“The Lower Decks” is a late season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode with an irresistible premise: what’s it like to be a low level crew-member on the U.S.S. Enterprise? As a general rule, Trek series focus on the people in charge, which makes sense; the captain and their staff are the front line against any danger the ship runs into, and they’re also responsible for making the big decisions that keep everyone safe. Ensigns are powerless—they do what they’re told without knowing what’s going on, and whether they live or die is largely dependent on circumstances beyond their control. There’s great potential for drama in that, as “Lower Decks” demonstrated. Most of our lives are spent at the whim of powers we have no say over. It’s nice to get the occasional acknowledgement that there’s a future for us, too.
Star Trek: The Lower Decks, the new animated series streaming on CBS All Access, takes that premise (and title), and runs with it. The setting has been shifted to the U.S.S. Cerritos, an Enterprise-like ship (albeit without that ship’s status and prestige) and the action focuses on four young ensigns: Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), a party animal who breaks rules but gets results; Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), an uptight nerd who does everything by the book; D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), an enthusiastic newbie; and Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), a recent cyborg devoted to engineering. Each fits neatly into a comic archetype, and the show’s first four episodes work to put them in situations that exploit their weaknesses, presumably for comedic effect.
The problem is that, at least as of right now, The Lower Decks is less “funny” than it is “the idea of funny,” with voice actors doing high-energy, rapid-fire delivery of dialogue that’s never as witty or clever as it needs to be. Jokes are obvious when they exist, and while “obvious” isn’t always the death of comedy, there’s a difference between using familiarity to build on a gag, and just grabbing the most obvious punchline in any given situation. Too often, the first episodes present situations where intellectually you know you’re supposed to be laughing, but there’s no twist or unexpected bit of cleverness to make it fresher than every other show that’s mined similar humor. That and a reliance on fan-service references to previous Trek properties gives the whole thing a feeling of something that’s designed to deliver on fan expectations without actually satisfying them.
A large part of this is due to an inability to settle on an appropriate tone. In describing the show back in January of 2019, executive producer Alex Kurtzman called it “Rick And Morty in the world of Star Trek.” It’s hard to shake that line, especially given how much the animation style resembles Rick And Morty’s signature look. Only, “Rick And Morty in the world of Star Trek” is a fundamentally bad idea, and invoking it at all, even to the tepid degree Lower Decks manages, creates a paradox that the series struggles to overcome. Each episode simultaneously wants to undermine and mock the tropes of the franchise, while being too dependent on those tropes to ever subvert them in a meaningful way. (As an example, the title sequence features the usual stirring Trek theme over shots of the Cerritos running away from danger. It’s a cute bit, but no one on the show is actually incompetent or cowardly; even at their worst, they’re just standard Trek characters with a little more Barclay than Riker in them.)
The result is something that’s neither hilariously cynical nor meaningfully sincere—it’s functional, and rarely outright bad, but fundamentally unmemorable. There are sparks of interesting perspectives, as well as an interest in the more mundane aspects of star-jumping; Trek’s vision of a utopian future is so thoroughly baked into the series that even going so far as to point out that maybe the people in charge don’t always have the best interests of their functionaries in mind feels borderline revolutionary. And yet there isn’t a single bad person aboard the ship that we see—even the braggadocious first officer is actually a decent guy at heart. It doesn’t help that we spend more time getting to know the bridge crew than the premise should allow in the early going, signaling a strong willingness to jettison what little originality the show has in a way that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence going forward.
There is potential here. A few of the individual storylines show sparks of life, and if the characters ever calm down, they might turn out to be endearing. It’s refreshing to have a new Trek series that actually takes place post-TNG, and once it settles on a perspective, it could actually have something worth saying. Animation allows for more interesting aliens than even CGI typically creates, and the voice cast is committed, even if none of them particularly stand out. Trek shows are notorious for taking some time to find themselves, and this one may also come into its own given breathing room. As of right now, though, it’s hard to recommend as anything more than a curiosity. There’s been a glut of new Trek content recently, and all of it has struggled to varying degrees to justify its existence as more than just a brand extension. The Lower Decks is no exception.
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“Rick And Mortyin the world of Star Trek.” It’s a sci-fi comedy, but in a sci-fi setting! Revolutionary!
Yeeesh, I love Rick and Morty, but that’s a terrible pitch. Might as well have said “IT AIN’T YOUR GRANDPA’S STAR TREK!”
Every time I see that written I throw up a little in my mouth. Whoever said that clearly does not understand the the thematic elements of either Star Trek or Rick and Morty or understand how those two very different shows with very different world views are completely incompatible.
Because it’s Hollywood and executives understand relatively little besides, “Popular Thing + Other Popular Thing = (Hopefully) More Money!”
“It’s like if you have a little pile of cocaine and then add another little pile of co…”“Stop right there. I’m sold!”
“Now, you say ‘little pile’; is there any wiggle room on the size?”
Yeah, I think there is a similar quote about discovery that like “it’ll be game of thrones but in star trek”.
Which, wow, it’s not at all. That’s just silly exec talk. The thing is there are shows you can debate are similar to Star Trek meets Game of Thrones. You can argue DS9 kinda hits those tones. The Expanse as well. And some other classics like Babylon 5 or Blake’s 7. But even all those aren’t perfect matches. Game of Thrones biggest innovation was telling us early on no character was safe and anyone could just die. Sadly they lost that thread in latter seasons but that was really what propelled the show in the first few seasons
MTV cops = Miami Vice.
The difference there was that was the executive’s idea. Brandon Tartikoff wrote that down on a cocktail napkin and that was the kernel from which the show sprang.
Brandon Tartikoff, is that you?
“It’s two great tastes that taste like an utter abomination together!”
“It’s like sardines and milk shakes…”
Also, it’s “Rick & Morty without either of the creators or any of the best writers”, so…Solar Opposites is already a drop from Rick & Morty – it’s decent overall, but there are lots of weak, obvious jokes that probably would have been rejected in R & M. And Justin Roiland was involved with that one. If you remove even him, you’re left with Mike whoever and the other people they hired, so I expect the writing quality to be even worse.
Yeah, I didn’t even read the premier premises/reviews before watching the show and that’s what screamed out to me – “they are trying to f**king hard to be a Rick and Morty parody of ST; fail.” Another retro-nostalgia driven show with scant room for truly new creativity. Where they reimagine iconic boomer/Gen-X franchises and try to shove them down younger gens throats while hoping to make us older folks still feel relevant.
In a more straight forward sense, I think Star Trek already had a pretty solid “Rick” character in Q.
Yeah, the first episode of this sucked pretty hard. Loud, frantic, noisy and annoying show’s overriding tone. The dialogue is delivered in such a ridiculously rapid fire fashion, as if to disguise the fact that it’s not actually clever or funny or worth listening to.So much of the show seems poorly conceived. Ensign Mariner is a fuck up who doesn’t give a shit, but she’s also a hypercompetent know-it-all who insists on being the smartest one in the room. The premise itself seems broken at its core. So much of the pre-release copy about the show joked about how the Cerritos was one of the “least important” ships in the fleet, but all of the senior officers still seem very capable and professional. No one is a coward or a screw-up or and no one fucks up.The show could have been either:It focuses on the junior officers on the greatest ship in the fleet who are frustrated that they are adjacent to greatness, but not actually a part of it.orThe senior officers are screw-ups and only the junior officers are capable of saving the day, even though they never get any credit for it.The show itself has no point of view and very few actual jokes. It needlessly namedrops characters from across the franchise as if just mentioning them is supposed to be funny or, I dunno, endearing or whatever.But, at least CBS All Access’ Trek record is consistent. They’re 0 for 3 so far!
Maybe the next two shows will somehow work. Guarantee within a decade they try a show set entirely in the mirror universe or something equally half baked and misunderstanding of what star trek was.
They’re already there with their proposed and possibly-already-in-production “Section 31″ show. Talk about misunderstanding Trek….oy.
Jesus I genuinely am losing track of the amount of shit they’ve announced. Just bulldozing through any goodwill I had. Just remembered they announced another animated show for kids the other week. So that’s 2 spin offs of Disco, a show that has such an identity crisis that season 3 will essentially be a spin off of itself, considering they’ve gone far enough into the future to jettison any attachment to its previous continuity beyond the core crew.
I missed the announcement about the other animated show, but section 31 was announced a while ago, but then I think I heard it got stuck in development or something, so I’m not sure what the latest is. But it’s easily the worst idea for a Trek show in history. Like, so fundamentally misses the point it’s staggering. I’m not saying Trek needs to be trapped in amber and can never grow or expand or try new things, but the idea of a show about an amoral intelligence agency is so diametrically at odds with the soul of what the franchise was and should be that I feel like anyone who even proposed it should have been summarily fired. Like, as a litmus test. Like it’s even worse than how Snyder fundamentally hated or misunderstood Superman.
I could go with it if the plot is about a fight within Starfleet or people working as double agents to snuff out or undermine Section 31. Or perhaps Section 31 has already been disbanded, but “rogue elements” are still intact trying to achieve its aims, and it’s our heroes’ jobs to root them out – that sort of thing.
We’ll see. But the one thing that was a common thread in the Section 31 on DS9 and the weird, bastardized version on Discovery was that they don’t uphold the ideals of the Federation and don’t care that they’re not. Also, Mirror Georgiou, who is literally space hitler (and one of the worst characters in all trek history) is going to be the lead.
