AND Y'KNOW (talking about intertextuality in media) this is one of the reasons that "The Orville" *works*, despite being, well, what it is; because it takes the super-familiar Star Trek setting, extrapolates the worldbuilding in a way that *makes sense*, and then it *takes risks* with that premise. the risks don't always work out, but when they do it's phenomenal, just by virtue of having done something genuinely risky with such well-known source material.
... no really I'm going away now for a while bye