‘Lower Decks’ Was The Best Trek
Image; Paramount+
For the longest time, my favorite Trek was Deep Space Nine (1993–1999). I loved how it forced Star Trek to grabble with its utopian premise. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) was not helming a spaceship exploring some unknown part of the galaxy but was in charge of a space station at the center of the Federation’s political universe. He had to balance a tenuous political situation between the Bajorans and Cardassians as well as an unknown threat that would bring the Beta and Alpha quadrants to their knees.
Many of its episodes questioned the limits of utopia when faced with an external threat uninterested in upholding the Federation’s ideals. Some of its episodes are ones I still think of today, so much so that I never thought another Trek show would take its place in my heart as number one.
That is until Lower Decks blasted onto the scene in 2020. The comedy about a group of lower-deckers (i.e., non-bridge crew) going on wacky adventures somehow managed to carve out a perfect balance between funny and thought-provoking — all while giving long-term fans little inside jokes that did not upset the overall integrity of each episode.
I know the case for what is ultimately the best is subjective (people are allowed to like what they like, even the inferior Enterprise), but I wanted to make the case for why I think Lower Decks is thee show Trekies should adore.
So, sit back and engage.
What Lower Decks Does Different
Lower Decks is a show about an irreverent, irresponsible ensign named Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) slowly learning to take herself more seriously in no small part due to her other lower deckers Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), and later T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz). They are aboard the Cerritos, a “second contact” ship that finishes the missions that other more important members of Star Fleet started.
This framing does two essential things that a lot of modern Trek could benefit from.
The first is that, at least initially, it lowers the stakes so that the show can focus on more mundane aspects of the Trek universe that often get neglected. How do inter-department transfers work in Star Fleet? What happens when someone is demoted, or your captain is a micromanager? These are some smaller stakes problems that are so rarely focused on in this TV universe.
And that’s a problem because Trek retreads some topics so frequently it can feel stale. Trek is a series where the number of wrinkled-foreheaded aliens with few cultural variances is numbered in the hundreds, and sometimes that makes it difficult to care about the latest away mission on whatever “Planet of Hats” we happen to be visiting. There are only so many times I can see the same political and cultural dilemmas trodded out before wanting something new.
Secondly, this premise allows the show to revisit some of the more famous moments of Trek history without feeling overly gratuitous. The Cerritos can, of course, visit the murderous robot Landru from The Original Series (TOS) or the Ferengi capital of Ferenginar because its job is to check up on previously visited places. The show can build on top of existing ideas rather than trying to make up a new immortal alien for the umpteenth time.
As a consequence of this solid premise, the show is just tighter than previous iterations. In the words of Christian Blauvelt in Indiewire of the first four episodes:
“There’s a lived-in feeling to the comedy too, like it emerges organically from actual storytelling that continues the particular ’90s-style exploration of the galaxy we saw on ‘Next Gen’ and ‘Deep Space Nine.’…By the end of the four 25-minute episodes made available, you feel even that much more connected to all of the characters than you would have after 100 minutes of any previous ‘Trek’ series. It’s quite an achievement.”
This conciseness is unique because most Treks do not have such a tight beginning, middle, and end, and that rarity elevates it above the other Treks in this IP’s discography.
Most Trek Shows Have Rough Seasons
There’s been a saying among Star Trek Fans that every show has a bad first season. As Christian Blauvelt continues in that article: “Every single ‘Trek’ has struggled to find its footing at first, to define its characters and make them ‘tick’ with the audience in a meaningful way.”
Sometimes, these gaps are obvious, with several decades in hindsight. The Original Series (TOS) not only had some clunkers, but it also had a longstanding bit of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) trying to seduce various women, which has not aged well by more contemporary standards.
In fact, this sexism remained in the show’s DNA till the end. TOS’s final episode, Turnabout Intruder, had what Hollywood.com calls: “…a dispiritingly sexist commentary on gender roles.” Captain Kirk switches bodies with a female scientist and makes the incredibly bizarre claim that women are barred from being starship captains in Starfleet, something you would hope a Utopian future had moved beyond at that point.
We see this souring of past storylines in 90s Treks as well. The Next Generation’s (1987–1994) first season consisted of mostly rehashed script ideas from TOS that were quite bad, including a very racist episode (Code of Honor) about the crew landing on an all-Black planet that replicates a very harmful trope about Black men preying on white women. Voyager (1995–2001) not only managed to completely bungle its Maquis storyline, but the way Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) treated Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) is now considered by many to be quite sexist. Even my beloved Deep Space Nine has plenty of mediocre episodes (see The Passenger) as well as an ending that remains controversial to this day.
Surprisingly, the inter-period between 90s Trek and our modern Trek that began in 2017 was even rougher. It’s very obvious now that Enterprise (2001–2005) drew heavily on the paranoia of post-9/11 to tell a story about temporal terrorism that seems quite dated. The J.J. Abrams Kelvin Timeline movies continued this trend by likewise focusing on temporal terrorism, and its second movie, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), focuses almost exclusively on the militarization of Star Fleet as a theme.
Some of modern Trek is much better than what came before. It cannot be overstated how much nostalgia causes people to ignore the problems I cited above (as well as the many I have missed), but even these new shows have been far from perfect. Discovery (2017–2024) never quite knew what it wanted to be, radically shifting its premise so much that by the time we got to the final season, we had shifted timelines. Its kid show, Prodigy (2021–2024), never made much of a splash, sunsetting after just two seasons. Picard (2020–2023) likewise had a rough time going, ultimately shifting focus every season as well.
It was Strange New Worlds (2022–present) that was meant to be Modern Trek’s liferaft, so much so that Discovery spent its entire second season setting it up, MCU-style. However, even here, there have been very weak episodes.
For example, the episode Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach is a direct homage to Ursula K Leguin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, about a utopian society built on the suffering of a single child. The plot is nearly identical, but since the Federation is likewise a utopian society that doesn’t have to make such a sacrifice, the impact of this episode is nonexistent. As Mike Poteet argues:
“…the would-be morally damning questions Alora (Lindy Booth) asks of Pike — ‘Can you honestly say that no child suffers for the benefit of your Federation? That no child lives in poverty or squalor, while those who enjoy abundance look away?’ — ought to be easily answered by Pike in the 23rd century, ‘Yes, I can honestly say that!’ The episode attempts a moral interrogation of the Federation along the lines of those Star Trek: Deep Space Nine used to do, but Alora’s accusations simply don’t ring true of the Federation as we know it, however much they do, sadly, apply to our own society.”
There were many episodes like this in the first season that had a premise that appeared thought-provoking, only for it to fall apart when you thought about it for a little bit. Most Trek is an act of sifting through the river of time until we only pick out the gold, but that means we often have to discard much of what is left to enjoy it.
Yet, when it comes to Lower Decks, I find myself having to discard very little.
No notes
Lower Decks came out of the gate, knowing exactly what it wanted to be. While shows such as Discovery and Picard had constant identity crises that weakened their overall stories, Lower Decks went on to produce great season after great season.
One can argue that it’s because Lower Decks is a comedy sitcom, not prestige television like Discovery and Strange New Worlds, and so it was able to be far more formulaic. But to me, such a structural argument makes Discovery’s flaws seem inevitable and absolves its writers and directors of all responsibility. A medium is not the sole cause of a show’s success or failure. The writing, acting, and direction matter a lot, too, and from what I have seen so far, Lower Decks has come out on top.
Hopefully, even this will change as Trek’s IP continues to grow and evolve.
Let’s make it so.