In the earliest days of screen entertainment, cartoons were the cool thing that you got before the movie started, produced by the great animators of Walt Disney and Warner Bros. and MGM. But by the 1970s, when the animated Star Trek debuted, animation had devolved into cheap kiddie fare, with the stilted figures produced by Filmation a far cry from what Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, and Hanna-Barbera had been doing three decades before.
But then the 1990s started a revolution in animation (Ren & Stimpy, ReBoot, Rugrats, the work of Bill Plympton, etc.). Now animation is everywhere, and in a huge variety of styles. With CBS committed to lots and lots of Star Trek, doing new animated series only makes sense.
Secret Hideout, Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin’s production company that is now in charge of Trek, is producing two animated series, and the first of them debuts today. (The second, Prodigy, will be more geared toward kids and will air on Nickelodeon.) Lower Decks is a notion that has been batting around since the same-titled episode of The Next Generation aired in its seventh season, a phenomenal episode that became its own TV Trope.
Now we have it as the focus of a show, thanks to Mike McMahan, one of the producers of Rick and Morty, and done in a similar animation style to that Adult Swim show.
And it’s almost really good.
[Some spoilers for “Second Contact”]
Parts of it are fantastic. In fact, the overall plot is brilliant, and a perfect template for the show: the U.S.S. Cerritos is making second contact with a planet and setting up a subspace array for the natives. A member of the away team brings a pathogen back on board that turns half the crew into crazed zombies. Meanwhile, two of our main characters have an adventure on the surface, which results in one of them getting covered in gunk, which turns out to be the cure for the zombie plague. The day is saved thanks to the efforts of the junior crew, but the senior officers get all the credit.
This could’ve been a brilliant opening, and instead it’s only a good opening, because the show gets in its own way too much by trying too hard to be funny. Two of the biggest pitfalls of writing comedy are letting the joke go on too long and becoming so in love with a shtick that it gets in the way of the story.
“Second Contact” suffers from both those problems, starting with the very first scene: Ensign Mariner is the drunken crazy person who’s always loud and getting in everyone’s faces and not understanding personal space, a shtick that wears thin after about two seconds, and which the character returns to far too often. Plus the opening bit—which has nothing to do with the rest of the episode, by the way—goes on about thirty seconds too long. Worse, it ends with Mariner slicing Ensign Boimler’s leg open with a bat’leth, which is then ignored thenceforth. I’m not saying we should then have a trip to sickbay and a lesson about playing with bladed weapons while drunk, but to not follow it up at all just feels—I dunno, cheap. And not that funny, unless you find just the act of two people screaming after a brief pause to be hilarious. Which, to be fair, some people do.
Some of the jokes land beautifully. I love that Ensign Rutherford and Ensign Barnes’ date is interrupted by the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, but they gamely continue their date even as they’re hiding from phaser fire and going EVA to help save the ship. For that matter, when Mariner is just tweaking Boimler and making fun of the senior officers and not being a loud obnoxious drunken moron, she’s way more effective. (It doesn’t help that Tawny Newsome feels the need to shout all her dialogue.) And then the reveal on the planet that she’s been demoted after having gone through some serious craziness allows her psychosis to start to make sense.
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To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
The thing is, that backstory for Mariner means she should’ve turned into Chris Knight from Real Genius—a great mind that finally decided “Fuck it!” and decided to have fun thenceforth because the universe is a crazy place. Unfortunately, McMahan instead chose Bluto Blutarsky from Animal House as a role model, by way of Chris Farley and Vince Vaughn. It’s a poor fit.
Plus, there’s a little too much early-21st-century dudebro in far too many of the characters—including Mariner, despite her being a woman of color. I mean, it’s one thing if our titular lower-decks folk are goofs, but we also see two high-ranking officers (one of whom is the first officer) who go on about getting a beer together after an away mission in a manner that wouldn’t be out of place in a Manhattan office building in the 2010s (chest bumps, finger-pointing, “that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”), and it just throws me out of the story.
Boimler is a bit too gormless, the nerdy, earnest Starfleet officer who aspires to command, who’s the square made fun of by Mariner’s jock, a dynamic that was hoary forty years ago and hasn’t aged all that well. Still, at least Jack Quaid makes Boimler mostly likeable in a schlubby way. Still, between him and Mariner, our two leads are not nearly as compelling as they could be.
Luckily, the supporting cast picks up the slack. Noël Wells is a delight as the naïve enthusiastic Ensign Tendi (I love how she fangoobers everything that she encounters, from the view of outer space to the holodeck to getting to work with command-track officers to the fact that she’s living through a zombie apocalypse, and every moment is the best thing ever), Jerry O’Connell is great fun as Commander Ramson, and I love seeing a woman of color as the ship’s captain, and Captain Freeman is voiced with arrogant dignity by Dawnn Lewis (plus the reveal that she’s Mariner’s mother lands perfectly).
But the best is the snotty Caitian chief medical officer, Dr. T’Ana, voiced with superlative crankiness by Gillian Vigman. I really hope we see more of her, as she’s rapidly becoming my favorite character.
The general theme, that there’s stuff going on belowdecks that may not be of earth-shattering importance, but is still relevant to the operation of the ship, is a good one, as is the notion that the senior staff takes all the credit even if they don’t do all the work. Plus I like that the Cerritos isn’t a top-of-the-line ship, that these aren’t the best and the brightest, but just the workaday Starfleet folk that don’t normally get to star in TV shows. (Of course, some folks will point out that The Orville did the same thing…) I adore the notion of “second contact,” the team that has to do all the drudge work after first contact.
