“Space… the funniest frontier?”
Star Trek: The Animated Series first aired in September of 1973, four years after the three seasons of what is now referred to Star Trek: The Original Series. It was a straight sequel that continued the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise. All of the original cast lent their voices to the characters they played in the live-action series with the notable exception of Walter Koenig. Chekov was replaced with an alien that had three arms and legs named Arex, who was voiced by James Doohan, as were many of the other guest characters throughout the two years the series ran. There were episodes that served as direct sequels, and so we were treated to the likes of Harry Mudd, tribbles, and the Guardian of Forever once again. Now Paramount and CBS have brought us a second animated series, and the first season of 10 episodes arrives on DVD straight from its running on the network’s streaming service.
This concept began with an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Lower Decks. The episode put the spotlight on the service crew that you really never see in Star Trek unless they are wearing a red shirt and … well … let’s just say they didn’t really survive long enough for us to get to know them. When the new Trek showrunners were looking to do an animated series, they wanted something different. Going back to that Lower Decks idea was a way they could deliver Trek from a slightly different point of view. This is also the first Trek series that’s truly a comedy. It’s also intended more as an adult cartoon, and that scared me a little. I was afraid that we were going to see tons of sex and nudity on the show. Fortunately, things don’t go that far. The series does touch on those subjects in ways the other shows either wouldn’t or couldn’t. The language is certainly more adult, but the F-bombs and such get beeped. I will have to say that here in the second season I’m seeing some real South Park callbacks. Some of the voices and even the animation are starting to turn in that direction. Look, I love South Park, and I love Star Trek. Do I necessarily love Star Trek: South Park? Not as much.
The ship is called the Cerritos and is a Next Generation version of a Reliant class ship. The timeline here takes place in that Picard area of the original timeline known as Prime. The show makes sure you understand that by using an original theme that hits beats very much like The Next Generation/Star Trek: The Motion Picture theme. Yes, they were the same theme. The credit fonts use the exact same blue color and appearance as The Next Generation credits. While the series does have a captain and all of the usual bridge personnel, that’s not where the focus of the episodes can be found. We deal mostly with four service members of the crew who live way at the bottom of the ship and way in the back. It’s their job to clean coils and fix replicators. Basically, they get the dirty jobs. That doesn’t mean they lack ambition. Most would love to be bridge officers someday … even captains. Here are your main characters.
Tawney Newsome voices our central character, Beckett Mariner. She’s the kind who thinks of the rule book as something of a suggestion. She’s always looking to play outside the box, and it’s gotten her in plenty of trouble and plenty of transfers to other ships. She’s also the captain’s daughter, a fact they both tried to keep quiet. Not so much anymore. With different last names (her father’s an admiral), they’ve been able to keep a lid on it. But it makes her quite jumpy when Beckett makes a mistake, which by rules of the series must be every four-minute segment.
Jack Quaid is Brad Boimer. He’s s stickler for the rules. He expects to be captain one day, and he doesn’t want to get involved in the antics but somehow gets sucked into the trouble. At the second season start he’s on the Titan with Captain William T. Riker in command. Frakes lends his voice to his character here. When we get some glimpses of that ship; it stands in stark contrast to the Cerritos. They’re always in some tight spot or battle, and it’s making Boimer rethink his desire for this kind of assignment. He lucks out when he’s the victim of a transporter accident much like Riker was, and now there are two of them. The original Boimer goes back home to the Cerritos and his friends.
Eugene Cordero voices Sam Rutherford. He’s a cyborg with an implant on his head and an eye something like you might see in the Borg. He is the requisite socially awkward character with little to no self-confidence. It doesn’t help that he’s still learning and adapting to his implant and all of the abilities it gives him. He is having some memory storage issues that cause him to have vision issues until he makes a hard choice to jettison some of those files.
Noel Wells voices Tendi. She’s a green Orion, and she’s the brand new member of the crew. She’s young and inexperienced, so she goes overboard trying to make friends and fit in. She’s eager to learn and looks upon the grudge assignments as a way to learn. She’s mostly assigned to sickbay where she assists the ship’s medical officer Dr. T’Ana (Vigman). She’s a cat with a pretty grumpy disposition. We learn a lot about her and her people in an episode where she and Mariner try to go undercover on an Orion world. They bond a bit over the experience.
Of course the ship has a captain. She’s Captain Carol Freeman, voiced with authority by Dawnn Lewis. She’s pretty strict, but we get to see there’s a side of her that lacks the authority and confidence she displays. Jerry O’Connell voices the first officer, Commander Jack Ransom.
There are a ton of Easter eggs to be found here for Trek fans. You’ll find items and references to every version of Star Trek you can recall. You should really see how many you can catch. That would be a perfect watching game (with booze or without).
Many of the episodes themselves are direct callbacks to classic Trek. The first episode of the season is called Twovix, and Voyager fans know exactly where that is going. The Cerritos gets the honor of escorting Voyager back to Starbase to be outfitted as a museum piece. There are cutouts of crew members with “mission worn” uniforms, and the easy gig comes when promotions are on the table. So you know things are going to go wrong. A transporter accident combines two crew members, and so they have to research the time it happened on Voyager with Tuvok and Neelix. We know that solution was to “kill” the combined creature to get the other two back. This causes the new entity here to bring in almost everyone in the “being” to avoid this. The result is a giant ball of a person that looks like something Cartman might become in South Park. The episode also features a virus that interfaces with the Borg tech, and promotions don’t look so likely… or do they?
We get to see what an Orion wedding looks like, and how about a Betazoid party where the mind tricks get real Star Trippin’? There is an overall arc that just shows for a few seconds on each episode. There’s a strange new starship out there intercepting ships from all races. Turns out we get to go back to the Next Generation episode of First Duty with a return of Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher, Robert Duncan McNeill as Nick Lacarno, and Shannon Fill as Sato Jaxa. The three were part of something called Nova Squad, and Wesley had to decide if he was going to narc out his friends when they did a banned and dangerous stunt. Wes got off, while ol’ St. Nick got sent up the river. Voyager would use McNeill as a cadet in prison at the beginning of Voyager, and it’s easy to see they could have very well been the same characters. The episode makes a running gag about how much Nick looks like Tom Paris. Good stuff.
There are a couple of features that take us behind the scenes a bit including a virtual meet-up with the three returnees from First Duty. There are 10 episodes on two discs with a few commentary tracks as well. Lower Decks will be signing off after the upcoming fifth season to air soon on Paramount +. Kurtzman keeps trying to mess up Star Trek, but these episodes are pretty good, and Strange New Worlds is already renewed for a fourth season, and we haven’t even seen the third yet. Star Trek is still there even with Kurtzman trying. “You’d have to screw up in a historically significant way to mess this one up.”
