A lot of work goes into making an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks and the guy overseeing much of that is supervising producer/supervising director Barry J. Kelly. TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Kelly about some of the challenges putting together season 5 including a special effort for latest episode “Fully Dilated,” and he also teased some of what we can expect for the “super-sized” season (and series) finale.
[SPOILERS]
The latest episode is quite a big one, bringing in Brent Spiner. When you have such a major legacy star is it just another week or are there special things you guys do for such an event?
Usually at the script phase, there’s always something where I’m like, “Oh, wow, this episode’s super fun, but oh crap, how am I going to make it?” There’s always a challenge in every episode, maybe it has a very ambitious car chase or it is a weird concept that isn’t really figured out in the script. And the challenge in this one is making sure Brent Spiner feels like authentic and genuine as Data should feel. And I just re-watched this one and forgot how dense and how many layers are in it, because in each episode we 44 minutes into a 22 minute episode. Not only is Data in this episode, but there is the whole time displacement thing going on and they are on a planet with the classic Trek setup of them being in disguise as a different species. And there’s a lurker who knows something’s up. That’s all set up and seven minutes in Data wakes up!
I think what takes a little of the edge off is it’s a little commentary on multiverse stuff, and we get away with it, because it’s multiverse Data. He’s purple and maybe the movies haven’t happened in his universe, yet? So it’s still the Enterprise-D, it’s just purple. So Generations hasn’t happened yet in his world. So we have a little bit of leeway there. He has been a head in a cave, but that is the extent we can give for his previous history as Data. But I just want to make sure he feels like Data… I mean, he is a head and he’s definitely doing way more things than a head can do on its own. He’s moving his neck and moving around, like how’s he doing that without his trapezius? But, just trying to subdue him and make him feel a little bit non-plussed in his face about what he’s saying and how he reacts, just to make him feel like a little bit more like a robot.
How does one go about directing Brent Spiner who knows the character so well, but to make it work for Lower Decks?
What I was just describing was more for the animators and the acting to do on the art side of things. When we have a legacy cast, [showrunner] Mike [McMahan] comes in and he’ll make sure that they’re taken care of. He wants to come in and make sure that we get the genuine feel. There was a lot of times where maybe a line doesn’t feel Data enough, we’ll just ask Brent. Like maybe we wrote “interesting,” but maybe he should say “curious” or some other Data-ism. That is a big thing with trying to get a genuine feel of the characters. And that came up plenty during the record. Sometimes it’s just rearranging some words.
I think just having him in the booth – he’s a pro, right? He came in and just did it. I think the writers in the script, he felt like Data to me. And it’s also how he reacts and how Mariner is fangirling about him a little bit, like “That’s such a Data thing to say.” That helps add to someone in their world reacting to a real Data that we’d be fanboying or fangirling. But, it’s just asking him what he thinks Data would do. He can just switch it on and it’s like we were back twenty years ago with him.
Brent Spiner as Lieutenant Commander Data and Noël Wells as D’Vana Tendi (Paramount+)
We spoke last year just as you were getting your first scripts for season 5 and you said there were things in there you didn’t know “how the hell” you were going to do them? So, can you remember what seemed so daunting?
Some of it was making alternate universe stuff with a fissure that’s not Mirror Universe, which is different. Just trying to make like a concept that applies itself to alternate dimensions, but is not just like a wormhole. I might have been wondering how the fuck am I going to make orbs and cubes talk and fight and show that an Olympian god is now a part of the crew, and how do I make her lightning bolts limp and lame? In every episode, there’s always some kind of thing I hope comes through.
Was Starbase 80 a particular challenge?
Starbase 80 was an interesting one, because we wanted it to look like something that was maybe built in between TOS and The Motion Picture. But it’s more like a surplus shop with old tech that gets shipped there because they don’t know where to put it. Just trying to make Starbase 80 lame but also fun and funny. That’s always the conundrum. You don’t want something to feel lame but actually be lame. You want it to be fun to be around. Like having Acamarians around and a Mad Max vibe in a space station sounds really fun.
Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner and Nicole Byer as Kassia Nox (Paramount+)
For an episode like “Starbase 80” as compared to the one with the cubes and orbs [“Of Gods and Angles”] which was more of a bottle show, just like for live action having to make all those new sets and characters takes extra time and resources, right?
That’s a good observation. It’s weird because there are benefits to both. Like on one hand we get to make something from scratch that’s new and is self-contained in its own episode. It’s not like I’m having to worry about using a wrong hallway from a different Cerritos, or pips problems. Anytime we get to do something brand new, like episode 504 – the Klingon episode [“A Farewell to Farms”] – where it’s pretty much entirely on a whole new set and a whole new location. It’s more of a gauntlet for our designers and where they can’t reuse stuff. So a bottle episode like orbs versus cubes offsets the demands of a higher design-heavy episode. But there are plus and minuses to both. So the Klingon and Starbase 80 episode are heavy on the design side, but then orbs versus cubes was surprisingly heavier on the animation side. Even though they’re just orbs and cubes who don’t emote, the scales get weird, and they’re always moving. They’re flashing – they have voices and they are lip-synced with glows. So for the comp department or the animation department, stuff does kind of offset itself in a weird way.
Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman (Paramount+)
Mike has teased the finale as “super-sized,” so for season five is it on a scale you haven’t done before?
I’ll say yes. In previous seasons the penultimate episode and the finale kind of like go hand in hand and lead into one another. And that’s no different here. And both are pretty dang big. We found out that it was going to be the final season when we were boarding it, so there was some consideration put into it that, maybe this is the last episode. I hope it’s not. I hope there’s some form of this, these characters live on somewhere. Hopefully, it’s not goodbye forever, it’s goodbye for now. We’ll see, it’s Star Trek. It’s a pretty insane finale. When I think about the finale, which just wrapped two weeks ago, when I re-watched it I was like, “This is a bang on episode.” I forget many things happen, almost. I’m like, “Oh, yeah this happens and this happens too!”
And it is literally a longer episode?
Yes. If you look at the trends of our finales, all of them are longer. I think season3 might have the longest one at this point [“The Stars at Night” has a runtime of 27:57]. Usually we fall into the 22 or 23 minute range. So if you look at the trend, they get big. And saying something is four or five minutes longer, that’s actually a lot for animation. An act of an episode is like six or seven minutes, so it’s no joke when something is just a few minutes longer. Like an extra act of a show is like 100 shots and we’re regularly like 300 to 400 shots a show. It’s a whole crew’s worth of work for a week or two, which can get expensive, a decent amount of labor. Hopefully you will all see the love is in the labor in this finale, because it is pretty fantastic and I’m excited for you to see it.
Jack Quaid as Boimler, Jerry OíConnell as Jack Ransom, Eugene Cordero as Rutherford, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Gabrielle Ruiz as T’Lyn, and Tawny Newsome as Beckett Marine (Paramount+)
The fifth and final season of Lower Decks debuted on Thursday, October 24 on Paramount+ in the U.S. and internationally. New episodes of the 10-episode-long season will drop every Thursday on the service leading up to the series finale on Thursday, December 19.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
NOTE: Interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
source: trekmovie.com