There’s comedy to be mined here, we’ll just have to see if McMahan and his staff can curb their worst instincts and trust the situations to provide the humor without having to force it.
Random thoughts:
- The opening credits are, at once, hilarious and disappointing. The tone is set by the images of the Cerritos doing things like running away from a fight with the Romulans and Borg, crashing into things, and having a giant space monster sucking on the nacelles. But the graphics and setup are all basically the same as The Next Generation, down to using the same font, which is disappointing. Every other Trek show has had its own unique credits sequence, and the other CBSAA shows in particular have had superlative opening credits sequences.
- Rutherford has cybernetic implants, which were apparently designed by Vulcans, so they suppress his emotions. They’re also glitchy. Mariner adjusts them so he can feel again, which allows him to be nervous about his date with Barnes. (Rutherford also looks a little too much like Cyborg from the Teen Titans…) Also, in an amusing touch, we see a crewperson walking past while wearing a VISOR.
- I’m wondering how long it will be before the whole crew finds out that Mariner is the captain’s daughter.
- On the one hand, the notion that a pathogen would come on board from a bug bite and not be stopped by the transporter’s biofilter is ridiculous. On the other hand, the biofilter isn’t 100% perfect. On the third hand, the notion that a Starfleet officer wouldn’t go to sickbay after that bug bite is ridiculous. On the fourth hand, we have Joe Tormolen…
- CBS’s web site has this taking place in 2380, which is a year after Nemesis. The uniforms are pretty similar to the ones we’ve seen Starfleet personnel wearing in Picard, so presumably the change from the uniforms that debuted in First Contact happened shortly after Shinzon’s coup on Romulus…
- Mariner has a holodeck program called “All Nude Olympic Training Facility” because of course she does. (Tendi’s comment: “Wow, this is a very detailed program.”) Honestly, you know that’s what most people use the holodeck for…
- I’d been avoiding doing a “Random thoughts” section for my previous reviews of Trek shows on CBSAA—not for any good reason, but just because it’s so common now—however, I think it’s a fitting feature for a review of a half-hour comedy.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has been reviewing each of the CBS All Access Star Trek shows—Discovery, Short Treks, Picard—for this site, and has also done rewatches of the original Star Trek, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager (that last still running twice a week). His next novel is the collaborative military science fiction novel To Hell and Regroup (written with David Sherman), coming soon from eSpec Books, and his most recent short story is “Materfamilias,” an urban fantasy story in Bad Ass Moms from Crazy 8 Press.
Looking forward to its debut tonight on CTV Sci-Fi in Canada. (Such a poor rebranding from the original name, Space.)
As for that early 1990s TV animation revival, let’s not forget the effects of two big studios that seemed to be revitalized after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – the Disney Afternoon bloc of series and Warner Brothers’ Batman: The Animated Series.
I enjoyed it, but then I’m not just the target audience for something like this, I’m the bulls-eye. The pacing was exactly what’s needed in a half-hour show, and fast, snappy dialogue is exactly what you need in comedy. I think loud and over the top is a feature in this case, not a bug.
The only drawback is that its humour relies on the audience getting the in-jokes and generally knowing the ins and outs of the Star Trek universe, but at this point that’s not all that risky: decades ago Leno was cracking Ferengi jokes on The Tonight Show. So.
I’m afraid I’m not a fan of the character design style. Partly it’s just that this particular designer’s aesthetic doesn’t really click with me, compared to other, similarly cartoony design styles I’ve seen. But partly it’s because if this is supposed to be in the same canon as the live-action Trek shows, I’d prefer it to have a more naturalistic look, something more along the lines of TAS where the designs were simplified and cartoony but proportioned like real people. Or at least something like the Star Wars animated shows where the designs are somewhat caricatured but you can still envision how they’d look in live action. Something that would allow for, say, a comic-book crossover with live-action canon characters where all the characters are drawn in a single consistent style but are recognizable as themselves.
I like it that they have characters with cybernetic implants, VISORs, and such. Early TNG flirted with transhumanism with Geordi’s VISOR and Picard’s bionic heart, but after a while, the shows backed away from that and portrayed a Federation that rejected and feared human enhancement. Cyborgs only appeared as villains, genetic engineering was illegal, Data was the only viable android, and Geordi’s VISOR ceased to be a superpower and just became a way for villains to torture and brainwash him. I’m glad the modern shows are more willing to include cyborg characters like Airiam and Rutherford.
I thought it was fun. I laughed relatively consistently and enjoyed the callbacks to other Trek. I’m hoping they tone down Mariner just a tad, but can live with it if they don’t. Agreed that Tendi is great. My favorite of the 4 leads. It’s going to be fun hearing all the people who say Orville is the true Trek trash this even though they’re definite cut from the same cloth.
Also, the Mission Log Live podcast did an interview with one of the writers of Lower Decks. It was pretty informative and I recommend it.
Wait a minute, isn’t having a child in the same chain of command as their parent a Conflict of Interest? (It’s not just a matter of avoiding accusations of nepotism, it’s also kinder to avoid putting a mother or father – or other progenitor – in a position where they may very well have to chose between their child or their ship on a daily basis*).
*That would be because this sort of decision (and its consequences) can brew up a veritable hurt locker of psychological issues even when not factoring in familial dynamics as yet another complication.
Some jokes landed, some didn’t. But I enjoyed the vibe of the episode.
@5/ED: I haven’t seen the episode yet, but I get the impression that Mariner’s been kicked off a lot of ships and her mother’s the only one who’ll still take her.
