Was Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Inspired By ‘Galaxy Quest’?

Although Fox’s “The Orville” and Dean Parisot’s 1991 film “Galaxy Quest” have similarities, Seth MacFarlane said that the former wasn’t inspired by the latter.

In a recent interview with Digital Spy, MacFarlane said that “The Orville” didn’t take a lead from “Galaxy Quest” even though he saw the movie before creating the TV series. “I saw ‘Galaxy Quest’ once years ago, but shockingly, it wasn’t [an inspiration for ‘The Orville’]. And it was because that was a full-on comedy,” said MacFarlane, who also plays Captain Ed Mercer on TV show.

“The intent of that movie, to me, was to be a full-on comedy,” continued MacFarlane of the parody film, which stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell. “As a result, the stakes, in terms of science fiction and the parables of science fiction, weren’t really something that needed to be taken all that seriously because it was pure comedy.”

“The Orville,” on the other hand, is a “sci-fi, comedic drama,” MacFarlane said. “Because we’re an hour-long show, the story has to come first. And it can't just be gag, gag, gag, gag, gag. There has to be some reality to where the comedy comes from.”

While “Galaxy Quest” didn’t influence “The Orville,” MacFarlane said at the Television Critics Association press tour last August that he drew from “many different places” when creating “The Orville,” and those included “Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek.”

“I miss the aspirational place ‘Star Trek’ used to occupy,” MacFarlane revealed at the time, noting that the beloved franchise has chosen to go dystopian. While the “Star Trek’s” change of direction worked well for the franchise, MacFarlane said that space dramas “can’t all be ‘Hunger Games.’” “There is some space for aspirational,” MacFarlane said, before adding that “The Orville” is “an attempt to fill that void.”

“The Orville” ended its freshman run earlier this month. Fox initially ordered 13 episodes for the show’s first season. But for some reason, the network cut the episode order by one. The supposed 13th hour, however, will be added to the already renewed Season 2 of the series — a similar move the network took during the second season of “Lucifer.”

Fox has yet to set a premiere date for Season 2 of “The Orville.”