By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Star Trek fans have always appreciated the franchise’s socialist, technology-based utopia, so it’s only fitting that the cancellation of Lower decks revealed capitalism’s biggest lie: if you build it, they will come. In other words, we spend our lives being told that to succeed, all you need to do is demonstrate your talent and do a great job. For this Star Trek fan, Lower decks was a near-perfect show, but its cancellation reveals two bitter truths: being great doesn’t mean being profitable, and modern Trekkers simply have no idea what they want.
Do fans want Star Trek: Lower Decks?
Paramount has understandably been reluctant to discuss the numbers that motivated it to prematurely cancel Star Trek shows. Discovery And Lower decksboth of which had to make their fifth season a final season. The main hypothesis regarding Lower decks is that, even though it’s much cheaper to produce than shows like Strange new worldsit wasn’t getting enough views or generating enough new subscribers to Paramount+. And while Paramount’s mishandling of the NuTrek area is partly to blame, I can’t help but think that my fellow fans just don’t know what they really want from this franchise.
Star Trek characters like Michael Burnham love children’s stories like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandso I think it’s quite appropriate to see Lower decks in terms of another children’s fable: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. While Discovery ended strong, it initially put off new fans by focusing so much on old lore that it disrupted existing canon regarding everything from Klingons to Spock’s tangled family tree. Simply put, early Discovery tripped because he was trying to concentrate too much on familiar characters and events rather than trying something new.
By comparison, Picard had the opposite problem. Patrick Stewart himself would have liked this show to avoid too many links with The next generationwhich is just one reason why the first two seasons were such a disaster. Only after those previous seasons failed did Paramount and Stewart give the fans what they wanted, turning Season 3 into a TNG reunion. But before this last deadly season, PicardThe biggest failure was that he kept trying to do something completely new instead of focusing on what made its main character so great in the first place.
The next big Star Trek series was Lower decksand he managed to find the Goldilocks balance fans craved. Each season was filled with hilarious callbacks to beloved characters, from Q to Harry Kim, and the show always had great Easter eggs that older fans could enjoy (I almost spat out my drink when I saw the giant skeleton of Spock Two, an obscure Animated series character). At the same time, the series introduced amazing new characters like Boimler and Mariner, proving that Lower deckslike Goldilocks’ favorite bed, was “perfect” in its ability to focus on something old and something new at the same time.
So much potential
Another thing the show got “perfect” was finding a happy medium between delivering silly comedy and creating killer canon. Each episode of Lower decks delivered its share of light laughs, but the series was never afraid to change canon drastically (I particularly liked the return of Nick Locarno). And the series finale ended with Starfleet having a stable wormhole to the multiverse, which is more or less an open invitation for future Trek writers to absolutely go there. savage with all this juicy narrative potential.
As a Star Trek fan who fell in love with the franchise during the first release of TNG, “potential” is the word I associate it with the most. Lower decks. The series lived up to all its potential and more, combining heartbreaking comedy with thrilling stories that pushed the boundaries of this franchise. Honestly, if Star Trek is infinite diversity in infinite combinations, Lower decks deserves a permanent spot at Stovokor for being the only NuTrek show (sorry, Strange new worlds) to fully embrace this Vulcan ideal.
Unfortunately, the series’ premature cancellation means the fandom either doesn’t appreciate the best of NuTrek or, worse yet, has no idea what they really want from this venerable franchise. Star Wars is understandably criticized for its failure to deliver what fans want, but the general assumption is that Disney executives are (for whatever reason) ignoring a proven, fan-favorite formula in favor of their own brand of optimized content for action figures. our throats.
However, Star Trek is now in a much worse situation where seemingly no one knows what they want from this franchise, and in a world where fans have rejected Lower decks is one where the franchise is doomed to a slow death. With any luck, Paramount will bring back Mike McMahan’s pioneering series in some form to get our favorite sci-fi universe back on track. Otherwise, the phrase “Star Trek Into Darkness” won’t simply describe the worst film in the franchise. It will also depict exactly how the Gene Roddenberry universe is dying at the hands of reckless leaders who can’t help but fail the fandom.
