Parody is considered fair use under US copyright law, so if you want to blatantly rip off something without getting sued, you say it's a parody. If you don't want to do a parody and you don't want to get sued, you come up with your own ideas. That's part of the problem with The Orville. McFarlane had to play it as parody early on, no matter that he wanted to do more serious Star Trek-style storytelling. The problem is, I'm sure I'm not the only viewer who can't take Mercer seriously in a less parodic episode because the guy's a joke. His character wasn't built to carry the weight of a serious story.
Nope. If the Orville is a ripoff of Star Trek than you can argue that Babylon v, Star gate and many more series are. Under that law they could actually use the Star Trek trademark and characters (see for example the SNL Star Trek sketches), but this is not what’s happening here. Is for setting similar? Sure. Would it have issues in court because of that? No. There are plenty of shows that have settings similar to each other.
The Orville tries so hard to imitate Star Trek that it has Star Trek writers and cast members on the show, it borrows the look and feel of Star Trek, especially TNG, tells similarly structured stories, and has episode music recognizably in the Star Trek style, not as a one-off, but as standard practice. Nobody else has done anything that obviously indebted to Star Trek without being Star Trek.
Sure, but it’s still not a parody of Star Trek nor does include any copyrighted material. On the contrary, they are developing their universe quite well and it doesn’t look like the one of Star Trek, if not for the obvious parallel union:federation, that still have some interesting differences and are pretty much the kind of direction one may optimistically see humanity take. And with Brannon Braga producing the show one may argue he’s pretty much doing the same thing he always does.
That's probably the hardest part for me regarding the Orville and why I didn't go back. They had a super comedy episode and then a super serious one and the gears stripped for me in trying to follow this character who is basically characterized as near incompetent who could only regain his mojo because of his manipulative ex and an admiral. That's not inspiring, and it is very jarring.
It tried, I'll give it that. It had a stand out episode and then a complete downer and that was pretty much it for me. The overall look and feel of the show so close to something that I could enjoy but it falls out of alignment quickly and I can't keep up. I'll revisit it someday. But, as a show it isn't doing much to hook me.
Yes, they swear on DSC, but I don't remember the other behavior you're talking about, and swearing has been pretty tastefully done. Hell, it's pretty hard to find non-kid shows that don't have swearing, and when it comes to Trek if they wanted taken seriously as prestige series, they were going to have be at least a bit more mature than the old shows were. Discovery is still very tame compared to a lot of the other streaming shows out, shit they can even say fuck on basic cable these days. I think a single episode of Yellowstone or The Magicians last couple seasons have more fucks in them than all of DSC has. Not many shows these days get the kinds of numbers shows regularly did back in the '80s, people's attention is spread out a lot more now. I pay $6.99 a month for Hulu and I have access to all of their original series and movies, all the Live gets you is access to content from more cable channels and stuff like that.
To make something that is similar to another thing, even if it is closely similar, is not in itself to parody that thing. The word has a more specific meaning, as does "satire."
I think it might have originally started off as a parody, but as the show went on, especially with season 2, the show became more of its own thing. It's done a lot to expand its own lore in a variety of ways, and I consider it more of a loving homage.
But even when it had elements of "parody" in the first season, there were still a number of episodes that were more 90s Trek than anything we'd seen in a long time.
one of my least favorite episodes. never got how swearing should be “mature”...in fact the ones that swear a lot, in my experience, are teenagers trying to sound “mature”.