Today with three current Star Trek shows on the air — Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks — and three more planned and on the way — Strange New Worlds, Section 31, Prodigy — we now live in a new renaissance of Trek that is greater than any previous period.
Lower Decks, a 29 minute animated comedy, is the latest addition to this growing list of Trek-related shows. Set in the TNG era just after the end of movie Star Trek: Nemesis it also happens to be the show that most closely continues to story continuity from the last point where it had ended following that movie following the prequel shows Enterprise and Discovery, and also occurs over a decade prior to the time frame of Picard.
Being closest in time to The Next Generation — also known as TNG — it reflects the visual, sonic and character esthetic of that time, but with more than a few twists.
Unlike Discovery and Picard this show is episodic rather than serial. Each episode is self-contained and individual rather than being part of one long-form single story. As a result it doesn’t suffer from the “big let down” syndrome of having weeks, months, or years of story all come down to a final big moment which is ultimately disappointing. The final episode in the first seasons of both Discovery and Picard suffered from this, as did the finales of Lost and Game of Thrones. Sometimes the final delivery simply doesn’t match the build up to it. The second season of Discovery seems to have properly paid-off even though it also suffered from growing escalation of stakes, which is another problem faced by serialized shows. Perhaps season two of Picard will as well, we’ll see.
Crew of Lower Decks Tendi, Rutherford, Mariner, Boimler
Lower Decks, tends to have episodes that are more of a high intensity romp. The situations are a bit more wacky and ridiculous while our main characters are far less uptight since they are a quartet of ensigns who are usually assigned seemingly less important tasks than whatever is happening on the bridge. Our characters African-American Ensign Becket Mariner, Caucasian Ensign Bradward Boimler, African-American/Enhanced Ensign Samanthan Rutherford and Orion Ensign D'Vana Tendi aren’t usually battling aliens as much as they might be changing diodes in a Jeffries Tube, or delivering farming supplies, or going on a milk-run to deliver a Klingon ambassador to the embassy. It’s just that things usually turn sideways and hilarious when doing these menial tasks.
The show is chock full of internal Star Trek references and Easter eggs. Both well known references like Khan and far more obscure ones like Xon (a character from Star Trek: Mark II who was intended to replace Spock when Leonard Nemoy refused to participate in rebooting the show, and who never actually appeared on film) fly by a break-neck speed. It’s also smart and did I mention the funny? It’s hilarious.
If anything this show is a love letter to all previous Trek shows, even the prior Animated Series from the 70’s. it has plenty of inside jokes, but also strong character moments and character development. Mariner is a super efficient officer who has a tendency to skirt the “less important” rules. Her best friend Brad Boimler is a fussy by-the-book officer who is really just a massive fan geek for everything in Star Fleet. Rutherford is a talented engineer who absolutely loves everything about the technical aspects of the ship and Tendi is a wide-eyed newcomer from the world Orion which is mostly known for being involved in a Slave trade and pirating, but she’s not that kind of Orion. There’s also another set of bridge officers such as Captain Carol Freeman, First Officer Jack Ransom, Bajoran Security Officer Lt. Shaxs, Catian Doctor T’ana and Chief Engineer Andy Billups.
The Orville
In many ways Lower Decks is both reminiscent of previous Trek shows, and also nothing like them. If fact if it’s similar to anything, it’s the Not Star Trek some-what wacky show The Orville. Created by huge Trek fan Seth Mcfarlane,The Orville features a virtual copy of TNG with a organization that is like the Federation — The Union — who operate a fleet of ships based from Earth who travel through the Galaxy attempting First Contact with alien races, while occasionally getting into conflicts with some scaily-skinned enemies.
McFarlane explains his “theory of Trek” in this video which was shot before the debut of Discovery.
Since the JJ Abrams reboot movies debuted, which McFarlane is commenting on here, there has been a growing battle with older Trek fans who feel that the newer projects and films have moved away from their Gene Roddenberry roots. As MacFarlane describes their is a “hope and optimism” along with “morality plays” contained within the Original Series (known as TOS) and TNG that he argues was missing in the JJ Abrams movies.
I think that’s a debatable point.
Fans of The Orville have argued that it’s the “Real” Trek show because it has this optimism and a more positive view as opposed to the melodrama of Discovery and Picard. Opinions are opinions, but I disagree with that point too. Season Two of Discovery absolute had that optimism, and frankly the crux of the end of Season One was based on it.
[BEGIN SPOILERS]
It’s just that during Season One the real enemy wasn’t the Klingons, it was their own Captain Gabriel Lorca, who was a duplicate refugee from the Mirror Universe deathly intent on manipulating them into taking him back where he could stage a coup against that universes Emperor, Phillipa Georgio. The show felt dark and off-kilter initially because that Captain Lorca was dark and off-kilter. it didn’t feel like Starfleet because he wasn’t from Starfleet. After their experiences with him and the Mirror Universe when the Discovery crew comes back to the battle with the Klingons they realize that Lorca’s perspective and Mirror Universe tactics are not for them. They buck Starfleet command and successfully convince them to find another way to end the war.
