Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks' Finale - “The New Next Generation"Star Trek: Lower Deckscreator and showrunner Mike McMahan wrapped up his beloved animated series' run on Paramount+ in grand fashion. After five seasons,McMahan closes a chapter of the voyages of the USS Cerritos, setting up future adventures for Lt. Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and her friends.
InStar Trek: Lower Decks’series finale, “The New Next Generation,” the USS Cerritos is the only ship in Starfleet that can save the universe. Working together while being chased by Klingons, the crew of the Cerritos stabilize a quantum rift in reality. In the end, a new gateway toStar Trek’s vast multiverse is open to be explored whilethe USS Cerritos gets a new command structure, with Mariner and Lt. Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) becoming co-First Officers to the new Captain, Jack Ransom (Jerry O’Connell).
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 6 - Will It Happen & Everything We Know
Star Trek: Lower Decks has concluded its fifth and final season on Paramount+. Here’s what we know about a possible season 6.
ScreenRanthad the pleasure of chatting with Mike McMahan on the challenge of wrapping up this phase ofStar Trek: Lower Decks, how he gotStar Trek: Enterprise’s Jolene Blalock to reprise T’Polfor the first time in 19 years, and what fans can do to bringStar Trek: Lower Decksback.
Mike McMahan On Writing Star Trek: Lower Decks' Finale
“I Think It’s The Best Series. What Do You Think Of That?”
ScreenRant: Mike, I thought the finale was awesome. Congratulations on a great season. I feel at the end of every season, I say the same thing to you, “This was the best season.” But I think this was the best season.
MIke McMahan: I think it’s the best series. What do you think of that? I was just telling somebody, we have big action episodes, we have big comedy episodes, we have legacy character episodes. But if you take any one episode of Lower Decks, if you just took “The Inner Fight,” or something like that, it’s not what the show is like. The show is all of it combined. It’s all these surprises. It’s all this balance. And so, that’s the final season. Definitely feels like we did it again. We did a good job making Lower Decks, at least.
Take me into your process of writing the finale and closing out this chapter of the Cerritos. I love the title, “The New, Next Generation.” I feel like the Cerritos inherit theTNGmantle in the end, and theDS9mantle too.
Mike McMahan: The title really does say to me that if we got to do more Lower Decks, you’d be in for something new while also getting what you love about the show. And I think TNG did a good job of that. This would be a different version of that, like getting to do our version of Deep Space Nine, but exploring the multiverse. And what are the themes of that? And what’s interesting about that, to me, is that Mariner and Boimler are in that show too. It’s just one’s an engineer and one’s a captain. And the idea of, we’re moving forward with the Cerritos, and now Mariner and Boimler are First Officers, and Tendi and T’Lyn are Science Officers, and Rutherford doesn’t have his implant, and Ransom’s the Captain.
I have stories I want to tell about all of that. Funny, and dramatic, and cool, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to get to tell those stories. But it was important to me that this season felt like everything you love about Lower Decks for the first half and then a little bit of an accelerated ‘Wow. What a party. What a way to go out.’ These characters are still experiencing stories, and there’s more to do, but even if we don’t do it, you guys got a taste of it and how awesome that world is.
I thought it was actually kind of brilliant how 508 and 509 didn’t center on the Warp Core Five, and then you brought it all back, not just to them, but to the entire Cerritos, at the end. And they saved the universe. I thought was a really great arc for the three episodes.
MIke McMahan: I think over time, people will realize that 509 is actually is a very big Mariner and Boimler story too. So, we’re away from Tend, Rutherford, and T’Lyn, but 509, in a lot of ways, is the resolution of the end of season one, where Boimler goes to the Titan and then gets split. We’re seeing where that Boimler kind of ends up in this. And his friendship with Mariner saves his belief in himself. And his friendship with Mariner literally saves existence. You know what I mean?
But yeah, definitely, we packed it in at the end of the season and the finale had to be a celebration of the Cerritos, the ship, the characters, a celebration of all of our leads, a celebration of the rest of the crew, a celebration of what makes a good Star Trek episode, with Klingons and mysteries, and sci fi phenomenon, and then, getting the fun of seeing the Cerritos change to all those different versions of the Cerritos. And that cool shot of the Klingons floating off of their sail barge in the nebula, and all that stuff.
And then at the very end, that Mariner speech, walking through the ship, pulling at your heartstrings and being like, ‘Man, we had an amazing run.’ That’s such a thank you speech. That was the last thing I wrote for the episode. We watched the animatic, and we were like, ‘Something’s missing here.’ And writing that, and adding those scenes, that peaceful moment of like, ‘Man, we loved making this show.’ And we love that it exists, and we love the koala, and we love Twaining, and we love having a good time with you guys. That really does encapsulate the entire season for me, that walk through Mariner does. And she kicked computer.
Mike McMahan: (laughs) And she set her bed on fire.
Image via Paramount+
I want to give you, Tawny, and Jack your due. The three of you together are central to thetwo biggestStar Trekcrossoversever, live-action and animation. And I know you punched up theStrange New Worldscrossover, and then you went bigger and topped it with your own. Just amazing.
