Paramount+ just premiered the first two episodes of the fourth season of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” and with it came a premiere that served as a great big love letter to “Star Trek: Voyager”.
In the episode, the team has to escort the U.S.S. Voyager to its new home as a museum exhibit. Of course, the journey goes haywire with big nods to ‘Voyager’ episodes like “Tuvix” and “Macrocosm” along with holograms of Chaotica and the Fear clown from “The Thaw” coming into play.
The episode also ain’t afraid to go some places, from judging Janeway for essentially murdering Tuvix. It also sets up soemthing the show hasn’t done before – a season-long arc involving a mysterious ship going around and destroying the starships of various races.
Recently, supervising Director Barry J. Kelly spoke with Collider about the episode and he said their aim was just to work as a great big bit of fan service:
“We love Voyager. We’re trying to capture the most classic moments. We have 22 minutes; we can’t fit everything that we love about Voyager, but hopefully, we were able to get enough love in there that if you love Voyager, too, it’s an episode that you’ll feel right at home with.”
Asked if by the same outlet if they could get someone from Trek’s past back they haven’t got yet, Kelly says “I would love a Geordi/Data episode. Maybe, if not them both, one or the other.”
In a separate interview with TrekMovie. Kelly was also asked what the status of a potential fifth season. Turns out it’s further along than you might expect:
“Yeah, we are already working on it. I still have some stuff left to do finishing season 4. But we are already getting scripts from season 5, and they are hilarious. That’s such a great thing about this job. I love getting these scripts for the first time and reading them and I get to just laugh at it and enjoy it. That’s when I get to enjoy it as a TV show, honestly. Then once I finished reading scripts, I’m like, “Okay, how the hell am I going to make this?”
The fourth season of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will consist of ten episodes and is scheduled to run through to early October.
