As Star Trek fandom waits for the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the production team is starting the final editing and preparation of the last ten episodes of the animated comedy debuting on Paramount+ on October 24. In new post-SDCC panel interviews, the showrunner and cast offered some insights into what we can expect.
Finale to be something very special
After four strong seasons of Lower Decks, the creative team is determined finish the show with the same wit, including a memorable series finale episode. Without revealing the actual plotline, Mike McMahan is eager to talk about the creation of the finale itself. McMahan describes the last show as carrying through the same humorous tone as the rest of the series, though he admits to re-writing portions of the script when it became clear that Lower Decks would not be renewed. The changes made were bittersweet, as he explains in an interview with Collider:
“We kept adding and adding and adding to the finale because nothing was ever satisfying enough, and there weren’t enough goodbyes to tell in a funny way. Ultimately, what we ended up with was a gigantic episode that’s really fun.”
In order to accommodate the extra story pages needed to resolve all those plotlines (and possibly open a few new ones for the future) the crew recorded an extra-long, story-dense finale that Tawny Newsome described as “a double-stuffed Oreo of an episode.” Still in the editing stage, the runtime is currently eight minutes longer than a regular Lower Decks episode. While it is unlikely the final cut will stay that long, the last episode is being given extra care. It was suggested that other longer-than-typical episodes may occur in season 5.
Over the last few weeks, McMahan has expressed how proud he is of how Lower Decks turned out, and says season 5 will be a big part of that, right up until the end. While fans have embraced the quirky series, it’s still difficult to explain how showrunner Mike McMahan managed to fuse a science fiction universe with cartoon humor. McMahan explained how the humor works from an in-universe perspective, as he told Variety:
“The world of Star Trek is real for the characters that inhabit the show. And so they’re telling jokes in a way that they’re as familiar with these locations from other series as much as Tawny and I are. Because we’ve watched them, they’ve lived them.”
While at SDCC, Jerry O’Connell found it difficult to parse some fairly heavy feelings that came about as a result of the story from the final episode. Although he didn’t explicitly talk about anything that happens to his character, Jack Ransom, the finale did seem to affect him personally. During an interview with Comicbook.com, he struggled for words:
“You know what really surprised me? How emotional I got when we were doing our finale. I was amazed I was capable of those emotions.”
Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Mike McMahan, Tawny Newsome and Jerry O’Connell at Star Trek Menagerie Booth at SDCC 2024 (Paramount+)
The post-SDCC panel interviews also offered a couple of insights into what we can expect during season 5…
Mariner and Jennifer storyline to be resolved
Season 5 will bring other resolutions along the way, including adding some closure to the conflict between Beckett Mariner and Jennifer Sh’reyan. Although a popular character with fans, Jennifer has been used only sparingly since the close of season 3. The reason for this, according to McMahan, is that he had felt satisfied with Jennifer’s story as it has been told. Fans, however, enjoy the chemistry between Mariner and Jennifer, and feedback convinced McMahan to revisit the pairing. He clarified in his chat with Comicbook.com:
“There’s this one episode this season with Mariner and Jennifer the Andorian. I felt like I had told a story with these characters that I really liked. And then I was seeing fan feedback being like, ‘We love these characters, it didn’t feel resolved.’ If they hadn’t said that, then I wouldn’t have been inspired to be like ‘Well, we need to do one more episode with these guys.’”
Tawny Newsome, also on hand for this revelation, chose to add “I really love the Jennifer episode.”
McMahan was tempted to leave this thread hanging, but listened to fans.
More depth added for Orions
Arguably, the most unexpected legacy of Lower Decks is how much detail the animated show has given the Orions, helped along by adding more character depth to Tendi. Though Orions date back to the earliest days of Star Trek, they’ve always been portrayed as dancing green women or weirdly-armored men. With an Orion character in the primary cast, Lower Decks took every opportunity to expand upon the culture, aesthetics, history, and philosophy of Orions. This will continue into season 5. What comes next, however, was teased by Mike McMahan during an SDCC interview with Variety:
“We pull in some Orion lore that’s been discarded over the decades.”
McMahan’s writing team has a talent for reviving details from previous Trek series in ways that enrich both the original episodes and Lower Decks. Whatever “lore” that will be uncovered, it’s likely to follow that pattern. McMahan credits a lot of the show’s success with Orion world-building to Noël Wells and her portrayal of Tendi. Wells opted against over-studying historical appearances of Orions and instead chose her own interpretation of Tendi, allowing the audience to compare and contrast the character with other Orions. McMahan expressed his gratitude to Wells:
“If you were focused on the old Orion episodes, then you wouldn’t be able to embody this character the way I love you doing. Because you would be full of all this arithmetic of Star Trek. Instead, you get to just play her as you would play her in the show as she exists.”
We can do better than this.
“Lower Decks” is a state of mind
Notably absent from any of McMahan’s commentary on the upcoming season is the need for more seasons to “finish” the story. Instead, he speaks only of the gratitude for having achieved five seasons in today’s television environment. When Variety did suggest that the crew of the Cerritos might outgrow the “newbie” storylines, Mike made it clear that Lower Decks was a mindset, not a lack of pips on your collar:
“It’s funny that, to me, there isn’t a natural end to being Lower Decks. Because, I feel like I’m still learning stuff all the time. Like, I still feel like every time you think you’ve left this place that you were, you’re finding out you didn’t know anything, again. And every time you go through one of those big changes, it starts all over again. The whole ship on Lower Decks is lower decks, and that’s kind of the fun of it.”
From the season 5 teaser trailer
ICYMI: SDCC Trailer
Check out the teaser trailer released at Comic-Con (and our full analysis of it and the panel discussion)…
The final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is scheduled to premiere on October 24, 2024, on Paramount+. The first two episodes will be available on that day, with the remaining eight episodes following each Thursday.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
source: trekmovie.com