As for conflict of interest, I’m not sure it applies that way in the military. When I wrote TNG: The Buried Age way back when and depicted the Stargazer court martial, I looked into the legality of Picard being prosecuted by his girlfriend Philippa Louvois (which also applies to Kirk and Areel Shaw) and found that the conflict of interest would be a non-issue in the military, since you’re obligated to follow orders, so if you’re ordered to prosecute your own lover, you can’t recuse yourself; you have to do that job to the best of your ability or else you’re committing dereliction of duty. (See also Riker being ordered to make the case against Data in “The Measure of a Man.”) So I’d guess that maybe that applies to things like family members serving together — you’re obligated by military discipline to serve under/over whoever you end up with, and to put any personal feelings aside and not let them interfere with your duties, period.
David: I didn’t realize Space had changed its name. That’s — unfortunate…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8 – Not as unfortunate as the US Sci-Fi name change to SyFy…
@8:
Keith – it’s all part of the corporate mothership needing to put its name on everything. Space became CTV Sci-Fi, Comedy Network became CTV Comedy, Bravo became CTV Drama, and some local stations became part of CTV2 (there’s corporate originality). The only ones they didn’t touch were Discovery and TSN, thanks to name recognition.
I still wish I could find a copy of some of the old Space promos from the mid-late 1990s which featured a semi-alien made partly out of an old baby doll wandering around a junkheap, or the guy who dissed Star Trek being forced to fight a Trekkie in a circle of fans all humming the original series fight music (“dah-dah dah dah dah dad-dah dah dah”).
I’m def not the target audience, being old. A lot of the humor wasn’t – it was dumb. I suspect the target audience will enjoy it thoroughly. They’re trying too hard. It seems like a ship of idiots.
Having said that, I was entertained. The opening sequence where the USS Doritos (I mean Cerritos) ran away from the Romulan/Borg fight made me laugh. Smart move, guys.
Having what’s-his-face gashed by a bat’leth and then never following up on it was a mistake.
I think it’s like an animated Orville. So I’ll probably like it. The husband came into the room as it ended and he was interested in seeing it (so a rewatch will happen tonight) and he is *not* a fan of most Trek other than the original series. He thinks it’s all rubbish.
The comparison to The Orville seems pretty spot-on to me. As much as I have loved Star Trek in all its forms for literally my entire life, my one issue with it has always been that the characters are far too erudite. For example, we’re supposed to accept that Mozart survives into the 24th century, but not The Beatles or Metallica or Johnny Cash? That’s why I really enjoyed using contemporary bands in the Kelvin movies, and the mention of The Monkees was cute for a couple of reasons. So yeah, I know that characters acting “dudebro” is going to land badly in 2020, especially in certain corners of the internet, but seeing Starfleet officers actually acting human by getting a beer after shift or using the holodeck to make naked dudes is OK in my book.
@12
Of course one issue there is budget. They couldn’t use the Beatles or Metallica because, presumably, they couldn’t afford them. Whereas Mozart works for cheap.
But for what it’s worth a few bits of pop culture have survived. I can recall Odo once mentioning “Louie Louie.”
I think the Orville comparison is real and not good. That show has great potential but Seth can’t not make a joke about an alien dissolving into goo and happily saying hello in the first episode. Turned it off quick.
Would I have watched this if I didn’t have a free trial membership to All Access? No.
Would I be watching this if “Star Trek” wasn’t in the title? No.
Did I actually find it funny? No.
Was it watchable? Certainly. It was perfectly passable “entertainment.” Sure, it’s obvious that the writers/creators are big fans of TNG and Star Trek of the Berman and Classic Trek eras what with the constant references to the other series. But those references, to me anyway, don’t qualify as jokes in and of themselves or actual story content. It’s just like, “hey, ‘member this? Isn’t nostalgia great?” So yeah, again, apparently I’m not the target audience of this show despite liking the concept of a focus on the junior officers aboard a starship. But maybe I’d just prefer that in a less juvenile, and also, live-action form.
Much better, focused below decks, is author JohnScalzi’s sneaky Redshirts, winner of the 2013 Hugo Best Novel prize. Avoid spoilers, puhlease, enough said that crew comes to notice away missions go really reallly bad for redshirted ensigns. Hilarity ensues.
I am more or less right down the line with Keith and Christopher here – what we’ve got with Lower Decks is a serious case of artistic schizophrenia. The character designs and the voice direction are straight from the “Modern Primitive People-Are-Idiots” school of animation development, but the plotting and background material are doing their best to work with honest Star Trek story values. There’s the makings of a potentially worthwhile comedy series in the premise, but they’re being drowned under several cargo holds full of alien goo treated with “it isn’t funny unless you hit the audience over the head with the gag really really hard” powder.
Someone needs to wash the last twenty years’ worth of prime time animation out of the writers’ (and directors’) brains, and replace it with a marathon binge-watch of post-McLean-Stevenson M.A.S.H. In order for a Star Trek comedy series to really work, it needs to fit recognizably into the larger universe in which all the other series and films exist. M.A.S.H. worked because it got its wartime setting really, really right, and drew its humor from sympathetic characters coping with that setting. As long as this show’s producers keep trying to graft angry-sitcom production tropes onto the Star Trek universe, Lower Decks is going to keep looking like what it is: a Frankenstein-monster construct built out of components from two genuinely incompatible donors.
Which is sad, because Keith is not wrong. I can see the potential for niftiness in parts of the underlying material. It’s just being squelched by forces that have watched too much animated “comedy” and not enough of the better live-action sort.
