With sci-fi effort, MacFarlane loses himself in space

Seth MacFarlane’s new vehicle, “The Orville,” will receive a special premiere Sunday on Fox, but the show isn’t ready for takeoff.

There’s something there, but it needs work — a lot of work.

Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) plays a starship captain without a vessel. He has had some problems in the past year after discovering his wife, Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), in bed with a hairless blue alien — or, as Ed calls him, “Papa Smurf.”

But with 3,000 captain’s chairs to fill in the galaxy, the Union has to take a chance that Ed can get his act together, so it hands him the keys to the Orville.

He inherits some crew members, including the super-serious alien Bortus (Peter Macon); Isaac (Mark Jackson), a C3PO type with a tin patina who thinks all other forms of life are doofuses; John LaMarr (J. Lee), who doesn’t take most things seriously, and super-strong Alara Kitan (Halston Sage). There’s also a new doctor on board, Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald); and Ed’s best friend, Gordon Molloy (Scott Grimes), has agreed to join him as helmsman.

All he really needs is an executive officer, and he gets saddled with his ex-wife.

At times, “Orville” seems like an uncomplicated paean to the original “Star Trek.” It has occasional moments of humor, but they feel half-hearted.

At other times, the show wants to make social commentary.

Bortus and his partner, Klydon (Chad L. Coleman), come from a single-gender race and learn that they are going to be parents. The infant turns out to be female. Klydon wants to have the child’s gender

altered; Bortus does not. The dispute plays out in complete seriousness, drenched with import and pronouncements about gender reassignment and female empowerment.

There are promising elements and moments. Norm MacDonald voices Yaphit, who looks like a mobile glob of rubber cement. He’s funny because, of course, he’s Norm MacDonald.

Holland Taylor and Jeffrey Tambor make brief guest appearances as Ed’s parents, again giving viewers a small taste of what this show really could be.

Real dramedy carefully weaves comedy and drama together, with the humor and seriousness refracting and modifying each other. (See “Transparent” or “Orange Is the New Black.”)

Another problem with the show: MacFarlane as its leading man. He can spoof a squarejawed hero, but he just isn’t very interesting as a straight man.

With any Seth MacFarlane project, of course, come certain expectations. He has every right to mix things up — to not create an outer space “Ted” or an intergalactic “Family Guy.” But he needs to know what he’s creating and why — so we know.

Unfortunately, we don’t — and MacFarlane gives us little reason to want to know.

Fox owes it to him and to viewers to bring “The Orville” back to port for retooling.

Too bad it won’t.