an excellent showcase episode near the end of the season. J. Lee is severely underused as Lt. LaMarr, but does get a better, more interesting role towards the end of the season (in a bemusing retread - intended or not - of what happened to La Forge on TNG). The show's MVP emerges as Isaac, the ship's alien mechanoid science officer who considers all other species inferior; Mark Jackson embodies Isaac with a terrific vocal performance and the character overcomes cliches by not wanting to become human, although he is fascinated by biological organisms' chaotic behaviour. 

The show also makes good use of MacFarlane's industry connections to deliver a very high class of guest star, with a brief appearance by Liam Neeson and proper, full-length guest roles for Charlize Theron and Rob Lowe, who all do terrific work. Rob Lowe's performance as a sexually voracious alien in truly ridiculous makeup is particularly entertaining.

The first season of The Orville (***½) never entirely overcomes its problems with tonal dissonance, non-sequitur toilet humour exploding through the wall of a dramatic scene with real stakes, and MacFarlane's somewhat clunky performance. But, after an initial burst of poor writing, it evolves into a reliably entertaining series which feels very comfortable in its role as a Next Generation cover band. It is available to watch worldwide on Disney+, and on Hulu in the United States.