SNAPSHOT
Developed by Emmy Award winner Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites), Star Trek: Lower Decks, a new half-hour animated comedy series, focuses on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, in 2380. Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi have to keep up with their duties and their social lives, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies.CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Lower Decks features the vocal talents of Tawny Newsome as Ensign Beckett Mariner, Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as Ensign Tendi, Eugene Cordero as Ensign Rutherford, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O’Connell as Commander Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Gillian Vigman as Doctor T’Ana, and Paul Scheer as Lt. Cmdr. Andy Billups.(synopsis via Bleeding Cool)
Welcome aboard Star Trek: Lower Decks where the crew, not the glitzy ones who sit atop the Bridge but the grunt workers far from the bright lights of Starfleet officer stardom, have their work cut out being, well, a little less than reverent and serious.
Kicking off a 10-episode first season run just a few days ago in the USA and Canada – no word yet on when/if the show will air internationally, an odd omission given how popular Discovery and Picard have been of late – thew first animated Star Trek series since Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973-74 promises a whole new look t life aboard Starfleet’s storied ships.
“How different?” you might ask.
Try replicators dispensing frozen and salted Margaritas. Or people imitating the sound of warp engines. Not the kind of thing you’d catch Commander La Forge doing, right?
Which is the idea, really.
Just as Deep Space Nine is the gritty, grimy, real world cousin to Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s more polished utopian sheen, so Lower Decks will bring the kind of quip-heavy irreverence that must surely happen away from the Bridge but which no one has seen to date.
Until now … off you go then! There are giant salivating alien spiders to be run and lessons to be learned …