Star Trek: Lower Decks (season 1)

CBS All Access 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,[15] and announced in July 2019 that the first season would consist of 10 episodes and be released in 2020.[1] 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 being made for All Access.[16] 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.[17] It took around a day for everyone working on the series to be set-up to work from home.[18] In July, CBS All Access officially scheduled the season to premiere in August 2020.[19]

The series' writing process begins with the writers room discussing the series' main characters in the lower decks of the USS Cerritos to determine what emotional stories and character arcs they want for the characters in each episodes. The writers then come up with science fiction ideas that align with those arcs.[18] McMahan felt that much of the first season involved the crew attempting to "figuring out what the show was and then we got it" in the last three or four episodes.[20]

By the end of the first season, McMahan felt that though the series was still focused on the "lower deckers" as was initially intended, he had found that they needed to explore the Cerritos' bridge crew more in order to tell better stories.[14] This includes Captain Freeman, who is revealed in the season to be the mother of main character Beckett Mariner. McMahan based this relationship on that of his own mother and sister, with the latter being the namesake for Mariner. They try to keep their relationship a secret in the season, which plays out until it becomes public knowledge in the season finale. McMahan described "Crisis Point" as a "kind of classic Marvel Comics sort of story", with a lot of film tropes and homages to the Star Trek films. The episode lets the audience see Mariner's relationship with her mother play out in a visual way, while also letting Mariner see that herself, and it ends with an emotional breakthrough for the character that allows her to work with her mother in the season finale, setting up a new dynamic for the pair in the second season.[20]

The writers would often look to previous Star Trek series to find similar characters and situations to those that they were proposing for Lower Decks, to ensure that their comedic storylines were not straying too far away from the franchise.[20] The character of Badgey began as a sketch of a Starfleet badge made by McMahan that he felt could act similar to the hologram version of Professor Moriarty from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The writers room then discussed what purpose Moriarty served in that series and how they could apply those ideas to Badgey in Lower Decks.[18] Similarly, McMahan described the character Ensign Fletcher as a dark version of Reginald Barclay from The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager where Fletcher ends up moving in the opposite direction as Barclay but fills the same role as "not a great officer".[20]

The season is filled with many references to other Star Trek series, which McMahan described as "just 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.[20] "Temporal Edict" ends with a statue of the most important Star Trek character according to McMahan, Miles O'Brien from The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. McMahan explained 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."[21] An element of the series that McMahan enjoyed was being able to go 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 is what led to the writers' decision to feature 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 been amassing power and are now a threat to Starfleet.[14] McMahan also saw this as a way to address the modern "re-rise of fascism", with a group that "got too powerful, and now they are actually dangerous and people are paying with their lives for not taking them seriously".[22]

The series' design team worked with CBS and John Van Citters, vice president for Star Trek brand management, on the design of the USS Titan for the season finale. The ship had never been seen on screen before, but had appeared in video games and on book covers, and McMahan wanted to "make sure we got it right because there are fans out there for who the Titan is a favorite ship". McMahan was also very specific about the designs of existing Star Trek characters William Riker and Deanna Troi in the finale, down to Riker's height and Troi's larger-than-normal pupils. McMahan hoped that the appearance of the Titan and these characters would feel like "one day in a bigger story about those guys".[23]

McMahan announced the main cast for the series in July 2019: a group of ensigns serving in the "lower decks" of the Cerritos, including Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as D'Vana Tendi, and Eugene Cordero as Sam Rutherford;[1] and the bridge crew of the ship that believe "the show is about them, but it’s not", including Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O'Connell as Commander Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, and Gillian Vigman as Dr. T'Ana.[1][2]

