This week marks the return of Star Trek: Lower Decks for its fifth and final year of adventures — and for the very first time since the show began, all four members of the primary cast gathered in New York City for New York Comic Con this past weekend.
 
Actors Tawny Newsome (Mariner), Jack Quaid (Boimler), Eugene Cordero (Rutherford), and Noel Wells (Tendi) joined TrekCore and a group of assembled outlets to discuss the last outing of the USS Cerritos.
 
We’ve got the highlights from our discussion here for you today, and you can look forward to hearing more of the interview in an upcoming episode of our WeeklyTrek podcast.
 

 
We asked the cast about their participation in Titmouse Animation’s annual Star Trek: Lower Decks T-shirt club, coming back for its fifth round of releases for the new season.

For the past four years, each Lower Decks episode has received its own shirt design — but this year, each of the four primary cast have contributed a design to the Season 5 collection.

NOEL WELLS (Tendi): I had a lot of ideas and thought, “Oh, you’re going to let me do multiple designs, right?” And they’re like, “No.” [Laughs]

 

Essentially, my idea was that I wanted it to feel like something that could almost be a band T-shirt, but with the gang. That’s the vibe, without spoiling my shirt.

 

JACK QUAID (Boimler): I just drew like a really crude drawing of something, and was like, “Uh, maybe this?” Mike McMahan was like, “This is terrible piece of art. But the designers will make this work!”

 

EUGENE CORDERO (Rutherford): I got really sentimental about mine, in a way where it was a really cool moment for Rutherford and for me, being in the Trek family… I wanted to make sure that was shown on a shirt. I’m really excited to have all four of these.

 

TAWNY NEWSOME (Mariner): I did the same thing as Noel; I literally modeled it after my favorite band T-shirt. Mike said I could draw it, or they would mock it up — and I was like, “I’ll just sketch out exactly what my shirt looks like, and put our little character’s faces on it.”

 

My drawing was very bad. Like, it looked like something a serial killer would have on his wall in a movie. I sent it in, and Mike was like, “Do you want it to look like this… or do you want it to be this, but good?“

 

CORDERO: But that’s Mike note to us even when we’re recording — you want to use that take or one that’s good?

 

NEWSOME: The one that’s good, yeah. [Laughs]

Actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid were asked if they brought any character performance moments back to Star Trek: Lower Decks after their participation in last year’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover event, “Those Old Scientists.”

QUAID: I feel like Boimler is just like way more in my body now. Like, I got to voice him for years, but that was just my voice. So when we did the crossover, I tried to like look at what the animators did for the character of Boimler on Lower Decks and try to copy some of those mannerisms, and now that’s just kind of in me when I record. I don’t know where I end and Boimler begins.

 

NEWSOME: I feel that wig that was on me just bouncing back and forth. Now when I’m in the booth, I’m like that little ponytail, it really does a lot for the voice acting. I don’t know if you hear the ponytail in the voice…

 

QUAID: Oh, yeah. I hear the ponytail.

 

NEWSOME: You do?

 

QUAID: I do.

 

CORDERO: Noel and I would love to be able to answer that one in the future, thank you very much!

Looking ahead to the final season of Lower Decks, the cast spoke about how they approached work for Season 5 — leading Tawny Newsome to share that they didn’t know this would be the last outing when voice recording began.

NEWSOME: Well, we didn’t know that we were going to be tying anything up! I definitely didn’t approach it like, “Ah, the final season. Let me bring that into the performance.”

 

No, I was just doing Mariner,  experiencing the growth that’s written into the season. But the final episode definitely went through a lot of rewrites, and has more of a button placed on everyone’s story so that it can be a nice healthy pause.

 

I say “pause,” because who knows what could happen in the future? But if you’re asking if I did anything special to prep for this season — the answer always is no. [Laughs]

With the five-year adventures of Star Trek: Lower Decks coming to a conclusion this December, the assembled cast talked about what they’ll miss most about their animated counterparts.

