When I first started this show I found it to be a really awkward mix of comedy and seriousness. It had some jokes thrown it at the most inopportune times as some kind of comic relief from a really serious situation. Perhaps the first half of the first season was actually a bit rough or maybe the show just grew on me, but by season 2 I found myself loving this show.
To me it seems as every bit as comfy, intellectually interesting and even funny as some classic Star Treks while still clearly being its own thing. I wish more comfy space shows like this would get made.
What are your thoughts on The Orville? Also I miss Alara.
Wow, i don't know many people who dislike it. I think the TNG-clone feeling is deliberate. I think like science fiction holds up a mirror to our world... they chose to hold up another mirror and simultaneously copy The Next Generation. There is the doctor, a robot/android... you quickly catch many similarities... but further along things start to get skewed, sometimes your expectations get fulfilled or ruined and they play with the stereotypes. I think it's kind of genius and often times gives it one or two additional layers of depth. Especially when they simultaneously discuss philosophical stuff and simultaneously play with TNG storytelling tropes. Like when they introduced people on the orville are vegan. and star trek still struggles with that today and people far in the future are super advanced, but randomly kill cows to eat them.
I also think the relationship between the android and the doctor has a certain cringy-ness to it. We currently see AI slowly becoming reality. It is very up to date to discuss people having relationships with machines. But they somehow do it in a weird and strange way. And too dramatic. But remember, there's also Wesley Crusher. And Captain Proton and some weird robots on Voyager's holodeck.
I don't know why you associate that "old" feeling with something negative. It reminds me of good times, watching star trek series as a kid. And to this date i like those sounds more than the atmospheric sounds of recent Star Trek. And I also like the light and bright spaceships more than the recent tv shows that all happen at night and have dark and dimly lit sets. like Picard.
Malloy's line delivery in Season 3 when he confesses to killing and eating animals really goes a long way to show how far the ethical mores of future society have moved. He basically felt like a murderer because, to him at least, that's exactly what he felt like. Contrast that against his prior characterization as the goofy, prankster guy and you get so much more depth of character from him.
It's like Marty McFly admitting to Doc Brown that he killed and ate Biff because the Doc left the two on a desert island and timey wimey weirdness meant he showed back up two months later than he expected. Heavy stuff.