It took me a while to get around to watching this one. After having been immensely disappointed and frustrated with both Star Trek: Discovery and Picard, I was not going to give CBS a single penny of my money. I still haven't watched the second season of Discovery (let alone the third), despite having heard that the second season is an improvement. In fact, I've been so bitter at CBS that I didn't even bother activating my account to stream the second season of Twilight Zone, even though the first season was good enough that I was curious to see the second season. I also didn't bother reactivating my CBS account to stream Star Trek: Lower Decks, even though my partner really wanted to watch it.

I was willing to cut a little more slack for Lower Decks, on the grounds that "surely an animated comedy will not be considered 'canon', so I don't have to take Lower Decks as seriously." But then I started seeing events, characters, and ships from Lower Decks showing up in articles on the Memory Alpha Star Trek wiki, and the thought of having to take Lower Decks seriously as canon tanked my interest in watching the show. I wouldn't be able to sit back and enjoy Lower Decks in the manner that I enjoy something like The Orville; I would have to watch it with my critic glasses on, and the baggage of expectations that comes with carrying the Star Trek torch.

I told my partner I didn't want to pay for CBS, so we would wait until all the episodes had aired, do the free trial with a new email address, and binge them all in like a weekend or something. And maybe I'd check out season 2 of Twilight Zone while I was at it. But we didn't keep track of the progress of the show, it fell onto the back-burner, and we just didn't get around to it.

Then, a few weeks ago, a friend offered to let me borrow his downloads of the show, as well as offering pretty high praise. My partner and I still wanted to give Lower Decks a chance, so I accepted, and we watched it.

... And it's ... fine. It's fine. It's OK.

The Best "Trek" that CBS has to offer?

Lower Decks is entertaining enough. It provides a decent laugh here and there. And it's actually telling some high-concept sci-fi stories -- albeit wrapped in a layer of absurdist comedy. As a stand-alone show, without the baggage of the "Star Trek" title, it's perfectly serviceable. It's not quite up to the level of The Orville -- at least not once The Orville had set aside the Family Guy antics and started focusing more on its characters and stories.

- ST: Animated Series "More Tribbles, More Troubles", episode 5

- ST: Lower Decks "Terminal Provocations", season 1, episode 6

Lower Decks remains faithful to the aesthetic of Star Trek, while still establishing its own visual identity.

And you know what, as an official installment of Star Trek, Lower Decks ain't bad either. Lower Decks is certainly the best Star Trek show that CBS has created for its streaming service so far, and definitely [ironically] the most worthy of "canon" status.

As I said in my reviews of Star Trek: Discovery, the context in which the show is created is important. The fact that Discovery's seasons are heavily-serialized, singular stories means that they must be judged on a different basis than the episodic episodes of previous Trek series. Discovery's stories must be held to a higher standard because its structure means that "bad" episodes cannot be dismissed as easily as a bad episode of any other series of Trek.

The difference in context between the animated comedy series Lower Decks and the more serious, live-action, canon series of Discovery and Picard is the one thing that gives me hope regarding Lower Decks. The trailer for the cartoon's first season was released over the weekend, and I'm honestly not upset with it at all.

Because Lower Decks is an animated comedy, I am assuming that CBS is not going to consider it "canon". And if the show isn't being presented as "canon", then I as a viewer don't have to take it as seriously either. I can much more easily forgive divergences in theme, tone, aesthetics, and [especially] lore because inconsistencies from the original source material don't serve to retroactively pollute the original source material in the way that Discovery and Picard have done.

That being said -- and tone and lack of seriousness aside -- Lower Decks has a lot of elements of its design presented in this trailer that takes more cues from golden age Trek than either of the two live-action series that CBS has produced. The design of the ships, the interiors, the holodeck, the uniforms, and so forth all seem to show more respect to the original source material than Discovery or Picard bothered to show. I'm going to hope that is a good sign that the writers are also taking more of the story and character cues from golden age Trek, albeit with the slapstick cartoon tone.

