We know you Star Trek fans love your soundtrack releases, and while there was quite a wait for the first score collection from Star Trek: Lower Decks, you won’t have to wait for Star Trek: Prodigy’s music!
The episodic Prodigy soundtrack from composer Nami Melumad — the first female composer to score a Star Trek production — will arrive for fans in a first-ever weekly release schedule, as Nickelodeon tells us they plan to debut a selection of music from each Season 1 episode after each new episode debuts on Paramount+.
We’ve also learned that once the first season has completed its 10-episode run, Melumad’s score will be available as a full Season 1 album from Nickelodeon; both the weekly releases and the full album will be available on all the usual digital music platforms for streaming and purchase as they roll out.
Star Trek: Prodigy premieres with “Lost & Found” on October 28 on Paramount+ in the United States, on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, and on October 29 on Paramount+ in Latin America, the Nordics and Australia.
Additional international premiere dates have not yet been announced.
In addition, stick around to hear to John’s wish for a Tilly/Tendi Short Trek and Alex’s theory about a potential Star Trek: Lower Decks—Star Trek: Prodigy crossover character!
WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify— and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.
Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!
We’re just a few days away from the premiere of Star Trek: Prodigy, and during yesterday’s Sunday NFL coverage, CBS released two new clips from the upcoming series debut.
The first clip from “Lost & Found” features purple teenager Dal (Brett Gray) trying to make his escape from the Tars Lemora mining asteroid, where he and the other members of the Star Trek: Prodigy cast begin their adventure — as he races towards (hopeful) freedom, he’s watched by The Diviner (John Noble), the overlord of the prison colony.
The second preview clip adds the hulking Brikar girl Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alarzaqui) to the scene, as she activates the USS Protostar’s systems — and much-needed Universal Translator — after she and Dal find and board the mysterious Federation ship.
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In addition to these new teases from Thursday’s series premiere, we’ve also got some words from the returning star of Star Trek: Prodigy — Captain Janeway herself, Kate Mulgrew — who we spoke to as part of a roundtable interview session during New York Comic Con earlier this month.
First, the actor tells us about how she worked with the Prodigy creative team to lend her input into the animation character design of her holographic Janeway character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMWTXLpsur8
“We were in very close collaboration, because it’s important to me that my physical features be exaggerated in just the right way — it’s easy to get that wrong, but these animators did it beautifully — so that the eyes are a little enhanced; the face, I think itself is a little shortened, a little square; the mouth is more facile.
Children need to respond to the eyes, the mouth — and the hair, which, you know, was diabolically difficult for real Janeway. These guys, Kevin and Dan Hageman, are just terrific to work with.
There’s a genius to animation. I haven’t given enough thought to myself. And being a part of this is teaching me that it’s a very rare and very excellent form of art. I mean, it’s a craftsmanship that I have to stand back and sort of say, wow!
These are men who are not only incredibly smart and very gifted, but who can somehow enter into the imagination of a six year old kid and produce the dialogue that would be in accordance with that personality.
It’s wonderful. Wonderful to be a part of it. I’m learning!”
She also told the assembled press outlets about her feelings on returning to voice Janeway after so many years away from Star Trek, and how she enjoys the new role Prodigy holds in introducing the franchise to a younger audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfJIA0XuBT8
“To go into the minds of the young will be thrilling — and I’m so surprised we didn’t do this earlier, that ‘Star Trek’ didn’t do this earlier. And I’m absolutely delighted and honored to be the one to take it in.
To have her in my pocket like that, Janeway, and to have her spring out with such alacrity and such vivacity makes me… pleases me very much. And it’s a pleasure. And at this point in time, 26 years later, it should be nothing short of a pleasure.
But I had to sit on it for a minute because my creation of Kathryn Janeway was not only wholly invested, but I have to tell you very, very defining. And that was a decade of my life that never ended. It just keeps going on and on. So the significance of Janeway is very apparent to me if I’m going to step into some recording booth and bring her to life again, I better understand that.
So after considering that for about two days, I said, I’d love to do it. And it’s been great.”
We’ll have more coverage of the impending Star Trek: Prodigy debut as the week continues, so keep your sensors locked here on TrekCore!
Star Trek: Prodigy premieres with “Lost & Found” on October 28 on Paramount+ in the United States, on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, and on October 29 on Paramount+ in Latin America, the Nordics and Australia.
Additional international premiere dates have not yet been announced.
For the past three years, the Star Trek Wines team has been scoring big points with Trek collectors and wine aficionados alike, as they’ve made real Jean-Luc Picard’s family cru Bordeaux,Klingon bloodwine, and more since their 2019 debut.
