10 Ways The Orville Is More Star Trek Than Discovery
2. Self Contained Adventures
One of the charming things about every Star Trek series, especially now that they are available on streaming services, is that you can watch almost any episode from any season and still pick it up and enjoy.
While there are often overarching plotlines that run through seasons or groups of episodes, Star Trek went out of its way to make sure that nearly every episode had one or two of their own stories to tell. This tradition, which is based largely on Star Trek being made for syndicated television, is being followed closely by The Orville.
Times change, and so do storytelling techniques. In the world of the streaming services where Star Trek: Discovery lives, long-form storytelling is king. It should come as no surprise, then, that the series is being presented as if each episode were a single chapter in a longer story. This break with tradition is probably more a sign of the changing times than it is a deliberate effort to set Discovery apart from its predecessors.