They’ve aggressively retconned Section 31 from the amoral “ends justify the means” agency in Deep Space Nine to not all that bad in Star Trek Enterprise to whatever they were supposed to be in Discovery. I imagine they’ll destroy my fun fan theory that connects the three shows.
Discovery turned Section 31 from “Sinister secret organization that everyone who knows about it is appalled that it exists” to “Sinister organization that everyone knows about and is fine with.”
I kind of wonder if Trek need to grow by expanding beyond crews and ships. I’m not the biggest follower of the franchise, so correct me if this isn’t how the Trek universe works, but could you do a series where first contact with a new planet has been made, and now the Federation is making inroads to recruiting the species there as a new member? It could be set partially on the new planet, partially at some Federation headquarters, and show perspectives of both the Starfleet members and the contact species. Show the culture clashes and the compromises that come with integration, and maybe have antagonists on both sides who don’t want this new people becoming part of the Federation.
You’ve described what DS9 was going to be – in part – at the series’ beginning. It was going to be a lot about how the Federation was trying to help Bajor navigate becoming part of the Federation after a long, brutal occupation left their planet in dire straits and how many of the Bajorans had ambivalent feelings, at best, about joining them.That storyline was pretty much put on the backburner very quickly, partly due to studio notes and partly because it just wasn’t super compelling. It was still there in the background and was touched on occasionally, but one gets the impression that it was originally going to be a much more significant part of the show’s focus.I don’t know if audiences would accept a Star Trek show that had no Starfleet at all in it. An interesting idea, but that’s really what the show’s defining focus has been in literally every series.
You’re kind of describing three seasons of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
Deep Space Nine opens with Ben Sisko being assigned to command a station in the Bajoran system with his orders being to “do whatever it takes short of violating the Prime Directive” to get the Bajoran people ready to join the Federation. There’s seven seasons of a religious people recovering from a half-century of occupation whilst receiving aid from a secular multi-race political alliance.
Section 31 startedproduction right after Season 3 of Discovery wrapped but the Pandemic had stretched out the preproduction period. This is the show I’m most hesitant about. My only hope is that it’s secret agent James Bond set in space and the characters are repeatedly having to deal with the conflict of getting the job done quickly and upholding the ideals of the Federation. But only if it’s episodic in nature. They already tackled that conflict stretched out through the entire Season 1 of Discovery. There were some hints in Season 2 of Discovery that S31 wasn’t full of murderous villains who do bad things “for the greater good”. So if the reason we’ve only seen the bad Section31 people on screen so far is because they are the worst at their job because they don’t know how to find a better way i’d be ok. But it could just as easily fall into the ends justify the means combined with the needs of the many outweigh the few fascism.
I know you responded to another post of mine about lower decks, but Kinja isn’t letting it show up, so I’ll just say, I don’t entirely agree with you, but I won’t bore you with the specifics in the wrong thread.
You’re funny. Shows in the Star Trek universe don’t have to be limited to the parameters you have decided they should stay within. Not every comic in the marvel or DC universes has the tone structure. Why aren’t you open to shows that explore other partsDon’t get me wrong. If you want to complain about characterization or plots or other criticisms about the quality of the shows, fine. However, complaining that they misunderstand Star Trek is silly.
No, it’s not silly. The parameters I give Star Trek are extremely wide indeed. Star Trek is a flexible franchise and there have been good stories told in multiple ways from different POVs, with different styles, tones and approaches. I’m delighted when writers find fresh takes on the franchise, we don’t need just TNG 2.0 or TOS: The new adventures. That’s staid and boring and pointless. Voyager, for instance, was about as unimaginative a Star Trek series that has ever been and who wants to see that again?HOWEVER, having a show in which the protagonists are part of a Machievellian organization that works in the shadows with zero oversight and espouses an “ends justifies the means” philosophy is about as antithetical to the soul and intent of the franchise as it’s possible to get.I have no problem exploring those kinds of concepts or characters in other media. But using those kinds of characters as the protagonists in a Star Trek series is simply dead wrong for this material.
The organization is already canon. Are you trying to wish it away? Also, we may get to see things from their perspective.
No. I’m fine with Section 31. As antagonists. The point is we’re not supposed to see their perspective. Don’t put villains as your protagonists in a Star Trek series. That’s literally the diametric opposite of what the show is supposed to be about.
I have found my people!Why do I waste my time arguing on io9 about how bad Discovery is when I could have been here all along?
Welcome, sister! I so desperately WANT to like new Star Trek, but it’s been so, so bad. Consistently so! Now across THREE series.
2016: Maybe Discovery will be good.2018: Maybe Discovery season 2 will be good.2019: It’s got Sir Patrick. Picard will be good, right?
2020: Lower Decks is a fun concept. That’ll be good.2020-A: Discovery season 3 won’t be poorly written trash, right? After all, TNG took three seasons to get good. And
2021: Hey, maybe Prodigy will be fine…2021-A: Section 31 is right up their alley. Dark Star Trek. They’ can’t mess that up, right?2022: Strange New Worlds is pure classic Trek in design and scope. This has to be the one that doesn’t suck…
I’m just so tired
There were plans to set a solid chunk of Enterprise in the mirror universe in the aborted fifth season. Rumors said the full season, but producers said a handful of episodes.I’d have liked to see that.
See, I’ve always thought a “Lower Decks” type show would work best as almost a workplace comedy, highlighting that most of Starfleet’s missions are fucking boring. The start of 90% of episodes were “we were cataloging gaseous anomalies” or “we’re completing a planetary survey” or “we were on our way to accompany a delegation”, and that’s the flagship of the fleet. On a mid or low-level ship, life would be even more monotonous, occasionally punctuated by weird sci-fi shit.
They could poke fun at some Star Trek tropes (without going full Redshirts), like how every away team is the same six senior officers, so there’s a WHOLE crew full of young officers who’d really like a chance to DO SOMETHING and are fighting for the one or two “random background officer” slots.
The senior officers shouldn’t even be seen. The Captain is just an occasional voice on the comm announcing some new random weirdness. “All hands, we have encountered a space-thing, all crewmemebers must fill their minds with pictures of oranges for the next five minutes or the ship will be lost!”
Most of the time, it’s a bunch of 20-somethings trying to stave off boredom until the routine is shattered by the Star Trek stuff they’re only tangentially aware of.
See, I’ve always thought a “Lower Decks” type show would work best as almost a workplace comedy, highlighting that most of Starfleet’s missions are fucking boring. This reminds me of the other live-action series of The Tick, the one with Patrick Warburton. That one didn’t show the superheroics and instead focused on the superheroes on their downtime, essentially doing something akin to a Seinfeld/slacker sitcom. And it worked great, because while lacking the gravitas’ of Amazon’s gone too soon series, watching Warburton as The Tick crank calling bad guys was a delight.This could work, I think, for a Trek comedy, especially since space tech allows for a lot of stupid accidents and pedestrian drama that gets elevated by being in space.
The Warburton Tick is a good comparison.
It’d be a little bit Cheers, a little bit The Office, a good chunk of The IT Crowd, with an occasional truly batshit Star Trek sci-fi weirdness to contend with. Our characters wouldn’t be solving those sci-fi problems, they’re just coping with them while trying to do their dumb jobs.
One fun conceit would be that each episode starts at the end of a typical Star Trek episode, with the characters sorting through the emotional and physical aftermath of whatever crazy thing just concluded.
“Damn, this place is a mess.” “Yeah, well de-evolving a whole damn starship crew will do that. The variety of feces I’ve been scooping in the passageways for the last two days is really fucking amazing. I’m sure it’d be fascinating if I were a xenobiologist, but I’m a security officer so it’s just gross.” “Do you know what you turned into?” “I dunno, it’s pretty hazy. Some sort of lizard-something?” “Wait, you’re human, how the fuck did that happen?” “It’s . . . unclear.”
I’d like that. Hell, I think a season devoted to a bunch of red shirts coping with their expendability would be a fun concept that could both end up funny and poke a bit of fun at the original series in a way that wouldn’t feel like pandering or the writers overdosing on the meta juice.
Agreed, though that’d basically just be Redshirts: The Series.
That doesn’t sound like a bad idea honestly. Certainly better than this. I think FX was working on it but the project went nowhere.
That was actually in development for a while. I wonder what happened with that.
Man, I would actually sign up for CBS All Access to watch that.
I think it would have been great if we never saw the captain, as you suggest, and barely ever saw the senior officers. The first officer in that version, however, should be a presence because it’d be her/his job to be the disciplinarian and they’d be living in fear of him/her. They’d be nervous and/or intimidated when interacting with otherwise harmless characters like Geordi (not literally, but you get the idea.) Just in the way that Ensign Lavelle in the TNG “Lower Decks” episode thought Riker had a stick up his ass. because, from his perspective, he does. And we’d see Trek adventures from their unique POV. What were the lower decks officers doing during, say, the borg invasion? Or when the crew de-evolved into monsters? THAT would be a fun and fresh way to do a Trek show.
True, I’m just thinking in terms of when I was Navy and deployed on an aircraft carrier (the Enterprise, oddly enough.)
I met the Skipper once. I met the XO once. If they even knew your name it was most likely because you fucked up hard.
Everything else was handled at a far, far lower level along the chain of command. Crew evaluations, all that stuff, it’s your OIC, not the XO of the whole ship. They don’t have time for that stuff unless you’re going to Captain’s Mast, or something.
