SETH-SHIP VOYAGES
Adrianne Palicki and Seth MacFarlane star in new space series for Fox,
LOS ANGELES— Space: the final frontier for Emmy-winning Seth MacFarlane. His are the new voyages of The Orville. Its 13-episode mission is to explore the ratings possibilities for a Fox sci-fi show, to seek out new viewers, to boldly go where it looks like others have gone before.
After bringing the network plenty of success with animated series such as Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, MacFarlane has created his first live-action series for Fox, The Orville.
The series, which will have a special debut Sunday, Sept. 10 (8 p.m. on City), follows the crew of humans and aliens aboard the U.S.S. Orville, a mid-level exploratory spaceship 400 years in the future. MacFarlane plays the ship’s captain, Ed Mercer, who had given up on his hopes of command until he got this one last chance.
The description of the show sparks immediate comparisons to spacetravelling series that have gone before, including those that have been part of the Star Trek franchise. To be as honest as a Vulcan in the witness stand, one of the executive producers of The Orville is Brannon Braga, who held a similar job on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. Also, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Jonathan Frakes and Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Duncan McNeill have directed several episodes.
MacFarlane understands why parallels are being drawn but stresses that the idea of a spaceship cruising the universe is not a new concept.
“Star Trek itself sprang from a lot of different sci-fi tropes that came before it, from radio, sci-fi radio dramas in the ’30s and serials. They were the ones who really crystalized it in a more perfect way than anyone else,” MacFarlane says.
“There are many different places that I draw from when I kind of think about this. I mean, there’s The Twilight Zone. There’s Star Trek. I hold a lot of these different franchises in very, very high regard.”
MacFarlane grew up a fan of the forward-thinking, aspirational, optimistic place in science fiction that was the prime directive for the Star Trek offerings. He’s watched science fiction productions in recent years go in a more dystopian direction and he wants The Orville to be more of an example of the positive thinking approach.
“I miss the hopeful side of science fiction that kind of goes back to the roots of the genre,” he said. “What can we achieve if we put our minds to it? And that flourished in the ’90s. In some ways, some shows did it in kind of a more cheesy fashion and others, like Star Trek, made it a little more legit. But that was the way to do a sci-fi show back then. And now, things are just very grim and so that was a conscious choice because I missed that flavour of science fiction.”
Since there have already been 40 different alien races created just to be crew members on the Orville, there are plenty of places in the TV universe for the new series to go.
Joining MacFarlane on his trek will be Adrianne Palicki ( Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Penny Johnson Jerald ( 24), Scott Grimes ( Justified), Peter Macon ( Shameless), Halston Sage ( Neighbors), J Lee ( The Cleveland Show), Mark Jackson ( That Royal Today) and Chad L. Coleman ( The Walking Dead). After its Sept. 10 debut on City, The Orville moves to Thursdays at 9 p.m., beginning Sept. 21, and then to 8 p.m., beginning Nov. 2.