Review by C.J. Bunce
Four seasons and forty episodes in, the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks is coming into its own next month with the release of its own guide to the show, its ship, and its crew. The Star Trek: Lower Decks–USS Cerritos Crew Handbook (available for pre-order now here at Amazon) is the latest franchise in-universe guide, running you as a new transfer–a junior officer–through your paces as Starfleet’s latest and greatest.
But if you know the series at all, you know your journey is going to be anything but ordinary.
If this year’s fantastic and funny Strange New World’s episode featuring the real-life actors behind the voices in the animated series (discussed here) didn’t convince you to give Star Trek: Lower Decks a try, this book will. Writer Chris Farnell has adapted the dialogue of the crew perfectly. Crew? In a ship handbook? Farnell peppers each page with the commentary and notes of your favorite crew members, beginning with Captain Carol Freeman, with lots of banter provided by Lt. J.G.s Beckett Mariner and Boimler.
First off, this even looks like a “real” crew handbook, complete with a smart, sturdy design–something between a paperback and a hardcover–and in a similar style as the handbooks Captain Archer kept on his shelf in the Enterprise NX-01 days.
Along with greetings from each department head, readers will get insight into the realities of space travel the live-action series never revealed. The bridge, engineering, sickbay, holodecks, crew quarters, cetacean ops, the brig, the shuttles, the Captain’s yacht–it’s all covered.
It’s a handbook so expect lots of rules, such as what not to take aboard ship, And of, course, how to do some of the monotonous tasks on the ship, like empty the holodeck biofilters (gross!). Admiral Picard provides his own overview of the Prime Directive. Sort of. Readers will find many throwbacks and callbacks to the series and past iterations of Star Trek–which Boimler and Mariner are always the quickest to poke fun at.
All those great props on the show? Readers will learn what they all are… sort of. The actual ship crew doesn’t always seem to know. But that is the difference between the Cerritos and the Enterprise, isn’t it? Badgey 2.0 even shows up to run readers–err… new junior officers–through some scenarios.
Star Trek: Lower Decks–USS Cerritos Crew Handbook takes the idea of ship technical manuals of past live-action Treks and flips it on its head. You’ll want to shelve it with your Deep Space Nine guide, Alien Colonial Marines Survival Manual, your Batman v Superman Tech Manual. And, yes, all of your copies of the Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda ship technical manuals. Expected to ship in time for Christmas with a December 19, 2023, publication date, Star Trek: Lower Decks–USS Cerritos Crew Handbook is available for pre-order now here at Amazon–a great gift for your favorite Trekker or Trekkie.
