Star Trek: Lower Decks

Season 4 broaches, (and in some cases reintroduces) some of Star Trek's biggest moral quandaries, and faces them head-on with bold and unabashed honesty. Amid drunken adventures, spicy language, and horny co-workers, lessons about trusting yourself and your crew, seeing the best in each other, and embracing life to the fullest are what really make Lower Decks sing.

The five episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" season 5 provided to critics for review showcase a series still operating at the height of its powers. Once again, each episode is a smart, funny standalone adventure in a new cook or cranny of the "Trek" universe, with one overarching storyline loosely tying the whole thing together.

Although Lower Decks won’t get to live as long and prosper as much as we’d like, we’re just happy to see this show end on what looks like a high. 

Lively, mirthful and colorful. [17 - 30 Aug 2020, p.10]

There’s a lot of potential there to be both curious and heartfelt, as Star Trek has always been, but push it into some new directions narratively and visually, with the animated format allowing the franchise to reach beyond what has come before. But Lower Decks, for all its raucous pleasures, doesn’t quite rise to that occasion.

The entire show seems to be caught in between extremes. It’s just over the edge of being too adult for kids to watch — Mariner complains that a yeti she once met was “being a dick,” and in one episode gets a punishment detail to clean the holodeck of what’s implied to be semen — but never really delves into truly R-rated Trek content.

The problem is it’s not really interested in anything. It’s a comedy show without gags or setpieces. The voice actors – most of whom are members of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy improv family – do their best to imbue the dialogue with real comic timing.

As a truly TNG fan, this series actually keeps the spirit of the TNG. Most of the problems feel like local ones (like in TNG where they were limited by some planet or system). They don't save the universe as in Picard Season 2 (after watching it I like LD even more).

Most of the new Star Trek content has failed because it expected us to take stupid ideas seriously. This show does not expect us to take its stupid ideas seriously, and that allowed me to let my guard down and actually enjoy some of the episodes.

Some of it's funny but it would of been funny under any IP, it's definitely a strange use of Star Trek. Most of it is not funny.

I tried to like it to understand the "modern audience" but alas I am not entertained. Sigh. Into the post-2010 bin with the rest of wokewood.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, with the freedom given by its animated platform, had the potential to be one of the best pieces of Trek in a good while. However, it often feels like you're watching untrained fans and everyday joes in Starfleet uniforms. The lower ranks are bound to be less disciplined than more experienced officers, but the main cast feels plain incompetent. The behavior of the main cast, and senior staff, is unworthy of Starfleet. Through their actions, Starfleet itself seems incompetent, less of what it was. Time and time again, we see botched encounters, officers filled with so much ego that a Captain ends up doing the job of an engineer, and a notoriously nervous and unreliable ensign handed a crucial task. Prime Directive? Never met her. Comedy can take place without incompetence. None of these fools should be in Starfleet.