Star Trek: Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan sat down for interviews this weekend at New York Comic Con to promote the upcoming fifth and final season of the animated installment.
“Some people on the crew are like, this is the most Star Trek we’ve ever Star Treked,” McMahan said. According to him, they’re not changing the formula in this last outing, promising to continue the format of mostly standalone episodes with a little of a through-line running across the season.
“It’s everything you love about Lower Decks and everything you love about Star Trek; we just got really good at it,” McMahan said. “This is kind of the season where we grow the beard a little bit.” McMahan is referencing the common perception by fans that Star Trek: The Next Generation improved after Commander Riker actor Jonathan Frakes grew his beard.
“This season is really about, now that we’ve been promoted, now that we’re not worried about getting fired all the time, who do we want to be? Like what paths are we going to pick? And who are we? Are we defined by work? Are we defining the work? And it’s kind of a sharpening of what you saw in Season 4.”
McMahan also talked about working with Garrett Wang, Voyager‘s Harry Kim, this season. “That guy was made for animation. He comes in with so much exuberance, and like, he’s a comedy guy.” This ease in playing the comedy side of Star Trek, he said, reminded him of Jonathan Frakes. “They’re able to just switch from the live-action sort of tone to, like, still be the character but a comedy version of it.”
He teased more of Star Trek‘s legacy cast turning up this season but didn’t provide names. “There’s a bit of a season-long thread that allowed us to, without time travel, have people that are harder to get into this specific time period of the show. We got to work with some really cool people. I was actually really surprised that we could get who we got.”