“All hands, we have encountered a space-thing, all crewmemebers must fill their minds with pictures of oranges for the next five minutes or the ship will be lost!”This is such a perfect imaginary Star Trek scenario. This is as good as Paul Kinsey’s spec script “The Negron Complex.” I’ve been laughing about this all day.
It’s definitely a Kurtzman show. While his movies and Tv shows replaced thoughtfulness for rapid paced, non-stop action. Lower Decks is a comedy show that replaces jokes with rapid paced dialogue and frantic performances.He’s as unsuited as a showrunner on Star Trek as Zach Sneider is to Superman.
That feels like a stretch. While I am absolutely not a fan of the other two Trek series, this show fails for entirely new and different reasons and definitely seems to be the product of its creator.
I worded that simplistically, it is a Mike McMahan show. But it is made by Kurtzman’s production company and he is in charge of the whole CBS Star Trek conveyor belt so he will have overseen it’s conception, hiring, and from quotes he seems somewhat involved in decisions. So it might fail in new ways but that is not surprising when the person overseeing it doesn’t really have much in the way of vision or idea of what to do with the property.
Yeah, man, I don’t know who decided “loud and fast” should be the primary vibe of this show, but they should know there are plenty of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing.
I mean, God, it’s like this thing was made on cocaine with a side order of meth.
This show makes “Teen Titans” look sedate. But at least that show is funny!
It mostly reminds me of The Amazing world of Gumball, though even that show was capable of slowing down for a damn minute.
I don’t know who decided “loud and fast” should be the primary vibe of this show
The answer is and always shall be Alex Kurtzman.
The premise itself seems broken at its core. So much of the pre-release
copy about the show joked about how the Cerritos was one of the “least
important” ships in the fleet, but all of the senior officers still seem very capable and professional. No one is a coward or a screw-up or and no one fucks up.
Firstly, the entire first episode happens because the First Officer fucks up and doesn’t go to sickbay.Second, I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the absence of fuck-up-ery. Because Starfleet is a professional military. There shouldn’t be a crew of fuck-ups. Even the least important ship in the fleet is still captained by someone with a decade of experience and crewed by officers who graduated after four years in the academy. You don’t get a crew of fuck-ups because if you fuck-up in Starfleet, you’re out of Starfleet.
I look forward to more episodes where everyone does their jobs well! Now that’s a recipe for comedy!
Yes. Because Trouble with Tribbles; Qpid; Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy; Trials and Tribble-ations; I, Mudd; Menange a Troi; Take me Out to the Holosuite; and so many others required the crew to be ineffectual and incompetent to be funny.
If a writer needs to rely on characters to be stupid and ridiculous to be comedic they need to find another job.
Hey, if this show is aiming for the same percentage of comedy as those other series (roughly 5% of the episodes), then they’re off to a great start!
>So much of the show seems poorly conceived. Ensign Mariner is a fuck up
who doesn’t give a shit, but she’s also a hypercompetent know-it-all
who insists on being the smartest one in the room.
Not to try to rehabilitate the show, but your take here is just wrong. She’s a naturally gifted legacy whose parents are an admiral and a captain, and she’s actively rebelling against the strictures of Starfleet from an incredibly privileged vantage. She’s Chaotic Good, and, like so many of that alignment, she’s constantly questioning whether Lawful Good is actually good, or if maybe it’s neutral (or even sometimes evil) because of its obsession with order. It certainly seems like she’s got the self-serving narcissism of the bridge crew and top officers pegged correctly.
The show itself seems braying, just like the reviewer noted. Even for a scant 20-30 minutes, my dominant thought was “this would be top-tier fast foward material in a Star Trek porno.” It doesn’t acquit itself much past that.
No, my take isn’t wrong. The problem is your take is only half right.The character you described is much more interesting than the character they gave us.And she is that….for maybe 2/3rds of the episode – albeit pitched at a very loud, fast and grating tone.But she SHOULD have been that character. The laid back fuck-up who’s actually a genius who doesn’t give a shit because she sees the hypocrisy and failures in the system.Her giving the farm tools to the locals should have been the reveal at the end of the episode, not the middle. You think she’s just dicking around, but she’s actually doing something good because she has to work outside the system.She could have been Bill Murray or Chris Knight or Dr. Cox. But then the script shifts gears and makes her really arrogant and boastful and condescending and grafts Hermione onto her personality. She shouldn’t boast about being smart, Boimer should have found that out on his own. Accessed her service record and saw her amazing academy scores and her early promotions, followed by her subsequent fall from grace, which she is still sore about and which turned her jaded.
But, because, I dunno, CARTOON, she has to yell every single line of dialogue and also be a smug dick about how awesome she is.
I don’t recall humility being a relevant aspect of the D&D alignment chart, and I definitely don’t recall Dr. Cox being a bastion of it regardless.
I think you’re letting your criticism of the writing bleed into your criticism of the character. You’re tacitly conceding that all of the stuff I mentioned is there, because you move on to taking exception with *how* it’s relayed to the audience. I don’t necessarily disagree with your complaints. The show was very loud, and chose to tell (or yell, really) rather than show on numerous occasions. I don’t think all of them were unwarranted, since the character we’re discussing is an extremely loud personality. In sum, though, it was a bit much.The farm equipment would’ve been a classic third act reveal, true. As it stands, the second half of the episode – perhaps in spite of itself – complicates the character dynamics. Rebel McAwesome (I literally can’t even remember her name) vociferously goes to bat for Douche (ditto) based upon some weird notion that he should “get credit” for having accidentally stumbled onto a cure for the zombie virus while the two of them were off-mission. That speaks to how stubbornly committed she is to her cause. That’s rather important, since it doesn’t set the expectation that she is *actually* right about everything, all the time. There’s going to be room for her to be wrong sometimes, and for other characters to push back against her worldview without necessarily being writer-created strawmen.
Dr. Cox was not a great example, that was a reach. And she’s actually kinda similar to him already – they both are damaged former idealists and both are arrogant and fucking loud.I know you were joking, but I don’t get the D&D bit at all. I think that Mariner on paper has qualities that could work very well for this kind of character, but the show fucks it up. A large part of it (but not the only part) is the shouty, annoying volume and tempo. That’s not the only problem and it’s not strictly her problem. I like the idea of someone who was a rising star, but then something went wrong – a combination of arrogance on her part and institutional short sightedness, perhaps – and she was busted down and is now jaded about the whole damn system. And she discovers her idealism again by meeting a group of new officers who had the same ideals and can-do attitude that she used to have. That’s a perfectly fine concept for a character. But she’s just really damned annoying and she’s also supremely arrogant. Her experiences should have humbled her a little. And the fact that the target of her obnoxious behavior, Boimler, is SUCH a hapless and passive drip that she’s punching down through most of the show when she should be punching up.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that expressing my opinions on the internet has never ONCE changed anyone’s mind. So if people enjoy it, great. I’m incapable of stopping them!
I’ve said this on another thread but this is the live action show McFarlane should have made instead of The Orville.
You realize that the single episode we’ve seen so far is exactly your second premise? The Senior staff are larger than life characters with their own ego’s and that’s exactly what endangered the ship in the first place. The junior staff ultimately save the day but the doctor is the one who takes all the credit. That seems to be the core of Ensign Mariner’s character. She KNOWS the senior crew is full of egomaniacs that are out to make names for themselves. She likes being where she is because she can make a differnce. How many ships did we see in TOS or TNG where something bad killed the whole crew and its up to OUR hero ship to save the day? Basicly those dead ships didn’t have an Ensign Mariner keeping ego’s incheck behind the scenes.
Oh, found it.
The episode isn’t really what I was describing. Not really. A little, in the margins.But we spend so little time with the senior staff that we don’t get to know them at all and the lower decks have no meaningful interactions with them. We don’t really KNOW they’re arrogant blow hards. Yes, the first officer seems a little bro-y and, yeah, he does something kind of dumb…And they do “steal credit” for saving the day, but that happens at the very end of the episode, so it isn’t a theme throughout the story, it’s just dropped in there at the end. So, thus far, the show is demonstrably NOT about the frustrations the lower decks have with the senior officers, except once, briefly, at the end. And with whatever trouble Mariner has with them, but we have to take her at her word since the show gives us no specifics at all. And since Mariner’s point is, “well starfleet officers can actually be idiots and jerks”, but we’ve had, what, 600 hours of TV showing starfleet officers being nigh flawless heroes, it doesn’t really track just because one obnoxious person said so. It’s definitely more than a stretch to say that “starfleet routinely fucks up except on our hero ships or when Mariner is around to secretly save the day.”
The TNG episode works because you have all of the TNG landmarks to guide you. Yeah, you’re focusing on the lower decks, but you have Riker walking around, and reference to the events that we know. I think one of the biggest misses is having this not set on the Enterprise. I’d almost prefer a show that is LITERALLY happening within episodes of TNG or the TOS – for example, here’s what all the lower decks people were dealing from the fall out from Sarek’s visit that made everyone want to fight with each other. That probably has a very niche audience, but I think it would make the premise interesting.
This only exists because of a plan to pimp out Trek, nothing more.Not respect the property. Not think in terms of the fans, in fact, to completely tell the old fans, “Fuck you.”So, I’m not surprised it’s middling at best.
Imagine what the writers of Futurama could’ve done with this.
We already saw what the writers of Futurama were capable of with Star Trek and it was…really great. Just an all-time classic episode, really.F for Welshy
“He’s not a child, he’s thirty-four!”