@17/John C. Bunnell: I’m not ready to agree with such a harsh take without having seen the show, but I’ve had a similar thought — that the best way to do an in-canon comedy series is a naturalistic sitcom approach, something where the stories and events are plausible and the humor arises from the characters and the situations they find themselves in. Basically, a whole series of “In the Cards” and “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.”
I really enjoyed it. I loved the TNG aesthetics (which serve a purpose in letting the viewer know exactly when it was set), the premise and characters worked, and it made me laugh. I’ve no problem with the animation (if they were to do a crossover you’d either see these characters made more realistic, or characters from other series in this style), and most of all it felt like Trek.
Looking forward to more
I haven’t seen Lower Decks yet. I don’t currently have CBS-AA. But I can’t say these reviews are enticing me to return anytime soon. Hopefully the writing improves.
I will say watching the pilot for Futurama now is a bit remarkable. Yes, the characters are rough and the actors are still trying to figure it out, of course, but what I found surprising is what a genial stroll the pacing was. After seeing the manic pixie cocaine clips from LD, it was downright… pleasant.
#18: I’m not so much trying to be harsh as I am being immensely frustrated.
There’s a part of me that wants to just kick the show to the curb for being aesthetically clunky (I’ve always liked my animation best with relatively realistic human beings, a la Jonny Quest and Gargoyles – though I’m flexible enough to be fond of Jackie Chan Adventures, which has some strong anime influences, and to respect the art choices of even the weirdest-looking iterations of Scooby-Doo). But on watching the first episode, I can’t legitimately do that, because yes, there’s a totally legit Star Trek plot underneath the sloppy-to-me character scribbles.
And because I can see the attempt – in the WIkipedia article, and the bones of the story under the visuals in “Second Contact” – there’s also a part of me wants to be the enthusiastic fan and hope against hope that the show will in fact find its footing and lose its Frankenstein Syndrome qualities over time.
I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so conflicted about a creative work. And as someone whose chief literary profession over the years has been that of reviewer, it is like to drive me mad….
Rutherford obviously looks more like a Saiyan under the early days of the Freeza force than Cyborg. As for the episode, I’d give i OVER 9000!!!!
I wasn’t too impressed with the trailer, and ordered myself to wait til after seeing a full episode to make any kind of decision about it. As I started watching, I was thinking “Um…what manner of beastie is THIS?” By the end, I was laughing my ass off. During the “coming attractions” preview at the end of the episode, I actually doubled over laughing when the doctor said “Is he f***ing (bleeped in the original) serious?” You just KNOW that, if TOS were made in 2020 on a streaming service, Bones would have asked that exact same question about Spock about five times per episode.
I definitely see potential here!!
I thought, based on the trailers, that this show would be a mean-spirited, anti-humanist nasty piece of work at odds with the Trek ethos.
Having watched the episode… well, kudos to the trailer editors for accurately portraying the spirit of the show, I guess.
Here’s STO’s interpretation of the four main characters:
They are given as duty officers to each character, so they inhabit your ship, but don’t manifest as 3-D avatars. They are essentially names on a duty roster that can be sent on missions from a list. I’m expecting “Failure” messages from this group. Would be funny, anyway.
Boimler is classified as a Security Officer, Mariner as an Assault Squad Officer, Tendi as a Nurse, and Rutherford as a Systems Engineer.
As far as the show itself, it’s too early to tell for me. As someone else said, it comes across as manic and juvenile. Needs to slow down by maybe 10-20%. Maybe it’s a sign of insecurity that every joke has to be rapid fire delivery. But being over the top doesn’t equal funny. Remains to be seen if actual good stories will emerge.
My favorite part was the multiple D’deridexes in the intro engaging Borg Cubes. It’d hold my interest if they do some large animated set pieces.
@14. Bill: “That show has great potential but Seth can’t not make a joke about an alien dissolving into goo and happily saying hello in the first episode. Turned it off quick.”
Sooo, it has potential but didn’t watch past first episode. Got it.
Last season, Orville had a Frakes directed episode, with a short appearance by Marina Sirtis, that could have been dropped into a TNG season. They also did the naked holo men (albeit aliens) bit already.
One tidbit that hasn’t been remarked on much (?) is that Orville has Penny Johnson Jerald (Kasidy Yates-Sisko herself) raising two boys as a single mom, which can function both as an echo of Ben Sisko as a single dad on DS9 and as a continuation of her life after Ben went with the Prophets. Yes, I know I’m conflating. So is Seth MacFarlane.
I haven’t seen this yet – no idea which streaming service it will be available on in New Zealand. But has there ever been a successful comedy spin-off of a drama? The closest I can think of is Teen Titans Go, but the original really wasn’t a drama.
Boston Legal spun off from The Practice.
Yeah, that’s a good example. The tone of both was a little more towards the middle – The Practice could funny, and Boston Legal wasn’t constant jokes.
The New York Times has a review that’s fun to read. (Judging from Krad’s review, and at the NYT, the reviews may be funnier than the show.)
There’s a bit about rampaging viruses that could’ve been lifted from the latest Voyager Rewatch entry, and the last line is pretty good, too.
@26/garethwilson: “But has there ever been a successful comedy spin-off of a drama?”
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. It started out as another superhero drama, but has since found its voice as an outright comedy.
The reverse has happened a couple of times. Lou Grant was an hourlong drama spun off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And from the same era, Trapper John M.D. was a hospital drama about the present-day, 30-years-older version of the M*A*S*H character (though for legal reasons the producers called the show a spinoff of the movie rather than the TV sitcom that was still ongoing at the time).