This year, the company is venturing even further into the final frontier, as their 2021 lineup includes a bright blue Andorian wine, inspired by the denizens of the icy cliffs of Andoria, and Cardassian Kanar, the dark alcohol seen everywhere from Quark’s Bar to the halls of the Central Command on Cardassia Prime.
We first showed you their new bottles and told you about the wine itself back during August’s Las Vegas Star Trek convention, and during that event, we sat down with Spencer Brewer, Craig Spurrier, and Howard Jackowitz from Wines That Rock — the company behind Star Trek Wines — who told us about the complicated challenges they had to overcome to bring these new offerings to fans.
Original Kanar prop bottles from ‘Deep Space Nine’ production.
TREKCORE: The Cardassian Kanar bottle is something Deep Space Nine fans have wanted to see for years — how difficult was it to put this together?
STAR TREK WINES TEAM: We looked for the original-style bottles that they used in Deep Space Nine for three years, and we were only able to find five originals in all that time.
Of those five, only one had the ‘spiral’ design truly well-defined all the way from the base to the top of the bottle — the others were produced later in the original manufacturing run, when the glass molds had begun to wear down from extended use. So the one we used as our ‘base’ was from an early production run, and we’re lucky to have found it.
In our research, we found that the last company who made the snake-spiral bottles actually went out of business in the 1970s — and after that, the design was changed to feature grape leaves, and those versions were still being built into the 1990s and even as recently as 2014, by one company.
But we got deep enough into our research that we found the family of the guy who imported all the original bottles into the United States back in the ’60s, and eventually the secretary who worked for them who was able to confirm the original molds were long gone; to be safe, we also talked to lawyers who told us that it’s very difficult to copyright glass.
Even so, we think we’ve made enough changes to the original design — all very slight — to avoid any issues there.
The Vinoseal glass stopper and (prototype) metal stopper, each included with the Kanar bottle.
TREKCORE: The bottles on display have this nice glass topper, which isn’t something that was used on the show. Can you tell us more about that decision?
STW Team: One change we ended up going with is a glass Vinoseal stopper for the Kanar bottle. The original bottles from the 1960s — used for Chiantis, vinegars, or olive oils — had very short corks, and they weren’t meant to last long. We went to all sorts of cork manufacturers, eight or nine around the world, and they told us they couldn’t do it because there wasn’t room for a cork when we made the new bottle.
Our bottle is molded from a a 3D-rendered replica of the original design, and it had to have the neck slightly extended because there has to be a half-a-millimeter lip on the opening to grab the Vinoseal stopper to really seal the bottle tightly — so that had to be built into the 3D model for the stopper to work, and we had both the bottle manufacturer and the Vinoseal manufacturer work together to get all the dimensions just right.
When we seal up the wine bottles for customers, we’ll vacuum-seal the Vinoseal stopper in place with a shrink-wrap plastic — so there won’t be any leaks — and all of the printed text normally found on a wine label will go on that removable shrink-wrap.
The 3D bottle “sculpt” used to make the mold for the new Kanar bottles.
TREKCORE: That’s great for collectors, once you take that wrap off you’re back into the Star Trek world.
STW Team: Really, that decision came from the shape of the bottle’s base; any label we tried to get printed for the back of the bottle would crease and just not look right — we went to five different label printers and not one of them said they could do it.
We did get the design for the front label from Doug Drexler, who did the original Cardassian graphic for the Deep Space Nine prop bottle, and the text for the ‘necker’ tag comes from Star Trek novelist Una McCormack, the expert in all things Cardassign.
Also, the alternate Zamacmetal stopper will be packaged separately and be included with every Kanar bottle we sell; it was also 3D rendered from a show-used prop.
We love this project, and even after doing hundreds of different brands of wines, we’ve never done anything like this before. We’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and this it the first bottle we’ve ever made from scratch, and we found a really good manufacturing partner to help us.
The Kanar bottle’s Cardassian label, based on Doug Drexler’s original design.
TREKCORE: The Andorian wine is something pretty different; it’s the first color-dyed wine in the Star Trek series.
STAR TREK WINES TEAM: It’s wild that it’s so blue, right? But it was a challenge to find the right color, and keep it as natural as possible.
While we were developing it, we contacted seven or eight different companies that specialize in food dyes, because blue is tough to pull off naturally. We did a bunch of different test bottles, each with a different number of drops of blue dye, to get it just the right color. “Show me, um, eleven drops?” That’s kind of how things went.
We kept going until all of a sudden, we all thought, “Yeah, that feels right, that looks fresh.” The base Chardonnay is a yellow wine, so as you add blue drops, it turns green — until we got to seven drops of blue, then it starts changing to a fully blue color and we found the right spot to stop.