“Sign it to Melllvar. ‘Melllvar’ has 3 L’s.”“I think I’ve done enough conventions to know how to spell ‘Melllvar’”.
“Alas, my ship—whom I love like a woman—is…disabled. (oh, lord)”
“I wope he will welp our vessel.”“WESSEL!”“Uuuugh…”
George Takei’s voice work was so great throughout that episode.“I find that offensive. You assume that just because I am of Japanese ancestry I know karate. Have I ever said anything that would indicate that I know karate?”
I kinda wish the Futurama writers got to tackle a similar episode with the TNG cast. There were rumors they had one on the books for a later season but it never panned out.
Huge fan of Futurama, but hadn’t heard about a TNG episode being on deck (though totally unsurprising).Now I’m sad.I also need to hang this up, got it for Dad’s Day, still sitting on the floor in my office …
“WEEEEELLLLSHYYYYYYY!”
A modern day Star Trek show not being great? Woooow sound the alarm I’m completely stunned….
“That and a reliance on fan-service references to previous Trek properties gives the whole thing a feeling of something that’s designed to deliver on fan expectations without actually satisfying them.”You could paste this into a review of any of the recent treks. Might as well keep it in your clipboard for the lazy sounding pike/spock spin off, or whatever dreck the unimpeachable Kurtzman dynasty trots out after that.
“Have you ever been trapped in a sentient cave? That’s a dark place that knows things”Is at least a very clever joke, if not laugh out loud funny.Honestly, I’ve been really really hating the new Star Trek stuff—particularly Discovery and Picard. But I found this endearing, fun, and actually witty. I was one of those fans that was clamoring for the new Treks to bring back the stuff I liked. So they did that in a silly cartoon. And that makes me happy.
After hating Picard and Discovery, I was REALLY hoping to have the reaction you did! But…I didn’t.
I dislike Discovery but the thing that is worse, for me, is that Picard was just so very disappointing. It had a few high points but way to many lows. Also it felt like they wanted to stuff way to much shit into a the show. The androids, the Borg and the Romulans, it was all to much shit.
Totally agree. Picard was awful. Too much. Shit. It was as if someone threw a bunch of random TNG concepts into a blender and hit puree. “Romulans. Plus Borg! And, uh, androids! What’s it all mean?? Nothing! Who cares!”
That’s what happens when you put an 80 year old actor who’s been given production powers as well as being the central focus of the show, alongside people who didn’t care for the series that actor was on originally or the property’s universe except as a way to do their own “Here’s another TWIST! Were you shocked? Did we shock you?” kind of show.
I don’t think the problem is that the writers didn’t care about TNG. I totally believe that they were big fans, as they said. Heck, the original “creator” of Picard (the one who is crediting for coming up with the premise) is a Star Trek novel writer. Which should have been a red flag to begin with, since Star Trek novels are pure trash.Fan bonafides aren’t a good indicator of anything. The most slavish fan can still turn out utter crap and sometimes a fresh perspective by someone who doesn’t treat the older versions as sacrosanct is exactly what you need.
I fucking hated Discovery at the start but it won me over, I think Picard was better than it was given credit for, but it was kinda scattered and they borked the landing bad.
A lot of the complaints were centered around how the shows didn’t have the Star Trek optimism, but I think that criticism was ultimately misplaced. If you think back to the original shows, there was always some dick Admiral or somebody running around ordering Picard to commit genocide or violate a treaty or kidnap Data’s daughter. The difference was that the high-minded ideals won out by the end of the episode. Both new shows ultimately did the same thing, but since they were heavily serialized it just took the whole season instead of an hour.
We are of one mind. The emotional roller coast that previous shows had was wrapped up at the end of the hour, Discovery and Picard you had 10 hours and to wait a week between episodes. It was taxing on us. As for the ending of Picard, it was very much a Star Trek TNG ending. A big speech stops a conflict and the injustice that loomed over the story was quickly reversed. I think that people’s fondness for the nostalgia of TNG overrides their ability to critically reevaluate . What has happened is the world and our sensibilities have changed and we are unwilling to take our new eyes to the older Star Trek series that we love out of sense that it would erode our historical enjoyment of it. Similar to Star Trek I would compare it to Dune or HP Lovecraft. Some people are unwilling to take a critical look at their works when their bigotry became an open part of the public discourse. Like many people I got into HP Lovecraft’s without really looking into his personal life., I like the unknowable horror and dread, his racist sentiments didn’t come through in what i read. Years later it stands out to me how much of the horror he described was based upon his own racism and xenophobia. Frank Herbert disowned his son over his homosexuality something I didn’t know until it was pointed out to me. His homophobia paints the Baron Harkonen in a completely different light. Rather than just being a sadist Baron Harkonen was a reflection of Herbert’s views on homosexuality, that they were predatory and pedophiles. If someone were to write something the same way today people would be highly critical of it
“ Both new shows ultimately did the same thing, but since they were heavily serialized it just took the whole season instead of an hour.”
I think the problem for some people is that this fundamentally changes the tone of the show. In a 22-episode season, that’s usually somewhere between 19-22 bright spots where intelligence, creativity, and high-minded ideals save the day in the third act. So the show itself was a succession of triumphs with a two-parter or downer ending tossed in once in a blue moon to mix things up. The average episode was tonally very upbeat.
Picard had more like 7 episodes of existential crises, one of comedy, one of action, and a happy ending. Way more brooding in the average episode.
Personally, I have mixed feelings on this. I recognize that that between Voyager and Enterprise, the classic model was begging for a new creative direction. The bigger problem with Picard is the same one that is plaguing all these modern superhero shows: when you sink this much narrative real estate into a single plotline, every element of it really has to sing.
That just wasn’t the case. The threats were undercooked and/or faceless, old friends were brought back just to be cheaply murdered, and the ending was kind of a mess. I have a seemingly endless reserve of goodwill for the character, so I’ll be back for season 2, but there is certainly plenty of room for improvement.
This gives me hope, since, I too, hate Discovery and didn’t love Picard.
There’s no “The” in “Lower Decks,” either the title of the original episode or the title of this series!
Maybe its like how old people add “the” to everything. Like Grandma told me to be a good kid and not smoke “The Marijuana”
There was originally a “the”, but they dropped it. It’s cleaner.
I was hoping for something along the lines of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Redshirt and Geek Ensign Are Dead?).
That’s a bit too high concept.
Hmmm, maybe you’re right. What about “Waiting for Picardot”?
“Yes, let’s beam up.”(They do not beam.)
well, yeah, they Boim up.
Three Men In A ShuttlecraftThe Taming Of The CrewDeath Of A SpacemanSexual Perversity In The Neutral ZoneNow, V’Ger
“Now, V’ger” Ha, perfect!Gamma Quadrant Story (a musical about the unrequited love between a Founder and a Jem’Hadar)Bajor Beach MemoirsMorn and Super-Morn
I like to be in the Jem’hadar / Okay by me in the Jem’hadar!
Gee, Constable Odo, we’re very upset
We never had the love that every child oughta get!
When you’re a Jem’Hadar, On tetracel-white. Obedience brings victory, and victory is life.
This is the kinja I’m here for.
I would have gone with ‘Waiting For Odo’…
D’odoh!
“My Replicator Ration with Andre”.
Lol (or “My Replicator Ration with Andorians”) But you’ve fallen for one of the two classic blunders! The first being never get involved in a land war on Ceti Alpha VI (at least until you’re sure that it isn’t actually Ceti Alpha V). But only slightly lesser known: never go in against a Cardassian when DABO is on the line! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. *dies*
I do wonder how much they debated setting this on the D, or during TOS?Because I think that good writers could build a pretty decent workplace comedy in the background of episodes like Encounter at Farpoint, Code of Honor, Justice, etc.They’d need to be careful that it’s not just mst3k-riffing, and that the new characters actually get their own stories. And there would need to be animated version of Picard and Riker et al, to make occasional appearances, and that would piss people off. (on a TOS lower decks Chekov could be a main character until he’s promoted up to the bridge).I can understand why they didn’t do that. But I don’t know that the world was asking for “yet another explodey trek show, but animated and ‘funny’!”
I think I was really just hoping that it might share a little more of the anarchical tone of Rosencrantz (or rather lamenting that it probably never would). Like maybe they don’t all have to be so gung-ho and competent. Hell I think Galaxy Quest just set my expectations too high for what is possible.
Galaxy Quest is amazing because it’s a comedy, but it’s also a better trek movie than almost all the trek movies. I don’t know that anyone could pull that off on a weekly basis.The nice thing about Rosencrantz is that the main story is already written, so Stoppard could play around with his characters in the margins.And with Lower Decks, I worry that the writers will feel the need to create a “Star Trek!” story every week, and then try to fit comedy into that. Even though there’s plenty of room to work comedy into the edges of existing stories.
(that said, season 2 of the Orville had a bunch of episodes that didn’t even bother with any ship-in-danger plot, and just did a whole episode of “spaceporn is bad”)
Just as a starting-point, you can imagine, “why would being a junior officer on a starship suck.”
It’s tough, because it’s a Robot Chicken sketch stretched out to a series. And the best joke is really that junior officers die all the time, which is tough to pull off on a weekly basis. (although they could commit, and bring in a guest-star Kenny redshirt to kill every week)The writing on these new trek shows does not have a great track record, and creating good lower decks characters; and bridge crew characters; and adventure stories where our characters are important but not too important; and making it all funny seems like asking a lot.
