Star Trek: Lower Decks Isn't Just A Great Comedy – It's Great Star Trek
This post contains spoilers for the season 4 finale of "Star Trek: Lower Decks."
Back when "Star Trek: Lower Decks" was first announced in 2018, it was impossible not to be at least a little skeptical. The original animated "Star Trek" series was...well, it was pretty bad. Now a follow-up was on the way from Mike McMahan, a "Rick and Morty" writer.
I enjoyed "Rick and Morty" plenty, but it didn't take long for me to realize that I certainly didn't like it as much as some of the show's most, uh, let's say ardent fans. As it happens, McMahan is the guy credited with writing "The Rickshank Rickdemption," the deeply funny, but very violent season 2 premiere that inadvertently sent "Rick and Morty" fans on a mission to harass and annoy fast food workers about Szechuan sauce across the nation. That wasn't remotely McMahan's fault, nor the fault of the show's creators, and frankly it's unfair that they wound up being painted with the same brush merely because the show's juvenile humor was misinterpreted by a bunch of meme-loving mouthbreathers. Even still, I have to admit that it was difficult to separate the show from its most vocal, toxic fans.
And as the August 2020 "Lower Decks" premiere approached, the "Star Trek" franchise as a whole looked pretty shaky to me, too.
"Star Trek: Beyond" from 2016 was one of the best "Trek" movies in years, but "Beyond" was also easily the lowest performer of the three movies. By 2020, hope of a follow-up was dim. And while "Star Trek: Discovery" showed signs of promise when it debuted in early 2018, the season didn't finish very strong. Its second season followed a similar trajectory — by the time the season 2 finale hit in April 2019, I tapped out. With every new spin-off announcement — "Strange New Worlds," "Prodigy" — not to mention only lasting through two-and-a-half episodes of "Star Trek: Picard," I couldn't help but give this new animated "Trek" the hairy eyeball. This next, next generation of "Star Trek" just didn't seem to be for me.
And then "Lower Decks" actually premiered in 2020 and I fell in love. As it turns out, I had no reason to worry about McMahan's sensibilities. That's because "Star Trek: Lower Decks" isn't just a great comedy — it's great "Star Trek." In fact, it's some of the best we've gotten in years.
So What Makes Great Star Trek?
Years ago, a friend of mine said to me that he liked "Star Trek: The Next Generation" so much because it showed characters all striving for excellence in their work simply because they loved what they did. It was an interesting explanation of the characters who live in the world of "Star Trek," one that I'd never considered before. And it pretty perfectly encapsulates what makes "Trek" so unique among other franchises. The drama and conflicts that occur between crewmates usually derive from their diverse perspectives, and their desire to try different methods all in service of the same goal: how to accomplish the mission in the best possible way.
This is the secret sauce that makes "Lower Decks" an amazing "Star Trek" show. Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), D'Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), and Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), our lead quartet of ensigns (now lieutenants-junior-grade), are assigned the unglamorous jobs that the bridge crew of every Federation starship never gives a second thought. But the only reason they ever chafe against having to clean out the Holodeck's biofilters or scan several walls' worth of isolinear chips isn't because they think the work is beneath them. It's because they know they're capable of so much more, and want to do what they're best at: exploring space, doing science, improving the ship's efficiency by several hundredths of a percent, and advancing Federation ideals across the galaxy.
Now get ready. I'm about to ruin some jokes by explaining them.
(What's so Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding
When Boimler and Mariner are stuck at the Starfleet booth at an interstellar career fair in season 3's "Reflections," Boimler ends up going bonkers by the end of the episode and embarks on a spree of destruction. Why? Because the other attendees of the fair just don't understand how great Starfleet is, and how noble a mission the organization has to spread its utopian vision throughout the galaxy. It's not simply that Boimler is having a violent emotional explosion at a job fair — it's that he's doing it in the name of Starfleet's peaceful mission of diplomacy and exploration.
And in "Envoys," the very second episode of the series, we see how early "Lower Decks" knew it could find comedy that works within a commitment to the ideals of "Star Trek." In that episode, engineering savant Rutherford decides to change his entire career path on the Cerritos all because he wants to be a better friend to Tendi. From there, he bounces from department to department throughout the ship, with each new departure from one team to the next seemingly setting up the old trope of the lower ranking worker coming into conflict with their boss. But the joke gets subverted, with Lieutenant Commander Billups (Paul Sheer) and Security Chief Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) each greeting Rutherford's decision to abandon their teams with enthusiasm and encouragement. They just want him to find the best fit for his skills and passion.
