The Orville 1x6 "Krill"

the story: Mercer and Malloy infiltrate a Krill vessel.

what it's all about: This is the first episode of The Orville I've managed to catch.  Like Galaxy Quest before it, Orville is both an homage to and parody of Star Trek.  It seems to have been created in response to Discovery, which from the beginning was announced to be a dramatic departure from the Star Trek franchise.  Whereas Babylon 5 ushered a floodgate of challengers in a previous generation of new Star Trek programming, Orville is the exact opposite.  Actually, along with Discovery it signals an improbable resurgence of sorts of the kind of programming the Babylon 5 surge eventually ended, somewhat symbolically with the abbreviated run of Firefly some fifteen years ago (Firefly itself could be considered a literal interpretation of Gene Roddenberry's famous "Wagon Train to the stars!" pitch for the original Star Trek).

This particular episode even features the recurring Krill threat, another Orville parallel relevant to Discovery.  The Krill, who sort of look like a cross between Deep Space Nine's Jem'Hadar and Nemesis's Remans, might otherwise be considered Klingon analogs, and of course the Klingons are at the heart of Discovery.

Obviously Orville has deep affection for Star Trek.  It virtually is Star Trek.  It's Star Trek with nitpicking commentary built into it, which is about as meta as you can get with Star Trek fifty years in.  The nitpicking is the only real parody involved; otherwise it's just as if Seth MacFarlane gave himself permission to continue the Star Trek franchise as it has been traditionally known.  The storytelling is more or less exactly the same.  Mercer and Malloy find themselves in a moral dilemma where the Krill have developed a superweapon, and in order to prevent it from being used, they must decide whether to take out the Krill, or let them use it on an unsuspecting colony, basically in order to guarantee their own safety during the risky mission aboard the Krill ship.  They end up killing most of the Krill, saving the children they find aboard, and a Krill woman Mercer has developed a relationship with.  But the woman chillingly tells him that he hasn't saved innocent lives but rather created new enemies. 

This is a twist that probably is only possible in the age of terrorism, in which the laws of cause and effect have been observed more keenly than perhaps ever before, how they take their time to play out, not merely action and reaction, but what happens with the next generation that has witnessed the sins of the past.  Mercer makes the call that has always previously been considered the right one, but he's forced to accept that it maybe isn't as right as it used to be, so to speak.

It's fascinating.  MacFarlane previously did this sort of thing with A Million Ways to Die in the West, which I think also worked extremely well on its several levels, but his fans, and audiences in general, will mostly think of him in terms of Family Guy and Ted.  Which is a shame.  I knew he was capable of something like this from his Family Guy Star Wars specials alone. 

No matter how long Orville lasts (history doesn't favor Fox's patience), it'll be a worthy testament to Star Trek's legacy, and in some ways an expansion of it.