When I first started this show I found it to be a really awkward mix of comedy and seriousness. It had some jokes thrown it at the most inopportune times as some kind of comic relief from a really serious situation. Perhaps the first half of the first season was actually a bit rough or maybe the show just grew on me, but by season 2 I found myself loving this show.
To me it seems as every bit as comfy, intellectually interesting and even funny as some classic Star Treks while still clearly being its own thing. I wish more comfy space shows like this would get made.
What are your thoughts on The Orville? Also I miss Alara.
Put me in the "like it don't love it" camp. It is very clearly Seth MacFarlane's love letter to 90s trek, pulled some good ideas from that era's writers, and has more heart than it seems in the first couple of episodes. Some of the character work is actually quite touching, and it seems like they're having fun with the show, so it's rarely a slog. Overall though, it is way too uneven to be great or even really good.
Seth is not a great actor, and several members of the cast are MUCH worse than him. The set design, costume, and prosthetics are pretty weak, and Seth's sense of humor just doesn't work for me, so in a context where he's trying to find the right balance with a Star Trek show, it hits even more awkwardly. It's also very specifically SETH MACFARLANE'S love letter to Star Trek, so there's way too much emphasis on 1980-2000 American pop culture, and I say that as someone who's only a few years younger than him. It's distracting how narrow the set of references are in a show that traffics in them so liberally.
There's also something just a bit off about the messaging of many of the more serious episodes, like Seth feels a need to come down on a definitive answer to the moral questions that come up. I dunno, I am having trouble recollecting specific scenes, but it's lingering feeling I have. I almost imagine 20-something Seth in a dorm room at RISD screaming at Picard that he should have just shot that Romulan!