Seth MacFarlane should take over Star Trek sooner rather than later

Star Trek has had a wild eight-year run. From the failure to get any film going after Star Trek: Beyond, to the fact that the shows have varied in both engagement and quality to the fact that the franchise seems to be only now returning to a tone that the core fandom really actually wants. It's been a comedy of errors, some made worse by Paramount, others made worse by Kurtzman and those he's hired.

It's clear that Nu Trek hasn't had the success that many envisioned, after all, it was seen as the core franchise to carry the CBS All-Access and then Paramount+ and it failed to do so. Some of it is on Paramount's executives, but some of it is the quality of the product we're getting.

Kurtzman has tried to shape Star Trek into this new thing, giving the reigns to people who either didn't understand why Star Trek worked in the first place or otherwise threw the playbook out the window to do something entirely different. It hasn't worked. The first show to really hit home, Strange New Worlds, did so because it remembered what Star Trek was and rolled itself in a proverbial blanket.

Now, with the shows winding down and so much bottlenecking happening on the film side of things, Paramount should consider the move that has needed to happen for years now and replace Kurtzman as the head of the franchise. Yet, just replacing him isn't good enough. You need someone who can come in, right the ship, and get the classic fan back while engaging in newer audiences.

That person is going to be hard to get, but he'll be worth it if you can and that person is Seth MacFarlane. A lot of the Starr Trek series have failed in one way or another. Maybe not in quality, maybe not in views, maybe not in execution but save for Strange New Worlds, they've all failed to some degree.

That's not a great rate of success. Some of the worst Star Trek shows have come out since 2017, and the odds we get another show as good as Strange New Worlds with Kurtzman in charge isn't great.

It's time to hand the reigns over to the one man who knows Star Trek better than anyone in Hollywood, MacFarlane. After all, he wrote a love letter to Star Trek called "The Orville" and it's been brilliant. Save for the heavy-handed jokes in the first season, this show has been far more Star Trek-leaning than the actual Star Trek series. From how it's shot, to the focus on interpersonal relationships, to the morality of very profound concepts, it is Star Trek in everything but the name.

MacFarlane gets Star Trek in a way Kurtzman doesn't. Fans know this to be true, it's why others are also proposing the idea of MacFarlane taking over the series. At least the TV side of things. The film side is a mess and may be better off being retired for now.

Yet, with MacFarlane's history of hit-making shows from Family Guy to American Dad, to the Orville and now Ted the series, there are few people who have the creativity or the originality to make Star Trek the top of the sci-fi zeitgeist once again.

He's one of them. So why not MacFarlane?