Liked it a lot. Very fun episode, and very trek; great balance between comedy and seriousness, great voice actors, and lovely designs. Nice intro sequence, reminded me of VOY’s, but the theme is not very memorable. I love that there are a lot of crewmen with mustaches.
Count me in in the Dr. T’ana fan club, I have been since the designs were previewed. I loved when she had the chance to publish another award-winning scientific paper and she just complains about the idea of more paperwork.
The only bad thing is that the episode was too short.
@24 – Alex K: I couldn’t disagree more. The tone and pacing is different from all previous trek, but it’s still faithful to the ethos.
Well, I bit, wasn’t sure what to make of it…I liked the overall concept (Lower Decks is among my all time fave episodes of TNG, and perhaps all of Trek). Strikes me though that the lower deck point of view was largely centered by Discovery. Like the design of the Cerritos, and a fair number of Easter Eggs (plus an equal number of ones I missed I’m sure) On the other hand, really struck me as something of an over the top parody or satire. Don’t get me wrong, I have a sense of humor, which has worked well in Trek, but not in such an extreme manner IMO. Also with Mariner we have the trope of the wide eyed, energetic newbie. We’ve already seen that with TNG’s Gomez, and Disco’s Tilly, not to mention the likes of Chekhov, Bashir and Kim to a certain level, and handled in a more realistic level IMO. Also add the Trope of pairing said character with Boimer, a by the book, stick in the mud. Time will tell on this, I had similar concerns with CN’s original Teen Titans series, which took something serious and making what to me at first glance was too over the top cartoony, but came to be more dramatic than I expected.
Capt_Paul77: I think you’re conflating some characters. Mariner is paired with Boimler, but she’s not an energetic, wide-eyed newbie in the same mode as Tilly, Chekov, Kim, and Bashir — the latter equivalent is Tendi, not Mariner. Mariner is a veteran who’s been demoted and decided to stop giving a shit.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
They’ve posted the title sequence online, so I’ve seen that now, at least:
https://youtu.be/Sr4bomaqMTE
Not a bad theme. My favorite part (of the music, I mean) is the bridge during the shot of the ship flying by right to left with the space creature sucking on the nacelle. The composer, Chris Westlake, is not someone whose work I’ve heard before.
(I think this is the first time I’ve seen Fred Tatasciore get billed in the opening credits to something, since animation voice credits are usually relegated to the end.)
@34/CLB: Here’s a scene from next week’s episode “Envoys” so you can get a further sense of this series and characters:
https://youtu.be/NgSmBMoRFf4
@33/KRAD Thanks for the catch, still putting names with faces and all…
This was not my cup of tea. I will keep watching, because I give anything with the name Star Trek a dozen more chances than any other show, but everything from the animation style to the pacing was not my kind of show.
At least there’s a Caitian, I appreciate that immensely.
Can’t say I really like the design of the U.S.S. Cerritos, so they have to use the transporter to access their engineering section?
@38/kaw211: The series creator said there are diagonal turbolifts that go down the pylon struts connecting the main hull to the engineering section. He said the Enterprise-D had diagonal turbolifts as well
So, about Boimler’s purple hair, fashion statement or alien ancestry? Or are we supposed to ignore it like with anime?
So, about Boimler’s purple hair, fashion statement or alien ancestry? Or are we supposed to ignore it like with anime?
@roxana: how’d you do a time warp and end up at both 40th and 1st posts?
@40/roxana: I figured maybe they were using the old cartoon convention of using blue or purple to represent highlights in black hair/fur/clothing. In the past, it was due to the limitations of four-color printing, but these days it may survive as an aesthetic choice. Of course, Mariner and Rutherford have black hair too, but maybe his is supposed to be of a glossier shade/texture.
Or it could be a fashion statement on the part of Boimler. After all, who cares what colour someone’s hair is when other members of the crew of white or green or blur or…..
I found it interesting but exhausting. It was GO, GO, GO!!!! from start to end. Mariner needs to be dialed DOWN to 11. She’s currently at 13 or 14. And the character being insubordinate all the time is tiresome. If someone is breaking the rules as often as she is, she’d be called out and face some consequences for it. But, even though she’s been bounced from other ships, it seems that’s not going to happen here.
Tendi is the wide eyed eager young space cadet which is fine. The exuberance is fitting for the character.
Thinking on it, the problem seems to be that all four characters are characterized by over-exuberance. Someone mentioned Futurama and it’ would be like having the lead characters (Farnsworth, Leela, Fry and Bender) all being played like Bender. Right now, the LD characters are too much alike in that regard.
So like Disenchanted.
@41, Sunspear, durned if I know. But it’s not the first time I’ve done it. Having been injected with radioactive isotopes I may be developing superpowers. 😁
So animation convention or fashion statement (CLB & kkozoris) I can live with either.
Well…
There’s a lot of potential here. And yes, Mariner would be great if she toned down from being on 10 all the time, maybe a 7. Otherwise I’m very interested to see how our principal four cope on this ship.
The dudebro high-fiving did throw me out of the story, too; I could have done without it, as it’s not particularly funny or compelling.
The highlights for me were also Tendi and Rutherford. Their enthusiasm is on par with Boimler’s, just more muted, which is perfect.
Dr. T’Ana (hands Tendi a live beating heart): Hold this. Don’t pass out. No one is authorized to pass out!
There is the skeletal frame of a good show here.
I’m surprised nobody has yet compared the show directly to Rick and Morty, of which Lower Decks‘s showrunner is an executive producer. If you ever watched any episodes of that, you’d quickly see that the character dynamic between Mariner and Boimler is very much the same as the one between Rick and Morty. And they have a very similar art and humor style, too (particularly involving alien slimes).
