Ok, look, I’ll level with you…
I really hated Star Trek: Discovery and, as someone who was genuinely excited for Picard, I found it unbearably bland and slow.
But I’ve just come across something that has me excited for new Trek (well, something as well as Brave New Worlds, that is) and, ironically, it was something I wasn’t really excited for at all: Star Trek: Lower Decks, the upcoming animated series from CBS all-excess.
And why am I excited? Because co-creator Mike McMahan has been saying all the right things about it and now that I’ve seen Solar Opposites (which he co-created), I’m genuinely looking forward to it.
Set within the time frame of Star Trek: The Next Generation (the best Trek time. Fight me), the show sounds like it could be just the fresh coat of paint CBS has been trying – and so far failing miserably – to give the franchise.
“Within Lower Decks, there is a proper in-canon Star Trek show,” McMahan says.
“It takes place during the TNG era. It’s on a ship that feels like it’s always existed there and the bridge crew is dealing with big, never-before-seen Starfleet Star Trek-type stories. So every episode has a thing like that happening in it. And then, on top of that, we’ve got A stories and B stories that are emotionally driven from the point of view of the lower deckers on the ships.
“So it was an area of storytelling that people had covered every once in a while on Star Trek, but never built a show around.”
If you have seen Solar Opposites, you will appreciate how well McMahan can work on the background world – one episode in particular in Solar Opposites is a standout because it focuses on a seemingly unimportant part of the story but proves that it may be packed with the biggest story of all.
Lower Decks takes place on the USS Cerritos and focuses on its ensigns, while the supporting cast is – surprise twist! – the bridge crew but despite the lighthearted look of the series (above), it promises to be in cannon and full of the heart Trek is (well, used to be) known for.
“It was important to me that if you know everything about Star Trek and you watch this show then it fits into canon and doesn’t break Star Trek,” McMahan added.
“In fact, it grows it. And if you know nothing about Star Trek, then all of the canon in Lower Decks feels like mythological, broad understandable sci-fi stuff.”
Now, doesn’t that all sound like a breath of nice Federation air in a universe that has gotten pitch black in recent years? I certainly think so.
Do you?
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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