It’s been a few years since longtime Star Trek convention organizer Creation Entertainment hosted regional events, as their footprint reduced to the annual Las Vegas bash a while back — but they’re getting back into the swing of things, spending 2024 building up local shows in San Francisco, Chicago, and Nashville so far.
This contest has ended and our winners have been notified.
November brings their “Trek Tour” to two additional cities — and we’ve got free weekend passes for their Secaucus, NJ (November 8-10) and Dallas, TX area (November 15-17) events for two lucky TrekCore readers!
Creation’sTrek to New Jersey begins next Friday, November 8 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ and has over 30 Star Trek guests scheduled to attend — including Anson Mount, Celia Rose Gooding, Christina Chong, Ethan Peck, and Jess Bush from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Tawny Newsome, Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, and Gabrielle Ruiz from Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: The Next Generation favorites like Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and more.
The subsequent Trek to Dallas convention kicks off Friday, November 15 in the Lone Star state. Hosted at the Marriott Dallas Allen hotel in Allen, TX, thirty Trek celebrities are expected to attend — including Anson Mount, Celia Rose Gooding, Christina Chong, Ethan Peck, and Melissa Navia from Strange New Worlds, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, and Elias Toufexis from Star Trek: Discovery, Tawny Newsome, Eugene Cordero and Dawnn Lewis from Lower Decks, plus many more.
If you’d like to win a pair free tickets to one of these November conventions, just complete the entry form below by Tuesday, October 29. We’ll reach out to you directly via email if you’ve been selected to confirm your details.
One winner will be selected for each event.
The contest closes closes at 5pm ET on Tuesday, October 29. Good luck to all entrants!
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.
Mike McMahan speaks onstage during the Star Trek Universe Panel at NYCC 2024. (Photo: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images for Paramount+)
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.
Jennifer (Lauren Lapkus) returns following her split with Mariner in Season 3. (Paramount+)
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!
Garrett Wang returns to reprise multiple copies of Harry Kim from STAR TREK: VOYAGER. (Paramount+)
Q: Is there a particular addition to Star Trek canon in Lower Decks that you’re particularly proud of?
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.
T’Lyn plays the strange tube instrument seen in “We’ll Always Have Paris.” (Paramount+)
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.
The crew in a STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE-style decon chamber at a Federation Starbase. (Paramount+)
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!
Mike McMahan, Eugene Cordero, Noël Wells, Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome at NYCC 2024. (Photo: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images for Paramount+)
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+.
We have sad news to report from the Star Trek world this week, as Star Trek: Voyager co-creator and showrunner Jeri Taylor has passed at age 86.
A driving force in the creation of Star Trek: Voyager (along with Michael Piller and Rick Berman), the executive producer ran the writers’ room for the first four years of the series, eventually handing the reigns to Brannon Braga upon her departure. Prior to Voyager, she spent several years at The Next Generation where she rose to the position of showrunner in the final season.
(“I was responsible for Troi getting a uniform,” Taylor told fans in 2021.)
Inside the #StarTrek TNG writers room with (L-R) Ron Moore, René Echevarria, Brannon Braga, Naren Shankar, and Jeri Taylor. pic.twitter.com/QASB2i9LpW
Taylor wrote or co-wrote more than thirty episodes of Star Trek during her tenure with the franchise, including “The Wounded,” “The Drumhead,” and “The Outcast” for Star Trek: The Next Generation, the two-part “The Maquis” story for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Voyager episodes like “Caretaker,” “Alliances,” “Resolutions,” and “Day of Honor.”
Outside of the television world, Jeri Taylor also wrote two seminal novels in Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Voyager line — the semi-canonical Mosaic (1996) which tells the story of Kathryn Janeway’s life before her time in command of the USS Voyager, and Pathways (1998) which delves into the lives of other members of Voyager’s crew. (Portions of these two novels have been referenced in Star Trek: Prodigy.)
Her two final contributions for the franchise were the B’Elanna Torres-centric Voyager episode “Nothing Human” in 1998, and an audio commentary for “Unification” when that two-part Next Gen tale was released on standalone Blu-ray.
After her retirement from Voyager, Taylor remained out of the public eye for more than two decades. In 2021, she made a surprising first-time appearance at the annual Star Trek Las Vegas convention to help promote the pending Star Trek: Voyager documentary To The Journey, interacting with fans and signing autographs for attendees.
Here is how some of Taylor’s Star Trek colleagues (and other voices) remembered the writer.
