STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Creator Offers an Update and Explains Its Place in Canon
Star Trek: Lower Decks is an upcoming animated comedy series set in the Star Trek universe. It takes place during the same time as The Next Generation, and I’m very excited to see how it plays out. Well, Inverse recently spoke to Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty), who is creating the new series, and he provided an update for fans. Basically, it’s still being worked on from home, but it has slowed down.
I can't give you a specific answer on when that's coming out, but we’re still working on it and we're on track for when we have planned, which is this year. Animation is kind of uniquely suited for this moment. We didn't shut down production. Safely recording the cast was really our biggest challenge because we don't want them leaving their houses. So getting remote setups and stuff was something we had to solve, but it seems like we have.
In addition to this nice update in uncertain times, McMahan was asked about how Lower Decks fits in the canon of Star Trek. He explains how it fits, is a love letter to the franchise, and also talks about how he wanted people who don’t know anything about Star Trek to still enjoy it.
Lower Decks is very different from Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty. Within Lower Decks, there is a proper in-canon Star Trek show. It takes place during the TNG era. It's 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. So every episode has a thing like that happening in it. And then, on top of that, we've got A stories and B stories that are emotionally driven from the point of view of the lower deckers on the ships. So it was an area of storytelling that people had covered every once in a while on Star Trek, but never built a show around.
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.
Star Trek: Lower Decks was originally planned to release on CBS All Access later this year, but there’s no word on whether that date has been postponed or not.