The following article discusses the fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks and older Treks.<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s no such thing as \u201cdead\u201d in Star Trek<\/a>, the sprawling, perpetual opus that has thrived in spite of itself for almost sixty years. What started as a cornball space-ships and punch-fights show for atomic-age kids and their parents has become (gestures around) all this. So I\u2019m not writing too much of an obituary for Star Trek: Lower Decks<\/em><\/a> despite its fifth season being its last. Given Paramount\u2019s fluid leadership right now, I can easily imagine that decision being reversed in the future. So this isn\u2019t so much of a goodbye as a farewell for now.<\/p>\n Lower Decks\u2019<\/em> fifth season picks up not long after the fourth left off, with Tendi still repaying her debt to the Orions. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a spoiler to suggest the status-quo reasserts itself soon after given, you know, all the other times this has happened. The crew of the Cerritos is then thrust into the usual sort of high-minded, lowbrow yet full of heart hijinks that we\u2019ve come to expect. Naturally, I\u2019m sworn to secrecy, but the fifth episode \u2014 where its title alone is a big spoiler \u2014 is a highlight.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen the first five episodes of the season and as with any sitcom, there are a few misses in between the hits. One episode in particular is trying to reach for an old-school Frasier <\/em>plotline, but it falls flat given the thinness of the characters in question. Thankfully, Lower Decks<\/em> is able to carry a weak show on the back of its central cast\u2019s charm. Sadly, as it tries to give everyone a grace note, some characters you\u2019d expect would get more focus are instead shunted to the periphery.<\/p>\n You can feel Lower Decks<\/em> straining against its own premise, too. A show about people on the lowest rung of the ladder can\u2019t get too high. As a corrective, both Mariner and Boimler use this year as an opportunity to mature and grow. I won\u2019t spoil the most glorious running gag of the season, but their growth comes in very different ways. If there\u2019s a downside, it\u2019s that the show still relies too much on energy-sapping action sequences to resolve its episodes.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s a minor gripe for a show that grew from the would-be class clown of the Trek world to the most joyful interpretation of its ethos. I\u2019ve always loved how, when the chips are down, Lower Decks<\/em> delights in the bits plenty of newer Treks would rather ignore. The show is, and has been, a delight to watch and something for the rest of the franchise to aspire toward.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been looking for a way to describe Lower Decks\u2019<\/em> target audience for years, but only now has it hit me. It\u2019s a show written by, and for, the people who grew up watching Star Trek in the VHS era. Creator Mike McMahan is just four years older than me, barely a teenager when The Next Generation<\/em> went off-air. So while he\u2019d have encountered Deep Space Nine<\/em> and Voyager<\/em> as first-run, everything else would have been discovered through re-runs and tapes.<\/p>\n You can almost track that timeline of discovery as Lower Decks<\/em> broadened its range of hat-tips each year it ran. Of course <\/em>we got a parody of the first two Trek films in the first season \u2014 both were ever-present on Saturday afternoon TV when I was a kid \u2014 but it\u2019s not until the third that we get a nod to First Contact<\/em>. As Enterprise<\/em> ran out of gas, you can feel McMahan and co\u2019s delving into the behind-the-scenes lore and convention gossip about those later series.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve seen <\/a>, you\u2019ll spot the gag about Harry Kim\u2019s promotion, something the character never got on Voyager<\/em>. If you\u2019re fluent with Trek\u2019s behind-the-scenes drama you\u2019ll know the handful of reasons why, and why it\u2019s funny to nod toward that now. But that\u2019s not the only subtle gag that points a sharpened elbow into the ribs of major figures from the series creative team. I\u2019m sure if you don\u2019t spot them all, Reddit will have assembled a master list half an hour after each episode lands on Paramount+.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t indulge in theorizing as to why a popular and successful show like Lower Decks<\/em> is ending (it\u2019s money, it\u2019s always money). But, as we\u2019ve seen countless times before, it\u2019s not as if it\u2019s hard to revive a successful animated show when wiser heads prevail. Hell, even McMahan told <\/em><\/a> he\u2019s prepared for that, and even has some spin-off ideas in the works. But for now, let\u2019s raise a toast to Lower Decks,<\/em> the animated sitcom that became the cornerstone of modern Star Trek.<\/p>\n The first two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season five will arrive on Paramount+, Thursday, October 24, with an additional episode landing each week for the successive eight weeks. The series and season finale will air on December 19.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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