Saw Lower Decks.

I’ll be honest: I’ve been absolutely baffled by this whole idea since they announced it. But I enjoy Star Trek as television, so I’m happy to see them keep investing in it.

I wanted to keep an open mind, so I’ve cultivated curiosity, not skepticism.

I’ve been wondering:

How will they make me interested in it enough for me to keep paying for All Access?

How will Star Trek even work as a comedy?

The comedy part was even more dissonant than the cartoon bit, tbh

With the first episode, I see some answers.

I don’t love the comedy bit. I didn’t laugh once. The humor is for someone else. Teenagers?

But also, this wasn’t a deal breaker. Shockingly… It was INTERESTING to watch.

The Federation is a SPRAWLING empire. We’ve only seen 0.1% of it

This show challenges Star Trek’s world building API to describe and construct detail in places where the camera hasn’t lingered in the past. With solid production design, fewer cost constraints, thanks to animation

How DOES a planet become part of the Federation?

We’ve never even seen this essential component of governance, even though the whole POINT of the stories we’re seeing is the weaving of that cultural tapestry.

Lower Decks wants to take us through that.

But the additional detail also has a micro component.

What does a replicator look like when you pull off all the paneling and take it out for repair? TNG was never going to show us that. They didn’t have the budget for one off industrial set pieces like that.

We got barrels

Lower Decks can show us all kinds of machinery. New aliens, alien creatures, alien architecture.

Animation completely changes the cost constraints of depicting Star Trek’s scenery. Cartoon or not, comedy or not, the production design is all very serious, grounded in the lore.

Taking it seriously, despite the comedy banner, is where Lower Decks makes a pact with existing Trekkies:

“We know this shit is weird, given your experience, but trust us to honor the history of the story.”

The main characters aren’t senior, but their values are all Starfleet.

Regardless of their idiosyncrasies, we’ve been given junior officers on Lower Decks whose convictions and moral code we recognize.

They’re young and inexperienced, but they’re trying to do the right thing as they understand it.

That’s what always kept me tuning in.

Star Trek is a diorama for examining difficult problems and big questions.

What makes it work is watching humans we like puzzle through it based on a framework of decency, curiosity and compassion.

Lower Decks is a departure in lots of ways, but isn’t budging on any of that.

It’s also clearly a love letter to the TNG era.

The main titles use the same typography, all the production design details are correct to that period.

So, of course, you have me there. That’s a rootkit installed during my formative years, I’m powerless to resist.

Did you know the Enterprise D had a fucking dolphin tank? And that the dolphin tank hosted DOLPHIN CREW who helped pilot the ship in 3D space?

“Cetacean ops.”

We never went there. They can’t do dolphins on their 90’s budget.

But Lower Decks can.

So fuck it, I’m in.

It definitely has some beard to grow, and I hope it gets the time to do it.

There are interesting questions it’s well positioned to ask and, and seems serious about answering, so even if the comedy doesn’t work for me, I’m curious to see where it goes.

“The Emissary to the Prophets has entered the chat.”

Okay, one correction: we’ve seen it ONCE and under the most absurdly exceptional circumstances. I don’t think most integrations go anything like Bajor. https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/1291946634050445312

By the third episode, Lower Decks has gone from my tepid enjoyment to a full-throated endorsement.

Cartoon or not, they want to use the Star Trek tools according to their intended purpose: critique of our modern social order.

Lower Decks seems invested in winking to the existing fandom. This time, we get a nod to Relics (TNG), where Montgomery Scott explains the fine art of engineering task estimation to our Commander LaForge.

Always start the negotiation higher than the time actually expected.

“Temporal Edict” is allegory for our current existence under capitalism:

Overworked, under-rested, completely exhausted, the crew can’t work out solutions to even the simplest problems. Without slack in the system, everyone is run ragged, broken by an unending stream of demands.

