New photos and details have emerged regarding “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” the upcoming animated comedy series which will debut on CBS All Access later this year.
Mike McMahan, a former writer on “Rick and Morty,” is spearheading this first attempt at pure comedy for the venerable sci-fi franchise. He tells EW his goal was “to do a show about the guy who brings the yellow cartridge to the back of the food replicator so that a banana comes out the front.”
Though aimed at adults, the show’s humor is more PG-13 than R so arguably more “Futurama” than “Rick and Morty”. McMahan goes on to explain the differences between this and something like ‘Morty’:
“It’s definitely not a kids show, but only because it’s a little bit more complex than a kid show would be. The fun of Rick and Morty is that it breaks down sci-fi tropes and is told through Rick Sanchez, who has a very specific, chaotic, nihilistic lens.
Lower Decks treats mythological sci-fi things just as important as a regular Trek show, while finding new stories to tell – just from a different angle. It’s not disassembling mythological sci-fi things. It’s treating them as important for everybody on the starship as it would be in a regular star Trek show.”
The story focuses on the adventures of low-ranking crew members of Starfleet’s USS Cerritos, those assigned the less glamorous jobs from repairs and maintenance to analysis jobs. Time period wise the stories unfold during the 2360s – the era of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” at its height.
As a result, McMahan hopes to have some recognizable characters on the series: “Next Gen is my favorite era. And as a huge Trek fan, I would definitely want to try to use some of them so that I could not only build out the world, but also work with some of my heroes. But I can’t get more specific than that. You’ll have to wait and see.”
The series has not set an official premiere date as yet.