When asked about potential cameo appearances by members of the Next Generation cast in August 2019, McMahan acknowledged that those characters are in the Star Trek universe at the time that Lower Decks is set, and as a fan of that series he wanted to include them but in a way that did not "mess up the show".[24] He knew that he wanted to include the character William Riker in the series, and had previously met actor Jonathan Frakes while working in Toronto, Canada on the shorts series Star Trek: Short Treks when Frakes was also there working on Star Trek: Discovery. Frakes told McMahan that he was open to reprising his role as Riker from The Next Generation in Lower Decks. McMahan thought it would be natural to have Riker appear in the series 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 the character Deanna Troi also appearing, with Marina Sirtis also reprising her role from Next Generation. McMahan described Riker in Lower Decks as an "enhanced" version of the character, and encouraged Frakes to let Riker be a "wild, insane character", which Frakes had wanted to do with Riker for years.[14] John de Lancie also reprises his Next Generation role of Q.[11] Additionally, several previous Star Trek actors play new characters, including Kurtwood Smith as Clar[11] and Kenneth Mitchell as Seartave.[12]

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;[25] Tompkins ultimately voiced Dr. Migleemo, Mariner's therapist, in the first season.[13] In July, Paul Scheer was revealed to have a recurring guest role in the first season as Chief Enginee Andy Billups.[8] Other recurring characters in the season include Jessica McKenna as Ensign Barnes as well as the Cerritos computer,[5][6] writer Ben Rodgers as Lieutenant Stevens,[7][24] Sam Richardson as Ensign Vendome,[9][6] Marcus Henderson as Lieutenant Jet Manhaver,[10][6] Tim Robinson as Ensign Fletcher,[6] Jack McBrayer as Badgey,[6] and Lauren Lapkus as Ensign Jennifer.[6] The human name Jennifer was improvised by Newsome for the Andorian ensign during recording.[26][27]

For most of the first season, Quaid and Newsome recorded their lines together with McMahan. They were encouraged to improvise during recording. During production on the season, the pandemic forced all further recording, including ADR, to take place remotely.[18] This became one of the biggest challenges for the series during the pandemic, with recording equipment needed in each actor's house.[28] Newsome already had a recording studio at her house that she used for the series.[18]

Independent animation studio Titmouse provides the animation for the series,[19] with Barry J. Kelly serving as supervising director for the series.[29] Work on the series' animation began by the end of February 2019.[30]

The score for the season, composed by Chris Westlake,[31] was originally going to be recorded with a 60-person orchestra in a traditional recording studio, but, due to the pandemic, each musician was recorded individually from home and then mixed together.[18] The pandemic also caused the timeline for the series' release to be moved up, which meant Westlake had around two months less time to work on the season's score than he was expecting. He was still able to write original music for each episode of the season.[32]

Westlake included several references to previous Star Trek music throughout the season, including an homage to fight music from the original Star Trek series for a scene where Ransom fights an alien using the same fighting style as that series' protagonist James T. Kirk. For "Crisis Point", Westlake wrote "movie-fied" versions of his Lower Decks theme, paying homage to the composers of the Star Trek films such as the nautical, French horn-based sound of James Horner from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). The series also features a direct homage to a scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) where the crew slowly circles the Cerritos, with Westlake acknowledging the music that Jerry Goldsmith wrote for that scene. In "Temporal Edict", Boimler can be heard humming Goldsmith's main theme from The Motion Picture and The Next Generation.[32]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 65% approval rating with an average rating of 6.89/10, based on 40 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fun, but not very bold, Lower Decks flips the script on Star Trek regulation just enough to stand out in the franchise, if not the greater animation landscape."[41] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gives it a score of 59 out of 100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[42]

Christian Blauvelt of review website IndieWire declared the show to be "the continuation of the Next Generation era fans have been looking for" and possibly "the most Trek series ever."[43] However, most other reviews were less enthusiastic, with Mike Hale of The New York Times saying that Lower Decks felt "caught in between [...] fan service and half smutty workplace sitcom." He also criticized the show for "lazy joke writing", citing an overreliance on sexual innuendo.[44] Noah Gittell of The Guardian stated the show left "no lasting impression", saying that it moved through its plot points too rapidly for viewers to become involved.[45]