Seth MacFarlane’s popular science fiction comedy returns to television on Sunday, December 30, just before the Dr. Who New Year’s special and three weeks before Star Trek: Discovery is scheduled to return. Producer David A. Goodman said The Orville will be taking a metaphorical turn in 2019.
“You want to do something new, so the constraint is finding original ideas that haven’t been done, and doing them well. The freedom is that nobody has been doing this kind of science fiction as metaphor in an action-adventure drama format for a long time.”
Seth Macfarlane
As Star Trek and Twilight Zone taught us, science fiction functions well as a metaphor.
The Orville did better than most viewers expected in its first season. If it’s going to be more metaphorical, does this mean MacFarlane will cut down on sexual innuendo and scatological humor to focus on the philosophical? It’s too soon to tell.
Setting records with its initial debut, the show sustained stronger average ratings for the season in the U.S. than the official Star Trek offering from CBS All Access, with a cumulative viewing audience of 14 million.
Jessica Szohr will be joining the cast as a Xeleyan named Talla. She comes in as Halston Sage exits from her role as Alara Kitan, and she’s set for 14 episodes, so it’s likely she’ll be a permanent replacement for Sage.
The first season of The Orville combined science fiction, comedy, adventure, and drama, and was broadly received by the science fiction fandom community as well as the general audience.
If anything, the second season should have found its footing, and we may be seeing some real solid science fiction adventure from it. Will you be watching The Orville when it comes back?
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Susan Macdonald is the author of the children’s book “R is for Renaissance Faire”, as well as short stories in “Alternative Truths”, “Swords and Sorceress #30”, “Supernatural Colorado”, “Barbarian Crowns”, “Cat Tails””Under Western Stars”, and “Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid”. Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio’s web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