The world of Star Trek lost one of its giants yesterday with the passing of writer-producer Jeri Taylor. Jeri became a supervising producer on Star Trek: TNG’s fourth season, eventually becoming co-executive producer. pic.twitter.com/OVBxpygK75
Very sorry to hear of the passing of the brilliant Jeri Taylor, but proud that she is a major part of the upcoming @voydocumentary. Her accomplishments will not be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/NiKHXDbQFJ
So saddened to hear about the passing of EP & showrunner #JeriTaylor, When I was a fledgling journalist covering #TNG, she could not have been more warm & welcoming and thoughtful. Always considerate to everyone she met, she was also immensely talented. The perfect combination. pic.twitter.com/sYgHTNzSsE
In “Shades of Green,” Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to exploring some of its favorite topics in a fun episode that continues threads from the season opener with Lower Decks staples — like the importance of friendship, getting comfortable with who you are, and the responsibility of command — as Tendi helps her house navigate a war with the Blue Orions and the Cerritos helps a planet transition to being a post-scarcity society.
Some of Lower Decks’ best worldbuilding has been of the Orions, and that continues in “Shades of Green” as Tendi (Noel Wells) and D’Erika (Ariel Winter) work to ensure that House Tendi ends up on top in their expanding war with the blue Orions — House Azure, naturally!
Tendi (center) and D’Erika lead the crew through the Orion race. (Paramount+)
The political structure to Orion society is interesting, and the solar sailship race is action packed and exciting. It’s also really nice to see D’Vana and D’Erika bond in this episode as sisters, rather than the more adversarial relationship we saw them have in Season 4.
This feels like a great wrap up to the Mistress of the Winter Constellations subplot that really got going with Season 3’s “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” as Tendi prepares to hand over that title to her new niece and returns to Starfleet more comfortable with her Orion heritage but more certain than ever the path that she wants to take. Tendi’s own exploration of and reconciliation with her heritage might be different from Worf’s embrace of Klingon culture, but it’s no less interesting and fulfilling of a storyline.
We also see in this episode the impact that last week’s encounter with the alternate Cerritos had on Boimler (Jack Quaid). After stealing the alternate Brad Boimler’s PADD, our Boimler appears to be slowly aping his counterpart, right down to beginning to grow the thinnest wisps of a beard. Fake it ‘til you make it, right?
Boimler’s story seems to be setting up to be going in a different direction from Tendi’s, with Boimler trying desperately to become something he’s not rather than authentically accepting his true self. I wonder how well that’s going to work out for him long-term.
T’Lyn attempts to provide Rutherford the friendship he’s missed in Tendi’s absence. (Paramount+)
The Rutherford/T’Lyn subplot is also a nice one, once again highlighting the importance for Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) of his relationship with Tendi but also giving T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) a good insight into human culture and the bonds formed through a collaborative exercise. Her realization that the joy of fixing the Sequoia for Rutherford wasn’t in completing the task, but rather in sharing it with a friend — and her dismantling the shuttle even further to make the task even more challenging, was a sweet act of friendship from T’Lyn.
I loved the comedic bits this episode around the Cerritos supporting a planet transitioning into being a post-scarcity society. The little jokes about abandoning currency and embracing having replicates that can make anything you could desire was a lot of fun, even if this larger subplot didn’t ultimately go anywhere particularly interesting.
Mariner rages to her capitalist captors. (Paramount+)
The capitalist terrorists were a cool idea, but the storyline is basically just dropped for time to get to the end of the episode. I would have liked a little more from it, and a slightly less convenient resolution… but the comedy beats were on top form.
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
The Orion solar sailship race in this episode is like combining the sail ship elements from Deep Space Nine’s“Explorers” with the race plot from Voyager’s “Drive.”
CANON CONNECTIONS
Rutherford says the shuttle Sequoia is “an older model” and you can’t treat it like it has sarium krellide cells. Sarium krellide is established in “In Theory” to be a material that stores energy, kind of like a battery.
I wonder how similar Boimler’s Bointers are to Lefler’s Laws, another junior officer with a set of rules she lived by in “The Game.”
Boimler’s observation that “It is possible to do everything right and still get your away team kidnapped by the corporate elite” is very similar to Picard’s observation to Data in “Peak Performance” that “it is possible to do everything right and still lose.”
There is a brief Goodgey sighting at the end of the episode, cowering inside the newly dismantled Sequoia shuttle.
