Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1


The first season of the American adult animated television series Star Trek: Lower Decks is set in the 24th century and follows the adventures of the low-ranking officers with menial jobs on the starship Cerritos, one of Starfleet's least important starships. The season was produced by CBS Eye Animation Productions in association with Secret Hideout, Important Science, Roddenberry Entertainment, and animation studio Titmouse, with Mike McMahan serving as showrunner and Juno Lee as supervising director.
Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, and Eugene Cordero voice the lower decks crew members of the Cerritos, with Dawnn Lewis, Jerry O'Connell, Fred Tatasciore, and Gillian Vigman providing voices for the ship's senior officers. Lower Decks was ordered in October 2018 with McMahan on board as showrunner. The series is a comedy, but the writers did not want to stray too far from the rest of the Star Trek franchise and used similar premises to classic Star Trek: The Next Generation stories for many episodes. Titmouse began work on the animation by February 2019, and the main cast was announced that July. Production, including voice recording, shifted to taking place remotely in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The season features many connections and references to past Star Trek media, including several actors returning as guest stars.
The season premiered on the streaming service CBS All Access on August 6, 2020, and ran for 10 episodes until October 10. It was initially met with mixed responses from critics for its humor and large number of Star Trek references, but reviews for the animation, Newsome's performance, and later episodes were more positive. The season received a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award nomination for its sound editing and several other awards and nominations. A second season was ordered at the same time as the first in October 2018.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main

Development

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, and announced in July 2019 that the first season would consist of 10 episodes and be released in 2020. 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 that were being produced for All Access. 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. It took around a day for everyone working on the series to be set-up to work from home. In July, CBS All Access officially scheduled the season to premiere in August 2020.

Writing

The series is set in 2380, one year after the film Star Trek: Nemesis, 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. 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. McMahan felt the writers were attempting to "figur out what the show was" for much of the season.
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 ". 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. 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. 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. Similarly, the character of Ensign Fletcher was created in relation to the Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager character Reginald Barclay. McMahan said Barclay begins his journey as a bad Starfleet officer but is able to improve and "find his path" with the support of others, while Fletcher is a darker version of Barclay who is not able to improve with support and is ultimately fired by Starfleet for his incompetence.
Late in the season, McMahan felt they needed to explore the bridge crew more in order to tell better stories. 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; his sister was 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 classic Marvel Cinematic Universe-style story with a lot of film tropes and homages to the Star Trek films. He also described it as being a parody of the Star Trek films, as well as a "big character therapy episode" that lets both 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. 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.
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. "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". 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 featuring 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 secretly amassed power and become a threat to Starfleet. McMahan saw this as a way to address the modern rise of neo-nationalist groups, saying the Pakleds, like those groups, "got too powerful, and now they are actually dangerous and people are paying with their lives for not taking them seriously".

Casting and voice recording

McMahan announced the series' main cast in July 2019, led by ensigns that serve 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. The ship's bridge crew, who have supporting roles, include 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.
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". He wanted to include William Riker, and had previously met actor Jonathan Frakes while working in Toronto 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. Marina Sirtis reprised her role as Troi 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. John de Lancie also reprises his Next Generation role of Q. Additionally, some previous Star Trek actors play new characters, including J.G. Hertzler as a Drookmani captain, Kurtwood Smith as Clar, and Kenneth Mitchell as Seartave.
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; Tompkins ultimately voiced Dr. Migleemo, Mariner's therapist, in the first season. In July, Paul Scheer was revealed to have a recurring guest role as chief engineer Andy Billups. Other recurring characters in the season include Jessica McKenna as Ensign Barnes and the Cerritos computer, writer Ben Rodgers as Lieutenant Steve Stevens, Sam Richardson as Ensign Vendome, Marcus Henderson as Lieutenant Jet Manhaver, Tim Robinson as Ensign Fletcher, Jack McBrayer as Badgey, and Lauren Lapkus as Ensign Jennifer. The latter is an Andorian, which Newsome did not realize when she improvised the uncharacteristically human name "Jennifer" during recording.
Quaid and Newsome recorded their lines together with McMahan for most of the first season, until the pandemic forced all further recording, including additional dialogue recording, to take place remotely. This became one of the biggest challenges for the series during the pandemic because recording equipment was needed in each actor's house. Newsome already had a recording studio at her house that she used for the series.