Last weekend, Star Trek: Lower Decks creator and showrunner Mike McMahan beamed down to New York City to join the animated series’ stars at New York Comic Con — and ahead of that day’s on-stage panel, the writer/producer sat down with TrekCore and a group of assembled outlets to talk about the show’s final season, his love for Lower Decks‘ five-year mission, teases of things to come, and more.
 

Q: What are you most excited for fans to see in Season 5?

MIKE MCMAHAN (Series creator/showrunner): There’s some really funny episodes — that are also very deeply Trek. You know, we have a planet becoming post-scarcity, throwing out all of their money and it’s a big party. There’s also bit of a “Carbon Creek” situation — that’s one of my favorite Enterprise episode – so we have a little fun with that.

 

And there’s also this really funny episode with time dilation, where we get to play with the comedy of time dilation — and the Cerritos crew is like, “Oh, it’s one of those?” They’re used to it! [laughs]

 

Jennifer the Andorian comes back, too. I felt like I had resolved the Mariner/Jennifer story in how Jennifer had treated Mariner when they broke up. Jennifer never saw Mariner for who she was, she saw her for the “bad girl” personality. I also felt like nobody wanted them together, and I clearly misjudged that! So getting to do just one more episode that gives a little more closure on that.

 

We also have some bonkers returning legacy cast — including a couple where I was like, “I was told they don’t answer calls for Trek anymore!”

 

But they came in and had a blast – I guess word has gotten around. I always hear two things from legacy cast now: “Fans keep telling me how much they love this show!” and “When you called to ask me to come onto Lower Decks, I jumped at that opportunity!”

 

After the season airs, I’ll have more to say about that because it was like dream-come-true stuff this year.

Q: What’s the process behind bringing legacy Star Trek actors back for Lower Decks?

MCMAHAN: Well, we go into the big walk-in freezer… oh, Bob Picardo! [laughs] The first thing is a million discussions with the writing team: who do we want, and how are we going to use them in a way that’s not just window dressing? More than just “Hey, it’s Jonathan Frakes!”

 

It’s about time — we really only have about 22 minutes, and if I’m going to go long, I have to rob minutes from an early episode to add minutes to a later one. We’re really lucky that in the final season — I made a push, and Paramount agreed — to have some longer episodes that kind of broke that rule; the finale has like an entire other act that we got in there.

 

The next questions are: If we have them on the show, does it fit into the Lower Decks era? Does it say something about their character? Is the actor going to love what they did with us? When someone watches the episode, will that viewer feel like something happened for that character? Were they part of the story in a meaningful way?

 

Then we reach out through their representatives, or in some cases we have to basically hunt them down — we’ve had to reach out through social media, reach out to old managers and find last-known contact information from 20 years ago. Shannon Fill, who came back to voice Ensign Sito in Season 4, hadn’t acted since she was on The Next Generation! She came and brought her kids with her, and had a blast. We told her she needed to go to conventions and meet the fans!

 

And other times, it’s Wil Wheaton texting me saying, “When do I get to be on the show? I want to have fun!” and I have to tell him “Wil, it has to be worth it!” Gates McFadden is the same way; every time I hang out with her she asks when she’s going to be on, and I reminder that she was on Picard and I don’t want to step on that — then Season 5 became the end, and now I can’t have her on!

Q: Is there a particular addition to Star Trek canon in Lower Decks that you’re particularly proud of?

MCMAHAN: I’m so proud that we did a Deep Space Nine episode and we didn’t fuck it up; I loved working with Chase Masterson and getting to do a little moving-Ferenginar-towards-joining-the-Federation story, I’m proud of that.

 

I loved building up the Orion stuff, and with them being such a notable species in Star Trek, they’ve been underserviced in a lot of ways. For a really long time, I did not like that whole we-control-men-with-our-sex-pheromones stuff, and I really wanted to shake that up in a way that I don’t think I could have been allowed to 20 years ago.

 

I love the ships we’ve added to the fleet, I love Billups’ homeworld. I love that a normal thing Starfleet has to deal with are PC towers that want to kill everybody — and that they have to gather them up in a room and make them not want that as much! [laughs] I could keep going.

 

There’s a moment this season where I had to call [VP Star Trek Brand Development] John Van Citters and say, “This type of alien can do THIS, but could they do that thing with this other type of alien?” He just stopped and said, “Well, nobody’s done that — and it would hurt – but you can do it!”

 

So that was a big “Hell yeah!” moment.

Q: Have you ever had difficulty keeping some of Lower Decks’ ultra-deep-cut nods and references in the show when you were putting these stories together?