Goodgey hides out inside the disassembled Sequoia shuttle. (Paramount+)
“Shades of Green” appears to bring a satisfying end for Tendi’s Orion adventure and puts her back on the Cerritos — with a deeper appreciation for both her heritage, and for her unique identity that makes her different from other Orions. Coupled with some really funny jokes in the Targallus IX plot, and this makes for a fun and funny episode!
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 continues next week with “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel,” premiering October 31 on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for its fifth and final season with “Dos Cerritos,” a season premiere that explores the road not taken for our Lower Deckers.
For Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford, that’s meeting their doppelgangers from an alternate dimension when the Cerritos is accidentally caught in a quantum fissure — and for Tendi, it’s taking up the mantle of the Mistress of the Winter Constellations and trying to stay true to herself and her commitment to her sister to rejoin the Orion family business.
The two Mariners face off. (Paramount+)
It’s so nice to have the Cerritos gang back, even if it is a little bittersweet knowing that this is one of the last episodes we’ll get from Star Trek: Lower Decks in this form. “Dos Cerritos” is a classic “our heroes meet themselves, but they’re not quite the same” of the genre that was first pioneered with “Mirror, Mirror” and continued through episodes like “Parallels,”and “Crossover.” And it’s successfully Lower Deck-y, giving the show’s unique twist on a familiar Star Trek trope.
The episode serves as a successful epilogue to last season’s two-part finale — “The Inner Fight” and “Old Friends, New Planets” — in showing how much Mariner (Tawny Newsome) has grown over the course of the show. Becky Freeman is the mirror image of Beckett Mariner, the logical conclusion of a darker path for Freeman’s growth that sees her lean into her ambition and darker tendencies. To watch our Mariner so visibly recoil from that vision of what her future could look like is a rewarding one, given how much inner fighting the character has had to do over the course of the series to date.
Tendi and her crew fight off some Blue Orions. (Paramount+)
Meanwhile, Tendi (Noel Wells) is on a parallel path. She doesn’t meet her actual alternate-dimension counterpart the way the Cerritos does, but throughout the episode she’s constantly confronted with the role that she is supposed to be playing… rather than the one she wants to play.
Lower Decks has another loving homage to The Animated Series with the “Blue Oreeons” — a loving gag poking fun at the strange look and pronunciation of “Orions” in 1974’s “The Pirates of Orion” — and the show continues its efforts to deepen the previously one-note race. Discovering that her pirate colleagues are also seeking lives outside of piracy was a nice touch, and shows that Tendi is not a uniquely different Orion, but one who has just been given the opportunity to thrive.
Rutherford’s (Eugene Cordero) need for his relationship with Tendi gets reinforced in this episode, and Boimler’s (Jack Quaid) story is all comedy. The confident, bearded Lt. Boimler of the alternate Cerritos is a hilarious counterpoint to Bradward’s anxious mess.
The lower deckers find their counterparts to be both fascinating and remarkable. (Paramount+)
From the synopsis and trailers for the season, we can surmise that these quantum fissures are the latest meta-narrative overlaid on top of Lower Decks’ largely episodic format. It’s a little frustrating that this particular story construction — small plot points that impact episodes throughout the season crescendo to the big finale — is being repeated for Season 5 after it was used to similar effect in Seasons 3 and 4, but given last season this same type of storytelling resulted in the phenomenal last two episodes, I’m willing to go along for the ride for Lower Decks’ final season.
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
This episode has all the trappings of any time previous crews have met themselves from alternate timelines — see episodes like “Parallels,” “Deadlock,” and “Endgame” — including the weirdness and sometimes the frostiness that comes along with that.
CANON CONNECTIONS
Tendi is masquerading as a Haliianin the cold open, the same race as Lt. Aquiel Uhnari from The Next Generation episode “Aquiel.”
While the character is not named in dialogue, the collector that Tendi robs from is almost certainly Palor Toff, who previously appeared in “The Most Toys.” The character’s appearance, attire, and unique metal headpiece are all the same, as well as Toff’s pride over his Veltan lust idol (referred to as a Veltan sex idol in the TNG episode.)
Toff also has a number of Hupyrianbodyguards, the same race as Grand Nagus Zek’s loyal servant, Maihar’du.
Toff brandishes a Starfleet phaser from the same era as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
A classic 2280s-style hand phaser. (Paramount+)
Mariner and T’Lyn are playing Kal-toh, the competitive Vulcan logic puzzle that Tuvok and Harry Kim often played on Voyager.