The episode also gives us a look at something that SURELY had to be happening off-screen in the Federation:

An integration gone wrong thanks to a cultural misunderstanding. I’m really loving how Lower Decks takes the politics and world building seriously, while stretching it too

Star Trek is a canon. A standard library of world building that storytellers can hook into to tell new stories efficiently.

Using it well is hard! TNG season 1 is nearly all throwaway. But Lower Decks is finding its footing much more quickly.

I also laughed my ass off this time

I think Parker gets the heart of this succinctly here:

Lower Decks is structured to deliver something for everyone without turning people off https://twitter.com/xor/status/1299153536421425154

Just saw the Lower Decks finale.

That was just extraordinary television, and a tremendous episode of CAPITAL S, CAPITAL T

Star Trek

Straight up. These people did not come to play. They have studied this media operating system and they have knocked it out of the park.

To understand HOW Lower Decks can possibly work—

—that is, how you can tell a real (comedic!) Star Trek story in a medium that doesn't always get a lot of respect in the west—

You really have to look at Star Trek like an operating system. A standardized delivery platform.

Star Trek is one of many.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe? That's an operating system, too. Star Wars, Harry Potter.

Speculative fiction is expensive, you know? You start with a simple "what if?" but then it takes WORK to tease out all the consequences.

But what could be more intriguing than a world that works differently than our own?

People are PASSIONATE about speculative fiction, which is what makes it economically viable. If you paint a compelling enough picture you can keep selling story after story.

People love Star Trek because its central what-if hits so close to home:

Star Trek asks: what would happen if everyone had enough?

What would happen if all were fed, housed, clothed, educated?

What would people want to do with all of that? What would be possible in that world?

Part of the answer is fucking spaceships.

Badass, streamlined, gallant hunks of metal and plasma trundling through the stars, pushing the very EDGES of human knowledge and experience.

I don't know about you, but I will try ANYTHING with spaceships for at least one episode.

And look, there's TONS of dorks just like me who love nothing more than to fantasize about spaceships, so already this feature is paying rent:

You invest in a BUNCH of world building detail to describe the workings of spaceships, boom, there's going to be an audience for that.

Enough preamble. Let's get back to Lower Decks.

The creators showed up with a LOT of knowledge about how Star Trek, the operating system, works. They have experience as storytellers but also specific passion for Star Trek as an OS.

They did their homework.

As media operating systems go, Star Trek has a blessing and a curse:

Its goal is to be encouraging, calling us to higher purposes and ideals.

But that important role requires an earnest commitment TO those ideals, and not everyone is in a spot to take that seriously.

Lower Decks takes up that mantle 100%.

But it does so in a way that would be insidious if not for the wholesome end product.

Lower Decks sneaks it all in a side door, distracting you with gags and hijinks.

The show takes ALL the what-ifs posed by Star Trek and recalculates the view for an all new perspective.

What if you went to work because you LOVED it, not because of economic coercion? How would your boss treat you? How would you feel about life's challenges?

A fully consensual workplace and a life without desperation:

These are RADICAL ways of life to depict right now, during the height of inequality and a moment of global precariousness.

As art goes, Lower Decks is subversive.

This was always the point of Star Trek.

Nichelle Nichols describes MLK exhorting her to continue with the show, modeling a Black professional in a future where racism had been vanquished altogether. https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter

That's big shit.

That's a meaningful role to play in history.

Lower Decks isn't fucking around on that, either. At a moment in time where ignorance and racism ROILS, you turn on Star Trek and two capable, intelligent, BLACK women are staring back at you.

So you've got a creative team with the guts to show up, full bore, for the social ambition of the show.

You've got a platform for making spaceships go vroom-vroom.

That's GOOD TELEVISION.

It's thought provoking, it's nourishing.

So much TOXIC media in the world right now.

We're living through a time of ignorance, paranoia and desperation. The collective consciousness of humanity is straight up polluted

You can give Lower Decks to anyone in your life knowing it'll be kind yet compelling—and fun.