Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan explains how canon references are part of the show’s “worldbuilding”

Clockwise from top left: Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan, Ryan T. Husk, Cirroc Lofton

OCTOBER 21, 2020 - It’s been almost two weeks since the Star Trek: Lower Decks season one finale, but the memories of the U.S.S. Cerritos crew are still fresh. Last week, series creator Mike McMahan sat down with The 7th Rule hosts Cirroc Lofton and Ryan T. Husk during Virtual Trek Con 2.

As reported by TrekMovie.com, the 55-minute panel covered a number of topics, but one consistent theme was the regular stream of jokes and references to prior Star Trek throughout the season. While you could argue that the writers might just be going for a laugh, McMahan doesn’t see it that way. For him and the other Lower Decks writers, it’s all about creating a genuine Star Trek series while building out the world for the crew of the Cerritos. “Lower Decks doesn’t betray Star Trek. We bend Star Trek rules,” McMahan said in the panel. “We are obviously a comedy, but at its heart, this show is Star Trek; everything from the design choices to the music to the words that the characters are saying.”

When it comes to what “the characters are saying”, the first season of Lower Decks has more than enough jokes, commentary, and references from across the Star Trek universe to go around the galaxy. It’s not always about being funny, however. McMahan points out that the crew of the Cerritos is very much a Starfleet crew, saying, “The lower deckers would be huge fans of all this stuff that happens in Starfleet. They would be learning about it at the Academy. They would be reading the logs. And this show is a celebration of all Star Trek [...] All these references for us, it’s worldbuilding. These are animated, two-dimensional characters [...] If they know everything about this ship, they know everything about Starfleet.”

In McMahan’s view, the first season gave the creative team a chance to try out some new ideas while bringing plenty of that “TNG era” feeling to each episode. With the second season currently in production, McMahan let it slip that Lower Decks will start to really stretch its legs and move into new territory. “[In the] second season,” McMahan said, “we start to bridge into Deep Space Nine-type stories and Voyager-type stories and even like an Enterprise-type story.” While he didn’t elaborate on exactly what that means, it seems like that the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos has quite the adventure ahead of them.

You can watch the full Lower Decks panel from Virtual Trek Con 2 at The 7th Rule’s channel on Youtube.