After all of our research, talking to all these experts, we were going to go with spirulina — it’s natural, has no taste, it’s easily accessible, and a great blue color…. but then we did some more research, and found that the FDA hasn’t approved it for use with alcohol.
The ‘Andorian Blue Special Reserve’ Chardonnay, inspired by the blue-skinned aliens.
And on top of that, we spoke to a food scientist who told us that after two years, spirulina dye in Chardonnay would fade back to yellow. It would last in hard alcohol, but the pH in wine is what causes it to fade out — so that was the end of that!
We also tried a type of butterfly die from South America, but ran into those same FDA approval and pH issues, and really thought we were heading into a dead end, because we didn’t want to use Blue Dye #2, you know? Can’t have it looking like toilet bowl water!
Finally, we found this scientist whose whole job is relating to his PhD in dye — talk about a needle in a haystack — and he was a Trekkie too! Eventually after talking it all through, he told us, “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make up the organic components to make your dye.”
And with that, we finally got to the blue color we liked — and then sat one of our blue bottles in the sun for four months to make sure it wouldn’t fade.
Once we had that down, we also got the metal plaques designed for the outside of the Andorian bottles, and went through five or six variations of that with different manufacturers until we had it right.
The metal United Federation of Planets seal affixed to each bottle.
All of us, we’re just trying to raise the bar every time, and we want these Star Trek releases to be special — and the best part of the whole [Las Vegas convention] has been everyone coming up and telling us how much they appreciate the level of detail, just going “Wow!” when they see it.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
The company’s previous releases, along with the new 2021 bottles, can also be ordered in various mix-and-match combinations — though take note note that the company has a two-bottle minimum purchase requirement.
Back in June we previewed a new set of Star Trek: The Original Series Steelbooks coming for this year’s 55th Anniversary, and we’ve finally gout our hands on them after a few weeks of manufacturing delays.
Rescheduled from early September to an October 26 release date due to some production delays, the twenty-disc classic Star Trek Blu-ray set finally arrives next week in a fancy repackaging of the 2009 high-definition remastering.
While the discs themselves are nothing new — they contain all 79 Original Series episodes (along with the standard and ‘extended’ version of “The Cage”) in high definition, with both “original” and “remastered” visual effects options — the new packaging is the draw for this release, as each season is clad in hearty metal cases in a stylish outer cardboard sleeve.
Each Steelbook holds 6 or 7 discs with stacker hubs to hold four discs on each side, and the outer design of each features a collection of photos and screencaps from the Original Series along with slashes of Starfleet gold, blue and red.
The 2009-era HD picture quality is starting to show its age, and the remastered visual effects are not exactly state-of-the-art anymore — maybe we can get a new 4K remastering for the 60th anniversary in 2026.
If you’ve already got the Original Series on Blu-ray, the new packaging might be a draw for you to upgrade from the old plastic packaging — but while it’s nice to look at, there’s nothing really new here to make the splurge worth your while otherwise.
But if you’re a Steelbook collector like us, this new collection will fit in just great on your media shelf.
The 55th Anniversary Star Trek: The Original Series Blu-ray Steelbook collection is available for preorder now and arrives for collectors on October 26.
In addition, stick around to listen to Will’s wish that more elements from Deep Space Nine will show up in current Star Trek productions, and Alex’s theory about how the rumored Starfleet Academy show might tie into Star Trek: Picard.
WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify— and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.
Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!
Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration, by Ben Robinson and Ian Spelling, is everything you’d want out of a Star Trek convention focused on the original Star Trek TV series, served up to you in your home and in the form of a book.
There are interviews with the actors, discussions about what happened behind the scenes, big picture asides that place everything in its proper context, and you end the experience feeling satisfied — but also like you might have wanted to go just a little bit deeper in places.
After 55 years since series’ premiere, you may be asking what could this book possibly bring to an already-stuffed of classic Trek books? What more could there possibly be to say about one of the most famous shows in television history, as it sets it races ahead towards its sixth decade since release?
Where previous books might have gone deep in specific areas of the show or production, there actually isn’t anything out there published about Star Trek that looks at the show holistically. Some books focus on the writing, some books focus on the production, and cast memoirs focus on their experiences, but Celebration is really the first book that has tried to bring everything together into one volume.
That’s a lofty job; there’s a lot to say about Star Trek. But Robinson and Spelling do succeed in weaving together a story that covers as much of the show’s history and oeuvre as 256 pages will allow for. It’s not going to give you all the depth you want if you have specific interests, but if you are approaching the book as a way of learning more about the series as a whole, you’ll leave satisfied and with a clearer sense of the areas you might want to explore further or go deeper on.