So, this is essentially Star Trek: Rick and Morty. Given that Rick and Morty is a very popular show (to the point of a throwaway gag involving a long-forgotten McDonalds special sauce causing the restaurant chain to temporarily revive it), and people who love that style of humor will probably eat this show right up, I can’t exactly fault it as a bad decision. It’s certainly not to everyone’s taste, but then not everyone will find everything equally funny.
And like many animated shows of the last few years, it uses the occasionally controversial “Cal Arts style” of animation, which is quickly becoming a popular way to animate shows. Personally, I don’t find it any more off-putting than the animation style of The Simpsons, but then I grew up watching just-as-stylized anime.
One thing that definitely came through, in both this and the “Ready Room” episode where Wil Wheaton interviewed the showrunners, is that it’s made by people who passionately love the earlier versions of the show, and that love shows in practically every frame.
@47/Robotech_Master: “And like many animated shows of the last few years, it uses the occasionally controversial “Cal Arts style” of animation”
Annnd… you link to an article whose whole point is that there is no specific “CalArts style.” It sounds like the term was originally used to refer to John Kricfalusi’s style, but this is vastly different from that. It seems to be more in the vicinity of a Matt Groening style, or that Rick and Morty thing. It’s certainly nowhere near the super-deformed/chibi look discussed in that article in connection to Thundercats Roar.
#47: That would be because I haven’t actually watched Rick and Morty, and I try to avoid passing judgment based on things with which I have limited familiarity.
That said, it’s true that I’ve been somewhat guilty of making a “Cal Arts” generalization about modern animated series that’s worth refining. And whereas I have not watched much of any of the more popular series, I have seen enough images from enough of the shows to be familiar with the trends.
So: you’re right, the character animation in Lower Decks is similar to that of Rick and Morty…and The Simpsons and Family Guy and Futurama. All these shows feature exaggerated, non-realistic body types and proportions. And that is just not consistent with the crisp, beautifully executed starship interiors and outer-space sequences.
But it’s not the only stylistic choice out there. King of the Hill features more human-like (still a bit cartoonish, but much more realistic) character designs. So does the much newer Bless the Harts. The new She-Ra series, for all that I wasn’t initially drawn to its visual style, features generally realistic characters – in particular, I can see the modern She-Ra cast interacting smoothly with the animated Kirk and Spock of the original animated Star Trek. And the new Netflix Carmen Sandiego series features primarily realistic character designs – I think, in fact, that that’s perhaps the strongest and most appropriate comparable show on a visual level.
And however much they may love the Trek universe, I think that it’s a fatal and critical error for the Rick and Morty creators to deliberately pattern the look and behavior patterns of their Trek characters after those of their other franchise. That says to me that they’re not trying to make a true Star Trek series – rather, they’re trying to make what fanfic writers would call a Star Trek/Rick & Morty fusion. Which would be fine if they were fanfic writers – but is exactly the wrong approach to a show that’s expected to be part of a canon that includes Discovery and Picard.
Quark, Galaxy Quest, and, yes, The Orville all seem to have gotten here first…
Play it straight or parody something, but parodying your own “serious” IP seems … questionable?
@50: If you can’t laugh at yourself, then who can you laugh at?
@49: A Star Trek/Rick & Morty fusion, yes. That’s how it seemed to me as well. Or more generally, a Star Trek/brutality-bullying-and-filth-are-funny crossover. I kept waiting for a “joke” on par with the time the dog on Family Guy licked frozen vomit.
My husband will try almost any show at least once, but did not finish this episode.
The animation style reminds me of the look of Final Space. I found that series visually interesting but kind of boring story-wise, sometimes downright tedious.
@49/John C. Bunnell: “And that is just not consistent with the crisp, beautifully executed starship interiors and outer-space sequences.”
Have animated characters ever been consistent with their backgrounds? I grew up with animation that featured simply drawn, ink-outlined characters with solid-color fill superimposed on richly painted and detailed backgrounds. There was always a very clear stylistic difference between the cel art and the background art, so that you could always tell when a background element was going to move because it was done in the cel style rather than painted.
For that matter, even in the CGI era, a lot of movies feature backgrounds that are so realistic and detailed they could almost pass for live action, but characters that are caricatured and distorted in shape and could never pass for human. So there’s nothing new about that.
I mean, really, it’s apples and oranges. Animated characters are best when they’re fairly simple in design, since that way the animators can focus on their movement and expressiveness rather than all their niggling surface details. (Compare the ’90s X-Men animated series, with its highly detailed, comic-book-like character art that moved extremely stiffly and had little expressiveness, to the contemporary Batman: The Animated Series, where the character designs were simplified and lacking in detail but were therefore free to move fluidly and had far more life and expression.) Backgrounds are static and less focused on by the eye, so they can afford to have more detail and indeed should, so that it registers more even when you’re not concentrating directly on it.
I’m very surprised that you think She-Ra and Carmen Sandiego have more realistic character designs than Lower Decks. I’d say they’re about on a par. Carmen‘s art style reminds me very much of Samurai Jack, partly because it altogether ditches the traditional black outlines. She-Ra has kind of an anime-influenced look, especially in how the eyes are drawn, while also showing elements of Noelle Stevenson’s extremely caricatured cartooning style. I guess they’re slightly less stylized than LD in having more natural head shapes and oval rather than circular eyes, but they’re still far less realistic than the cartoons I grew up with, like ST:TAS or the original She-Ra.
