THE NEW FOX comedy The Orville stars Seth MacFarlane as the captain of a Star Trek-style starship. In fact the similarities to Star Trek are so overwhelming that science fiction editor John Joseph Adams is surprised they haven’t resulted in a lawsuit.

“I’m kind of baffled that it’s legal that they’re allowed to do this, because it’s barely a parody,” Adams says in Episode 288 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s so exactly Star Trek. You could take the Orville ship and put it in an episode of Next Generation and no one would blink.”

The similarities to Star Trek even extend to the show’s format, which is highly episodic, with the crew of the Orville exploring a new location every week. It’s a throwback to an earlier style of television that author Robert Repino really enjoys.

“The things that happen and the decisions that are made end up having consequences throughout the rest of the season,” he says, “but at the same time you don’t have to watch Episode 2 and really pay attention in order to understand what’s going to happen in Episode 11—which is the format of a lot of these binge-worthy shows these days. So I appreciated that a lot. I thought it was a good compromise between the two.”

Unfortunately The Orville gets off to a slow start, according to Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley. “I watched the first episode and I didn’t really laugh,” he says. “It just really didn’t seem good to me at all, and I was kind of like, ‘OK, I’m not going to watch any more of this.’ But then I started hearing people who had watched some of the later episodes saying they liked it, and that got me interested in watching more.”

Science fiction author Melinda Snodgrass, who wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, agrees that the first two episodes of The Orville are a bit uneven. But overall she loves the way the show combines Star Trek-style adventure with goofball humor.

Orville is great. Hope they stick to the monster of the week" format. The serialized story is what killed Discovery for me.