These jokes are all great because of sharp writing and perfectly timed performances — but they're also incredible examples of what makes "Star Trek" so beloved among its fans. It imagines a better tomorrow where people's ambitions and careers come from wanting to be their best selves — not to have the most money or best stuff.
"Lower Decks" doesn't shy away from showing off its Federation ideals through drama, either. In the penultimate episode of season 4, "The Inner Fight," we finally learn why Mariner has been so unstable throughout the last several episodes: She's emotionally stuck in a state of grief for her friend Sito, who died needlessly in service of a botched Starfleet mission. Mariner's Klingon adversary-turned-ally reminds her that no death is meaningless when it's in service of one's ideals and following a higher purpose. She remembers that honor, grace, and redemption can be found in the unlikeliest places, and resolves to live up to the Federation's ideals to honor her fallen friend.
Pretty good for a cartoon featuring a robot villain named Peanut Hamper and Mugatu orgies.
Boldly Going
Best of all, "Lower Decks" isn't just a goofy cartoon dressed in Starfleet uniforms — it's a legitimate, reverent and somehow extremely canonical addition to the "Star Trek" franchise. Set not too long after the end of "Voyager" — specifically in 2380, one year after the final "Next Generation" movie "Star Trek: Nemesis" — each episode of "Lower Decks" gives us glimpses into how the fictional timeline continues to progress. Just in season 4 alone, we've gotten fascinating updates on classic "Trek" alien civilizations.
In "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place," we get to see how things have been going on Ferenginar, where "Deep Space Nine" fan-favorite characters Rom and Leeta have taken over as the planet's more progressive rulers, who are considering Federation membership. Meanwhile, in "Something Borrowed, Something Green," we took a trip to the Orion homeworld, where an alien race that goes all the way back to the original pilot of "Star Trek" starring Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) made its debut. That's right — the Orions have been a part of the "Star Trek" franchise since literally the beginning, and fans have never, ever gotten a peek at the surface of their planet, much less so much detail about how their society functions (or, more specifically, how it kinda doesn't).
The Wrath of Locarno
Then there's the last two episodes of Season 4, which manage to bring back an incredibly deep "Star Trek" cut in the form of Nick Locarno. Played by Robert Duncan McNeill on "Lower Decks," Locarno has only ever appeared one other time before now, in the "Next Generation" episode "The First Duty," in which we learn about a group of elite Starfleet cadets whose poor choices end up getting another cadet killed. We discover Locarno has always been bitter about being expelled from the academy, and has conspired with lower deckers from other non-Federation ships to build a fleet of his own — one where the crewmembers on the bottom rung of the ship can actually have a seat at the captain's table. Not only that, but he uses a Genesis device — the big terraforming missile Macguffin from "Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan" — as leverage to get the Federation and the rest of the quadrant to take him seriously.
The result is an incredible episode that closes the loop on an obscure but very important character (Locarno was the inspiration for McNeill's much more famous "Trek" role, USS Voyager pilot Tom Paris), while also serving as a springboard for a wonderful, exciting homage to "Wrath of Khan." It manages to do in less than 30 minutes what "Star Trek: Into Darkness" couldn't figure out in over two hours. And it's really funny the whole way through!
Then there's the mountains of easter eggs that only add to each episode's humor and never feel shoehorned in, the countless "Trek" tropes like evil admirals, fascist computers, and way more Mark Twain references than anyone would ever expect. The list goes on!
These are just a handful of examples that show how "Lower Decks" expertly and lovingly builds on the continuity and legacy of "Star Trek" while still carving out a unique but easy fit within the rest of the franchise.
Star Trek has always been funny
That's the ultimate secret of "Lower Decks," of course. As often as the franchise has dived into ethical and moral debates, or helped us better see ourselves through the lens of science fiction conflicts and high concepts, it's also been really, really funny.
The original series often tackled the futility of war and racism, but "The Trouble with Tribbles" also features an extended sequence where a bunch of fuzzy balls fall out of a cabinet and onto Captain Kirk's head. The first villain from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Q (John de Lancie), was basically the MCU's Loki before Tom Hiddleston graduated from primary school. He was a powerful, petulant jerk who caused life-threatening trouble with an arrogant smirk (and maybe a mariachi band). And "Deep Space Nine" — known as the darkest "Trek" show for years — explored the costs of freedom and utopia, among other deeply dramatic themes. Meanwhile, some of the best episodes of the "Star Trek" franchise as a whole revolve around a space-goblin bartender getting into fights with his mom about the fact that she's dating the president.
That's why when "Lower Decks" was first announced, I really never should've been worried. "Star Trek" has always been a potent mix of serious and silly from the very beginning. With "Lower Decks," the franchise has finally broken past the threshold and evolved into its newest — and maybe truest — form.