CORDERO: That ownership of the things that he loves, and the things that he has worked really hard to get – and still kind of being like a fanboy of his own work — is something that I would like to keep taking forward after this is done. But I don’t see this ending.

 

I think it’s open-ended for all of these characters and, hopefully, this is just a moment that we get to take a second to kind of look at what has been awesome over the last five seasons, and what we can bring moving forward.

 

QUAID: I think that I’m a very anxious person, and I feel like Boimler to me kind of reflects my inner anxiety. And what I love about the character is that he’s kind of learned to manage that over the seasons – and gain more confidence. So I’m going to miss that.

 

He holds a really, really special place in my heart. Like Eugene says, we’re trying to think of this as more of a pause and less of a goodbye, because we just love playing these characters.

 

We’ll do it until we’re dead — and that’s a promise!

 

NEWSOME: I will miss the way the show can surprise me and make me laugh out loud even when I’ve read the script, I know the joke — maybe I even recorded the joke. But then when I see the animatic or I see the episode, something will still surprise me to the point where I’m bursting out laughing.

 

I had done a lot of comedies in my life, and that does not always happen. Like you have to be surprised in order to laugh.

 

WELLS: For Tendi, I feel like she got to play a lot of levels — she starts off really sweet and chirpy, but through the course of the show, she has to take on more of her badass leadership capabilities.

 

I liked finding all of those levels and being able to turn the knob really high and then really low. Finding all those different nuances and having those different facets to something, I’m going to try to bring into anything I do. Tendi is so optimistic and so voraciously embracing her life and her passions — and everybody likes her for the most part. For me, I’ve found that that’s a deep part of my personality, but it’s been kind of repressed, or it’s oftentimes met with people who are pretty cynical.

 

So it’s allowed me to embrace those parts of myself and not hide them as much. Voicing Tendi has taught me that my enthusiasm and unbridled curiosity about how life works can actually be an asset in the world.

Finally, the cast took a moment to look back at the series as a whole, and shared their thoughts on what the legacy of Star Trek: Lower Decks may be within the Star Trek franchise.

QUAID: I just love that it has brought animation to the Star Trek franchise. I’m just such a fan of animation, and I love that we get to make a very silly cartoon canon to the Star Trek universe. Even to the point where we’re like crossing over into live action, and these characters exist… I love that they made a silly cartoon that wasn’t like a throwaway gag; like it actually matters within the world. That’s one of the things I just absolutely love about it.

 

NEWSOME: I think it really cemented the weirdness that has always been present in Trek, in little drips and drabs. You know, when you have episodes like “Who Mourns for Morn,” or other tonally strange ones.

 

I always think about Iggy Pop in “The Magnificent Ferengi.” Like, that is the strangest performance that’s in all of Star Trek, and people are kind of like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Iggy Pop was in a Star Trek.” And I’m like, “No, watch it again.” That is an acid trip. And I feel like our show is just like a series of acid trips that we’ve just made like canon.

 

It’s a very purposeful weirdness, and we’re going like, “No, no, no, this is part of the franchise.” It always has been, but this is very intentionally here to stay.

 

CORDERO: It also gives you a different perspective of where you stand in the world. Like you can be a beginner. You can be just starting out and that’s just as important — and you have a place here as much as anywhere else. You don’t have to be the captain. You can be the ensigns, have a story, and have your voice heard.

 

I think that’s something that the younger generation of Trek fans want; to feel like they’re included in that way, and I think that that’s something that this has brought that’s different.

 

WELLS: I also think the fact that it’s animation, the storylines got to go anywhere, and do. I feel like the imagination is really been opened up. I mean, it was always—you know, it’s always been that way, but you’re not constricted by –

 

CORDERO: CGI and makeup?

 

QUAID: Real practical sets?

 

WELLS: Yes, yes, totally. So it’s just gotten even bigger.