Entertainment News

Star Trek's New Animated Series Is Called "Lower Deck"

...and it's already green lit for two full seasons.

By Darren Orf

CBS

Star Trek never really goes away, but it's having a renaissance at the moment unlike any in the history of the franchise. It's a new golden age, and it's fun as heck—for Trekkies and regular humans alike.


CBS has been releasing new Trek every month in the form of the excellent Short Treks. Then there's Star Trek: Discovery, currently ramping up for its second season, and we're learning more every day about the upcoming Picard series. Next up in this wonderful embarrassment of Trekness: a funny cartoon.

Star Trek: Lower Deck is the name of Alex Kurtzman's long-rumored Star Trek animated series. The show is designed to be a half-hour comedy, written by Rick and Morty alum Mike McMahan, which will focus on a starship's lesser-known characters, mainly the support crew who work in—you guessed it—the lower decks.

Lower Deck will also be Star Trek's return to animation after the short-lived Star Trek: The Animated Series, which ran from 1973-1974 (pictured above), and will be a straight-to-series order with two seasons already greenlit. Although we don't know when the show will premiere or how many episodes will fill each season, the show will sit along side Discovery and the untitled Picard show on CBS All Access.

"Mike won our hearts with his first sentence: I want to do a show about the people who put the yellow cartridge in the food replicator so a banana can come out the other end," said executive producer Alex Kurtzman in a press release. "His cat's name is Riker. His son's name is Sagan. The man is committed."

In addition to these impressive Trek credentials, McMahan started a Twitter account in 2011 posting his own season-eight fanfic for The Next Generation (he even went on to write a book about it). Interestingly, season seven of TNG has an episode titled "Lower Decks," which focuses on the junior officers onboard the Starship Enterprise (and an episode of Voyager does the same).

"It's undeniably 'Trek,'" McMahan says about Lower Deck. "I promise not to add an episode at the very end that reveals the whole thing took place in a training program."

Although there is no word yet on when within the Trek timeline the show will take place, McMahan's apparent obsession with The Next Generation would seem like a good place to start.

Source: CBS