Star Trek: Lower Decks (season 1)

CBS All Access officially ordered two seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks, a new animated series, in October 2018. Mike McMahan was set as showrunner for the series,[15] and announced in July 2019 that the first season would consist of 10 episodes and be released in 2020.[1] Executive producer Heather Kadin said in January 2020 that the season would be ready by May 2020, but would be scheduled for release around the other Star Trek series being made for All Access.[16] By late March, work on the season was taking place remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing staff to work from home. McMahan said that, at the time, delivery of the series had not been affected by the pandemic.[17] It took around a day for everyone working on the series to be set-up to work from home.[18] In July, CBS All Access officially scheduled the season to premiere in August 2020.[19]

Creator and showrunner Mike McMahan

The series is set in 2380, one year after the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002),[2] and focuses on the support crew of the USS Cerritos rather than the main bridge crew that would usually be the focus of a Star Trek series.[15] The writers began by discussing the main characters in the lower decks of the Cerritos, to determine what emotional stories and character arcs they wanted for each episode. They then came up with science fiction ideas that aligned with those arcs.[18] McMahan felt the writers were attempting to "figur[e] out what the show was" for much of the season.[20]

McMahan said the season was "playing the hits" of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, adding, "Let's do our trial episode. Let's do our version of a movie. Let's do a plague on the ship. Let's do all these things that [feel familiar]".[21] Though Lower Decks is a comedy, he did not want it to be about "punching down on Trek" and focused on telling Star Trek stories with characters who happen to be funny.[22] The writers looked to previous Star Trek series to find similar characters and situations to what they were proposing for Lower Decks, to ensure that their comedic storylines were not straying too far from the franchise.[20] The character Badgey began as a sketch of a Starfleet badge by McMahan that he felt could be similar to the hologram of Professor Moriarty from The Next Generation. The writers discussed what purpose Moriarty served in that series and how they could apply those ideas to Badgey in Lower Decks.[18] Similarly, McMahan described the character of Ensign Fletcher as a dark version of Reginald Barclay from The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, with both characters filling the role of not being a "great officer".[20]

Late in the season, McMahan felt they needed to explore the bridge crew more in order to tell better stories.[14] This included Captain Freeman, who is revealed to be the mother of main character Beckett Mariner. McMahan based this relationship on that of his own mother and sister, with the latter being the namesake for Mariner. They try to keep their relationship a secret but it becomes public knowledge in the season finale. McMahan described the penultimate episode, "Crisis Point", as a "kind of classic Marvel Comics sort of story" with a lot of film tropes and homages to the Star Trek films.[20] He also described it as being a parody of the Star Trek films and a "big character therapy episode" at the same time,[23] with it letting the audience and Mariner see the relationship with her mother play out visually. The episode ends with an emotional breakthrough for Mariner that allows her to work with her mother in the season finale, setting up a new dynamic for the pair in the second season.[20] McMahan said it was difficult to pitch the episode to executives, a problem that he also had with the episode "Veritas" which was inspired by his childhood memories of tuning into Star Trek episodes late and not understanding the context.[23]

The season is filled with many references to other Star Trek series, which McMahan described as "texture and details that we love". There are also non-Star Trek Easter eggs, such as the registry number for the Cerritos being based on McMahan's mother's phone number.[20] "Temporal Edict" ends with a statue of Miles O'Brien from The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine who McMahan said was the most important Star Trek character, explaining that O'Brien is "the original Lower Decker, moving from an enlisted crewman all the way to professor of engineering at Starfleet Academy... those of us who spent years watching him grow across two television series know he is, without a doubt, the most important person in Starfleet History."[24] An element that McMahan enjoyed was being able to revisit aliens and locations from standalone episodes of previous Star Trek series, which was a way to bring back elements from earlier in the franchise without impacting on the existing Star Trek canon. This led to the writers' decision to feature the Pakleds as the "big bads" in the season finale. The Pakleds were introduced in the Next Generation episode "Samaritan Snare" and "used to be sort of a joke", according to McMahan, but are shown in the finale of Lower Decks to have been secretly amassing power and are now a threat to Starfleet.[14] McMahan saw this as a way to address the modern "re-rise of fascism", with a group that "got too powerful, and now they are actually dangerous and people are paying with their lives for not taking them seriously".[25]

Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid respectively star as two of the series' central "lower deckers", Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler.

