STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Animated Series Gets a Premiere Date, Poster and New Image
We’ve got a poster and a new image to share with you for the upcoming Star Trek: Lower Decks animated series. The show comes from Mike McMahan, the writer and producer of Rick and Morty, and the show follows a support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships in the fleet. It was also described as being like Downton Abbey in space.
This is a series that I’ve been looking forward to seeing and it was also announced that it would premiere on CBS All Access on August 6th, 2020. Below the poster and image, you’ll find some additional details on the series that were previously shared.
McMahan previously shared some additional information on the series and what we can expect from it. He offered some insight into the comedic tone and also shared some details on the characters of the series:
"A big thing that was important to me was figuring out how do we comedically access these characters. How can these characters be funny and not break Star Trek? You can't have a Morty in Star Trek. You can't just have a stupid person in Starfleet, otherwise it breaks the aspirational paradigm of what humanity is like in Starfleet. So our leads are foils for each other, but they're very much ingrained in Star Trek."
McMahan went on to dive into more specific details about the crew that fills the USS Cerritos:
"You have Ensign Beckett Mariner, who is sort of like our Tom Cruise/Maverick, where she's amazing at Starfleet stuff, and she's incredibly knowledgeable, but she just hates following the rules and she bristles at the military structure. She wants to do whatever she wants. She's kind of like Captain Kirk if Kirk wasn't a captain and didn't have the power. Kirk would follow his gut, and she followers her gut.
"Then, Ensign Brad Boimler also knows everything about sci-fi stuff, and is also an amazing Starfleet crew member, but he's so by-the-book and so burdened by following the rules that he can't follow his gut. So the comedic friction there is that they both want the same thing, they're both good at this stuff, but emotionally and from a human level, they're completely different about how they do it."
When previously talking about the show, the creator revealed that the series takes place during The Next Generation era. The story is set 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. He goes on to say:
"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. 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. So you can still enjoy Lower Decks even if it's your first Star Trek show. I used to have a Twitter account called TNG Season 8 that imagined fake episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This sort of it walks an even finer line than that Twitter did where its stories feel very Star Trekky, but you're having a good time while you're watching it. And it's half the length of a regular Star Trek and takes place in '90s Star Trek. It's sort of like a love letter to people that love Star Trek, but it's also a funny show for people who have never seen it."
McMahan also offered some other details about Lower Decks and why he wanted to set it during TNG, saying:
“I was a [Star Trek: The Next Generation] guy and when I grew up, that was the Star Trek I really loved. I like all Star Trek, but that's the one that feels most like home to me. I wanted to choose a year that was kind of untouched, was kind of blank slate, that didn't touch on anything that they might be doing for whenever Picard takes place but also doesn't get in the middle of anything that was like, ‘Oh, this was happening during the Dominion War.’ Or, you know, ‘This would be happening during [Star Trek: First Contact].'
“For me, it was like what was a little spot where our characters on a less important ship could be having adventures and doing their thing that wouldn't break anybody else's favorite show. Everybody else, there's so many fans. There are people who are huge fans of Deep Space Nine. I love Voyager and Enterprise and everything that came around there, those shows are all amazing. I didn't want anybody to feel like I was trying to subvert their favorite show by what we were doing. Also, because it was my favorite era, I was like, ‘I'm going to slip in at the very end and get to do just one more little piece of that era. Just one more little growing of the world, just in this different format.’”
The cast for the series includes Tawny Newsome (Brockmire), Noël Wells (Master of None), Eugene Cordero (The Good Place), Jack Quaid (Rampage, Logan Lucky), Dawnn Lewis (Veronica Mars), Jerry O’Connell (Jerry Maguire), Fred Tatasciore (American Dad!), and Gillian Vigman (The Hangover).