Boimler bemoans Naomi Wildman’s inclusion in Fleet Magazine, saying she’s “like 10 years old,” which is accurate given this episode takes place in late 2381 or early 2382 and Wildman was born on the USS Voyager in 2372.
The anomaly encountered by the Cerritos is a quantum fissure, the same anomaly that Worf got caught up in that caused him to skip through parallel dimensions in “Parallels.”
While this appears to be the first mention in canon of a Great Plague on Orion, in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Doctor Roger Korby supposedly translated medical records from ancient Orion ruins that significantly advanced Federation immunization techniques.
Alternate Boimler performs Will Riker’s signature “swing the leg over the chair” move in reverse when his Ransom leaves him in command of the alternate Cerritos.
OBSERVATION LOUNGE
The opening credits battle scene has become even bigger, if that were possible! Added to the chaos this season are Breen ships, Tholian ships, the big green hand of Apollo, and V’Gerfrom Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The series title logo also has the blue “warp trails” which also accompanied the Next Generation series title in that show’s fifth season credits.
A Season 5 homage to THE NEXT GENERATION. (Paramount+)
The cover of Starfleet’s Fleet Magazinebears a striking resemblance to the now ending Star Trek Magazine that has been running since 1995 in the UK and 2006 in the United States.
Ransom’s metaphors for what’s happening to the ship (his previous all time “carving us up like a First Contact Day salmon”) continue to be hilarious: “We’re dunking into the rift like a big old cookie!”
The alternate Cerritos’s crew uniform colors are slightly darker than in the prime universe; they seem to match more closely to the live-action version of the uniform seen in “Those Old Scientists” on Strange New Worlds.
Alternate Ransom’s mullet is awful.
This episodes does make appropriate fun of the decision in Discovery to canonize referring to the main narrative continuity of Star Trek as the “Prime Universe” — because every universe is “prime” to the point of view of the people who live there.
We finally learn Beckett Mariner’s full name – Beckett Mariner Freeman.
Oh, no, your uniforms don’t look ridiculous at all. Really. (Paramount+)
I love the inclusion of the “Blue Oreeons” from The Animated Series, complete with their “ridiculous uniforms”!
“There’s no interpersonal conflict on my ship!” Captain Becky Freeman shouts at her crew, who clearly weren’t as aware of the Roddenberry Rule as Freeman is.
You know Becky Freeman is an asshole captain because she has a riding crop, the accessory of choice for asshole captains.
“Don’t you give me that sarcastic Vulcan salute! Beckett! Ha. So that’s what that feels like.” is a nice homage to Mariner having done that to her mother in “Moist Vessel.”
It’s so nice to have the Cerritos crew back in a season opener that lets us enjoy a Lower Decks take on a classic Star Trek trope. Alternate universes are all the rage in genre media right now — see the Marvel Cinematic Universe, among others — but it arguably started in a big way with Star Trek.
It’s great to see Lower Decks take it on, and in the process get a chance for the character and us as the audience to see how things might have turned out if things had gone just a little differently.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 continues today with a second episode, “Shades of Green.”
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.
Lower Decks Shirt Club Subscriptions Are OFFICIALLY OPEN for pre-order! Celebrate the conclusion of the epic Lower Decks saga with eleven saucy shirts designed to preserve the spirit of the Cerritos.
The subscription includes TEN tees plus one BONUS TEE (designed by the voice of… pic.twitter.com/xdQasAwMwx
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]
Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid in STRANGE NEW WORLDS’ “Those Old Scientists.” (Paramount+)
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]
The animated crew of the USS Cerritos. (Paramount+)
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.
Season 1 publicity artwork for STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS. (Paramount+)
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.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere its first two episodes October 24 on Paramount+.
ABOVE: Photo by Santiago FelipeGetty Images for Paramount+
This year’s New York Comic Con wrapped up on Sunday, but for those of you who couldn’t be there in person, ReedPop’s Popverse channel has made a recording of Saturday’s Star Trek Universe panel available to watch online!
Come back soon for the first of TrekCore’s interviews from New York Comic Con, where we got to speak with the full Lower Decks crew about their final year of adventures!
Keep checking back to TrekCore for all the latest Star Trek franchise news!
Fanhome has been ramping up promotion for their new expansion of The Official Star Trek Starships Collection, with the launch of their subscription program set to pick up where Eaglemoss left off in 2022.
