I'd agree with that. Once you get past the Seth MacFarlane "humor"[0] it is obvious that they have a better understanding of what people liked about Star Trek than the Abrams movies, Discovery, or even Picard.

[0] Which actually does manage to be funny on occasion. The leg gag, the cigarettes, a few others come to mind.

Anything JJ Abrams produces is entirely made to be visually effective, rather than philosophically interesting or even internally congruent.

Occasionally, I want to watch something more for the visual and coolness factor, and I can appreciate when productions don't take themselves too seriously.

However JJ takes it too far, and I've ended up despising everything he has ever had a hand in writing and producing. Aside from the visuals, every single story element is so devoid of any logical coherence, that they are an affront to the mind or anyone who would care about things making sense.

Take a look at some of the amusing "pitch meeting" videos on JJ movies, and you'll quickly see the common thread of nothing ever making any sense. He's a great visual composer, but his story writing abilities is worse than that of an average 10 year old.

> Anything JJ Abrams produces is entirely made to be visually effective, rather than philosophically interesting or even internally congruent.

There is one exception. Probably the only one, or at least the only one I know of. JJ Abrams was an executive producer on Person of Interest series, which is to date the best coverage of AI in television[0]. I was shocked when I noticed JJ's name in credits, because the show is very good in the cerebral sense, unlike everything else I've seen his name on[1].

I'm not denying his film-making skills. He's sharp. But his specialty is action and visuals, not deep plots.

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[0] - It starts pretending to be a run-of-the-mill crime solving drama with a sci-fi twist - the protagonists receive tips of possible violent crimes from an AI. But very quickly it turns into a discussion of AI ethics, state surveillance (the show managed to depict Snowden revelations before they happened!), information security, pros and cons of black-box vs. glass-box algorithms, and AI control/alignment problem. That's on top of good character development and regular (but not overdone) firefights that keep things interesting.

[1] - Most notably Westworld, which, like PoI, was created by Jonathan Nolan, and had a chance of being a spiritual successor - but it became a repetitive, violent action series from 2nd season on, with a plot that serves mostly as an excuse for characters to murder each other.

Thanks for the heads up of Person of Interest. It sounds right up my alley, and I'm sure I would have given it a pass if not for that.

I agree regarding Person of Interest. I just love the show.

I think if Seth had been allowed to run a "proper" Star Trek, it'd have helped temper his humour a little and he'd have had a really positive impact on the universe. Recent Star Treks have taken themselves far too seriously, and he could have reversed that.

However in some ways perhaps it's a blessing that he got to do his own thing with The Orville - without the pressure of being in the official universe he has been free to capture the feeling of Star Trek, rather than retreading the same path.

Yeah, I'd argue he was overdoing humor in The Orville on purpose - I think he wanted the show to be classified as a parody of Trek-style shows, and not a Trek derivative, in order to avoid intellectual property issues. You can see that as the show established itself, the jokes were toned down a lot - season 2 of The Orville is much more serious than the first one (I'd describe it as TNG, but with the drama/humor proportion of StarGate SG-1), and manages to cover some deep political and ethical topics.

Spoiler of the topic that impressed me (rot13, spoils a topic from S2):

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As far as I remember, Star Trek never ventured that far. United Federation of Planets did not make such compromises.