McMahan announced the series' main cast in July 2019, including ensigns serving in the "lower decks" of the Cerritos—Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as D'Vana Tendi, and Eugene Cordero as Sam Rutherford—and the ship's bridge crew who believe "the show is about them, but it's not"—Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O'Connell as first officer Commander Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as security chief Lieutenant Shaxs, and Gillian Vigman as chief medical officer Dr. T'Ana.[1][2]

In August 2019, McMahan said there was potential for members of the Next Generation cast to make cameo appearances in the series since those characters are in the Star Trek universe at the time that Lower Decks is set, but he did not want this to be in a way that would "mess up the show".[26] He wanted to include William Riker, and had previously met actor Jonathan Frakes while working in Toronto, Canada, on the shorts series Star Trek: Short Treks when Frakes was also there working on Star Trek: Discovery. Frakes was open to reprising his role in Lower Decks, and McMahan thought it would be natural to have Riker appear if the Cerritos needed help from the USS Titan, so that was written into the season finale. He also felt that they could not feature Riker without Deanna Troi also appearing, with Marina Sirtis reprising that role from The Next Generation. McMahan described Riker in Lower Decks as an "enhanced" version of the character, and encouraged Frakes to let him be a "wild, insane character", which Frakes had wanted to do with Riker for years.[14] John de Lancie also reprises his Next Generation role of Q.[11] Additionally, several previous Star Trek actors play new characters, including Kurtwood Smith as Clar[11] and Kenneth Mitchell as Seartave.[12]

In June 2020, Newsome was asked by a fan on Twitter if comedian Paul F. Tompkins would have a guest role in the series given Newsome was a frequent guest on Tompkins' podcast Spontaneanation. Tompkins expressed interest in the idea, and McMahan responded to say that he was organizing to have Tompkins cast for a guest role in the series' second season;[27] Tompkins ultimately voiced Dr. Migleemo, Mariner's therapist, in the first season.[13] In July, Paul Scheer was revealed to have a recurring guest role as Chief Engineer Andy Billups.[8] Other recurring characters in the season include Jessica McKenna as Ensign Barnes as well as the Cerritos computer,[5][6] writer Ben Rodgers as Lieutenant Stevens,[7][26] Sam Richardson as Ensign Vendome,[6][9] Marcus Henderson as Lieutenant Jet Manhaver,[6][10] Tim Robinson as Ensign Fletcher,[6] Jack McBrayer as Badgey,[6] and Lauren Lapkus as Ensign Jennifer.[6] The latter is an Andorian, which Newsome did not realize when she improvised the uncharacteristically human name "Jennifer" during recording.[28][29]

Quaid and Newsome recorded their lines together with McMahan for most of the first season, until the pandemic forced all further recording, including ADR, to take place remotely.[18] This became one of the biggest challenges for the series during the pandemic, with recording equipment needed in each actor's house.[30] Newsome already had a recording studio at her house that she used for the series.[18]

Independent animation studio Titmouse provides the animation for the series,[19] with Juno Lee serving as supervising director for the season.[31] Work on the series' animation began by the end of February 2019.[32] The series' animation style reflects the look of "prime time animated comedy" series such as The Simpsons, but with more detailed backgrounds and environments than is traditional for prime time animation.[33]

The uniforms worn by the crew of the Cerritos are based on unused designs for the film Star Trek Generations (1994), which McMahan said looked similar to designs from previous Star Trek series but were unique enough that fans would associate them with Lower Decks. The uniforms have a flap on the front,[26] and come in yellow for engineering, blue for medical and science, and red for command.[34] He suggested that these uniforms were just for California-class ships like the Cerritos,[26] with other Starfleet officers, such as the crew of the USS Titan, appearing in the grey-shouldered uniforms from the Next Generation-era films and Deep Space Nine.[35][36] Mariner also wears that uniform in a flashback to her time on the USS Quito.[36] Regarding the use of multiple uniform styles at once, McMahan explained that not all starships get "the new stuff" at the same time.[37] In the episode "Much Ado About Boimler"—which was inspired by the two-part Next Generation episode "Chain of Command"—Freeman, Ransom, and Shaxs wear the same stealth outfits that the characters in "Chain of Command" wear.[38]

McMahan hoped that references to Star Trek: The Animated Series in Lower Decks would honor it as the franchise's first animated series, and make it "even more canon that it was before" (referencing a long-time fan debate regarding whether the series was officially part of the franchise's canon).[26] When discussing the characters James T. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series (often abreviated by fans as "TOS", which Lower Decks also jokingly uses in-universe to mean "Those Old Scientists"), an image of the pair from The Animated Series is shown instead of animating them with the style of Lower Decks.[39] In addition to featuring alien species from all of the live-action Star Trek series, Lower Decks includes some "deep cut" species from The Animated Series:[40] the cat-like Caitian Dr. T'Ana is the same species as the Animated Series character M'Ress;[26] a Vendorian shapeshifter, first introduced in The Animated Series, appears in "Envoys";[40] and the three-armed Division 14 specialist in "Much Ado About Boimler" is an Edosian like the character Arex from The Animated Series.[38] McMahan said these characters "fit in perfectly in [the Lower Decks] world" and the series did not have to justify the difference in appearance from the original version that a live-action adaptation of the species likely would.[41]