Last week the company announced the full lineup for the first 20 ships in their planned series, and they had several of the new models on display for fans to see up close at New York Comic Con this past weekend — starting with the initial starship in the new line, the USS Titan-A from Star Trek: Picard Season 3.
The Titan-A was actually available for direct purchased in limited quantities during the convention (just 250 pieces were available), and Picard actor Todd Stashwick (Captain Liam Shaw) made an appearance on Friday, October 18 to autograph some of those ships as fans came to the Fanhome booth.
The Titan is shipping soon to subscribers (and will be available for individual purchase shortly after) — and the Constitution III-class ship was joined on display by the XL-sized Enterprise-G model, scheduled to ship to collectors in May 2025.
Fanhome Starships — USS Titan-A and USS Enterprise-G
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Next was the second entry in Fanhome’s fleet, set to ship to subscribers in November: the Sagan-class USS Stargazer(NCC-82893) from Picard Season 2. This was joined by December’s USS Farragut (NCC-1647), from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1.
Fanhome Starships — USS Stargazer
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Fanhome Starships — USS Farragut
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The first XL-sized model shipping out is the Odyssey-class USS Enterprise-F, the starship from Star Trek Online which previously had two different Eaglemoss models. This edition is larger in size, and is designed to match the Enterprise-F captained by Admiral Shelby in Star Trek: Picard Season 3.
Fanhome Starships — USS Enterprise-F
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February and March bring another pair of Picard Season 3 models: Beverly Crusher’s SS Eleos XII(NAR-59019) and Vadic’s deadly Shrikewarship, each adding a pop of color to the greyish Starfleet models surrounding them.
Fanhome Starships — SS Eleos
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Fanhome Starships — The Shrike
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Rounding out Fanhome’s NYCC display is one that many fans are sure to chase down: the Luna-class USS Titan(NCC-80102), captained by Will Riker following his departure from the Enterprise-E.
Eaglemoss released two editions of this ship in their time — a smaller version inspired by the ship’s appearance on the Star Trek: Titan novel cover art, and a larger purple-ish release themed to emulate the ship’s animated appearance in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Eaglemoss’ original USS TITAN starship model from 2017.The LOWER DECKS-style USS TITAN from 2022.
This new Titan model appears to be based upon the ship’s revamped digital model used in Star Trek: Picard, upgraded by Tobias Richter of the Star Trek Online team for that live-action series.
New York Comic Con didn’t bring fans any new footage from the upcoming Star Trek: Section 31 movie, but now we at least know when the Michelle Yeoh project will make its way to Paramount+.
Director Olatunde Osunsanmi announced that the Philippa Georgiou-centric Star Trek: Section 31 movie will arrive on Paramount+ on Friday, January 24, as he was joined on the NYCC stage by cast members Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl and Robert Kazinsky.
(Paramount+)
Here’s the first teaser trailer, released at San Diego Comic Con back in July:
Along with the release-date announcement, Paramount+ also unveiled a series of key art posters for the upcoming film — each of which also confirm the character names each actor will be portraying in the new movie, starting of course with Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou:
Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou. (Paramount+)
Omari Hardwick stars as Section 31 team leader Alok Zahar:
The return of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is still far away, but Paramount+ threw a bone to fans at Saturday’s New York Comic Con panel with a new clip from the Season 3 premiere.
Picking up immediately where Season 2’s “Hegemony” season finale left off, the clip sees Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and the Enterprise crew struggle to battle the aggressive Gorn fleet — and attempt to rescue their missing crewmates, captured in that 2023 episode.
The streamer also released a few publicity photos from the tense scene on the Enterprise bridge:
Anson Mount as Captain Pike. (Paramount+)Ethan Peck as Spock. (Paramount+)Rebecca Romijn as Una Chin-Riley. (Paramount+)Rong Fu as Mitchell, Anson Mount as Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Una. (Paramount+)
During the brief panel at New York Comic Con — which featured appearances by showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, alongside series stars Ethan Peck (Spock) and Carol Kane (Pelia) — it was also announced that actor Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows) will be guest-starring in Strange New Worlds Season 3 as a previously-established Trek character.
Rhys Darby. (Paramount+)
The identity of Darby’s character was not revealed, but speculation is already in overdrive as fans have theorized he might be Strange New Worlds’ take on Matt Decker, Trelane, Sybok (established in Season 1), or other possibilities.
We’ll find out when Strange New Worlds returns next year.
Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is in post-production now, expected to return to Paramount+ in 2025.
