yeah, I think losing Bortas and all the silly "Aren't these aliens weird" bits would be a godsend for Orville, but yeah it has the whole Explore, try your best to not be "THAT" star spanning empire thing is the feel of Trek to me, something actual banner Star Trek shows have been doing increasingly since DS-9, though it worked in DS-9 because of the whole total war thing, you just need to look at some of the truly horrible things the allied powers did in WW2 to see that kind of thing is a real thing, but generally once the war is done, try and forget it...
My least favourite episodes of Voyager for example were the ones where they met other Starfleet ships in the Delta Quadrant, who had gone feral every time, if it was that easy for starfleet crews to fall, why didn't Voyagers crew?
ok, thats just a pet peeve, but it's one example of my issues with SOME of the writing of Voyager