(courtesy IMP Awards)
Saying goodbye to any series you love is always a desperately sad affair.
Sure, you could argue, if you’re head was made of Romulan stone, that the end of any series is hardly the end of the world, and yes, in the grand scheme of things, that’s quite true.
Stack it up against climate change, the rise of fascistic nationalism worldwide and a whole host of other societal ills and the finish of a series like Star Trek: Lower Decks really isn’t that big a deal.
But, and it’a bolded, capitalised BUT with neon-clad vivacity (well, if the blog’s font system ran to that which it lamentably does not), when said show is so well-written, so funny and so heartfelt that it manages to both life your day-to-day life and reinvigorate a franchise, its untimely end can feel like a huge thing.
The ninth series in the long-running Star Trek franchise, which begin, of course, back in the 1960’s with the Gene Roddenberry-created The Original Series, Lower Decks has been ended by Paramount+ which appears to have a ruthlessly savage approach to a franchise which you would think it would treasure above all others.
Like many a richly-written animated series before it – think The Simpsons, Family Guy etc – Lower Decks could have gone on and on, able to mine from a venerably long franchise which it reveres and affectionately parodies in equal measure while becoming very much its own take on Roddenberry’s idealised view of the future.
But here it is ending after just five seasons (it doesn’t even get the traditional seven seasons of old, bestowed on the likes of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine), leaving a great big hole where some bright, vibrant, highly clever Star Trek programming should be.
The good news is that the final seven episodes in the series are a riot of fun, and while not necessarily the show at its peak, nevertheless gives the series the sendoff it deserves and leaving devoted fans like this reviewer at least feeling like we got the chance to say a proper goodbye.
If you’ve watched the first three episodes of season five, you’ll know that the Cerritos is on a mission to discover why quantum fissures are opening between various realities in the multiverse, all of them running the risk of rupturing the delicate balance between each reality and possibly ending life as we know it.
So, you know, fairly serious stuff.
But Lower Decks being Lower Decks, it’s possible to have a great deal of fun about some fairly deadly stuff, and so it is that the four, now five really, main characters of the show, all now on the rise up the ranks in various ways – Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), Sam Rutherford and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) deal not only with fissures but with what each of them mean to the other and what that means for them going forward.
For instance, on a mission to Dilmer III in episode seven “Fully Dilated” to recover some lost Trek tech that might influence the development of the pre-warp culture there, Mariner, Tendi and T’Lyn have to contend with issues far beyond the standard mission parameters.
On a world where one second of standard trek time equates to a week planetside, Mariner decides she wants the complete full-life-lived-in-mere-moments trope experienced by the likes of Picard in Next Generation (“The Inner Light”) and in Voyager’s “Blink of an Eye” episode – it doesn’t, quite amusingly, go as planned – while Tendi and T’Lyn try to find themselves a purpose on a planet where science is rudimentary at best.
Tendi and T’Lyn are both up for Senior Science Officer on the Ceritos and while the fissures issue is paramount, Lower Decks takes the time, with Data (voiced by Brent Spiner) even making an appearance, to develop the two characters in quite meaningful and engaging ways while also making all kinds of pleasing Star Trek Canon references.
It’s one example where Lower Decks manages to continues to grow its characters, widen the scope and originality and yes, fun, of its storytelling, while still saying goodbye in a fitting, emotionally meaningful and imaginatively amusing way.
Episode after episode, including standout “Fissure Quest” where a range of Star Trek characters, from across shows and realities get to make a hugely entertaining appearance, and where the great fissure mystery is cleverly solved while still giving our much-loved Lower Decks crew a chance to strut their stuff.
Final episode, “The New Next Generation”, is a wonderful end to things, closing off season five while setting up all of the characters for a life beyond Lower Decks, which alas we’ll likely never get to see, and giving us a hoot of an episode that is a love letter to this show in particular and Star Trek as a whole.
Saying goodbye to such a fine show is never going to be easy but this finale at least makes it a little easier to handle, serving up some Star Trek lore, very real characters and a vibrant sense of goofy, thoughtful fun right until the end of a very worthy series-ending episode.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What I loved about Star Trek: Lower Decks, right from the very beginning, was its willingness and quickly demonstrated ability, to be both a love letter to a long-running franchise and to parody it in equal measure.
Like many fans, I fiercely love what I love, but I also love the idea of playing around with it too; treasuring something doesn’t mean you can’t push it a little away from you, look at it from different angles and have some fun with what it is and what it represents.
Star Trek: Lower Decks did that beautifully, and while some more serious fans might see its propensity for parodying ridiculousness as a betrayal or lessening of the franchise, what it did it fact is elevate Star Trek as a whole by going deep into its lore and having some fun with it.
It’s all too easy to lose the fun that propels a show to much-adoring greatness in the first place, but Lower Decks always knew what made Star Trek so good and so compellingly entertaining to watch, and it made merry with all of it, not as a way of diminishing it but of showcasing how daring and imaginative, and yes, a little silly in the best of all ways, the show could be.
It mixed satire and seriously good storytelling in a fun homage to a franchise which it clearly loved, and deservedly so, but which it knew, like every TV show out there, could be just a little silly too.
In this interview with the delightful Tawny Newsome, who boisterously voices Beckett Mariner, we get a sense of how the show meant to everyone involved, and how like Futurama, Lower Decks may yet rise from the televisual grave.
A boy can dream because this was one of the good ones and a return to its glorious take on the Star Trek universe cannot come soon enough …