'The Orville' Is the 'Star Trek' Parody Trekkies Need Right Now

The first trailer for Seth MacFarlane’s new series — The Orville — dropped out of warp on Tuesday, and it’s exactly the kind of loving pastiche of a parody that Trekkies need right now.

With a Star Trek: Discovery debut still tenuous, and the fourth installment of the film series also in limbo, the next best thing to a real Star Trek product looks like The Orville.

While it’s often easy for Seth MacFarlane to relentlessly poke fun at all sorts of things, especially in Family Guy, he brings his love of Star Trek to bear in The Orville, which takes place 400 years in a future, remarkably similar to your typical Star Trek exploration-focused show. MacFarlane plays Officer Ed Mercer, who graduates bottom of his class and becomes captain of the exploratory vessel, U.S.S. Orville, as part of the Planetary Union — because he was their last and only choice.

If the trailer is any indication, The Orville will include a diverse array of humanoid alien species, grapple with difficult interpersonal dynamics among its crew, and follow a fun and casual errand or planet of the week format. It’s fun, goofy, and smart — much closer to Galaxy Quest than it is to Spaceballs in its design and brand of comedy, without ever edging into lampooning its source material. In short: It’ll be everything that people love about Star Trek, with jokes.

Check out the debut trailer below.

The Orville will fly its way onto Fox sometime this fall.