It’s tough, because it’s a Robot Chicken sketch stretched out to a series. And the best joke is really that junior officers die all the time, which is tough to pull off on a weekly basis. I don’t know, I think you could do more with it than just that. Like how the same five bridge officers are on every away mission, meanwhile there’s a whole crew’s worth of (probably pissed off) qualified junior officers twiddling their thumbs who never get off the ship. Or how the Chief engineer and his android buddy (who doesn’t even work in Engineering) do all the cool engineering stuff and all you get to do is sit around and monitor the coolant interface.
You can also play around with different perspectives and motivations when you’re not dealing with Captains and senior officers for whom Starfleet is their whole career. There’s a lot of possibilities with the idea of characters for whom Starfleet wasn’t their first choice, or are just riding out their enlistment (or whatever) and are checked-out, or generally see this whole thing as just a job and not a calling. You could have the wannabe-politician who sees this whole Starfleet thing as a resume builder, or someone who wants a cushy desk-job on Earth and needs to rotate through a starship assignment before they’re qualified for what they really want to do even though they fucking hate it, or who joined Starfleet out of a grand sense of adventure and have become deeply disillusioned with the whole thing. (I seem to remember a pretty good Voyager episode that was kinda like that, with some fuck-ups and likely wash-outs and people who were planning to be in Starfleet for, like, a year and got stuck in the Delta quadrant.)
Plus, stuff like time-loop episodes can do something new when the only person who recognizes the looping isn’t a well-respected senior officer, but a low-level fuck-up that nobody listens to. Or when some Star Trek-y bit of sci-fi nuttiness is going on, but since they’re not in the briefing room when all of this stuff is explained they’re just experiencing the effects and seemingly random batshit orders from their superiors with no fucking clue why any of this stuff is happening. Or even just spending time dicking around and staving off the boredom and the monotony of doing yet another survey of some goddamn solar phenomenon.
I mean, one example, Worf had a whole security team. What the fuck did they do the 99% of the time they’re not ineffectually running around the ship with phasers only to be outwitted by Data or Wesley or this week’s guest star or whoever?
Exactly! Let’s really see beneath the carefully maintained veneer. Like DS9, if it focused on Garrick, Section 31 shenanigans, and Morn.
I always loved the running gag that Morn was chatty as hell whenever he wasn’t on-screen, and was also some kind of sex machine.
But yeah, the different perspectives on Starfleet from a bunch of people for whom being a Starfleet officer isn’t their whole life could be a lot of fun.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the Orville. I think I’d rather look that up over watching this.
Oh, now there’s a show that I’d watch. A “lower decks” version of every single TNG episode!
That’s too bold or brave a concept for the idiots at the helm of nuTrek, sadly.
I guarantee they did and then realized they’d have to pay royalties to the writer’s of the original episodes and changed their minds. Tom Paris was originally conceived as Nicholas Locarno; hence Robert Duncan MacNeill being cast. The studio remembered they’d have to write a check to people who wrote an episode of a different series for the entire run of their new show that was supposed to anchor their new network and said “fuck that.”
While that sounds lovely, how many people would even get this reference let alone watch a show like that?
Babylon 5’s “A View from the Gallery” did that perspective really well.
That was maybe the worst episode of Babylon 5 and it’s not like it didn’t have a lot of stiff competition for that award.
I thought episode 1 was decent enough, I laughed out loud a few times, and the plot on the ship was basically any given episode of Trek, but played for laughs. It wasn’t great, but I found it enjoyable.
I think that’ll probably be my reaction if I ever get round to watching this show; something that’s perfectly digestible, but not terribly interesting or innovative. The Cheerios of television, basically.
hey, cheerios are good!
I thought the second episode was better than the first. Similar number of laughs, but bigger ones. Less of the Rick and Morty/Archer-style rapid-fire dialogue, and a lot of jokes that are referencing Trek standards, but not just in a “hey, remember Bolians?” kinda way.
Not gonna lie, I enjoy these types of low effort comedies. They are great after a long day at work, when you just want to switch off your brain. Was looking forward to this one before I found out that its only available in the US. Thinking of getting a VPN as I’m also missing out on a lot of Netflix content. If anyone else is in the same position I can recommend Nordvpn (https://nordvpn.com/coupon/deal/?coupon=gonordvpn), ExpressVPN (https://www.expressvpn.com/coupons) and PIA (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/)
High-concept? The premise is a 25-year old “TNG” episode. Literally. The title should have been a clue.This is also about as awful a show as any of those prime time cartoons the networks rushed out in the initial wake of the symptoms. Like “Discovery” and “Picard,” this is fanfic bad.
Plus its also roughly the idea of the Improvised Star Trek podcast.
High Concept means “based around a simple gimmicky idea”. I think this show fits.
Biggest laugh of the first episode for me was actually the mention of Cetacean Ops. My bar for Nu-Trek (hell, for every Trek after DS9) isn’t very high, so if they just keep mentioning dolphins from time to time I’ll be satisfied.
It was better than I expected… but I had *very* low expectations.It feels like it doesn’t really know who its audience is yet. It’s written in a style reminiscent of stuff aimed at young adults but with wider potential appeal (Gravity Falls, etc.) but never quite lands in that area nor in ‘a comedy for devoted Trek fans’ most of which would be well outside the young adult.
While the comparisons to Lower Decks make sense and are obvious, it also sounds like the DS-9 episode Valiant did a better job with the concept of this series.
Lower Decks is a great and rightly memorable episode of Star Trek.
Valiant is pretty great too, even if it is 100x more nihilistic.
The trailer was enough for me know that I wouldn’t like this. When I initially heard they were going to make a show about the lower deck ensigns, I naturally thought back to the TNG episode. The reason why that episode worked so well was because we already knew the upper decks so well. So when I thought they’d maybe try to do something along those lines, I figured they’d struggle. But the animation angle never seemed right, at least not like this.Seems like we are well beyond peak Trek at this point. We have fully entered beating a dead horse territory…
The sad thing is that ST’s universe pretty much allows for endless exploration, so the problem isn’t that ST has exhausted its premise, it’s that studios keep trying to force it into boxes that don’t fit. Which they could get away with if they had an extremely talented creative team with lots of latitude. But they never do that.
There’s been a glut of new Trek content recentlyThe best way to get the golden eggs is to always gut the goose and spread its entrails everywhere.
Discovery tried to be Orville in Season 2 and now Star Trek tries to be Rick an Morty. God, new Star Trek really has no freaking clue why people like Star Trek.
Did it really? What was it like? I am pretty sure the Orville still hasn’t figure out what it is exactly. I liked it better then Discovery but its really has as lot of tonal issues. Its clear McFarlane gets Star Trek better then anyone at CBS does but I feel like he pitched the Orville as a comedy sci-fi first so any time he tries to do a more serious Star Trek plot it feels like whiplash because the same episode probably has at least three bodily function jokes in it as well. I love Star Trek nearly as much as I love Star Wars and both franchises needed to step back and take a break from some things ironically in different ways. I fell like Star Trek needs to step back and maybe make a really good original movie that isn’t a reboot, prequel or other call back to old shows and movies and Star Wars needs to stay off the big screen and stick to making smaller serial stories for a bit(like the Mandalorian).
Well, it’s a bit of an hyperbole to say all of season 2 was like Orville but here were whole scenes added to serve the exact same comedy style. Like ther makers of Discovery saying “Oh you like Orville because of the toilet humor and the elevator scenes, right? Here you go.”
While we actually liked it because it took ST serious and from THERE started to make fun of it, while Disco seems to believe all pf the previous ST was a joke while taking itself way too serious.
And yes, I think it’s quite obvious that Seth McFarlane really would have loved to make an actual ST show, but he’s Seth McFarlane, so he’s gotta sell the network a comedy show.
There were rumors that Seth was just going to buy Star Trek outright. Apparently selling shows to Fox has made him a ton of cash and Star Trek is one of his passions. Most those rumors come from the same Youtube spaces that are MRA assholes complaining about SJW in genre so I would take it with a grain of salt.
There have been severe tonal problems in anything Trek since Enterprise (that includes Enterprise).I just want that feeling that I get from good Trek and the only thing I have got that from was Beyond. That ended the JJ verse right when it was starting to figure it out.
I didn’t go back all the way to Enterprise because I didn’t watch much of it when it was out. I was okay with the Kevlin timeline movies having a bit more of an action tone, I liked the first one and the third one was great. Into the Darkness may be the worst Star Trek thing to have come out int the last 20 years. I put it worse then any of the CBS all access shows.
As somebody who is more of a casual Star Trek viewer, I totally agree with you. The first movie was a fun thrill ride that did a decent job re imagining the characters of the original series for modern times. Beyond is absolutely spectacular and felt like a feature length original series episode with modern special effects and a budget. Into Darkness I enjoyed on first viewing, but the more I thought about it, the worse it got, to the extent that I kind of hate it now, and I think that I would hate it more if I was more of a fan.
Orville to me is a TOS/TNG cosplay show that is very faithful to it but there’s also just a lot of random quips which is in McFarlane’s style. It’s definitely not a parody of sci-fi shows though, this is even back in the pilot too, although it was sold as one.
I get the distinct impression that they fall prey to the most common misconceptions that most people who didn’t watch much Star Trek seem to: That TOS was actually “The Wild Wild West,” only set in the future, i.e. a show about guy who was constantly screwing, getting into fist fights, and finding himself in situations where he had to take his shirt off. TNG, on the other hand, was like a “Cosmos” episode shot at a Star Trek convention, with no action or humor to speak of.These attitudes appear to inform all new iterations of the franchise.