Along the way, the book also explores some interesting angles that don’t feel particularly well developed in the existing literature. Each of the speaking-part Enterprise characters from the first two pilots, “The Cage,” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” get short profiles that discusses why that character may or may not have proceeded to the series.
In addition, the book gives space to going deeper into the non-special effects post-production on Star Trek. Many examinations of the show focus on its groundbreaking visual effects and the way in which the production successfully told stories of such magnitude on a 1960s television budget. But every aspect of the Star Trek production is remarkable, and Celebration goes a bit deeper into that.
The book is also gorgeous, filled with art from the show and a number of rarely seen images from production that the authors worked with Star Trek: Tour owner and operator James Cawley to identify. The clean, white layout of the Celebration books, which started with the Voyager book last year and extends to the original Star Trek book this year, was a smart choice by Hero Collector.
The generous white space allows the colors in the photography and the art work to pop off the page, and makes the book a very easy read.
Perhaps the best way to think about Celebration is as a very good introductory text to Star Trek — it does not go as deep as some of the other works about the series that already exist, but it is more comprehensive than they are, serving as a ‘start here’ text that should whet any fan’s appetite to understand where they want to go deeper and learn more. On the very last page, a “Further Reading” section provides your jumping off point to the rest of the Star Trek library.
For me, who has read some but not every book on Star Trek, I found a lot about Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration that I did not already know. True die-hard Star Trek fans who’ve read every word published in print about the famous show since its release might find they learn less, but like any great Star Trek convention, sometimes it’s less about what you learned that was new and more about hearing a good story told in a different and entertaining way.
After all, if we can watch the episodes a hundred times and still find value in them, can’t we do the same with what we learn about the show’s production history?
‘Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration’ is in stores now.
Star Trek: Lower Decks wraps up a stellar second season with its most exciting and ambitious episode to date. After serving up a delicious meal in last year’s finale, “No Small Parts” — which I thought was the best season-ender since 2004’s “Zero Hour” — I was quite nervous heading into “First First Contact.”
Could Mike McMahan and his team top last season’s ending? I am please to report that I think they have, giving us everything we could have wanted in their Season 2 conclusion.
Relying this year a little less on legacy star power (after “No Small Parts” brought Riker and Troi in for a last-minute rescue), writer and series showrunner Mike McMahan leans hard into the character work that’s been carefully built up over the course of Season 2, pushing each our Cerritos pals forward in a more significant way than we’ve seen to date.
Captain Sonia Gomez commands the USS Archimedes (NCC-83002). (Paramount+)
Half-remembered Star Trek: The Next Generation ensign Sonya Gomez (Lycia Naff) returns to duty as the captain of top-of-the-line Starfleet vessel, with enough time having passed since her time as an Enterprise engineer to credibly be an old friend of Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis).
“Sonia Gomez was one of the original Lower Deckers on the Enterprise-D,” said Mike McMahan when we asked him about the character’s return.
“While it was fun and surreal to get to bring back Riker and Troi (and to work with Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis!), I wanted to highlight a deeper cut hero for the second season. She’s as ‘lower decks’ as you can get, and I was thrilled to have Lycia Naff reprise the role so many years later.”
Captain Freeman’s senior staff isn’t happy about being kept out of the loop. (Paramount+)
Assigned to support the USS Archimedes with a first contact mission to the Laap system, the Cerritos hangs back to let Captain Gomez and her crew approach a new Alpha Quadrant world when disaster strikes — leaving the Archimedes without power, and hurtling toward the pre-warp planet.
A dangerous asteroid field now prevents the Cerritos from mounting a rescue, and they can only get close to the Archimedes after they strip all of the outer hull plating from their ship — an out-of-the-box idea from Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) that puts every member of the Cerritos crew to work.
It’s a BIG episode — but the most impressive thing about “First First Contact” is that amidst all the ticking-clock plot points and technobabble wizardry, there’s so much well-used time devoted to furthering our characters’ personal journeys.
The Cerritos crew finally comes together as one, just in time. (Paramount+)
Freeman has to navigate her own feelings about getting the recognition she’s been craving all season, Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) must come to terms that her mom’s success will mean she’s lost someone who can protect her from herself, Ensign Tendi (Noel Wells) thinks she’s failed in sickbay and being kicked off the ship, Rutherford worries about losing his memories of Tendi a second time — and even Andorian rival Jennifer Sh’reyan (Lauren Lapkus) finds a moment to consider her outward attitude.
There’s no way all of this can fit into a half-hour episode — but somehow the Lower Decks team makes it work, and it’s impressive to think how quickly fans have fallen in love with these characters after just 10 hours of screen time.