In season two of Discovery, we have the optimism of Starfleet on full display with their new Captain Christopher Pike on loan from the Enterprise. It’s just that in that season the ultimate enemy ends up gaining control of Starfleet’s own Section 31 clandestine group — so Starfleet is fighting Starfleet.
Similarly in Picard the main conflict of the show is with his beef with Starfleet over their abandonment of the Romulans to a super nova and the banning of synthetic life. So he's fighting with Starfleet also which has been infiltrated by Romulan agents hell bent on destroying synthetics.
[End of Spoilers]
It’s hard to show the Federation and Starfleet as “optimistic” when they are who you're having a problem with. So I think that this is simply a matter of story choices, because in the old shows there were plenty of times where the crews had to battle other Starfleet officers, particularly in the DS9 episode “Paradise Lost” where the USS Defiant battles the USS Lakota over totalitarian control of the Earth.
This argument has gone pretty far among Star Trek fans who’ve completely written off all the new shows, but Lower Decks skips right over that issue. It’s much more whimsical and upbeat. Rarely are the circumstances totally dire. Loving Starfleet and the Federation is hard-wired into the shows DNA.
Plus the humor is far more natural in Lower Decks than in The Orville. The comedy comes from the characters and their relationships, it’s not a set of site gags and poop and pee jokes like it is on The Orville.
Also since Lower Decks is actually Star Trek it’s free to use Star Trek references, story points and tropes openly, rather than steal TOS and TNG stories and plots.
You see, Seth MacFarlane is a thief.
Many of his Orville scripts are directly re-written versions TOS and TNG plots. I can appreciate that he has a special affinity for the "morality plays" of TNG, but then he's gone are redone the TOS story about a world ship where the inhabitants think they're on a planet, but really there on a disguised ship that's on a disastrously collusion course which is from the TOS episode "For the World is Hollow and I have touched the sky."
The story where First Officer Kelly performs a simple medical procedure and gets assumed to have "God-Like" powers is taken from a TNG episode “Who watches the Watchers.” where the same thing happened to Picard. it's not until he lets himself get injured that they finally stop believing he's a God who can bring the dead back to life.
The story of Isaac turning against his own people to save everyone is basically Odo's story all over again. Kelly, again, being in two places at once with a seven year gap is exactly taken from the story "Second Chances" from TNG where Riker's teleporter reflection from seven years previously shows up and restarts his relationship with Diana, just like the younger Kelly restarted her relationship with Ed.
The episode where the Maclan ex-boyfriend of Bortis comes aboard and he violates his people's requirement on same-sex relationships which is just like the episode "The Outcast" where Riker starts up a relationship with a non-gendered person who against her people's beliefs identifies herself as female. Again, I’m not just saying these story are “similar”, I’m saying it’s the same story. Exactly.
They've redone portions of "The Cage", they've redone the time that Data decided to have a girlfriend from the TNG episode “In Theory” using Isaac and the Doctor. They've reused the idea of pockets of accelerating time rapidly aging objects and fruit from the TNG episode “Timescape.”
I get that Seth really, really likes TNG, but he could try writing his own fucking stories. Simply adding poop and pee jokes probably protects him from copyright infringement because of the "parody exception" but it's not funny, and it's not good either. It's robbery.
This is why Lower Decks is ultimately far better than the Orville. First off, they aren’t stealing stories. If they want to emulate something from a previous Trek, they can do it — for example Rutherford does a fan dance to distract a security guard just like Uhura did in the Star Trek V movie. But it’s just a quick throwback reference obviously intended to be noticed and to be funny. They don’t take the entire script of Star Trek V and try to pawn it off as being an original creation. When Lower Decks does references we’re supposed to notice them. It’s part of the plan.
And when you realize how many of the Orville’s stories are taken directly from Star Trek stories, and clearly not intended for you to notice but to be fooled — it stops being funny. MacFarlane tried to start up a new Star Trek franchise before he was turned down by CBS. If this is what he had planned, I can see why they didn't go for it. They’ve already done most of these stories.
Whew.
Anyhoo, now that I’ve got that off my chest.
Lower Decks is a great show. It’s super fast-paced and witty. It’s humor is genuine and an outgrowth of the characters not simply a tacked on one-liner here and there. It might not be your cup of tea, but it’s pretty safe to try it out now because their about to broadcast the final episode for season one this week, so you do a one-week signup for CBS All Access for free and binge watch the entire season in 5 hours.
I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Monday, Oct 5, 2020 · 3:46:30 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Just because words alone are often not convincing here are many visual examples of what I’m saying from two guys who were actually reviewing Discovery who became side-tracked talking about how many things the Orville steals from other Trek shows.
It’s practically crazy.
And these guys were just talking about the first five episodes of the Orville, it got worse after that.