TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 1

TV #58 of 2023:

Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 1

I can’t complain too much about this show. It’s an animated half-hour comedy that, sure, makes me laugh most episodes. But I don’t think it’s really living up to its mission or its potential, at least in this first year.

The series takes its name from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that broke from that program’s typical convention by focusing on a group of characters who would ordinarily be in the background of the action and showing how they faced their own unique challenges and still meaningfully contributed to the success of the bridge officers we’d normally be following. This cartoon likewise places us among the menial workers on a Federation starship, though the contrast is less effective since we don’t already know the upper ranks on the U.S.S. Cerritos (and since the ship itself is situated as a bit of an underdog in the fleet).

My main issue here is tone. It feels reductive to say that this doesn’t feel like Star Trek, when the whole point is obviously to present a different sort of take on the usual material. And I do admire the ways that the writing finds to skewer some of Starfleet’s traditional pompousness! There are also some fun fan-service references, like a cutaway scene of Q’s shenanigans or a minor character insisting Wolf 359 was an inside job. But the scripts sometimes lean a bit too far in portraying a fundamentally cynical and harsh moral universe, in my opinion. Star Trek generally reflects an optimistic look at humanity’s future among the stars, so what are we to do with a schlimazel like Brad Boimler, who basically gets penalized by the narrative again and again for the apparent fault of trying to do his assigned job and advance in his career?

His crewmates fare somewhat better. Tendi and Rutherford aren’t treated nearly as cruelly by the plot, although again, the implication seems to be that Boimler’s flaw is caring too much, in a franchise that has previously always expected and rewarded that kind of behavior. Meanwhile the last lead Beckett Mariner is a new type of Star Trek hero, a competent badass who does get promoted for her efforts but then inevitably acts out in order to get busted back down. That leads to some entertaining story moments, but I find her a little tiring and underwritten as a character, especially when so many of her antics come at Brad’s expense. Her connection to the ship’s captain is similarly an interesting idea that doesn’t really go anywhere just yet.

I’ve seen some comparisons of this show to Rick and Morty, and I’m not familiar enough with that other series to weigh in on whether that’s the strangeness I’m sensing in its DNA or not. But there’s definitely something that’s holding me back from embracing it to the degree that its clever humor should rightfully merit. (That closing joke about the Enterprise finale and theme song, for example? Delightful.)

Still, it’s early days yet! Barclay was abused by TNG in his first few appearances too, before Trek found a way to organically develop and redeem him. I hope a similar grace can eventually be found for the animated denizens of these lower decks.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

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