by Alison Pitt
Star Trek: Lower Decks - the upcoming animated series from CBS - is still on schedule.
But what that schedule is is still anyone’s guess.
Mike McMahan, the series showrunner, gave an update on the state of the new show in the course of an interview with Inverse.
The long and short of it is: we’re still on track, but there’s still no official word on a release date.
McMahan was speaking to Inverse as part of an interview about his latest series for Hulu, Solar Opposites, which premiered last week.
Solar Opposites, an animated sitcom about an alien family living in middle America, is one of two shows that McMahan took on after leaving the hit show Rick and Morty, which is in its final season.
The other, of course, being Lower Decks.
When the Inverse interview naturally turned to how Lower Decks is coming along, McMahan wasn’t able to give much more detail than what we’ve heard from him before about how the show is progressing. “I can’t give you a specific answer on when that’s coming out,” he said, “but we’re still working on it and we’re on track for when we have planned, which is this year.”
McMahan pointed out that while much of Hollywood has slowed or stopped production, animation is uniquely suited to continue, which is what’s kept them on track.
He said, “Safely recording the cast was our biggest challenge because we don’t want them leaving their houses.
So getting remote setups and stuff was something we had to solve, but it seems like we have.”
It wasn’t just production that the conversation covered, though; McMahan was also able to reiterate some details of what we can expect from the plot.
He describes Lower Decks as a “proper in-canon Star Trek show” that takes place contemporary to Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The adventures will be “big, never before seen Starfleet Star Trek type stories” and have “A stories and B stories that are emotionally driven from the point of view of the lower deckers on the ships”.
McMahan insists, “If you know nothing about Star Trek, then all of the canon in Lower Decks feels like mythological, broad understandable sci-fi stuff. So you can still enjoy Lower Decks even if it’s your first Star Trek show.”
All we need now is a premiere date from CBS All Access.