@50/Cdr. Bowman: “Play it straight or parody something, but parodying your own “serious” IP seems … questionable?”
Star Trek has often made fun of itself, going back to episodes like “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “A Piece of the Action.” Its ability to have a sense of humor about itself is part of its charm. Although whether it can do that as a show’s sustained, primary tone remains to be seen. I think the best Trek comedy would be one that balances the humor with moments of drama and sincerity, as with many of the best Futurama episodes, say.
Indeed, and it’s continued doing so even now. Even given how grim and serious Discovery and Picard have been on the whole, there have been some great moments of lightness. (Picard in an eyepatch doing an intentionally terrible French accent…) And fully half of the “Short Treks” segments so far have ranged from mildly amusing to downright broad comedy. There was the just-as-stylized animated “Ephraim and Dot” which mixed realistic-CGI depictions of various Star Trek ships and characters with a pair of Warner Brothers-meets-Pixar protagonists. The seemingly serious “The Escape Artist” that ended up being a hilarious-in-retrospect shaggy dog story. There was the over-the-top self-spoof “The Trouble with Edward” (right down to the punchline at the end). And who can forget Spock and Number One stuck together in an elevator in “Q&A”?
Really, the grim seriousness that has characterized most of Discovery and Picard so far is one of the things a lot of their critics have complained about. I think the shows would do better with more moments of levity interspersed. Hopefully Discovery will lighten up some in its third season.
Something else that grits my gears is the apparent transplanting of “Joe White Collar Peon does the work, Martin Middle Management gets the credit” into an organization in which the brass are supposed to be actively searching for people to promote. Shouldn’t there instead be comedy in the vein of “Martin Brasshat keeps ‘fixing’ my engineering because he used to be a hands-on engineer himself, how did he DO that to the replicator and how do I politely tell a superior officer to knock it off” or “The episode about the away mission report that keeps having to be rewritten because Lower Decks and Brass are two different dialects and there are two wildly different ideas about what actually happened as a result”?
I hope that’s coming, but my hopes are not high.
I think there’s a show with heart underneath the messy first episode. They need to focus on that instead of the sad attempts at comedy. If they find the heart in the character interactions the comedy will flow from that, much like it did in other Star Treks.
There was a television drama called “Seven Against the Sea” – about an American WWII navy crew stranded on an island and having integrated themselves into the native culture. When the Navy finds them, and sends a by-the-book officer to bring the survivors back into the Navy culture, he has to deal with the psychological problems of traumatized men who have managed to escape from the war and are not interested in going back.
When the network created a series as a sequel to this drama, it was called “McHale’s Navy”
@58/AndyLove: Intriguing. I don’t think I ever knew that.
@59: No problem. Here’s an article about the drama https://www.rewatchclassictv.com/products/seven-against-the-sea-mchale-s-navy-pilot-rare-abc-4-3-62
@58, 60 AndyLove:
Wow! Fascinating!
I had no idea.
I may be the lone poster here who likes “The Orville” a lot and thinks of it more as a slightly light-hearted homage to “Star Trek: The Next Generation” which promises to become more serious as evidenced by the final Season Two episode. As for “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, I am going to disagree respectfully with Keith here and say that I think “Second Contact” was barely 50% of a good “Star Trek” episode. After the first fifteen minutes, it made me long or watching “Galaxy Quest” again. Judging from the main cast, I think the one I want to see more of is the USS Cerritos’ chief medical officer, who may be the most appealing member of the crew. I’ll watch next week’s episode but I hope it’s much better than “Second Contact”.
I love the Orville (and so does my Trek-mad daughter) so you’re not alone. Agree that it’s pretty much the same concept – not every ship is the flagship, not everyone is a brilliant officer, person manager and so on, and most of us have seen the Peter Principle at work, so I can see a command staff that isn’t brilliant, is a bit up themselves and is glory hungry to the detriment of others.
I’m definitely not the target audience, other than being a Star Trek fan, but I can see, in common with the Orville, a lot of love from the people producing Lower Decks and, you know what? I could sit back and enjoy it. Made me laugh a few times, and made me smile a lot. Loads of comedies have failed to do that.
@64: I’m a big fan of “The Orville” – it feels like Star Trek, in that most of the characters are sincerely trying to do good.
@47 – Robotech_Master: While the dynamics between Mariner and Boimler might be similar to the one between Rick and Morty, and of course, the character design style in general is similar; this episode did not remind me in tone or humor style to that other show, at all.
@56 – Jenny Islander: Starfleet is supposed to be that kind of organization, but the Cerritos is the bottom of the barrel. Not just the lower decks protagonists, but it’s whole senior crew. They’re not useless, but they’re not the best and the brightest either.
CBS All Access has posted this episode for free on YouTube in order to hook more people on this show so here you all go!
https://youtu.be/_HzRGqvRK8U
Just watched the free episode. I actually rather liked it. The clips I’ve seen of Mariner — apparently the random-gag teasers of the first two episodes — made me wary, but despite her behavior, the episode showed she had a benevolent, true-to-Starfleet core and genuinely wanted to help people, from the throwaway bit adjusting Rutherford’s implant to her trade with the farmers to her problem-solving with the spider to her attempt to stand up for Boimler at the resolution. Boimler, in turn, is a bit of a caricatured whiny stiff and fall guy, but he came through in the end and stood up for Mariner too.
Tendi is great. I love her enthusiasm and positive attitude.