MCMAHAN: I remember in the first season, an executive was like, “But this admiral you have, he’s like, bad! Would there be a bad admiral in Star Trek?” And I get it! You don’t become a development executive because you’ve watched every episode of Star Trek. I said, “Well, that’s part of the DNA of Star Trek; knowing how good the Federation is, when you see a BAD admiral…”

 

I’ve never really run into challenges on canon things because everyone knows now that if they question it, they’re going to get a lecture from me about a hundred episodes of Star Trek! [laughs] The stuff we’ve pushed hardest on is the Orion culture, going to the Vulcan ship in “wej Duj,” stuff we’ve done with Klingons — like an episode this season — just growing and expanding the world of Trek just slightly…. I really love doing that stuff.

 

I feel like I earned the studio’s trust in Season 1. And before we made the first episode, I sat down with Rod Roddenberry and he asked me, “Tell me about the Federation.” That was his first question. I said, “Well, let’s talk about the Federation. Let’s talk about Trantor and Foundation, about Coruscant and Star Wars. Let’s talk about what your dad created, and how it’s reflected in Data. Let’s talk about the Prime Directive.” I just started talking, and about 10 minutes later he was like, “Okay, yeah, I get it. I have fewer questions now!”

 

I think he wanted to make sure that the spirit of what he loved about Star Trek was still going to be in the show, even if I had a different expression of it. He’d probably watched some Rick & Morty and thought, “Uh-oh!” — and he wasn’t alone, some fans worried about that too — but it’s like, when you make fun of your best friend in a way that makes your best friend laugh because you share a unique lexicon… after that dinner told me that he couldn’t wait to see the show.

Q: Were there any special moments from making this final season that stand out?

MCMAHAN: I went to the final orchestra record for Season 5, and we had like three extra minutes at the end of the day, so we re-recorded the Lower Decks opening theme one last time – with full percussion, because we had never done that with live percussion before! Everybody recorded at their homes during the pandemic for the first season, and we had to stitch it together for air.

 

I didn’t realize we were going to do that, and I just sat back in my chair and it felt like an amazing bookend. Then all the musicians came up and they were wearing Lower Decks shirts — like the flautists and the harpists and the guy playing the French horn — sixty-something musicians all saying, “Sign my shirt!”

 

I was like, “Wait, the orchestra who works with John Williams and is in the LA Philharmonic, they’re fans?!” Every time that hits, it’s really surprising. I don’t know how this is true, but it feels like there are more Lower Decks fans than Paramount+ subscribers! [laughs]

 

However that’s happening, I couldn’t be prouder of our 50 episodes — but I could keep doing this for another 100 episodes. People have favorite episodes, people have thought we’ve messed up every once in a while, but for me, we got to things in Star Trek that people have never done.

 

That doesn’t mess up Star Trek. We do it all with deep respect, and the only thing I’m sad about is that I will never be able to watch Trek again without thinking, “Oh, I can see what they had to do there, that narrative choice, those prosthetics…” I’ve got work-brain now when I watch it, so I honestly caution anybody from working in Trek — because you’ll gain something special, but you’ll lose that put-it-on-in-the-background comfort that it give you now.

 

I’m glad I didn’t know that when I started!

Q: What will you miss most about making Lower Decks?

MCMAHAN: Everything. That’s an impossible question. I’m just a Star Trek nerd who wrote on Twitter, then tricked Simon & Schuster into letting me write a book — and in the opening of the book I’m saying, “I’m never going to make a Star Trek show, so this book is my Star Trek show.”

 

Getting to actually make one… it changed my relationship with Trek, it changed my relationship with fans. This is the first show I ever made! I’ve worked on other shows like Rick & Morty, but this was MY first show. I made Lower Decks and Solar Opposites and sold them almost back-to-back, like within a month, and was working on the first season of both at the same time.

 

They’re totally different expressions of my sense of humor. The relationship I have with the casts — especially the Lower Decks cast — we made it through the pandemic together, we made this thing we’re really proud of…

 

We were making it for ourselves! Nobody fuckin’ wanted it at first, right? CBS put out this trailer that not represent the show well, I was going nuts… but we never moved away from the vision we had for the show, and never worried if we were going to find our audience, because we were an audience for ourselves. We love Star Trek almost more than the people who were getting worried and mad about this show they didn’t want.

 

We know what was coming; we know what our goal was. Tawny’s voice, Jack’s voice, Noel and Eugene… having that in Star Trek, in a way that feels like you could go hang out in a bar with their characters and have an amazing night — but that’s literally true! I’ve seen many fans hang out with us, and they’re so inviting, having fun making people laugh.

 

Look — I wrote a Star Trek comedy book. I’m a Trek fan. We’re not famous for having good senses of humor about the stuff that we like. But that’s not true! We do! We’ve been laughing with Star Trek the entire time, but people on the outside think fans like us are like, serious scientists. No! We have “Catspaw,” you know what I mean? We have fun!

 

Getting to make a Star Trek I love, getting to make a comedy I love — with people I love — I’m really, really proud. I’m not going to complaint about getting to make five seasons of this thing that I love.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 continues next week with “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel,” premiering October 31 on Paramount+.