Like the woman in the crowd in The Princess Bride, it’s the only thing you can say when Paramount keeps saying this is the final season for Star Trek: Lower Decks, the series that in four seasons and forty 25-minute episodes established itself as the best Star Trek since Star Trek Voyager, a series so well-written it pulls in every brand of Star Trek fan no matter what quadrant they come from:
BOOOO! BOOOO!
Only five seasons? Come on!
Five seasons isn’t anything to sneeze at, and we’ve discussed the very best genre series of all time cracking that five-season threshold before here at borg. Star Trek: Lower Decks did what Paramount was afraid to do (or afraid to spend money on) taking all those great ideas that would best be brought to the live screen via practical effects and elaborate sets and putting them to life, including some of the best alien races in every episode as regular characters (we’re looking at you, Dr. T’Ana). In animation you can do anything, and for the same price as an ordinary story. What could be better? This series in live action?
Enter: San Diego Comic-Con 2024.
At this year’s Comic-Con, not only did Paramount issue a teaser for the next (and yes, last) season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, it announced the next best thing to a Season 6: Beckett Mariner herself–actor Tawny Newsome–will be headlining her own half-hour Star Trek comedy series. We’re not even going to sneer at a half-hour vs. hour format. Why? Comedy writing is hard. We get it. But we got a sneak preview of Newsome as Beckett in this year’s brilliant and funny Strange New World’s episode “Those Old Scientists” featuring the real-life actors behind the voices in the animated series (discussed here). It was better than both Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds (like a Reese’s?).
All we know about Newsome’s potential series is that it sounds like Love Boat: The Next Generation, that famous Saturday Night Live skit featuring Patrick Stewart as the cruise director on a future Love Boat. Here’s the pitch for the Newsome series: “Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant.” Very Philip K. Dick, right? As in his Time Out of Joint (reviewed here), which later influenced The Truman Show? What immediately comes to mind is Risa, too, right? That “resort planet” famous for its horga’hn, the Tox Uthat, angry Ferengi, and the Captain’s girlfriend Vash in the NextGen episode “Captain’s Holiday.”
While we’re waiting for that show to get out of pre-production, we have the final season for Star Trek: Lower Decks coming this fall. In case you missed it earlier, here is the teaser from Comic-Con:
Along with Newsome expect the return of Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, Jerry O’Connell, Fred Tatasciore, and Gillian Vigman. Look for the end of Star Trek’s best, the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks coming to Paramount+ October 24, 2024.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
