While Star Trek: Lower Decks is about to beam to viewers in the United States and Canada this week — with its online virtual “premiere party” kicking off on August 4, just as this article goes live — fans around the world are still wondering just when they’ll get their own chance to enjoy the animated adventures in their part of the world.
Believe us, it’s something we’ve been concerned about too — as we’ve had to sort out how to manage spoilers on social media while still engaging our readers in North America, for example — and the lack of information from international platforms has been only more and more noticeable as the weeks have passed.
In a new interview today with the How to Kill an Hour podcast, Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan shared some insight into the state of international plans for the new series — and how the impact of COVID-19 shook up the normal timeline.
I want everyone in the world to be able to see this show. And I think that, something the internet doesn’t quite calculate into, you know, it’s always a mystery, you’re always seeing like, “Oh what is CBS up to?”
CBS wants all you guys to see it too. I want to be careful here, because I normally just go radio silent because I don’t want to speak out of turn because this business stuff, the deal making, is not something I’m involved in. I’m involved in making sure a Trill symbiont is called a symbiont and not a symbiote.
But from what I know – here’s the pieces of this I know for you guys to hold on to – is there are, in the works, a way for you guys to watch it. I don’t know the timeline, but the reason you guys don’t know yet is squarely because of COVID… because the timelines for everything we’ve been doing for production have been completely thrown out.
A lot of what we’re doing [for ‘Lower Decks’] unexpectedly got shifted two months earlier, because they were juggling around schedules and stuff. A lot of the different groups in entertainment — when you shuffle that stuff around, they can’t move as fast as [we in production can]. My priorities were keeping everybody on the show healthy — making it the best as possible — and getting it into everybody’s hands as soon as I can, because we’re all fucking miserable right now.
And, I did not know that doing all that stuff was going to end up having to leave UK, and abroad other than Canada hanging for a minute — but it’s not because we don’t love you guys, and it’s not because we don’t want to share ‘Trek’ with you guys. You know, ‘Star Trek’ is universal. ‘Star Trek’ is global.
The characters in Star Trek aren’t an American set of characters. They are an Earth set of characters, and you know, we want everyone on the planet to be able to see this Federation show, so I get the frustration. I have been quiet about it, only because I don’t want to step on the jobs of everybody else [who] is trying to get it to [global fans] faster, and accidentally slow [those plans] down to calm people down on Twitter.
The thought of having CBS be like, “We were about to close [the international deal], but then you fucking said something, and now people have to wait an extra month” — because it complicated some deal or whatever… It’s been in the works for a long time, and I’m fine at people tweeting their frustrations at me. I get it. I’ve been frustrated at deal making a million times before.
But my priority is that you get it as soon as possible. So I know it’s frustrating, but it really is a symptom of our whole timeline moved up. We were not expecting to premiere [as soon as August], but because of circumstances being what they are, it was important to us to get this out in the world. And we had the ability to do it safely.
The unintended consequence is [fans around the world] having to see us all being pumped about it, and then [be] like, “Hello, what about us?”
But trust me, it’s a priority that you guys get it. And we’re working on it.
Some have aimed their frustrations at CBS, but as with Discovery and Picard in the past, announcements on international airings of the new Star Trek series won’t come from them: it will almost certainly come from whatever global partner acquires the rights to Star Trek: Lower Decks — just like Netflix did when it picked up Discovery back in 2016.
Once those negotiations are completed — whenever that may be — and an announcement is made, you can be sure to read about it here at TrekCore.
In the meantime, for those of you who’ll be able to watch the Star Trek: Lower Decks premiere this Thurdsay on CBS All Access, CTV Sci Fi Channel, and Crave, watch for our review of the series premiere, “Second Contact” and some overall thoughts on the four episodes we’ve seen so far that morning.