It wouldnt work for me, because Trek is a drama show, not a drama/comedy mix. If you have comedy in Star Trek, it is entirely situational comedy without a joke punchline. That's also why the comedy works very well in Star Trek: It is believable and since the show has an overall serious tone, the "surprise" factor, when comedy hits, is much greater. Brent Spiner did some hilarious comedy with Data.
"Orville" had such a perfect Trek comedy moment: When Bortus left his appartment while his partner was watching TV and eating comfort food, they shared one long look at each other - without a word, just through body language, the situational comedy worked perfectly, because it was realistic.
Also Trek is a period piece. It shows mankind several hundred years from now and thus these people have a different culture than ours (like we have compared to the people during the 1600-1700 years). They behave differently, speak differently. Which Trek reflected perfectly. "Orville" drops this concept entirely. While the time and science is 400 years from now, the human beeings are from the year 2017 and not from a period far in the future. This breaks the realism of the show.
The contemporary pop culture references work in Star Trek only, when they come from an individual character motivation like Tom Paris and his love for old movies (that's why they work also in "Guardians of the Galaxy", since Quill was a kid on earth during the 70s and thus has a motivation to cite pop culture because of the connection to his childhood).
BTW I personally whould have jump started the pop culture references in Orville by having Mercer a personal interest in this (because his family were active in the entertainment industry of old earth for example, under the name "MacFarlane" back then) and as captain he uploaded his private collection of videos into the ships computer and the crew discovers it over time and refers to it.