The series' design team worked with John Van Citters, vice president for Star Trek brand management, and CBS Studios on the design of the USS Titan for the season finale. The ship had never been seen on screen before, but had appeared in video games and on book covers, and McMahan wanted to "make sure we got it right because there are fans out there for who the Titan is a favorite ship". McMahan was also very specific about the designs of the legacy characters Riker and Troi, down to Riker's height and Troi's larger-than-normal pupils. McMahan hoped that the appearance of the Titan and these characters would feel like "one day in a bigger story about those guys".[42] The episode "Veritas" features many starships from throughout the franchise, with a sequence set at a starship museum that holds a 21st-century Vulcan ship like the one seen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), a Klingon battlecruiser, a Jem'Hadar fighter, a Tholian ship, a Ferengi shuttle, and various Federation shuttles from The Original Series and The Next Generation. In the episode, the characters steal a Romulan Bird of Prey—a ship with cloaking technology that has appeared throughout the Star Trek franchise—from the museum, and they also use a long-range Vulcan shuttle that was introduced in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).[43]

The score for the season, composed by Chris Westlake,[44] was originally going to be recorded with a 60-person orchestra in a traditional recording studio, but, due to the pandemic, each musician was recorded individually from home and then mixed together.[18] The pandemic also caused the timeline for the series' release to be moved up, which meant Westlake had around two months less time to work on the season's score than he expected.[45]

Westlake included several references to previous Star Trek music throughout the season, including an homage to fight music from the original Star Trek series for a scene where Ransom fights an alien using the same fighting style as that series' protagonist, James T. Kirk. For "Crisis Point", Westlake wrote "movie-fied" versions of his Lower Decks theme, paying homage to the composers of the Star Trek films such as the nautical, French horn-based sound of James Horner from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). The series also features a direct homage to a scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the crew slowly circles the Cerritos, with Westlake acknowledging the music that Jerry Goldsmith wrote for that scene. In "Temporal Edict", Boimler can be heard humming Goldsmith's main theme from The Motion Picture and The Next Generation.[45]

Selections from Westlake's score for the season were included in the series' Vol. 1 soundtrack, which was released by Lakeshore Records on October 8, 2021.[46][47]

The season premiered on August 6, 2020, on CBS All Access in the United States,[1][19] and ran for 10 episodes until October 8.[1][50] Like previous All Access Star Trek series, each episode of the season was broadcast in Canada by Bell Media on the same day as the All Access release, on the specialty channels CTV Sci-Fi Channel (English) and Z (French) before streaming on Crave.[52]

International distribution for the series had not been secured by the time of its premiere in the U.S. and Canada.[53] The series was originally intended for release later in 2020, following the release of the third season of Star Trek: Discovery, but the premiere date for Lower Decks was moved up after the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the post-production timeline for Discovery and forced that series to be delayed.[53][54] McMahan explained that negotiations for international distribution could not be similarly moved up, so the release of the series outside of the U.S. and Canada would have to wait until those negotiations were completed.[53] Amazon Prime Video was revealed, in December 2020, to have picked up the streaming rights for the series in several territories—including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and India—with the full first season released on the service on January 22, 2021.[55]

In September 2020, ViacomCBS announced that CBS All Access would be expanded and rebranded as Paramount+ in March 2021.[56] The season remained on Paramount+ along with future seasons.[57]

The season was released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and limited edition steelbook formats in the U.S. on May 18, 2021. The release includes almost two hours of bonus features, including deleted and extended animatics, featurettes on the cast and characters, the references to other Star Trek series, and the making of each episode, and an "over-the-top action trailer" for the fictional film Crisis Point from the episode of the same name.[58]

Rotten Tomatoes reported 67% approval with an average rating of 7.10/10 based on 45 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fun, but not very bold, Lower Decks flips the script on Star Trek regulation just enough to stand out in the franchise, if not the greater animation landscape."[59] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 59 out of 100 based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[60]

The season is one of 117 television series that received the ReFrame Stamp for the years 2020 to 2021. The stamp is awarded by the gender equity coalition ReFrame as a "mark of distinction" for film and television projects that are proven to have gender-balanced hiring, with stamps being awarded to projects that hire female-identifying people, especially women of color, in four out of eight critical areas of their production.[61]