Over the last few months I watched the Orville.
Season 1 began as a Star Trek parody primarily focused on the original series, Next Generation, Voyager, and Battlestar Galactica. That quickly changed, and in some ways it became kind of like rebel Star Trek - that is Star Trek that kind of broke the rules. They remade episodes based on Voyager and the Original Series, you can tell they’re really big fans of it. The budget is quite low for this season, you can see mask errors and horrendous CG - it gets a lot better.
Season 2 added in some aesthetics from Star Wars in the action scenes and such, while maintaining the rebel Star Trek approach. This brought in some plot elements from Enterprise and Deep Space 9, on top of the TOS, TNG, and Voyager stuff.
Season 3 I felt the show really came into its own this season. It felt VERY Star Trek TOS Season 1, but also modern. The hard dilemmas and drama, and the courage to dive right into controversy made it feel more like an update of Star Trek TOS than any of the other shows to date. Part of the issue with Star Trek TNG onward is that it shies away from political controversy, while other Science Fiction shows weren’t so shy. 1960s TOS had no issues with cosmopolitanism, interracial relationships, communism, and so on. In the 80s and 90s TNG had these elements too, but we’re no longer politically controversial… partially because Star Trek TOS helped normalize these things.
Then there’s the dilemmas, TOS had episodes like The Conscience of a King, the City on the Edge of Forever, and A Taste of Armageddon, which have stuck with me—all of those just in season 1. Later Star Trek shows had episodes with dilemmas, but usually there wasn’t a bitter taste of victory for the characters. The Orville season 3 gives a price for victory in many episodes, and the episodes had a weight to them that is rare in the Star Trek spin-offs, they basically had several back to back episodes with dramatic weight equal to the heaviest TNG episodes - The Offspring, The Inner Light, and DS9’s heaviest episodes Duet and Sacrifice of Angels, and Voyager’s Course: Oblivion — except those great episodes were scattered across decade of programming, The Orville had them all lined up one after another.
The head writers of the show are Seth Macfarlane (Family Guy) and Brannon Braga (Star Trek Voyager, later TNG, and First Contact). They’ve done a great job with this series IMO. I’m hoping it’s back for 4.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