MIke McMahan; I love the Strange New Worlds crossover. One of my writers was the co-writer of that, Kathryn Lyn. [Jonathan] Frakes and everybody at Strange New Worlds is such a big Lower Decks fan that we really got to be involved in that all the way down to the edit. I got to sit in the edit. But really, it’s Tawny and Jack that are shining there. I can’t take that away from then. We gave them stuff to work with, and then they took it further.
And then for our crossover episode, that was a thank you to the fans, because the number one thing fans say that they don’t want is retreading old stuff, and the number thing they want is to celebrate the old stuff. And it’s a very hard thing to do, to give them something that’s so surprising like that without f*cking it up. That episode did take a lot of work. It took a lot of thought. And my number one rule for it that made it so hard was that we have to have it packed with legacy folks, but none of them can be window dressing. All of them have to have a story. All of them have to have funny moments. All of them have to have dramatic moments. And that’s going to make this episode really hard. We don’t have room for a B story in it. It’s a movie the entire time, and I’m really proud of it. Like, I just think we pulled off something really special.
It’s one of the bestStar Trekepisodes ever. I’m on the record saying that. I want to go back to that and talk about T’Pol, which is my biggest dream come true that you pulled off this season. How did you get Jolene, and did you get the impression that she would be interested in doing moreStar Trek,just from the experience she had with you?
Mike McMahan: I didn’t ask her about doing more Star Trek. I was so amazed she did [Lower Decks], because we were told that she had told other shows that she was out [of Star Trek]. She was just being a mom and doing her stuff. I think she does charity stuff. And so, I wrote her a note, I sent her the script, and she watched some of the show. And she literally was like, ‘Yeah, this is fun. I want to do this. I like this show.’ She came in and was so good at getting back into T’Pol. Like, bonkers good at it. It felt startling. And I was asking her to do like, ‘Faster T’Pol, and slightly more ironic T’Pol.’ But always saying, Can we find this together?'
Because she, as T’Pol, defined so many Vulcan attitudes with T’Lyn and everything you saw in “wej Duj.” And then hearing how much fun she had and how much she loved Bakula… We have all these outtakes of that line where she’s calling him a big Starfleet nerd. And we were like, ‘What else would you have called Bakula?’ There’s a lot of funny outtakes of that. You could tell she had fun with him on that show.
And here’s the thing: I think Jolene can do whatever she wants. If somebody from Star Trek came to her and said, ‘What do you want to do? And then put together something even better than what she wanted, that’s how I think you could get any legacy folk back into Star Trek. You want them to feel like they’re getting to do something new. They all did so many episodes of these characters, and they love them too, but I think you want to push them, but you don’t want to change it, and make it different. I don’t know. I’m just guessing now. She was awesome.
Yeah, she was fantastic. Like you said, her cadences, everything was perfect. Like it was like 2001 all over again.
Mike McMahan: Just like, emulating it with T’Lyn. And it was so weird to direct it. I worked with Gabrielle [Ruiz] doing T’Lyn for a couple of years and then to have Jolene? This is awesome.
Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Finale Promotes Commander Ransom To Captain
Jerry O’Connell Got His Star Trek: Lower Decks Finale Wish
I love that at the end, Ransom becomes Captain of the Cerritos. It’s the passing the torch thatTNGnever really did with Riker. When I talked to Jerry a couple of weeks ago, he said to me that all he wanted was forRansom to become Captain before Una[Rebecca Romijn]. And then you did it. I think you completely upended the O’Connell and Romijn household.
Mike McMahan: (laughs) I think so, too. Jerry is probably strutting around with his pips. I love how we started the first episode making sure the audience despised Ransom. And then, across the series, had them fall in love with him, because Jerry is so lovable. I did a lot of work to show you why Ransom was a good officer and a good Starfleet officer across these five seasons. So having him become captain at the end of it, and knowing that he’s going to drive Mariner and Boimler nuts, and they’re going to drive him nuts, but still be good Starfleet officers… It just felt really right. It felt really good to do that at the end.
Binge And Talk About How Much You Love Lower Decks Online, But Be Respectful
We all want more. Is there a way to get the show on another streaming service? What can we do to make that happen?
Mike McMahan: I’d say just be really vocal about it, but be really respectful. The thing I don’t want anybody to do is to is say stuff like, ‘Whoever canceled this is a moron.’ Shows get picked up because of enthusiasm and joy, not out of bitterness and [being] demanding. I think, as the finale comes out, figuring out a way to celebrate it and ask for more is always going to be better than demanding and being upset that you’re not being given what you want.
And then I’ll tell you anything that the fandom can do that helps me point at that and say,‘Look at these peanut hampers they sent in, or look at these postcards they wrote.’ I will be working behind the scenes for sure, not only trying to navigate this moment, but it’s just hard to get anything going right now. But also, I’ll be working behind the scenes to attempt to figure out the exact right time to get a yes on getting to do more Lower Decks. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but I’m certainly not going to give up on it. And at the same time, I’m always writing ideas for Lower Decks. So it’s not like I’ve stopped thinking about the show and coming up with stuff. So the second that they say yes, I’m going to be ready to hit the ground and do some more awesome stuff.
More About Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5
In Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5, the crew of the USS Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes” – subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Jr. Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford … if they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries, and scariest of all: their own career aspirations. This upcoming season on Paramount+ is a celebration of this underdog crew who are dangerously close to being promoted out of the lower decks and into strange new Starfleet roles.
