The Orville is one of the better shows over the last five or so years. It focuses on a Star Trek-like universe, where far more shenanigans happen than in the world of actual Trek. It's not Star Trek, but it carries the moral center of the franchise at its core. Helped forged together by American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane and a host of Star Trek alumni, the Orville focuses on your standard ship doing its standard thing if this were in fact Star Trek.
It's not though, but aside from some of the humor, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. The show tackles concepts like racism, sexuality, addiction, and loyalty while diving deeper into concepts that Star Trek used to explore.
Used to, because most of the Nu Trek we've gotten didn't focus on that stuff anymore. Not really, anyway. The Orville did and did so brilliantly. It was one of if not the best show on Fox for its first few seasons before it had to move on to Hulu. With Hulu, they did fewer episodes but they were longer and more bolstered in nature.
Fans flocked to the streaming service but it was unsure if they would keep the show going. For nearly two years we've sat and waited as we've waited for any type of information to come out about the show's future. Two years as we've waded through bad sci-fi with no meaning for The Orville to return.
But now, after two years of waiting, MacFarlane may have put our suffering at ease. When speaking on the Mike Henry Show, MacFarlane spoke about his passion projects, namely The Orville, and it's then that he drops this line;
"The Orville was a passion project, I say ‘was’ but I don’t really mean ‘was’ because there will be more..."
Now we can get doom and gloom about the possibilities of what this means, maybe it's just the upcoming novella we're hearing about, or maybe it's a comic book, but we're hoping that it's a fourth season of episodes. A season we're more than hoping for, because until Star Trek: Strange New Worlds got here, us Star Trek fans have been severely missing our dose of real Star Trek, and thanks to The Orville, we finally can get some.