There are jokes everyone will get and then there are jokes just for the fans, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, in its first season, proved itself a master of nailing the latter kind of humor. The animated comedy, set aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos during the post-TNG era of Star Trek, features no shortage of quality Trek action and adventure. But it also isn’t afraid to have a little fun poking at some well-established tropes of the franchise.
That’s thanks to creator Mike McMahan, whose credits include Rick and Morty as well as co-creating Solar Opposites, who makes the series from a place of deep love. As he explained to Collider in a recent phone interview, his innate fandom is why the show maintains a deep reverence for Trek‘s legacy, while also having a lot of fun depicting the adventures of crewmates Boimler (Jack Quaid), Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Tendi (Noël Wells), and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero).
Below, McMahan talks us through the process behind creating one of the show’s most memorable gags, teases a bit about what to expect in Season 2, and reveals why Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) won’t be making a cameo anytime soon — and why he wants to fix that.
Collider: So I wanted to start off by talking about the first season of Lower Decks, specifically the penultimate episode, mostly just because it feels like probably the furthest you got to go in terms of pushing into the realm of parody.
MIKE MCMAHAN: No, I think that parody and homage kind of live hand in hand when you’re doing the kind of stuff we’re doing. I remember sitting in the edit bay, watching the sequence where we’re circling the Cerritos and it’s as if you’re seeing it for the first time, after 10 years of being off the air on the big screen. If you’re a Star Trek fan, you know that moment from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I remember telling the editor being like, “Longer,” and they’re like, “It’s too long.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, we need to keep going.” And they’re like, “But this is getting insane. This shot is becoming a certain percentage of the episode.” I was like, “No, no, no, you don’t understand. I want to be laughing and then stop laughing and then start laughing again that we’re on it for so long. Then we’ll know we’re there.”
We kept inching it forward, and I finally had to say, “I want you to extend this so long that you can’t possibly think I’m going to like it. Tell me that I have to say less,” and they did it. I was just like, “This is the exact right length.” Then I had to go to CBS and be like, “Guys, I hate to say this. The episode’s going to be tremendously long. I need extra budget because we’re seeing the ship for this ludicrous amount of time.”
We did kind of edge into parody [with “Crisis Point”] because we are fitting an entire two-hour something movie into less than 30 minutes and you want to hit all of the beats that makes it feel like a Star Trek movie, but also say something about your characters so it comes fast, it comes hard, it’s a little bit more on the nose, maybe, in a good way.
I sort of think that about the trial episode too. There are so many trial episodes in Star Trek that getting to do a trial episode that originally was based in the concept of, I used to turn on Star Trek and not know what the episode was because I would have missed the first five minutes when I was a kid. So I wanted to do a trial episode where the characters had missed the first five minutes and it was like they were coming in late on a Star Trek episode. That one and the movie one were both our “listen, we promise you network, we’ve done a season of standalone episodes, let us do these two slightly higher concept meta [episodes] and then the finale will be back to business.” And I loved the last three episodes. I think they’re so fun.
What degree of freedom do you feel like you’ve gotten in terms of getting to bring comedy on this level, to the universe?
MCMAHAN: Total freedom. And on no other show do I police myself as much, because I’m such a fan of Star Trek that it’s important to me that we are as funny as we can be without breaking Star Trek at all times and without being mean about Star Trek. With the network and with the studio, the conversations are mostly when I’m pitching an episode, I’ll be like, “Here’s what inspired this episode.” And it’s always coming from a thing that I love about Star Trek, and then “Here are the things that we love about these characters, here’s how we want to explore them, and then this is why it’s going to be funny.” So it is always coming from a place of good intentions and in every production, sometimes things are working and you see it at color and sometimes things aren’t and you’re like, “Ooh, we better pump up the stakes or whatever is going on here.” But the bedrock of everything is we just want to make an amazing Star Trek show that happens to be fast, funny and animated.
Absolutely. One thing I’ve noticed is that Lower Decks has found this nice way of finding story engines that explain why there’s something funny happening on the ship this week, without the answer being “somebody screwed something up.” Everyone’s good at their jobs.
MCMAHAN: Yeah and I think that’s kind of from Rick and Morty. I really love the monster of the week, the sci-fi of the week formula, and what really helps is telling those in the background, letting the bridge crew deal with that, and then letting our crew have their own social, emotional stories and their own little pieces of that story. Then you feel like there’s a whole Star Trek thing happening, we just happen to be with the side guys. That really helps for Lower Decks and thank you for saying that because it is important to me that part of what makes the lead characters on Lower Decks likable is that they’re pretty confident. They just have some personal stuff going on, whether it’s “my mom is the captain and I have trouble with authority” or “I’m brand new, I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but I’m good at what I do when I do it.”
In terms of the show’s rating, it kind of hits that not quite adult, but not quite young adult spot. At what point did that that feel like the right level to hit with the show, and how much does that help or hinder you in terms of the storytelling?
MCMAHAN: I think that it helps that we know we can be as adult as we want and again, it’s pretty self-limiting. I think that, what it really helps is complexity. What type of adult stories are we telling? We can tell stories about loss, we don’t have to avoid stories with violence in it, and not everything needs to be turned into a kid lens, even though we’re animation. At the same time, because we’re not serious Star Trek because we get to play with both… That’s what I love about modern animation, is we get to be funny when you think we’re not going to be funny and then we get to be serious when you think we’re going to be cracking jokes. That’s kind of our superpower is feeling like you never know what’s going to be coming, which is part of what I love about streaming-era Star Trek.
Looking forward to Season 2, is there anything you’re excited to tease?
MCMAHAN: Oh my gosh. I miss poor Shaxs, his demise at the end of Season 1 really bummed me out, but I really felt like we had to do it. The new security officer, I just want to tease, is very funny and I love him as well. I think we’re going to be seeing Boimler’s got a bit of a be careful what you wish for, with being on the Titan. So we’re going to have Jonathan Frakes as Riker back and the Pakleds still remain a threat. I don’t know. Season 2 feels like the last three episodes of Season 1, but just right from the get-go. It feels like we know what we’re doing, we’re having a good time doing it, and then we’re actually writing Season 3 now. So there’s some fallout from Season 2 that just results in a really fun Season 3.
Because in animation we live a year in advance because we’re making it… I’m hearing all the music getting made for Season 2 right now, and it adds so much richness and so much sort of cinematic Star Trek-ness that like I’m geeking out every day as I’m seeing new stuff and I’m writing what I’m going to geek out for next week with Season 3, for next year I mean. So it’s just a blast.
To wrap up — my boss Steve was able to ask Colm Meaney about the Season 1 joke where Chief O’Brien is declared “the most important man in Starfleet history.” Did you get a chance to see that?.
MCMAHAN: I did see that. I loved it. He had the most Colm Meaney response ever to it. Him being like, “I didn’t see it, but it sounds like they got it right.” It’s the most Miles O’Brien thing to say. And we aren’t using him in Season 2, although I would love to have him back as Miles O’Brien and see where he is now. He’s kind of the perfect Lower Decks character because we saw him going from being a transporter chief all the way up to being so important in Deep Space Nine and having a family and all this amazing friendships. It’s almost like the more you love a character, the harder it is to figure out how to… it was so hard to figure out how to use Riker correctly and just make sure that it felt like an expression of joy when he and Troi show up, and we just want to make sure we do that. There’s some great legacy cameos in Season 2, and as well as in Season 3, but so far I’m still trying to figure out the perfect Chief Miles O’Brien cameo.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 is available on DVD/Blu-ray now. Season 2 premieres August 12 on Paramount+.
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