Understandably, the impact of the ongoing Screen Actors Guild has had a negative impact across the film and television programming at this year’s New York Comic Con. But that didn’t stop Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan from during the show’s portion of the overall “Star Trek Universe” panel to let fans know what to expect from the rest of the currently running fourth season and a sneak peek of what may be in store for season five.
Lower Decks season 4 is currently airing with new episodes dropping on the Paramount Plus streaming app every Thursday.
The Lower Decks portion of the Star Trek Universe panel kicked off with a screening of a new episode, “Caves,” which is set to drop on the Paramount Plus app this coming Thursday, October 19. Afterwards, McMahan took to the stage and said that he had snuck out into the audience to watch the episode with the fans.
Diving into discussing the current season and the biggest change it introduced from previous seasons – the promotion of the lower deck ensigns to lieutenants.
“We weren’t originally going to promote them this soon,” he admits. “When we started talking about season four I was like ‘Let’s end the season with them getting promoted, I have a lot of fun ideas…’ But then it was like ‘Wait, if you have a lot of fun ideas, and it’s already hard to write for this show, why not just promote them at the beginning of the season and not delay it?’ So doing it at the end of the first episode opened up a lot of story avenues.
“But they’re still lower deckers,” he continues. “They’re junior lieutenants, the word ‘junior'” is right there in the title. But Lower Decks is based on being in your twenties, your early thirties, you’re getting your first jobs, you’re meeting your best friends you didn’t know you were going to meet, you’re still yourself but you’re learning about yourself at the same time. All this season you’re examining what its like to be lower deckers but you’re still moving forward. What challenges does that make? What comedy does that create? What crazy sci-fi adventures come from that?”
McMahan also gave the fans an hint or two as to what to expect from the newest character added to the Lower Decks ranks, T’Lyn, an exchange officer from the Vulcan Expeditionary Group.
“We wanted a Vulcan Mariner,” he stated with a chuckle. “What’s a Vulcan who doesn’t fit in with the other Vulcans like? What is a Vulcan like who shoots from the hip? Gabrielle Ruiz plays T’Lyn so deadpan and so perfectly that it feels like something that just fits into Star Trek and the comedy at the same time. She is genuinely fun to watch.
“Writing for T’Lyn is the best because you write something and then go back and say ‘How do I make this even drier? I’ve got to dry this out so everything else is lugubrious but this is just… sandy.’ We love T’Lyn and there’s lots more fun stuff to come in this season and in season 5 which we’ve been writing, so she’s sticking around.”
The panel pivoted from discussing characters who are new to the show to the show using iconic characters from other live action Star Trek shows into their animated show. McMahan says that care needs to be taken due to the differing tones between the live action series and the animated Lower Decks.
As he explains, “When we have characters from other Star Treks on that’s a big deal because if they’re going to be on screen, there’s going to be a gravitational pull of emotion and attention that we have to be honoring them but we also have to be building on and creating from what they built before. I don’t want to make fun of these performers because I love their work, but you want them to be part of the fun. To bring in a legacy character it has to be important for the show, it has to be important for the character, it has to be funny.I’m really proud of the DS9 episode we did in season three.”
