Final Season in the Final Frontier: ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Creator Mike McMahan Sneak Peeks Season 5

This article was written for the November '24 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 344).

Star Trek has always been about going boldly where no man, or one, has gone before. And the evolution of the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, as it enters its fifth and final season, proves that Star Trek is always going somewhere, even when it says it’s going nowhere.

Starting out as the rare comedy in Trek canon, Lower Decks is like a coin with two sides: One has animated comedy and the other is pure Star Trek.

“We have to be as Star Trek as possible on this show — more than any other Star Trek,” says Mike McMahan, creator, showrunner and exec producer on the Paramount+ series. “We can’t really play with the form as much, because we also have to be funny, and if we’re messing with the formula of Star Trek and being funny, it might not feel like Star Trek at all.”

Growth Opportunities

The series has evolved perhaps more than expected since its debut, as the lowly ensigns of the U.S.S. Cerritos have grown from slacker entry-level officers stuck with all the dirty and dull jobs to being worthy of promotion and — most surprising of all — responsibility for the ship and its mission.

Exemplifying that is Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), who in the fourth season overcame her need to self-sabotage, which leaves her free in the fifth to become a good officer while remaining funny and chaotic, McMahan says.

“You get a season where Mariner isn’t defined by her mistakes of the past,” he says. “It just felt very Star Trek and very Starfleet to see her, as a character, get to be unencumbered by the stuff that she had gotten past.”

An early example is the episode “Dos Cerritos,” which takes the classic Star Trek trope of encountering a doppelgänger crew from another dimension to show how the characters have changed and where their choices might take them. Other early plotlines also follow D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), who left Starfleet in the Season 4 finale to return home to Orion. This devastates her best pal and possible love interest, Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), while Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) tries to grow into a manly Riker- or Kirk-style commander role.

‘We’re all sad to be stopping, but we’re also putting in our best this season … I really hope people enjoy it.’

— Showrunner/creator Mike McMahan

But worry not, Lower Decks fans, there are still plenty of laughs to be had. “You still get to be funny,” McMahan says. “Improving yourself and being happier makes you more of who you are, not less. We’re not defined by the things that burden us. And that felt, in a show where self-discovery and learning about yourself is paramount — no pun intended — that those were worthy things to go for this season … It opened up a lot of comedy and a lot of fun stories that are just driven by seeing people be at their best and loving what they’re doing.”

The characters on Lower Decks are, perhaps more than for most shows, informed and influenced by the actors portraying them. The physical resemblance made it possible for Newsome and Quaid to play Mariner and Boimler in a live-action crossover with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. McMahan says that originated from having cast actors he liked and wanted to spend time with and allowing them to fully inhabit their roles. He says he’ll walk the actors through the big swings he has for each character to get their thoughts and feedback before committing to it.

One of the challenges of the show’s final season is figuring out which stories to do and how to wrap up the show in a satisfying way. McMahan says he initially had a seven-season plan for the show and has accelerated his plans to fit into five seasons. For example, the characters earned promotions from ensign to lieutenant junior grade in Season 4. “[That] allowed me in Season 5 to be able to start telling kind of endgame stories,” he says.

As with any show heading into its fifth season, the process for making Lower Decks has settled into a bit of a groove. McMahan cites, in particular, the contributions of supervising director yBarry Kell and art director Nollan Obena for their vision and ability to efficiently solve problems as they crop up.

“We’re not trying to reinvent what we’re doing every episode,” McMahan says. “There’s a baseline of understanding of what we’re doing, so that when Nollan’s working on designs and when Barry’s working on the directing, they are lockstep with me on writing, and that it’s a balance.”

Kelly joined Lower Decks in its freshman season as an episodic director, moving up to supervising director for Seasons 2-5. A veteran of the production team at Titmouse, Kelly says he has used the same process for animation for the past 20 years and is comfortable overseeing and contributing to every stage of the pipeline.

“I know the parts and the pieces that make up the show, so sometimes I find myself just going inside shots myself and revising or updating certain parts and pieces,” he says. “If you’re a storyboard artist and you need some designs to go from, let me get you what you need. If you’re a compositor and you’re just missing a layer of animation, OK. I’m kind of whatever somebody needs me to be.”

One of the challenges of animating Lower Decks is keeping the look similar to that of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That show aired from 1987 to 1994, before wide-screen and high-definition TVs. The technology of the time affected everything about that show’s look, including the lighting and composition of shots.

“We want to still sit in that comfy zone of that Next Generation tech,” Kelly says. He loved getting some help from legendary Trek designers and historians Michael and Denise Okuda, who helped them get right the look of the LCARS computer graphics and came up with the ship map that’s become an iconic feature of Trek TV. “We didn’t get it made until Season 2, but if you find the detailed map, it’s an Okuda-approved and -designed map,” he says.

The characters’ promotions not only changed the writing but also required constant vigilance to ensure the characters were animated with the correct number of collar pips for their new rank. “One of our technical grievances is a very superficial thing, but it’s a pip check,” he says. “Somehow, always, they’re missing a pip, or the deltas are backward, or things like that. We’re like, ‘How is it Season 5 and we’re still not getting the pips right?’”

Triggering the Sci-Fi Brain

As with the writing, the blend of comedy and action plays a significant role in the animation stage.

“I’m always asking the story artists and the animators: [Does this scene] trigger your sci-fi drama brain or trigger your comedy brain?” he says. “Literally, every shot is like one or the other. Is this shot serious or is this shot comedic?” For example, an action sequence that suggests an extensive and dynamic cinematic approach may need to be funny. In such cases, they’ll cut more to the characters’ reactions. “It might be funnier if we see that Boimler is scared than about a cool monster coming out to swipe at him or something with a sword.”

The finale for a Star Trek show is a big deal, going back to “All Good Things …” on Star Trek: The Next Generation. McMahan is tight-lipped about what to expect other than to say it will be satisfying — and one act longer than a typical episode. “It’s like three acts for the story, one act for the series,” he says. “It feels like one cohesive era of Lower Decks and that if we did more after this finale, it would still be Lower Decks, but it would definitely be Part 2.”

McMahan describes Season 5 as one big, beautifully animated party. “We’re all sad to be stopping, but we’re also putting in our best this season,” he says. “I really hope people enjoy it.”

The new season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere Thursday, October 24 on Paramount+ with two episodes.