Metaverse 2020: Star Trek – Lower Decks Recap

With conventions going digital in order to avoid killing the people who give them money, New York Comic-Con has joined the virtual convention fray. Among the many panels release on Youtube in the past few days, the lone panel that we will be covering involves the fresh off the market “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, which just debuted its second episode of ten yesterday before this panel aired. The panel was moderated by Ramin Zahed, Editor-in-Chief of Animation Magazine, while the guests present to discuss the series were creator Mike McMahan, Supervising Director Barry Kelly, Writer M. Willis, and character designer Marisa Livingston.

After showing a clip of the upcoming third episode coming next Thursday, McMahan discussed the initial conception for the show, coming from his previous strong relationship with the Star Trek franchise from being a fan for so long. Miraculously, he got a conversation with the people putting together the current live action Star Trek series and pitched them his idea of a comedic show based on his own favorite episode, TNG’s “Lower Decks”, which became the inspiration for this series. Like in that episode Lower Decks the series focuses primarily on the underdogs and less impressive members of their respective Star Fleet crew, while a more conventional Star Trek adventure would be happening in the background with the bridge crew.

McMahan, like most of his crew, was more than excited to get involved with a show officially connected to the Star Trek universe, but showed frustration that the specific time period the series takes place has some limitations in using characters they’d like to have on the show. Nonetheless, they plan to make a show that is reverent to Star Trek as a series and using the “power of animation” to handle sets and props better when they can destroy them as much as they’d like. And with each episode of at least the first season being a reference of a previous type of story across the franchise. Plus, while the pandemic did impact the recording process, McMahan is still hard at work writing the Season 2 finale, which we likely won’t see until next year.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is available on CBS All Access. Watch this panel here.