There is an interview with Frakes on the DVD of Nemesis where he says “I think what people want most of all from Star Trek is lots if good action”. All I could do was sigh and shake my head. Even the people who were involved in great Trek don’t seem to get what made it special. I’m starting to really think that the best Trek came from budget limitations.
The myth was always that Star Trek was a low-rated program during its initial run. The truth is it put up respectable, if not phenomenal numbers. Certainly enough to get renewed even before the fan write-in campaign. But NBC brass didn’t really “get” what it was about, and they always wanted it to be more action oriented. In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The ratings for TNG went through the roof after Best of Both Worlds, but it did struggle a bit before then to maintain a consistent viewership. Voyager was up and down until Seven was introduced and then it maintained pretty consistent numbers until the final season. I’m currently rewatching Voyager and it really feels like they lost the thread when it comes to some of the characters. I really enjoy all of the Tuvok episodes before Seven came along, but after she showed up came an end to Tuvok oriented episodes. I’m not complaining really, I think Seven was a breath of fresh air that the show needed, I just wish they’d given more centric episodes to some of the other characters.
The rep on Voyager was essentially that it was a newer, somewhat less inspired version of TNG. Essentially, TNG had ended about a season or two earlier than it could have – at least from a ratings standpoint. From a creative standpoint, more than a few of those last season episodes seem to indicate there wasn’t a lot left in the tank. DS9, no matter how fanatic its core fans may be, was simply never going to match it in terms of broad appeal. So they came out with Voyager. Rather than introduce yet another generation of Enterprise crew, they put it on another ship that was Lost in Space! But otherwise, it was another mystery/adventure/monster of the week show.Critics of Voyager really tend to fault it for not “doing more” with them being Lost in Space! I tend to chalk it up to the fact that Lost in Space! theme sounds a lot more intriguing than it really works out in practice. For example, about 30 years before Voyager there was a show called… wait for it… Lost in Space. And wouldn’t you know it, every week the adventures of the Robinson family ended up shaking out to variations on pretty much the storyline? And yeah, while Seven of Nine undoubtedly gave the show a new lease on life, it did so at the expense of it becoming “Star Trek, starring Jerry Ryan and featuring Captain Mrs. Cloumbo, along with the rest of the crew of the USS Voyager.”
TNG was on the decline in season 7. Most of the episodes didn’t pull the same ratings they had in season 5 and 6. It ended on a high note. You feeling like they could still do more is a testament to that. Voyager had a dedicated network in UPN so it had a solid timeslot and promotion. DS9, which mostly ran concurrently to VOY, was syndicated like TNG, it’s timeslot was on the whim of whatever channel decided to put them in but was mostly free to do it’s on thing. Essentially there was more riding on Voyager’s success, thus it got more top down review and influence. Overall I think Star Trek shows find thier sweet spot in season 3. Seasons 1 and 2 tend to be easy to skip over on rewatch (especially sea 1 of TNG *shudder*)
Season 4 on it became the Doctor and Seven Show, featuring Captain Janeway………with special guests Tom or Tuvok or B’elanna or whoever.
Voyager had three characters in the Spock/Data role of looking at human emotion from the outside: Tuvok, the Doctor and Seven. Not exactly from the same angle, but still close enough to get in each others’ way.
Well, you’re half way there. Discovery bears zero resemblance to The Orville (in Season 2 or otherwise), but Lower Decks has tons of parallels to The Orville. Both are inspired by TNG, and bring the classic TNG spirit into a new show, with a more self-aware and comedic spin on what are, essentially, TNG-style episodic stories. The Orville has some forced originality because it has to dodge copyright infringement, whereas Lower Decks is more of an explicit copy (down to the font-face), with the only fresh parts being (a) that it’s animated, and so less limited with its action set-pieces, and (b) attempts to be funny. It faces all the same problems that Orville did in trying to settle on a tone and land jokes (Orville also generated the observational response of “that’s funny”, without actually inciting laughter), but all the same charm of being a successor-in-spirit to TNG.Discovery has tried to be an HBO/Netflix-style prestige drama, telling a serialized, twisty mystery box story, which just so happens to be set in the Star Trek universe (but the universe has been re-imagined so drastically versus every prior series that it is difficult to recognize for a lot of people to recognize as the Star Trek universe).I think both shows are perfectly enjoyable, and I’m happy they exist. But I won’t force anyone else to watch them.
The elevator alien could be in an Orville script without any changes
I’m beginning to doubt that you watched more than the 30-second teaser trailer for season 2.
Yeah, when he said, “Discovery tried to be like the Orville in season 2,” I immediately thought, “he’s talking about the elevator scene.” Scroll down and…there it is!No, that scene is NOT indicative of the whole season. It was a self-contained bit of levity. Season 2 was definitely lighter than season 1, especially when Reno dropped in, but it was still unequivocally a sci-fi drama.
Good comment
“Discovery tried to be Orville in Season 2″Totally missed that
You’re really hung up on a single joke that lasts (literally) the length of a sneeze.
Except that it carried over into the following team meeting that was more or less dominated by talking about a random, never before seen Alien crew member’s bodily functions.
I’m going to go finish watching The Red Shirt Diaries, thank you.https://stexpanded.fandom.com/wiki/The_Red_Shirt_Diaries
lol i’m not really a trek fan (i appreciate it, just always found it very boring) but this is the first i’m learning it’s not even an original idea, just based on an old TNG episode. someday someone somewhere will make a cartoon that looks really, really nice and is well directed, and hopefully it’s very successful and prompts others to rip it off and we get cartoons that look nice again and aren’t shot like sitcoms in flash.
I believe that show as called Futurama
almost any show from 20 years ago works as an example.
Realizing that Futurama is 20 years old just made me feel really really old
you gotta start rounding the years up early. big mouth is gonna be 10 years old before you know it.
you’re gonna see a 10 year bojack horseman retrospective in like 20-something months.
See also: Archer
After seeing the trailer, none of this review surprises me.
Really? Because after seeing the trailer and reading the review, the B- seems far to high of a grade for this
They (by which I mean the reviewers on the website) tend to give things generally higher grades overall than I and others probably would, even while feeling the exact same way. Even if they will explain why an episode of a comedy show didn’t make them laugh once, they give it a B-, they just tend to be more reserved with bad grades. The grades are given as though they were in the same room as the person who made the show and they are trying to avoid hurting their feelings. But that just means I’ll read a review for a show I’ve never watched or will watch when it gets a D of F
I have a sneaking suspicion the Spanfeller mob have advised AVC reviewers to up their ratings to appeal to advertisers. A lot of recent mediocre fare has been getting B+ or even A- ratings. I understand that there are differences in opinion, but I really, really struggle to believe that the Umbrella Academy S1 premiere’s A- was a genuinely heartfelt grading from the reviewer.
Oops, I meant S2 premiere.
I probably is-
“The problem is that, at least as of right now, The Lower Decks is less “funny” than it is “the idea of funny,” with voice actors doing high-energy, rapid-fire delivery of dialogue that’s never as witty or clever as it needs to be.”Yeah that really doesn’t sound like B- material. The whole “Its Rick and Morty meets Star Trek” premise is a bad take, especially for TNG era Trek.
I am probably preaching to the choir but the animated show they should be looking towards is, of course, Futurama. Futurama could be a little dark sometimes and political biting at times but in the end it was still a fairly optimistic looking future. Even if it was a mostly mundane future where the tech and culture changed but people where pretty much the same.
I remember reading somewhere that Futurama was an attempt to avoid a cliched utopian or dystopian future, where the future has societal issues that it’s trying to work out, but isn’t some unlivable mess, either. I think they did a pretty good job with it, although I don’t think that approach would work best for Star Trek, as it leans much closer to the utopian end. It would still be a better template for a Star Trek comedy than Rick and Morty. Galaxy Quest and Orville would be much better scifi comedies for Star Trek to emulate as well.
I disagree with Zack pretty categorically about new trek (I love it!), but I always look up his reviews first because for the most part I feel like it’s pretty good negative criticism and better than the reflexive hatred I find in some forums. I’m delighted with this show already, but there are some good points and suggestions here for how the show can improve.
To think, we live in a world where this gets produced but the TV adaptation of John Scalzi’s Redshirts has been languishing in development hell for years.
Have you seen the full season?
I haven’t watched any of it. I have no opinion about Lower Decks, I’m just annoyed that we haven’t gotten a Redshirts show yet.
If you get over the Boimler abuse, Lower Decks is a solid show that is definitely worth watching.I’m not familiar with Redshirts; after quickly Googling it, are you referring to the novel?
Yeah.
Has there been a streaming service that has given away more free months then CBS all access.When I signed up years ago to watch Discovery they gave me a free month, then when I went to cancel they gave me another free month and again when I tried to cancel(So we are up to 3).Then when Picard came out I got an offer to get another free month and when I went to cancel they gave me another one(2 more so 5).Then during Covid-19 in March I got a offered another free month and another when I went to cancel. (So I am up to 7 now)I just opened my email today and got an offer for another free month to restart account to watch Lower Decks. So I have gotten 8 free months of CBS all access at this point without spending a dime
Don’t be so sure all those months are free. I went in to cancel before the next charge after getting the previous month free and they told me they would give me another month free if I stayed. Then I was charged anyway. I have contacted CBS All Access about this several times, but they have not resolved it. I don’t think I can afford any more “free months” at this point.