I quite like the music, which is a good pastiche of TNG’s musical style (especially Dennis McCarthy’s) but has its own distinct character. All in all, it does a good job capturing the feel and spirit of the Trek universe, and the cartoony humor doesn’t clash with that as much as I feared. There are some overly broad bits, but the attention to Trek-universe detail helps ground things and balance them out — like the way the beamdown site on the planet is ringed with pattern enhancers. And I love it that there were two crewwomen wearing VISORs, one on the planet and one in Ten Forward at the same time. It was always implied that Geordi wasn’t the only VISOR user, but TNG kind of forgot about that.
I’m amused that Phil LaMarr is playing the admiral husband of Dawnn Lewis’s Captain Freeman. They previously played husband and wife as Hermes and LaBarbara Conrad on Futurama, which is the show that this reminds me of the most. Lewis is also currently the voice of the Chief on Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego (and I keep mixing her up with Jenifer Lewis, who plays Professor Granville on Big Hero 6: The Series using a voice resembling Lynne Thigpen, the original Chief).
Cute. Don’t take it seriously and have fun.
That hallway with bunks doesn’t look so bad, especially with a panoramic window at the end of it. And did you catch the little mother daughter moment with Freeman and Mariner holding the sickbay door together? I think I see where she got her negative view of the upper deck from but there’s clearly two sides to that story.
@67 -“And I love it that there were two crewwomen wearing VISORs, one on the planet and one in Ten Forward at the same time. It was always implied that Geordi wasn’t the only VISOR user, but TNG kind of forgot about that.”
According to Mike McMahan, the show’s creator, Rutherford doesn’t need the implant, he chose to get it. Opens up the possibilities to recreational cybernetic implants. Would Borg style implants become a fashion style?
“Just a quick clarification on Rutherford. So his cybernetic implant is a choice? It’s not to fix something, he wanted to have it.
We say in the show that it’s a choice. Yes… I would say if the cybernetic implant seems odd to somebody who knows Starfleet stuff, then they are not wrong.”
Mike McMahan interview
Well, I gave it a chance and tried watching the freebie. Something about the rapid line delivery gets on my nerves. I have the same problem with modern Doctor Who. Sorry, not for me.
@70/JFWheeler: You’re not the only one. I’ve found some measure of enjoyment in every previous Star Trek series from the first Animated Series to Enterprise. But I feel nothing at all when I watch this show, which is a shame. I feel like I’m just not the intended audience.
The Orville is great. It gets a lot better as it goes.
This show might be okay. It mostly didn’t offend me. The Orville was dumb when it started, and so was ST:TNG. Both got better. Here’s hoping.
This is the first I’d heard of Short Treks. That wasn’t a thing until today, or my name isn’t Mandela Berenstain.
Short Treks started in 2018, it’s a series of short episodes focusing on characters first from Discovery, and a couple on others such as backstory for the Picard show, or preview for Strange New Worlds (even if the show wasn’t confirmed yet).
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Short_Treks
Another way of looking at it is that Short Treks is a way of making low-budget mini-episodes by recycling sets and resources from Discovery — the exceptions being the two animated ones and the Picard prequel. Though I’m sure we’ll get some next season that take advantage of standing Picard sets — maybe something set in Picard’s villa before the series, or a mini-adventure on La Sirena or the Borg cube.
Of course, that too. Mini episodes taking advantages of availability of resources to deepen the understanding of events and characters, a great way to go.
I have two simple thoughts:
1. I think of this show as closer to Galaxy Quest than regular Star Trek and that is awesome as a result.
2. If your complaint is some variant of, “This is not a serious Star Trek show that can be reliably taken as part of the canon” then you should erase your comment and let other people enjoy the silly program.
I loved Twin Peaks and X-Files but that doesn’t mean I apply their seriousness to Gravity Falls.
@76/C.T. Phipps: If “I, Mudd” and The Voyage Home and “A Fistful of Datas” and “In the Cards” can be in the canon, there’s no reason Lower Decks can’t be. As long as it plays within the (very loose) rules of how the universe works and derives the humor from the characters’ reactions and personalities, then it can fit.
Take it even further than that. We’ve got giant pink tribbles, planets run by gangsters with Federation backing, a universe of white space with black stars where time runs backwards, a giant clone of Spock, the Pakleds who can somehow operate starships but don’t have the slightest idea how they work, holograms that become sentient simply by being left on, giant space amoebas, Starfleet captains having eh ability to decide by themselves which planets deserve to be subject to the death penalty while patting themselves on the back because the Federation only has one reason on the books for itself.
Toss in a Prime Directive that is self-contradictory and unevenly enforced and you really, really have to squint to make it all fit together in some sort of coherent form.
I tend to look at each episode in isolation. If it fits with something else, fine. If it doesn’t fine.
It’s not as if Star Trek was ever intended to be approaching a dozen different series as well as a movie franchise. It was conceived as a way to tell self contained morality plays within a sci-fi wrapper.
As for the Pakled, most people who operate computers have no idea how they work.
@79, me for example. As far as I’m concerned the glowy little men from Tron are doing the work.
FLYNN: Who’s that?
YORI: Oh, that’s Zoom. He’s very popular.
ZOOM: Gotta open the waiting room. Gotta admit. 200 participants! What’s your passcode. What’s your passcode? You’re muted. You’re still muted.
FLYNN: Seems busy.
BIT: Yes.
@79 – Starships include computers. And warp drive. And matter/antimatter reactors. And impulse drives. And life support. And much, much more.
Not understanding how the computer is one thing. Stating flat out that you have no idea how to even operate a starship when you’re in deep space is quite another.
It’s like someone who’s unable to program the clock on their stove after a power outage being totally able to fly an A-380 from London to Tokyo.