The prequel bit didn't bother me too much; prequels can be really cool when done well. And it wasn't supposed to be a direct prequel -- it didn't start out as a "Young Kirk" story or anything -- which was also promising.
If I had to pick only one issue with it, I'd say it tried to do too much too quickly. The plot of Season 1 could have been stretched out over 2-3 20+ episode seasons (and would have benefited from that), but it was crammed into 15 episodes. Everything had to move at breakneck speed, you didn't see much development of the cast as an ensemble (one of the strongest parts of earlier shows), and there were very few one-off "problem of the week" episodes (which have often been some of the best of the whole universe).
i feel like star trek as a concept is kind of a product of it’s time and not really something that could work today.
I've heard a lot of Star Trek fans who really like The Orville as a Trek-esque show that works pretty well today. I think the concept of utopian space adventure is still workable; it just needs a good amount of distance from the ~50 years of established history, similar to how TNG and that era of shows was set a century after the original series. Apparently Discovery Season 3 jumped several centuries into the future, so fuck it, maybe it'll work, but I'm not holding out too much hope for this particular installment. Probably the best case scenario is a decade from now we get a show set in the 25th or 26th century that can be largely separate from everything we've seen so far.
The prequel bit didn't bother me too much; prequels can be really cool when done well. And it wasn't supposed to be a direct prequel -- it didn't start out as a "Young Kirk" story or anything -- which was also promising.
If I had to pick only one issue with it, I'd say it tried to do too much too quickly. The plot of Season 1 could have been stretched out over 2-3 20+ episode seasons (and would have benefited from that), but it was crammed into 15 episodes. Everything had to move at breakneck speed, you didn't see much development of the cast as an ensemble (one of the strongest parts of earlier shows), and there were very few one-off "problem of the week" episodes (which have often been some of the best of the whole universe).
I've heard a lot of Star Trek fans who really like The Orville as a Trek-esque show that works pretty well today. I think the concept of utopian space adventure is still workable; it just needs a good amount of distance from the ~50 years of established history, similar to how TNG and that era of shows was set a century after the original series. Apparently Discovery Season 3 jumped several centuries into the future, so fuck it, maybe it'll work, but I'm not holding out too much hope for this particular installment. Probably the best case scenario is a decade from now we get a show set in the 25th or 26th century that can be largely separate from everything we've seen so far.