“The Orville: New Horizons” Releases New Trailer
Seth MacFarlane’s space adventure series, “The Orville,” last saw a new episode hit the airwaves back in 2019. The pandemic was a massive setback for a show with standing sets, regulars, and extras requiring heavily detailed prosthetic makeups that require close contact. As a result, the pandemic put a temporary halt on plans for the show until last year.
“The Orville” debuted in 2016, and two seasons have aired, and the show had viewers who either “got it” right away and immediately jumped on board or those who were confused and asking, “what exactly is this show?” The latter group might further ask, “is this show a Star Trek spoof, or is it something else?”
Put simply, “The Orville” is a tribute to “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” with nods to “Star Wars,” “The Twilight Zone,” and others. The original “Star Trek” series, with its dated effects and over-the-top acting, has been satirized many times. As a result, more people have come to appreciate it. Yet “The Next Generation” was responsible for the endurance of the franchise across many subsequent decades, with three other spin-off series using its often less campy approach to storytelling. It focused more on worldbuilding and drama, with stories that didn’t need action and alien threats every week. “The Orville” is a tribute to this more episodic type of storytelling and is also set on a more luxurious starship than the original “Star Trek” series. With Paramount reaching into the past and peeling away the official canon for Star Trek shows that air on its streaming service and using more flashy versions of the ship and its ready-made characters and plots, the Orville is simpler. It is shot in the same style as “The Next Generation.
Furthermore, it utilizes the same type of stories that appeared on that show, as well as the same types of characters and the same types of dilemmas weak to weak. Even the filming style (with brightly lit sets and sparse designs) and the background music) is more akin to 90’s Star Trek. This technique is more pleasantly nostalgic than trying to rewrite the histories of legacy characters like Spock, Kirk, or Pike. The show cares a lot more about the vision of Star Trek and about its own characters; it’s free from needing to shoehorn itself into fifty years of canon stories.
Season three of the show will air on “Hulu,” and an amazing new trailer has just been released. The show, now called “The Orville: New Horizons,” will be building its world outward this season as the conflict between the Planetary Union and the robotic Kaylons grows in intensity. The trailer shows some magnificent special effects and space battle sequences. Still, it is intercut by perfect character moments that ensure that a positive vision of the future will always be the show’s focus. As Captain Mercer says in the trailer: “Show the galaxy that humans are different, that we value life even when our enemies don’t.”
We’ve come to a time in our culture when a show that began largely as a parody of a well-known property will thrive because it truly understands what makes that property work. “Orville New Horizons” drops on Hulu on June 2.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G982GjpWZDU&ab_channel=Hulu
