While the status of the 1970’s Star Trek Animated Series’ status in Trek canon is murky at best — most agree that the events of that series are not to be taken as a literal part of in-universe history, save for perhaps the D.C. Fontana-penned “Yesteryear” — the franchise is returning to that format for next year’s Star Trek: Lower Decks, and this week the leader of that show Mike McMahan clarified how his show will fit into the franchise.
McMahan, who started his path into Star Trek with the parody Twitter account TNG Season 8 a few years ago — which lead to a book deal on the subject, resulting in Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season — is the showrunner and creator of Lower Decks, which we learned at San Diego Comic Con will be set in the year 2380, just after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis.
Speaking with ComicBook.com this week, McMahan shared how he decided when the series should take place, picking a spot in the Trek timeline that is both familiar but not something that would step on the events of previously-released on-screen adventures, saying he’s looking to bring viewers “a mix of the familiar and the new.”
I wanted to choose a year that was kind of untouched, was kind of blank slate, that didn’t touch on anything that they might be doing for whenever Picard takes place but also doesn’t get in the middle of anything that was like, ‘Oh, this was happening during the Dominion War.’ Or, you know, ‘This would be happening during [Star Trek: First Contact].’
For me, it was like what was a little spot where our characters on a less important ship could be having adventures and doing their thing that wouldn’t break anybody else’s favorite show. Everybody else, there’s so many fans. There are people who are huge fans of ‘Deep Space Nine.’ I love ‘Voyager’ and ‘Enterprise’ and everything that came around there, those shows are all amazing.
I didn’t want anybody to feel like I was trying to subvert their favorite show by what we were doing. Also, because [the TNG timeframe] was my favorite era, I was like, ‘I’m going to slip in at the very end and get to do just one more little piece of that era. Just one more little growing of the world, just in this different format.’
As for the dreaded “Will it be canon?” question — meaning, will these events be “real” Star Trek history like the live-action shows, or not? — McMahan was clear that he wouldn’t be doing this project if it wasn’t going to “count” in the overall story of the Star Trek universe.
It’s important to me that canon and ‘Star Trek’ really go hand-in-hand. It’s important, to me. It’s not worth making a ‘Star Trek’ show unless you are at least trying to make sure that it fits into the canon because the canon is part of why I and everybody else loves ‘Star Trek.’
It feels like, that is what is kind of the original shared world of all these different shows. Now you’re seeing it in the Marvel movies and the DC movies and all of that, but in the very beginning you had [TOS] and then it became TNG and all the other series reference each other, and the movies reference each other. To me, that was the original fandom and if you’re not trying to fit into that stuff and not being careful, it’s kind of not worth doing. That’s part of the joy of doing it. It’s not a constraint.
So the trick with ‘Lower Decks’ is that our characters are, our stories and our characters are definitely in canon. Ours, they’re just a little bit more aware and self-referential. Our guys might talk about the characters from the other shows that they’ve heard about because they are as big a fan of ‘Star Trek’ as I and my writers are. They don’t get to do as important stuff. It’s almost like our characters are aware that they’re in canon, and some of them are geeking out over it.
McMahan wouldn’t say if we’ll get to revisit any of the well-known Star Trek locations established in the previous television shows or films — or if any of the franchise’s prior stars will be back to voice their characters in the animated show — but as we get closer to 2020, we’re sure to learn a lot more about the series.
Sunday, in fact, will be the first big Star Trek: Lower Decks panel at the Las Vegas Trek convention, where McMahan and the entire Lower Decks writing team will be on stage to discuss the upcoming show, where we expect to learn a lot more — and maybe even see some new artwork from the upcoming show.
In the meantime, keep it locked here at TrekCore for all the latest news on Star Trek: Lower Decks as it decloaks!