I have ignored The Orville because it is created by Seth MacFarlane, who I dislike intensely because of his rabid atheistic hatred of religion.
But I learned from watching a Youtube video that the show is pretty good, so I gave it a shot.
Yes, Seth takes every opportunity to portray religion as something that it is bad and awful with no redeeming qualities. But, I decided to overlook that and keep watching the show.
I binge watched both seasons last weekend and I have to say, the show is better than Star Trek: Discovery and every other iteration of Star Trek except perhaps the original series.
However, it does borrow heavily from the Star Trek series, so much so that you think you're just watching another version of Star Trek. It might be described as fan fiction of Star Trek.
But what The Orville has that Star Trek lacks is the portrayal of realistic adult relationships between the characters. And because the show has an ongoing story line, these relationships are portrayed as developing over time.
I highly recommend this show, which has been approved for a third season.
I don't know about Seth's views on religion, I can only say that it doesn't seem to enter into the Orville TV series.
If The Orville seems to have a lot of qualities like real Star Trek, that is because Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, two of the chief creative minds and producers behind everything from The Next Generation thru Voyager head the show.
The 1st season was good, the 2nd season developed a lot and shot off the scales towards the end with a 2 part Borg-like war between the Union and the robot home planet that Isaac is from. Really super duper top notch stuff.
It's a real shame that they cannot produce more than half a season of episodes every 15 months or so. Ridiculous.
One of the funniest aspects of the show is the gay relationship between Bortus and his partner. This guy is a scream!
The Orville is a joint production between Fuzzy Door Pictures and 20th Century Fox Television. By law, all network TV shows are required to offer over the air broadcast. There is no reason shows like Picard and Discovery and Orville cannot be carried on All Access, Hulu, etc., for people who want that, but I have real legal issues with them taking TV shows off the air or moving / offering them EXCLUSIVELY only on a pay service streaming internet service and plan to look into the legal side of this and perhaps see about challenging Fox on this.
I won't watch Discovery or Picard because of this, I doubt my giant TV has internet capability, and if it did, the last thing I'm interested in is buying into a bunch of costly internet services, buying a bunch of additional gear, incuring a lot of expense or hooking up a bunch of cables just to watch 1 or 2 TV shows I may or may not like, and no, I do not want to sit at my desk watching it on a computer monitor.
I WANT TO SEE TELEVISION ON TV
Television is paid for through advertising and I refuse to be manipulated into paying for a new medium forced down my throat. It would be different if they were offering me the choice. There is a definite effort to move "premium" TV to a pay-for streaming medium that they own and control in a cloud and relegate normal TV to rubbish.