With so many shows on hiatus, shuffled between networks or suffering major production issues due to the pandemic, it can be hard for a fan to keep track of a show's status. Seth MacFarlane's The Orville has been hit hard by that confusion. With its last episode having aired in April of 2019, the fans have long since begun to fear the worst. However, The Orville is still expected to return for a third season, moving to Hulu after two seasons on FOX.
What is The Orville?
The Orville is creator Seth MacFarlane's love letter to Star Trek, and the culmination of a childhood dream. The premise is familiar: a spaceship and its crew on a years-long deep space mission. Unlike the Enterprise, the exploratory vessel USS Orville isn't a dream assignment, it's where the C students and the officers with a couple of blemishes on their service records wind up. The Orville's early episodes give its characters a sense of barely-hanging-on. It always feels like dollar beer night on this vessel.
The Orville maintains a bridge crew of conflicting but often empathetic personalities trying to do their best. Captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) was a talented officer until his life hit the skids after the dissolution of his marriage. Captain Mercer's first officer, Kelly Grayson, is his ex-wife. Years after the fallout, the pair are supportive, if sometimes fractious friends.
The crew also includes single mother Dr. Finn (Penny Johnson Jarald), who is possibly the best doctor the mid-list ship could have hoped for. Helmsman Malloy (Scott Grimes) is a cheerful himbo obsessed with more than one flight stick, while Second Officer Bortus (Peter Macon) is a brusque alien Moclan whose episodes are often painful but heartfelt dialogues. And of course, there's Isaac (Mark Jackson), the robotic science officer whose second season two-parter, "Identity" is a must-see.
The Orville's Success
The first season of The Orville was critically lambasted for feeling like a Star Trek rip-off weighted down with unnecessary jokes, but audiences quickly grasped what MacFarlane's goal actually was. The show was a carefully crafted throwback to the pulp fiction era of sci-fi, it's a loving but sometimes joshing homage to Gene Roddenberry. The light humor would persist but seldom overwhelm a given episode, and it helped balance the weighty topics the show might deal with.
Untethered from the sprawling lore of other franchises, The Orville returned to anthological storytelling mixed with short arcs and persistent character growth. There are all the things that classic Trekkies loved. By the second season, the critics finally realized what the fans already knew. This was a show with real chops, mixing modern humanity and humor with the complicated morality stories newer Star Trek entries had begun to leave behind.
Why the Delay?
The Orville's renewal for a third season was confirmed shortly after its second season finale went to air. By July, streaming service Hulu amicably took control of the show after MacFarlane discussed his ambitious goals for the show with both them and 20th Century Fox, who has been MacFarlane's sponsor for over twenty years. Committing to a slower but high-quality production, unfortunately, meant that The Orville ran head-on into COVID-19 delays in March 2020. Production kicked back into gear in December 2020, with new pandemic concerns hitting the pause button in January. The series is still tentatively dated to release in late 2021, exclusively on Hulu.
The Orville stars Seth MacFarlane, Adrianne Palicki, Scott Grimes, Peter Macon, Penny Johnson Jerald, J. Lee, and Mark Jackson.