Editing The Orville (section)

==Season One==
The first season was supposed to have thirteen episodes but The Suits didn't like the episode revolving around (gay) porn addiction, so that got pulled, leaving the first season with twelve episodes.

The pilot episode (creatively named "Pilot") introduces Edward "Ed" Mercer and the ship, opening with his soon-to-be-ex wife Kelly cheating on him. This puts him into a tailspin that nearly wrecks his career until he gets a posting on the ''Orville''. Unfortunately for him, Kelly is assigned as his first officer, so he has to come to grips with being a captain while trying to build a professional relationship with her. As the crew learn to work together, one of the better episodes sets the stage for this; "Majority Rule", an episode with good (albeit heisted from ''Black Mirror'') commentary on social currency systems. There's also "About a Girl", a Bortus-centered episode that explores his relationships during a vital part of his race's life cycle. A later episode, "Cupid's Dagger", reveals why Kelly cheated in the first place, being due to biological aphrodisiac properties of Kelly's lover Darulio, a slimy (in the "disgustingly immoral" sense, not the "covered in slime" sense... until you make him happy) alien playboy.  

Since this is a Star Trek homage, the show has to have a recurring bad guy group the protagonists alternate between killing and studying. Given both franchises' showrunners, they also represent/strawman something the showrunner opposes. That's where the Krill come in; reptilian aliens with a fatal weakness to UV radiation (and a maybe-maybe-not coincidentally similar look and name to the "Star Trek: Beyond" villain, Krall). The Krill are villains because they follow a [[Protectorate of Menoth|violently xenophobic religion]] that claims all non-Krill are soulless abominations to be killed or subjugated. Also, [[Derp|the god of this religion and one of its religious phrases (see below) were named for throwaway jokes about U.S car rental companies and "The Hunger Games" protagonist Katniss Everdeen]].

This brings us to the subject the show's been most preachy (pun intended) about by far, its anti-religion slant. While Star Trek also has some "better off atheist" overtones, the Orville goes further. Not content with using the Krill to beat the "religion bad" drum, they harp on it for a quarter of Season One's episodes (including "Mad Idolatry" - Star Trek's "Who Watches the Watchers" with the serial numbers filed off). Every religion is replete with visual references to Christianity - eg; every group's religious vestments, Krill places of worship look like chapels with pews and even a quote-mine of the Bible - plus a potshot at Islam with "Temeen Everdeen", the Krill equivalent of "Allahu Akbar".  All this results in a show pushing anti-religious atheism hard enough to make Star Trek look like [[C.S. Lewis|The Chronicles of Narnia]] (even non-religious viewers made complaints). Hey, if Seth can bog down a season of a TV show with it, we can bog down a paragraph of a webpage talking about it.

The critics did their best to tank the show this season, but most ''viewers'' liked it, a few recurring complaints notwithstanding. In light of positive reception it received, the show was greenlit for a second season.