I think what I appreciated most was seeing just how badass the Cerritos crew can be when they all work together! Because of the comedic nature of the series, we often see these officers on far from their best days — like when Ransom and the senior staff blow up at Captain Freeman for hiding the news of her impending departure, or Tendi having to chase Dr. T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) around the ship for a medical scan.
This year, our gang gets to be the heroes. (Paramount+)
But here, when the mugato dung hits the fan, the entire contingent comes together to overcome impossible odds and rescue the Archimedes. From Commander Billups’ (Paul Scheer) leading the hull-removal spacewalk to Commander Ransom’s (Jerry O’Connell) expert piloting through the asteroid, the entire team — from bridge to Cetacean Ops! — works as one… as all well-trained Starfleet crews should.
The crew even gets their moment in the spotlight, coming to save the Archimedes in the nick of time — mirroring the Titan‘s rescue of the California-class ship last season.
Like all good season finales, “First First Contact” also made clear strides to set up what’s to come in Season 3, from the hopeful to the harrowing: Tendi’s getting a well-deserved career boost, sparks fly between Mariner and Jennifer, and Boimler gets to save the day… while Rutherford unlocks a mysterious memory about his cybernetic implant, and Captain Freeman gets hauled away for supposedly destroying the Pakled homeworld.
Freeman is placed under arrest, accused of destroying Pakled Planet. (Paramount+)
“I knew that I wanted Season 2 to end with Captain Freeman in trouble,” McMahan told us, “but it wasn’t until late in production that I realized it would be a perfect moment to use the on-screen To Be Continued… that used to strike fear in my heart back in the 90’s.”
While it’s possible that Freeman’s arrest may be resolved as quickly as Boimler’s temporary trip to the Titan, the Rutherford and Tendi paths forward seem like they’ll have much bigger impacts on the series — and the group dynamics of our Lower Deckers.
That’s unabashedly a good thing, because after two years of setup, it’s time to take the Star Trek: Lower Decks story to the next level.
Looks like there’s a dark secret hiding behind Rutherford’s implant. (Paramount+)
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
Captain Freeman gives an inspiring speech over the ship’s intercom about the dangerous rescue mission the ship is about to undertake, with quick shots of the ship’s crew listening from various locales. Though, because it’s Lower Decks, she also has to break the bad news that the ship’s ballroom dancing competition will need to be postponed.
A Starfleet ship is in distress, and our crew need to overcome impossible odds to rescue them with very limited time. It’s the classic definition of a Trek trope.
Tendi is excited at the prospects of becoming a senior science officer like Jadzia Dax — but T’Ana subverts the Lower Decks trope of referencing 90’s-era Trek characters, exclaiming that she’s got no clue who that is. “No, like Spock!” the Caitian exclaims, mimicking the majority of humanity who never watched Deep Space Nine.
Commander Ransom take the helm… by joystick. (Paramount+)
CANON CONNECTIONS
The Cerritos has a manual steering joystick able to pilot the ship manually — but unlike the bulky console on the Enterprise-E’s bridge, the hand control pops out of the first officer’s chair armrest.
Sonya Gomez comforts the nervous ensign on her bridge by joking about her own run-in with a “much more intimidating captain,” an oblique reference to her hot chocolate incident in “Q Who?”
The gang finally pays a visit to Cetacean Ops. (Paramount+)
After teasing it for two full seasons, we finally pay a visit to the aquatic Cetacean Ops department, where beluga whale officers Matt and Kimolu work on navigation research.
Boimler is excited to celebrate Captain Freeman Day, and mocks up a banner that looks just like the Captain Picard Day banner from “The Pegasus”— but even the whales in Cetacean Ops know that celebrations for calves.
“We could end up with some weirdo with a riding crop,” Mariner frets about the possibility of a new captain, referring to egotistical Captain Styles of the Excelsior in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Boimler gets excited for the chance to honor the Starfleet tradition of lining up in the hallways to see honored crewmen off the ship, seen previously in “Redemption” and in “Homestead.”
The cetacean facilities aboard the Enterprise-D, as rendered in Rick Sternbach’s amazingly-detailed “Star Trek: The Next Generation” blueprints.
After a few references to it last season, was fun to finally see that even a ship like the Cerritos carries a captain’s yacht. While one appears on schematics of the Enterprise-D, the only one seen in use to date was aboard the Enterprise-E in Star Trek: Insurrection.
Several Starfleet vessels rendezvous with the Cerritos and the Archimedes at the end of the episode: a blue-stripe (sciences) California-class, an Oberth-class, a Parliament-class, and what seems to be an Antares-class ship assist the damaged vessels, while Starfleet Security takes Captain Freeman away in a Nova-class starship.