Besides, Star Trek is old enough, and bloated enough, as an intellectual property that it could probably use a good deconstruction or self-satire. I mean, skits on Family Guy, Robot Chicken, Futurama, and so forth have [arguably, and to varying degrees] worked well over the years. The Orville has been generally well-regarded by audiences and eventually shifted towards telling stories that were more in-line with Trek -- far closer than anything in Discovery or Picard.

Oh boy, there's been a lot of Star Trek news and rumors over the past half year or so. They've been coming in so rapid-fire that it's been hard to take any of them seriously. But now we actually do have confirmation from CBS that new Star Trek projects (aside from Discovery) are in the works.

While it might sound nice to have new Star Trek in the works, the news isn't necessarily good. If you're like me, and did not like the direction of Star Trek: Discovery, then the news of new Trek projects from CBS is probably not very promising. In fact, it may all sound like a train wreck waiting to happen.

Discovery still can't get its shit together!

Let's start with the show that already exists: Star Trek: Discovery. The production of season two has so far been just as rough as the production of season one. CBS fired the showrunners mid-way through filming the second season. The studio claims that the showrunners were causing the show to go overbudget, and that they were mistreating staff. However, it's also the case that there were extensive reshoots (which apparently involves giving the Klingons their hair back), which may imply that the studio was meddling in the production, and that there were creative differences between the showrunners and the studio execs. Sounds a lot like season one all over again.

Discovery is going through a major pivot, and it's production is not going well.

The series is apparently trying to course-correct and is pivoting hard by bringing in the original Enterprise as a last-ditch effort to try to win back the support of long-time fans. But, as a long-time fan, I don't want to see the Enterprise again. I especially don't want to see any extensive, canon-breaking retcons to the characters or history. However, it looks like that's what we're going to get.

I'd rather see Star Trek go to new places and try new things, as long as they are consistent with the established canon, and are consistent with the cerebral, hard science fiction theme of the series. Basing the entire series on magic trans-dimensional fungus that allows instantaneous teleportation to anywhere in any universe is consistent with neither.

I want to see Discovery explore new ideas; not retcon Original Series characters and history.

It isn't just Star Trek that's in trouble, the CBS corporation has also gone through its share of troubles this year. Its chairman and CEO, Les Moonves, was forced to resign after accusations of sexual improprieties. Moonves was one of the core champions of Star Trek: Discovery, who saw the series as the flagship program for CBS' All-Access streaming service. Moonves also notoriously doesn't like or understand science fiction -- let alone Star Trek -- and it was creative disputes between Moonves and original showrunner Bryan Fuller that resulted in Fuller being fired, and in the direction of Discovery pivoting to what it was.

With Moonves out, Discovery might not have the protection of the CEO of the company anymore, which might result in budget cuts and other limitations in the show's production that will almost certainly reduce the quality of the product. The high production qualities were pretty much the only thing that Discovery had going for it (as far as I was concerned). Things are not looking pretty for the future of Star Trek: Discovery.

Patrick Stewart is back as Jean-Luc Picard

The big news, however, is the announcement of two new Star Trek series. The first and foremost is a new series featuring Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean-Luc Picard.

Had the writers even started planning Picard's
show prior to announcing it?

It's unclear, however, what this show will be about. In fact, it looks like the writers didn't even start thinking about that until after the series was announced. That isn't promising. It means we have a studio grasping at straws, without a clear vision for what they want to create.

Apparently, Stewart (or Alex Kurtzman) suggested that Picard may not necessarily be the captain of a starship in this new series. This lead to an early rumor that Picard may instead be an instructor at Starfleet Academy. I can't find any links to this rumor, so maybe it was my own idea that I'm mistaking for a rumor...? In any case, I would much rather see Picard be more of a cameo character in a show that isn't squarely about him. Making him a professor at the Academy, teaching cadets who are the main characters actually sounds like a half-way decent idea with a lot of promise. Rumors of CBS being pitched ideas for a Starfleet Academy series have been circulating for a couple years now, so maybe this gives them an opportunity to finally pursue that idea.

Another interesting idea that I had would be to make Picard to have retired from Starfleet and taken up a new career as an archaeologist. The character had a profound interest in archaeology throughout the series, and even gave lectures about the subject in at least one or two instances.

...