Let’s celebrate how Lower Decks unapologetically brings back Star Trek’s sillier side

[u/mekilat]

Lower Decks is ending. Sometimes, it is possible for a show to be perfect, and still come to an end. That is not failure. That is life.

I think we all agree the show went so far above and beyond than expected. It has been hilarious, outrageous, while remaining deeply respectful of the lore. In doing so, it reminded me how silly and hysterical these voyages can be.

Fun isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Trek. The gap between the conclusion of Enterprise until Discovery, made it that I mostly remembered and discussed the highlights. The episodes that meant something. The Measure of a Man. Darmok. Far Beyond the Stars. For a decade and a half, moments like “There are four lights“ and Shakespearean speeches on the value of freedom were what these stories are about. I brushed aside its humor, as some extra dressing.

Star Trek is deeply silly sometimes. It can be a show where a god-like entity shows up in a mariachi band to be kind of a dick to the crew. Where Chekov will ask police officers where to find nuclear weapons (in a thick Russian accent!). There is a deadly plague of plush toys called the Tribbles. Let’s not even get into the Ferengi shenanigans.

Short Treks had some funny short stories. The Tribbles are born pregnant, and they are a menace! Una and Spock sing along! It was great, but felt like a side serving of fan service. Lower Decks blew every expectation away. Every week, year after year. We got to see Cetacean ops. The dolphins are really horny, and they have a Starfleet beach ball. There’s a Tuvix episode where they make these Dragon Ball style fusions of random characters and give them names. There’s a Tamarian, and we have no idea what he says but it sounds important. Evil robot has sex with bird people.

It’s not just a comedy. It’s a comedy for us. It is so astonishingly respectful of our fandom. To be clear, we’re a few thousand fans, the hardest of hardcore, debating things like how a phaser’s power settings work, or the diplomatic nuances of the Khitomer accords. They had no business reason to make a show for us. It could have been done for a fresh new audience, and simply use the IP as a starting point. They didn’t have to go so hard. References to a single line from a TOS episode in the 60s that was never explored again. Integrating inconsistencies across all these shows, all these decades into canon. How!?

Lower decks writers love trek so much. They breathed so much life into that world, by pointing out how ridiculous it often is, and running with it. It still managed to deliver coherent, intelligent stories worth exploring and reflecting on. Like how Starbase 80 helps us understand the daily lives of Federation civilians.

The crew is on the wildest ride in the universe. They’re having fun, they’re trying their best, and they’re boldly going somewhere sillier than before. This is the most fun I’ve had with this franchise since my childhood. Lower decks! Lower decks! Lower decks!

I’d love it if everyone could share their favorite dumb, silly, or funny moments from the show :)

[u/Edymnion]

What I appreciated most about the series is how much it took the weirdo nonsensical elements that we ALL just kind of pretended like never happened, put them front and center, and just made them work.

The original Animated Series was so freaking wild that for decades it was deemed entirely non-canonical, but here we are with not just references to but actual on-screen callbacks to Giant Spock, Pandronians, the blue Orions (complete with silly M shaped space suits and weird pronunciation)? And it works?!?

Plus, the worldbuilding that animation allows! Live action or even CGI like Prodigy could never afford to do vast open wasteland farms on Kronos, but Lower Decks traditional animation could, and we got more universe building in that one episode than what entire SEASONS of other shows have done!

I swear, the creators and writers were uber-nerds like us, they fully understood the concept of "Just show us the thing, you don't have to spend 20 minutes explaining it, just show it and move on and the fans will fill in the rest!" that will have us debating things for a decade!

[u/EffectiveSalamander → u/Edymnion]

I think one of the reasons TAS was considered non-canon was that they wanted to be free to contradict it. They never needed to, so there was no need to make it non-canon.

[u/onthenerdyside → u/EffectiveSalamander]

The big reason TAS was considered non-canon is because Gene Roddenberry considered it non-canon. That man loved to de-canonize stuff he didn't like. He actually wasn't a stickler for canon at all, which is why it's so funny when people hold him up as a paragon of continuity. It took the studio and some of the other writers to talk him into TNG not being a total reboot instead of just a sequel.

[u/Eurynom0s → u/onthenerdyside]

Did Rodenberry decide to do make TAS not canon before or after it was over (or partway through)? I know he wanted it to just be a straight continuation of TOS, but animation was considered purely kiddie fluff by TV execs back then, which is where the wildly inconsistent story quality in the show comes from. It's the tug of war between Rodenberry and the studio on whether or not to heavily water things down for kids on display.

So makes sense if it was after, or at least partway through, if he had walked away feeling like the studio had forced him into making shlock and maybe wanted to decanonize it as a way of distancing himself from it.

[u/onthenerdyside → u/Eurynom0s]

From what I've read, it was afterwards. By the end of his public life, he didn't like most of TAS, and he didn't like what the movies had become, especially the recently released Star Trek V. He said he didn't like how militarized Starfleet had become since Wrath of Khan, which likely is why Picard says Starfleet isn't a military organization in TNG.

Funny how he wanted to decanonize all the stuff he didn't work on directly. He had mostly handed off showrunning duties on TAS to DC Fontana, IIRC. What we know as Star Trek today would be much different if Roddenberry had his way. It's been influenced by Fontana, Gene Coon, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Ronald D. Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Branon Braga, Manny Coto, Alex Kurtzman, Mike McMahon, and even JJ Abrams and the ghost of Bryan Fuller's ideas for Discovery.

What will be interesting to see is how Prodigy and Lower Decks bleed back into live action shows going forward. It seems that the Star Trek universe is expanding into new genres with a live action comedy, so we'll see how that is received.

I used to be a Star Trek nitpicker, but I've come to mostly just relax when it comes to such things on the new series. It can be interesting to try to incorporate new stuff into the old or vice versa, but it doesn't bother me as much anymore. Perhaps modern television has watered down my expectations, but I'm just not as critical as I used to be. Maybe I saw all the anger and realized I didn't want to sound like that. Who knows?