When Rutherford dumps his implant’s saved memories of Tendi, we see brief flashes of never-seen events, including: the pair attending an art class, sketching a nude Ransom; celebrating New Year’s 2381; and getting caught in a Chinese finger trap like Data.
Previously-unseen moments from Tendi and Rutherford’s friendship. (Paramount+)
Like Harry Mudd’s helmet, the top of Jennifer’s spacesuit has two little extensions to accommodate her Andorian antennae.
The golden look of the ‘naked’ Cerritos is one of the coolest things this season.
The exposed inner hull gives the Cerritos a golden hue. (Paramount+)
In one of the deepest-of-deep-cut gags this season, Tendi thinks she and Rutherford are off to see “the rubber ducky room,” a joke which only makes sense if you know about the many visual Easter eggs in the Enterprise-D’s master systems display graphic… and only clearly visible in tie-in reference works like The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual.
The ‘rubber ducky room’ on the Enterprise-D, one joke among many in the Enterprise-D cutaway diagram.
That original MSD graphic was created for Star Trek: The Next Generation by Mike Okuda, who returned to the Trek fold this season to expand some of the Cerritos‘ technical designs for Star Trek: Lower Decks — and help correct one design element of the ship’s interior layout you may not have noticed.
“We met with Mike Okuda after Season 1,” Mike McMahan told us back on Star Trek Day in September, “and we had a couple of meetings with him where we went through [the Cerritos] deck-by-deck and really talked about what we wanted to do with the ship in the future, our plans for it.”
The reoriented engine conduits, which appeared after the Cerritos’ major repairs at the end of Season 1.
One of the things Okuda “pushed for, real hard” was to reorient the energy conduits in the Cerritos engineering bay from their original ‘uphill’ angle, to a more-appropriate ‘downhill’ position — which only makes sense, because the ship’s warp nacelles are located below the engineering pod between them.
“Working with the Okudas is a dream I didn’t know I had, it’s literally so amazing I couldn’t even imagine it,” McMahan said when we spoke again this week. “They’re both so friendly, and thoughtful, and DEEPLY smart about Star Trek design — both in what looks right and how to tell a story with it — that we immediately hit it off.”
The new Okuda-designed master display graphic from “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” which features the red-and-white California-class starship logo.
Along with the engineering change, Mike Okuda also designed the hyper-detailed Cerritos master systems display graphic seen in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” along with the barely-visible California-class logo that we hope to see in higher-resolution someday soon.
“Both of the Okudas are ambassadors for everything I love about what Star Trek looks like,” McMahan continued. “They they also embody the goodness and morality of Star Trek, and I truly feel lucky to have been able to geek out with them over California-class designs and schematics. I also LOOOOOVE the Cali-class logo that Mike designed for us as a surprise!”
Enough said. (Paramount+)
After a pulse-pounding episode with a seemingly-happy ending, Captain Freeman’s arrest comes as quite a shock — but it’s a classic Star Trek cliffhanger, and one that’ll make the year-long wait for Lower Decks Season 3 even longer.
Lower Decks is probably the best thing about this modern era of Star Trek, certainly something none of us expected when the show was first announced back in 2018. It’s been a terrific season, with only one real misfire along the way, and I hope this show continues for as long as Mike McMahan and his team want to continue making it.
Wherever the series takes us in Season 3, I know I’ll be aboard for the ride.
Star Trek: Lower Decks may be done for 2021, but the already-in-production Season 3 will return to Paramount+ in the United States, CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, and to Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) in 2022.
Last week’s penultimate Star Trek: Lower Decks episode was one for the ages, as “wej Duj” (or “Three Ships”) expanded the show’s horizons to the parallel lives of low-ranking Klingon and Vulcan officers, in story that culminated in a big reveal about the year’s Pakled storyline.
We wanted to know how this highly-praised episode came to life, so we asked the man himself — Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan — to tell us all about this three-tiered episode ahead of this week’s Season 2 finale.
Vulcans, Klingons, Pakleds, and Starfleet converge in battle. (“wej Duj”)
TREKCORE: “wej Duj” generated an enormous positive reaction from fans last week — what was the genesis for the episode?
MIKE McMAHAN: I really wanted to do another run like at the end of the first season: 108 was the trial (“Veritas”), told like a sketch comedy episode through the thematic lens of context – and the Lower Decker’s lacking of context. Then in 109, we had our movie (“Crisis Point”), and then 110 was our big finale (“No Small Parts”).
So this season, after everything so far, I really wanted to go big again at the end and have it feel exciting – but part of the “bigness” is the format, so we did the 8-9-10 thing again: 208 was our sketch comedy with the Starfleet drills (“I, Excretus”), and 210 is going to be the big finale (“First First Contact”).
