2D TO BEAM UP
BOLDLY GOING WHERE NO FUN HAS GONE BEFORE, THE LATEST STAR TREK SERIES IS NOT ONLY ANIMATED, BUT A COMEDY SHOW AS WELL. WE SPEAK TO SHOWRUNNER MIKE MCMAHAN ABOUT IT
GIVEN THAT THE FRANCHISE has birthed eight television series and 13 films, it’s perhaps surprising that (barring a couple of recent shorts) Star Trek has only boldly gone into the world of animation once – way back in 1973 with Star Trek: The Animated Series. But since we’re experiencing quite the creative Treknaissance of late, it was only a matter of time before a course was charted back to the drawing board.
At the helm of new 2D animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks is executive producer (and unabashed Trekkie) Mike McMahan. An Emmy-winner, he’s made a name for himself in animation as a showrunner for Rick And Morty and co-creator of Solar Opposites. But charting new Trek adventures is where McMahan always hoped to be. After all, as he tells SFX,
“I work in comedy. I love animation, and I also love Star Trek.”
Serendipitously, when Lower Decks was in development at production company Secret Hideout with executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin and Aaron Baiers, McMahan was asked to come in pitch his vision for a contemporary animated take on Star Trek storytelling. “It was my opportunity to say, ‘This is a show for me’, primarily,” he laughs. “It’s one that is purely Star Trek, that has all of these great The Next Generation elements to it, but then really takes the comedy
elements in Star Trek and heightens them. And then it enhances them, so that you get this vibrant, fun, love letter to Star Trek that always feels like Trek. But it’s also doing something you’ve never seen take flight in Star Trek.”
With the producers sold on his track record and enthusiastic vision, McMahan’s work really began. Trek fans are well aware that all the iterations of the universe have had some tendrils of comedy, be it via characters like Bones or circumstances on missions. But there’s never been a flat-out comedic Trek series. “The Tribbles episode and numerous others have comedic moments,” McMahan observes, “but there’s nothing really centring around Starfleet characters that they, themselves, are funny. [I wanted] animated characters that have a love of Starfleet and are allowed to have fun, while also being human and serving on a Starfleet ship. I wanted to add that vibrancy to it, because that is what I like in Star Trek.”
As its title implies, Lower Decks is focused on the worker bees in all the areas of the USS Cerritos that aren’t assigned to the bridge. This smaller, California-class starship concerns itself with second contact missions on worlds recently connected to the United Federation of Planets. McMahan wanted to explore what it’s like to be one of the unseen functionaries who make everything run day-to-day.
“To us, the Cerritos is still amazing,” he enthuses. “And it means that in every episode you get to have a story of the week. It was important to me that every episode felt like it was standalone. But something that Star Trek does so well is it grows the character stories and the family. And sometimes they take over the show. So every episode of Lower Decks has a new ‘sci-fi of the week’ element that the bridge crew is dealing with, that then impacts the new stories that are happening with our Lower Deckers.”
THE PERFECT DATE
McMahan also wanted to set his series in a familiar section of the Trek universe: specifically, the year 2380. “Because I’m a fan of all Star Trek, I want the characters to somewhat be a surrogate of what I love about Star Trek,” he explains. “And putting it in 2380 not only allows me to do a The Next Generation-era show – which is clearly the dream – but opens it up for our characters to know everything except for stuff that happens in Star Trek: Picard. That means they get to refer to all of the Star Trek. Like, you could literally write a book of the references, both visual and verbal, of all the stuff you would’ve had to have seen in Star Trek to get every little reference in every episode. But our characters get it because they live in that world, and they love that stuff.”
Setting the show in this era also opens the door for appearances by legacy characters or actor cameos – with some limitations. McMahan explains his approach. “The thinking behind those was twofold,” he says. “For any legacy character from Star Trek that shows up on the Cerritos, there has to be a big reason for it to happen. This isn’t Deep Space Nine. It’s not a place where characters are coming and going. So, if a legacy character shows up, there has to be a really important reason. And it’s gonna be so disruptive to the lives of the characters that we’re following on the show that it has to be worth having this gravitational pull on the storytelling.
“Now, that being said, Star Trek also has a rich history of these actors who are playing characters underneath masks,” he continues. “So, we did go out to a couple of people, and we did get some great actors that we’re not making a big deal about. We wanted them to play our aliens because they give Star Trek the sound of Star Trek, and the feeling of Star Trek.
“So there are some Easter egg people that you might have to dig a little bit for. But, for the most part, the number one important thing to me was that for the Lower Decks characters and the bridge crew, I wanted to give people enough time to fall in love with them.”
With a second season already deep into production, McMahan says he’s proud that Lower Decks is a show that captures the alchemy of the best Trek stories that are standalone, yet weave in some serialised storytelling too. “There are things even in the opening episode that track as a serialised element across the season, that does have its own arc,” he teases. “I really like, as a viewer, always being surprised by the shows I’m watching; I think we all do. And what I really like is when I thought I understood a show, but now it’s doing things that I didn’t expect it to.
“So, every time you think that Lower Decks is just gonna be a frivolous, non-serialised ode to Star Trek, suddenly Star Trek-y stuff starts happening that gets serialised and carries you through the episode. It takes a minute for that stuff to naturally build, but once it does, it’s really satisfying.”
So how does McMahan, as a Trek fan himself, feel about what he’s about to serve up to his fan brethren? “I think the entire first
Every episode has a new ‘sci-fi of the week’ element that the bridge crew is dealing with
season is awesome!” he declares. “You gotta remember, it was everyone’s first time making an animated Star Trek in decades and defining what that meant, defining what you could do and what kind of stories were feeling vibrant. And pretty quickly – I’d say a couple episodes into the season – we hit our stride and it starts to get really fun. Then at the end of the season we pull a fast one. There are some story arcs that culminate in a finale that changes the storytelling for the second season…
“I’d say the last three episodes are bonkers!” he continues, with a note of glee. “It culminates in a really amazing way. It feels like the show has completely solidified. And it leads us into a second season we’ve been writing that’s better than what I was hoping for when we were starting out. The show has gotten better than I could’ve anticipated.”
Looking back over how it’s all come together, McMahan says, “It’s been a blast! The show came out exactly like I wanted it. I love that the new stuff, like Picard and Discovery, has such different tones. You don’t have to have the old definition of what Star Trek has to be. Trek has always changed. We have all these rules to make [the stories] feel Star Trek-y, but then we also get to have fun and have a good time. And I think Trekkies deserve to have that, you know?”