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What do you get when you combine Star Trek vibes and the creator and writer of Family Guy? Come aboard The Orville! Created by Seth MacFarlane, the comedy series first hit screens in 2017 and follows the adventures, and misadventures, of the exploratory spaceship the USS Orville. The captain of this ship is Ed Mercer (MacFarlane), whose leadership of his team is complicated by having to work with his ex-wife, Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki).
Season 2 of The Orville, released in 2018, took audiences on a journey of the USS Orville going on great adventures and meeting mysterious species. Yet, not everything went as planned, resulting in plentiful scenes of unexpectedly serious character development, sacrifices, and witty comedy.
Hulu took over from Fox, releasing the third and final season of the show in June 2022. Titled The Orville: New Horizons, the ragtag space crew arrives for the upgraded return of the series, full of danger, new territory, and new battles to be won against the Kaylon race. Determined to establish peace despite impending threats, Captain Mercer guides the USS Orville into its new mission.
While The Orville is finally back on screen, fans of the show have a lot more options to explore along the same lines. Here’s our top list of shows that possess a similar combination of science fiction, drama, and parody.
Mike McMahan, the writer of Rick and Morty, created the 2020 adult animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks. The series is not only the first Star Trek animated show since the 1970s, but it follows the lower deck workers of a lower-level ship of the Starfleet, known as USS Cerritos. This comedic take on the Star Trek universe, charting the dysfunctional lives of lower-rank crewmen, is one of a kind. Main characters include demoted daughter-of-the-captain Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), ambitious Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), the Orion D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), and tinkerer Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Paramount+ will be releasing the third season on its streaming platform in 2022.
People of Earth (2016-2017)
David Jenkins, who recently helped create the 2022 HBO Max show Our Flag Means Death, created the humorous TBS sci-fi series People of Earth. Ozzie Graham (Wyatt Cenac) is a skeptical journalist who takes a story in Beacon, New York, to interview and write on a support group called StarCrossed. This group, which meets in a Catholic Church, consisted of people who believe they were once abducted by aliens. Graham is fairly unamused and disbelieving of their stories until he begins to identify with what some survivors are saying. What he once denounced with complete certainty as impossible suddenly becomes a possibility. People of Earth has two seasons, both of which are streaming now on Hulu.
Armando Iannucci, who recently wrote the screenplay for 2019’s The Personal History of David Copperfield, created the 2020 HBO comedy series Avenue 5. House actor Hugh Laurie leads as Captain Ryan Clark, head of the interplanetary cruise ship known as Avenue 5. When an accident on the ship bumps the cruise off-course and kills three passengers, Clark finds himself with a spaceship full of panicking people. With insufficient supplies for the new journey home to Earth, and the owner of Avenue 5, Herman Judd (Josh Gad), breathing down his neck, chaos ensues.
The first season of Avenue 5 is streaming now on HBO Max. A second, and likely final season will be coming soon.
Hyperdrive (2006-2007)
Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley, both of whom worked with Iannucci on the HBO satire series Veep, created the British sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive. Welsh comedian Nick Frost is Space Commander Michael Henderson, head of the HMS Camden Lock spaceship. Henderson leads his crew through space as they secure British interests and assets across the galaxy. Serving under Henderson are the two other main characters, trigger-happy First Officer Eduardo Pauline York (Kevin Eldon) and potentially unqualified Diplomatic Officer Chloe Alice Teal (Miranda Hart). The USS Camden Lock flies through space, striving toward a mission with its highly disorganized and eclectic team.
Tim Miller, director of the 2016 film Deadpool, created and developed the anthology Netflix series Love, Death & Robots. Originally imagined as a movie reboot of the 1981 film Heavy Metal, Netflix helped shape the reboot into a series and launched the first season in 2019. Each episode is its own story, connecting to at least one of the series’ title’s themes–love, death, or robots. The short episodes encapsulate individual tales, some sharing cast members or, for example, continuing storylines, like how one episode in Season 3 is a sequel to Season 1’s “Three Robots.” Notable cast members voice acting in the series include Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Season 1), Stefan Kapičić (Season 1), Michael B. Jordan (Season 2), Peter Franzén (Season 2), Rosario Dawson (Season 3), and Dan Stevens (Season 3).
Justin Roiland created the adult animated series Rick and Morty for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2013. Roiland based the series on his short film, which was a parody of Back to the Future, and turned this core concept into an Emmy-award winning five-season show. Additionally, Roiland voices the two titular characters, Rick and Morty Smith, along with various side characters.
Rick and Morty follows the quirky members of the Smith household, who live a fairly average life in Washington. Yet nothing about this family is normal, as Ricky, the mad scientist patriarch, spends much of his free time traveling across dimensions. Traveling alongside him is his low-key, anxious grandson, Morty, who joins in explorations.
Chris Sheridan, who is known for his work on Family Guy, created the Syfy show Resident Alien, which premiered its first season in 2021. The show is based on the comic book series Resident Alien, written by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse.
Alan Tudykis an alien who invades Earth and kills and steals the identity of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle. Harry has been assigned to eliminate Earth’s human population. Yet as he works with the dominant species on the planet, and strikes up an unlikely friendship with the only person who can see his alien form, a boy named Max Hawthorne (Judah Prehn), he hesitates to carry out his original mission. Harry also finds a friend and confidante in doctor’s assistant Asta Twelvetrees (Sara Tomko), who is of the Ute Tribe and has her own traumatic past to reconcile with.
Partially written by Howard Overman, and executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Future Man is a Hulu sci-fi comedy series that premiered in 2017. Josh Hutcherson spearheads this original series as an unambitious janitor, Josh Futturman, who spends his free time playing the unbeatable video game Biotic Wars. When he manages to conquer the game, he celebrates as any other millennial gamer, only for Tiger (Eliza Coupe) and Wolf (Derek Wilson) to emerge from the video game. The two very real people recruit Futturman’s help in saving the world, which means one thing: time travel.
Star Trek aficionado Bryan Fuller and writer of Star Trek Into Darkness, Alex Kurtzman created the prequel television series Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. This show is the only non-comedic and solely sci-fi drama series on our list.
Sonequa Martin-Greenof The Walking Dead plays the main character Commander Michael Burnham, a Vulcan-raised human science specialist who learns her new place on the USS Discovery as the United Federation of Planets enters its war with the Klingon Empire. She serves on the starship under Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and alongside fellow crew members First Officer Saru (Doug Jones), Voq (Shazad Latif), chief engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), and ensign Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman).