For 209, “wej Duj,” I didn’t want to do another movie, but I wanted to again break the Lower Decks format and expand what the show could be. We have such a great writing team this season, and it struck me how, as much I loved the episode like where Riker went and worked on the Klingon ship (“A Matter of Honor”), and there was all that great Klingon stuff in Deep Space Nine.
It blew me away that we had never spent that kind of time on a Vulcan ship.
The ‘lower decks’ of the Vulcan ship Sh’vhal. (“wej Duj”)
TREKCORE: There wasn’t even much on Enterprise, really.
McMAHAN: I mean, Enterprise scratched that itch a little bit, but I had just been thinking a ton about T’Pol and how much I loved Vulcans, and Spock of course. I had been trying for a while how to get T’Pol on Lower Decks, but the timeframe just doesn’t work, you know?
Almost in a flash, I just realized that I wanted to see the lower decks of other ships – like on a Vulcan ship, and on a Klingon ship. That was the beginning of it: “I want to spend time with Vulcans, I want to spend time with Klingons, and I want it to feel cinematic.”
“wej Duj” kind of ended up being like the kind of pitch I’d make to Paramount if they’d let me make a Star Trek movie. What I would want is like a Wrath of Khan-era movie that looks like it was produced in 1982, from the point of view of a Klingon ship – and the point of view of a Vulcan ship. That’s like my dream Star Trek movie.
So we condensed that into this examination of Lower Deck-ish-ness, this celebration of Lower Deck-ish-ness – and getting to tell this triple-mini-movie that’s part Undiscovered Country, part this Vulcan thing we’ve never seen before, and have it all tie up with our overall Season 2 plot… I was just so in love with this episode.
Below decks on the IKS Che’ta’. (“wej Duj”)
When we were really trying to nail down how we wanted our show’s Vulcans to speak, it’s like, not only are they precise and logical, but they’re also kind of catty, you know? It just feels so right.
I have to admit, though at the very beginning of things, we were getting a little push-back from the network, who were concerned about the story being away from the Lower Deckers on the Cerritos for so long. My feedback to them was, “I promise you – we’re doing this late enough in the season for it to work, and there’s still a ton of time with our main characters in it.” But you know, when you hear a pitch like this, it can be a little scary.
We spent the longest time in sound design for this episode too – we did like a six-hour mix because this is the first time I felt like we made an episode that could have been part of the Next Gen or Deep Space Nine series. It’s a little faster and a little funnier than those shows, but to me, I was losing my mind with happiness that we pulled it off.
TREKCORE: It was kind of astounding how much you managed to pack into just 25 minutes.
McMAHAN: There’s only one thing that I wanted to do in 209 that we couldn’t make happen, just because production was out of bandwidth. I mean, we finish everything at the last possible second, especially on these big episodes.
Originally, I wanted every card of the opening credits — for all of the opening credits — in alternating Vulcan and Klingon languages, so you couldn’t read anything. I mean, everything from the Lower Decks show title, the names of the actors and producers, everything — and then we would have added some extra credits at the end in English.
And we were going to do it, but it’s essentially telling my animators that we were going to have to add an extra minute and eight seconds to the episode… which may not sound a lot but is a massive ask. But the remnant of that original idea, at least, is that the episode title is written in full Klingon.
TREKCORE: Which is still a great gag, since it’s never been done before.
McMAHAN: It’s cool, right? And still, 800 episodes of Star Trek, there’s never been a single episode where it’s all Klingons who don’t talk to the Federation at all? Or one where it’s just a bunch of Vulcans flying around in their own ship?
I honestly couldn’t believe we were the first ones to do it.
The episode’s title, rendered in the language of the Klingon Empire. (“wej Duj”)
TREKCORE: And on top of all that, you still managed to fit in a big reveal on the Pakled story, too.
McMAHAN: Well the name of the show is Lower Decks, right? And the Pakled stuff is big, but there are all these lower-decks levels: our main four characters are lower on the Cerritos, and then the Cerritos itself is in the “lower decks” of the Starfleet in some ways — and even the Pakleds themselves are kind of a “lower decks” alien race, in the pantheon of Star Trek aliens.
The real plot with the Pakleds across the season is that Captain Freeman feels like she wants to be moving up to bigger and better places, and then learning across the season that she’s in the right place. “The carpets are greyer on the other side of the ship,” she says in 208 — that’s a theme we touch on all the time this season.
TREKCORE: Just like Boimler and the Titan, he wanted the spotlight until he didn’t.