I’ve always wondered why no one’s explored the vast wealth of the old mass-market paperbacks of the 80s and 90s for story ideas (and writers…)
I found the problem Alex Kurtzman
In theory, a comedic animated Star Trek could work. But I started to get worried when they compared the show to Rick and Morty, which not only doesn’t seem like it has the right tone for the show, but judging by the episodes I’ve seen also kind of sucks. Aim higher Star Trek.
This review gets the title of the show wrong FOUR TIMES.
oh that is really weird. And it calls the TNG episode “The Lower Decks” too…and I’m pretty sure it’s just called “Lower Decks”
Fool me once, CBS All Access, shame on me. Fool me twice? Nah.
Please stop trying to tie this horseshit to the Prime universe. The one good thing JJ Abrams did was put all his stupid fuckery in an alternate universe I can ignore as non-canonical.
I was going to say that if I wanted to watch a show where continuity was not a thing, I’d watch The Simpsons, but even that show has some rules. Some of the stuff the various Trek properties have done recently are akin to Bart suddenly having four fingers and a thumb and it not being mentioned at all.
Well, no, you’re forgetting that what JJ did was decide to annihilate one of the most important and most beloved races (the Romulans ) with an impossible to accept nonsensical scientific premise, and THEN create his own timeline where it happens to another race (the Vulcans). In fact, he actually went out of his way to devote a portion of his movie to having the original Spock come in to confirm that yes, JJ Abrams’ version of events is cannon to BOTH universes. He wasn’t content to spin his own thing off, he made it so that if you want to ever do stuff in the Star Trek universe now that’s not a prequel, you have to address the utterly ridiculous conceit that the entire Romulan Star Empire was destroyed because he had ORIGINAL Spock tell the JJ Spock. He sucks so much
I have blocked some much of that trash fire out I don’t even remember it anymore. I mean, I knew it enough to not be lost at the start of Picard, but honestly I’m trying to block out how amazingly awful that show turned out. This franchise was pretty much dead in 2009 because all the most faithful writers were gone, and then Abrams dug up the corpse and just started fucking it.
‘Rise of Skywalker’ has convinced me that Abrams gets off on saying, “My version is THE version. Canon that was created earlier than mine? Irrelevant. I’ve replaced it. I own all the toys.”
Jabbering voice actors spewing soyfacey catchphrases set to garbage animation produced by non-union basement slaves. This is 90% of contemporary animated comedies, and if you like them you have holes in your brain.
Is this an unpopular or popular opinion? I enjoyed the first episode.
It’s a popular opinion elsewhere, but Zack Handlen’s signature review style for modern Trek is to give every episode a B and then shit on it endlessly in the review.I enjoyed it, too.
Same. Sure, the characters were Extra, but it’s a pilot episode. I think it’s fun and was surprised at the Trek action
Same. Sure, the characters were Extra, but it’s a pilot episode. I think it’s fun and was surprised at the Trek action
Yeah I thought it was fun and cool, but I come here just to read the dumpster fire review and hater comments
You’re not alone; I liked the pilot way more than I expected to. FFS, it’s refreshing to see a show in this franchise where everybody’s happy to be there. Rutherford was great for me on two levels: he’s not introduced as having Angst about being a cyborg, and it was great not just seeing his first date play out action movie-style, but that both he and his date were kicking ass the whole way through.
I thought it was all right, but they’re going to have to step up the sci-fi ideas if they want to keep my interest. One of the fun things about Rick & Morty is that it bangs through and combines like four TNG-sized, worldbreaking big sci-fi ideas every episode, and the biggest sci-fi idea this one had was “zombie virus”.
I’ll one up you: I think it’s a better first episode than Orville or any other new Trek show 🙂
Emissary is a great “first episode of a Trek series” episode.
Yes, but that isn’t a new Trek show.
It was when it was first aired.
Yes, but I think westinlee was referring to Kurztman-era Trek.
So is Ensign Mariner the Captain’s daughter and also has a father who is an Admiral and the Captain’s hubby? Well, that explains why she just got demoted rather than kicked out of Starfleet. Looking like some mother/daughter tension here going forward.
If anyone’s interested in another, possibly more creatively successful take on the idea of “Star Trek Comedy Featuring Starfleet Officers Who Aren’t The Best Of The Best,” I strongly recommend the late Improvised Star Trek podcast. The Wizard from Hello From the Magic Tavern is the Captain! Former(?) Maquis Terrorist, Acting Doctor, and Acting Security Chief Rip Stipley left the show to write for SNL! The (non-acting) Doctor is from a parallel Earth where all the nouns begin with “Z!”If you audio drama isn’t your thing, you can still get a taste of it from the recently-released lost episode, “The Measure of a Manatee,” which is mildly animated!
I’m trying to think of how you could actually do this as a show and have it be good. The only thing that comes to mind is to have it be like, following the people who we never saw in episodes that are one for one retellings of every episode in order of TOS or TNG, but with entirely different spins on how each episode goes. The most you ever see of the main series’ crew would be backs off the heads or something, while the boss would be some sap middle manager who is like, “Hey, is anybody free to go down to the planet to find out what monster killed the entire outpost? Really? No one, you’re all too busy pushing buttons while we’re in orbit? Oh but you were all eager to see the gangster planet.” You could be funny without being all about semen and people dying all thy time, have two people’s discussion be derailed with one being like, “Did-was that just… Abraham Lincoln?” in the hallway and them trying to be like, “Junior Ensign’s log… Today I uh, found out there’s a planet of nazis, so that’s… something I wasn’t really expecting to see”. Aside from bits, have them be in that episode where they go to the planet that has the virus which kills them at the onset of puberty and have them all losing their minds that nobody seems to care about the fact that the planet is inexplicably an identical copy of Earth or what it means and it’s implications. Actually, the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced you could do a very good show that’s actually able to be serious and light hearted in equal measure. Have one of them be like, the Star Fleet version of an Army Priest, who is severely shaken by the encounter with the Greek god Apollo and them having a complete crisis of faith by the increasingly difficult to ignore possibility that God was just some alien and that he’s devoted his life to a primitive superstition that few even believe in. Have them all in the Corbomite Maneuver being forced to reckon with the fact that they’re about to die. You can even have them being less mature or collected as Kirk, with them being more prone to wanting to disobey, escape in a stolen pod, or ignore the prime directive. I don’t know, I could see that being a great show that could double as a nice look back at the original series without being just a fan servicey reference. Have them collecting samples on the planet with the time travel thing, and debating if they have an ethical duty to go back to the past to stop the Holocaust or Eugenics Wars or something and if the suffering of the dead are worth anything. Almost more like a series that’s the DS9 episode where they go back in time to TOS and disguise themselves as miscellaneous crew
H-h-hey Geordi! I-it’s me! *burp* I’m Picard Rick! I’ve turned myself into a Picard!Why do I feel like this shit joke is still better than most of this show.
They never make the one joke that’s just crying out to be made: People on Star Trek are dorks. They only listen to classical music, read lame mystery books (Dixon Hill, Mike Hammer) or read James Joyce on vacation to a sex planet, love baseball (the nerdiest sport), only watch movies made before 1950, play the trombone, clarinet, or whatever that Vulcan harp is, make their own costumes for holodeck cosplay (when the holodeck could easily create them), play chess in a bar. The list goes on.Are there even cool people on Star Trek? I don’t know… the outrageous Okona? Lame. Vic Fontaine? Lame. Tom Paris? Lame. The coolest guy was probably Steven Hawking, or Zephrem Cochrane. This is funny. Why does no one make jokes about this?
If you asked me to rank fandoms by their chill-natured willingness to put up with having the piss taken out of their franchise … well, I think we can maybe see the fundamental conceptual issue with this show.
I actually wonder why CBS didn’t just spinoff a new animated TOS universe aimed at kids, the way that DC and Marvel have been doing forever.It’s all just about recycling IP, so give the world “Star Trek Go!” with hyperactive animated versions of Kirk and Spock and the rest.
Teen Titans Go! did a solid two-part Star Trek spoof. It even included an Inner Light reference (Robin got brain-zapped and stuck in a virtual world where he learned the trumbone) – you know, for kids!
Yeah, I wasn’t actually meaning to make a dig with the “aimed at kids” part.
But Marvel & DC have both been creating new fans with their various animated shows for decades. (many of which are also enjoyed by non-kids)
Trek could probably use some new fans, and Lower Decks seems too niche-y to do that. A poppy-cartoon with characters that people already know could probably be pretty successful (while also helping to teach existing fans (like me) not to be so hung up about continuity).
Oh, u didn’t think you were -my “you know, for kids!” was aimed at Teen Titans Go sticking in such weirdly specific references that kid’s wouldn’t get. (Which itself isn’t a dig – my five year old just loves how silly it is)
Why is it so damn hard to make a new Trek show? The only one that’s come close isn’t even official Trek—The Orville—and even they’re saddled with a lame “dick jokes in space” concept that they can never quite escape.
I have a sneaking suspicion the MacFarlane could make a really good serious Star Trek show if given the chance, but because of his reputation for comedy and the fact that he was stuck with Fox instead of CBS as a network to work on, he was forced to Trojan Horse his serious Star Trek show as a spoof. Orville can be funny at times, but its usually at its best when its trying to be serious science fiction. If you toned down the comedic elements a bit, you could put episodes like “About a Girl,” “Krill,” “New Dimensions,” “Lasting Impressions,” “Home,” and “Identity” in with the best of ST: TNG, and all of the episodes that I just listed are actually pretty dark stories at their core. Even some of the weaker episodes feel like they could have been ST:TNG episodes, and some of them pretty much were.
