With the Season 4 premiere just two weeks away, now is the perfect time to catch up on Star Trek: Lower Decks. Lower Decks is the first animated series in the Star Trek universe since 1974 when Star Trek: The Animated Series wrapped up, and it’s different in all the best ways. It’s also Star Trek’s first true comedy. While so much of the Star Trek canon allows viewers to acquaint themselves with the Kirks, Spocks, and Picards of Starfleet, Lower Decks focuses on junior crew-members aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos, an unimportant starship that makes “second contact” with alien races. The best way to describe Lower Decks comes from EP Alex Kurtzman, who says that the A-plot of a typical Star Trek story is happening in the background, so it’s only tangentially related to the plot of each Lower Decks episode — for the most part, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford are attempting to do their menial support jobs despite the crazy sci-fi chaos in the background. Three seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream now, and when you’re all caught up on that, you can even check out Mariner and Boimler make the jump to live action in a special Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover episode.
Photo: CBS All Access