McMAHAN: Yes — and we’ve already covered that, right? The thing about the Pakleds is, you know, I wanted there to be something going on with the, but it’s almost above our characters’ pay grade! Like, it’s almost like a “real” TNG or DS9-type villain, now that Klingons are involved.
If you go back through the season, we’re putting Klingon disruptors in the Pakled’s hands in the second episode to tie into this; they’re mining this stuff for the bomb that Captain Dorg gave them….
Pakled soldiers fighting with Klingon disruptors early in the season. (“Kayshon, His Eyes Open”)
TREKCORE: And you added Klingon ships to the battle in the opening credits.
McMAHAN: One hundred percent. There are all these little hints, but you know, we’re not TNG — so you can’t meet the hands that are making all of these moves until much later, because our guys aren’t important enough to have found them!
If Boimler had stayed on the Titan, maybe, or if we had stayed with the duplicate Boimler over there, you would have heard about the Pakled-Klingon thing more… but technically it’s all there in our episodes, but the nice thing about Lower Decks is that isn’t what our show is about. It’s there, but it’s not why the show exists.
It’s fun for me to put it in there, it textually changes the stakes and creates these situations, and it’s something we’ll follow, but at the end of the day, this is a show about finding personal truths — not unlocking mysteries, or truths about war, or whatever else.
That’s there, but it doesn’t get to take over the show.
TREKCORE: Fans are clamoring to see T’Lyn again, they really fell in love with her.
McMAHAN: Kathryn Lyn wrote it, and she’s so deep into it — literally, T’Lyn is the name of the Vulcan she has cosplayed as for years at conventions.
There are a lot of people who are like, “Have her join the Cerritos!” — but listen, I have a story for T’Lyn figured out. Season 3 is written, and like, the first episode of Season 3, she’s not on the Cerritos, you know what I mean? But I have stories for T’Lyn that are coming. I love T’Lyn — and I love Ma’ah! My whole thing with Klingons is that I just love a Klingon that doesn’t backstab. A Klingon that’s like, the most honest in their motivations.
I’m just so proud and happy of that episode, and coming into the finale, I’m like “Oh man, now the finale has to be super good now because of how much 209 rules!”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
“Live long and prosper… sir.” (“wej Duj”)
We’ll have more from our interview with Mike McMahan after the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 finale, “First First Contact,” beams down later this week — so keep your sensors locked here at TrekCore!
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for its season finale on October 14 with “First First Contact”) on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 15.
This week brings us to the final episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ second season — don’t worry, Season 3 is already in the works! — and we’ve got a new set of images from the year-ending “First First Contact” today!
While Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid) prepares to celebrate Captain Freeman Day — a play on the Enterprise-D schoolchildren’s Captain Picard Day — the Cerritos is called into help a fellow Starfleet vessel on a first contact mission.
Here are seven new images from this week’s episode, which not only features a starship that looks like an Excelsior-class refit into more Sovereign-class styling, but also the return of a Star Trek: The Next Generation former lower-decker: Sonia Gomez(Lycia Naff), now a Starfleet captain.
Star Trek: Lower Decks -- 'First First Contact'
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Admiral and Captain Freeman meet with Captain Sonia Gomez. (Paramount+)
Mariner and Jennifer, the haughty Andorian. (Paramount+)
A new starship design leaves Spacedock. (Paramount+)
The Cerritos senior staff in a tense moment. (Paramount+)
Tendi and Rutherford in the Jefferies tubes. (Paramount+)
Rutherford adjusts his implant. (Paramount+)
Freeman and Mariner look up during red alert. (Paramount+)
Series showrunner Mike McMahan took to Twitter today to share that the new ship is an Obana-class starship inspired by the Excelsior-class.
We have a cool new ship in this week's Lower Deck's finale: the USS Archimedes, an Obena class ship. Inspired by the Excelsior class (which is still in service) but larger with some other changes. #starfleetstuffpic.twitter.com/h0c6DTJW21
It’s likely there’s much more to this season-ending episode, as the episode’s trailer features precious little bearing on the episode’s official description — there may be a larger story yet to be revealed, just like how last week’s “wej Duj” had no hint of Pakled involvement ahead of it’s public release.
There’s still a few scenes from the Lower Decks mid-season trailer we haven’t seen yet, including some dangerous-looking asteroids, likely to be part of this week’s finale:
Finally, here’s the trailer for the episode, released this weekend on social media.
FIRST FIRST CONTACT — In the season two finale, the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked to aid an Excelsior-class starship on a first contact mission.
Written by Mike McMahan. Directed by Jason Zurek.
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for its season finale on October 14 with “First First Contact”) on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 15.
Star Trek: Lower DecksSeason 1 Blu-ray
Star Trek: Lower DecksSeason 2 Blu-ray
