Being set in the same universe as Gene Roddenberry’s landmark series and its myriad film and television offshoots, Star Trek: Lower Decks, a new animated series about a crew of up-and-coming Starfleet crew members, never leans on its own mythology.
The lead characters are young goofballs who work on the crew of the USS Cerritos, a ship specializing in “second contact”, which means they visit new planets after the A-team has already done the more prestigious work. Their jobs are routine and bureaucratic. They usually involve paperwork. None of the characters resemble Captain Kirk or Mr Spock, mentioned here only in passing and usually as the butt of a joke.
At the risk of earning the wrath of Star Trek fans everywhere, I’m disappointed to report the latest series is a work place comedy that tries to resemble, Parks and Recreation and The Office, except there needs to be more comedy involved, just like these two outstanding examples. However, Lower Decks smartly creates new, original characters who are funny, relatable, and fully independent of their source and that is what drives the show onwards to “boldly go where no-one has gone before.”
All the references and Easter eggs prove a double-edged bat’leth. They help ground the show in the main Star Trek universe, but somehow holds the show back from becoming the behemoth and weirdly-funny show it is trying to be.
OUR HEROES:
With each episode representing its own comic adventure for our bumbling protagonists. There is Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid), a rule-following aspiring captain; Mariner (Tawny Newsome), his rebellious co-worker who specializes in making more trouble than Boimler can clean up; Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), an engineer with a new cyborg implant he’s struggling to adjust to; and Tendi (Noël Wells), the crew’s newest recruit, who is all bubbly enthusiasm.
There are also various captains and commanders, and it is a shame that Jerry O’Connell, Sliders fame, isn’t given a bigger role in the show! And each episode features a smaller assembled crew piloting down to a new planet, getting into trouble with a new race of aliens, and making it back to their spaceship having learned a lesson about teamwork.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Lower Decks is a little too breezy for its own good, and it moves so quickly through its various plots – each episode feels like it was edited to remove any dead air. Oh, it does have funny moments, but these are few and far. If you’re after a Family Guy-esque take on Star Trek, then why not try Seth Macfarlane’s live-action, The Orville instead? Or, for sustained laughs, it’s hard to beat 1999 movie Galaxy Quest. But, Culturedemandsgeeks would love to see another season, and I’m guessing, Star Trek fans too.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
3/5 STARS