I was a fan, definitely on the Rick and Morty side minus the nihilism but you see a lot of it in there, the lightspeed pace and even line delivery is very close in the vibe, and there were some pretty hilarious qupis in there (“I was on a Klingon Prison Planet and fought a Yeti for my shoes! He didn’t even need it, he was just being a ****!” is probably my favourite line, like ever). But there was actually, surprisingly, some character development! in a 24 minute pilot! now that’s efficient! (Seriously, when do pilot episodes ever have character development – it’s mostly just setting the stage -, that was a nice surprise)
like the dynamic between Mariner and Boimer is very R&M, she is very smart and has seen it all while Boimer is the naive one she keeps trying to talk about how the world is run. Also she’s introduced as boozed up (Rick and Morty pilot episode scene 1) and the final scene has Mariner going off on a rambling rant about how many adventures they’re going to have while the other person groans (Rick and Morty pilot episode final scene). Not quite bordering on copy and paste copyright infringement but the influence is definitely easy to spot.
The title sequence is actually a fun parody of Trek title sequences, the dynamic ship shots but except the ship keeps crashing into stuff or in the heroic attack of the Borg vs. Romulans the ship takes one shot and then immediately turns around and jumps away.
I like all the characters and nobody actively got on my nerves, maybe Mariner was starting to get there but she became more snarky Rick Sanchez as the episode goes on and the final reveal that she is literally the Captain’s daughter (and her dad is an Admiral!) was really smart. I also liked how Boimer developed over the pilot where he won’t rat her out to the Captain, especially after she says in her log how the actions of her bridge crew were what saved the day, when it was really Bomier’s goo. (the goo! “He’s useless! it’s the goo!”)
Maybe canon bending is that the lower decks crew are literally sleeping in a hallway in bunks near the communal shower but considering the naval influence on Star Trek that’s not entirely implausible. Maybe that’s just for the smaller Second Contact type of crews.
the First Officer being bitten by a bug that unleashes a zombie virus also seems very R&M, like the one where they were infected in the house with false memory characters who kept replicating. Even kind of the same gag in both episodes Rick/Mariner makes a quip about washing your hands to avoid infection.
I’d say also tonally this is close to Orville inasmuch that the sci-fi world and rules and stakes are treated seriously legit but its the responses of the characters that are funny. Like the two characters being excited about a system malfunction that needed analysis or the borked food replicator that kept spitting out hot bananas
The internet seems mad at it but I remain steadfastly befuddled what ticks the internet off as they were mad at Discovery and Picard too. But this is definitely more fun than expected.
My favourite Star Trek Show is TNG. I liked, yet never loved, Discovery once we were in Season 2 and it was less dark. I love Lower Decks. The characters are interesting, I found the jokes funny, but what I love most is how optimistic this show is. How fun it is.Other new trek shows and movies deconstruct/reconstruct Trek in grimdark way, while this makes fun of Trek in a loving, reverential way. Out main characters are nerds who love Starfleet. The show is set on a less prominent ship. We get to see the less glorious parts of Starfleet’s work
Sure, it’s cynical about the commanding officers being glory hounds who marginalize the contribution of people below them but other than that this show feels more Star Trek than anything since Voyager.
It’s basically this only in animated form and Star Trek
I don’t know whether it has been said before – if not, maybe cause no one was watching – but this is basically Final Space with a franchise anchor to it. Nearly identical animation, including anthropomorphic cats, which is a dead giveaway. Nearly identical lead male character, an annoying manchild with self-delusions, who the show really wants to push as endearing, but who is only consistently obnoxious (that is my read after one episode, at least). A similar way-too-rapid-fire jokes delivery, both visual and dialogue, seemingly hoping something sticks, and yet never letting the jokes breathe or weave organically into the story. Also so meta. Just loving the damn meta. Oh, look, we’re making a space show! And, actually, Final Space for all its weaknesses came out ahead here, because at least it was an original, not dragging 50 years of mythology behind it, mining it for the lamest meta jokes because they can and because Family Guy once ruined referencing for everyone.I’m more interested in how these shows are so similar despite being seemingly from entirely different creators than I’m annoyed by it. I’ll watch a few more episodes of this as fluff, because there’s not much new content around anyway these days. It was amusing enough.
Ensign Mariner’s speaking pace was so quick I thought I was watching Gilmore Girls. It hangs a lampshade on a number of things that I thought was clever. The fact that the command crew get all the glory despite everyone else’s participation was a nice touch. Overall I thought it was in the same vein as The Orville, heck the title theme is very reminiscent of it and I enjoyed it. My long term enjoyment is going to be determined if they slow the dialog down a bit. If you have to speed the dialog up to fit it all in you should just extend the length of the episode or trim the dialog. It’s still worlds better than Star Trek the Animated series or season 1 of Next Generation.
I still might check it out. I’m easy, though. You give me a show with Tawny Newsome, Noël Wells, and an animation style that doesn’t make me want to gauge my eyes out? You know that I’ll at least watch an episode.
Have you finished the season? Just wondering, of course.
So it’s exactly what I was worried it would be. Shame. Maybe it’ll grow into itself once the writers get the whole “This ain’t your daddy’s Star Trek! Wahey!” angle out of their systems.. I actually like the concept, but it’s a tricky one to pull off.
How can you not address the elephant in the room? Is the voice actor for the cyborg and actual cyborg or is this just another case of organic humans marginalizing a minority?
Reading the premise and early reviews of this, all I could think of was Red Dwarf, which managed to get some serious mileage out of what the vending machine repairmen on a starship got up to.
getting major reminders of Tag and Bink, the Star Wars comics about these two guys screwing up the entire continuity because they were so dumb.
Shorter review: “It is shitty and I will not pay to see it.”Surprised at even a “B-” rating. Give it the suck rating it deserves, so that other show creators MIGHT learn from it.Meanwhile there is an excellent Perry Mason series going.Quick note about ST:TNG: it actually improved A LOT from the first two seasons. That is a rarity on TV. One thing it did was that it made sure the series-long story arcs (Worf’s excommunication from Klingon Empire, Data trying to be more human, Wesley Crusher growing out of The Enterprise and eventually the series, Picard and Dr Crusher’s para-romance, Riker and Troi’s failed romance, Romulans’ fucking with Klingon Empire, Borg’s dominance, etc.), were not fucked with. They did this my making a lot of interesting and independent episodes, and There were only a few instances of recurring characters injecting their potentially incongruencies in. And Q being able to Simpsonize each of his episodes (putting everything back in its place by the end of the show) were an awesome distraction. Bookending the whole series with him was pure joy.
The first season was just……soooooo bad, in almost every respect; looking back, I’m stunned it got renewedThe second season was still pretty crummy in general, but had enough really good episodes (Q Who, Elementary Dear Data, and The Measure of a Man) to overtake the dreck (The Outrageous Okona, The Royale, and ESPECIALLY Shades of Gray) and make another season worth tryingAnd BOY HOWDY was it….Sins of the Father! Yesterday’s Enterprise! THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!It’s almost like watching an entirely different show
I mean…B- seems high?
It’s got problems. It’s uneven. But it had the spark that a lot of the later years Trek like the last Next Gen movies and Picard lacked.I liked it.P.S. Noticed Jerry O’Connell in the credits which ties in nicely to his real life wife Rebecca Romijn being in the new Pike/Number 1/Spock series as Number 1 of course.
so will the show do more to center “real-world” racial minority characters, e.g., not the green Orions? Black, Latinx, Indigenous American, East Asians, South Asians, etc. I’m also not for having, say, blue folks with horns being coded as Caribbean, Arab, etc.
what about lgbt characters or relationships on the show?… what about progressive people of faith? The Federation is officially secular, but in this distant future, do any Earth based religions survive?The show needs to go without the older tropes of constant bashing of Klingons and Romulans.
…what?
This only exists because of a plan to pimp out Trek, nothing more.Not respect the property. Not think in terms of the fans, in fact, to completely tell the old fans, “Fuck you.” So, I’m not surprised it’s middling at best.
“the captain and their staff are the front line against any danger the ship runs into”I’m not sure you know what the “front line” is.
Am I the only one who is hating the Mariner character? She seems to go out of her way to annoy everyone, especially the Boimler character, who appears to be our “entry point” character that we’re supposed to root for.
I’ve been enjoying the show so far, but I’m wondering how old these characters are supposed to be. Three of the ensigns seem like they’re probably…19? And then there’s Mariner, who’s gained and lost promotions like they’re car keys, who has racked up comparable experience with the grizzled war veterans on the bridge, definitely not 19, but happy to hang out with the younglings. There’s a whiff of MPDG in her but she’s more of a Ferris Bueller type, a havoc-wreaking free spirit who’s insulated from consequences, fun to hang out with but probably less fun for the people who get stuck with the bill. There would be no place for her in one of the live-action shows but her existence makes sense in this.
Too bad AV Club has deigned some cartoons unworthy of weekly review because this week’s season finale was the BEST Trek in years. Beats out Picard, at least in entertaining minutes vs total run time. With a few pleasant surprises and call-backs to earlier episodes, TOS, The Animated Series, Next Generation and probably a few I missed.