'Star Trek: Lower Decks' Gets Sentimental With Final Season Teaser
The team of the USS Cerritos is moving on, up, and out this fall on Paramount+
Lower Decks! Lower Decks! Lower Decks! Paramount+ Saturday released the teaser trailer for the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, a fact met with boos from the audience it was released to as part of the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con, which Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells and Jerry O’Connell, and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Mike McMahan were on hand for. That’s ensigns Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, D’Vana Tendi, and first officer Jack Ransom, respectively
This season the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing “space potholes”, which are subspace rifts that trouble the Alpha Quadrant. Handling these “potholes” would be easy for Jr. Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford, but that’s on top of having to to deal with an Orion war, angry Klingons, diplomatic disasters, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations. That’s right, this underdog crew is dangerously close to being promoted out of the lower decks and into strange new Starfleet roles, which explains the streamer’s mindset of canceling the show as the show achieves goals and believing there’s no need for them to advance further than that. See also iCarly.
Anyway, the teaser starts by looking back on various moments from the first four seasons on the hull of the Cerritos, kind of like Phineas and Ferb’s coffee mug gift to Candace in Candace Against the Universe that projected their adventures. One of the alternate universes explored through these rifts sees a Beckett who captains the Cerritos with a stronger relationship with her mother Captain Freeman, even using the Freeman surname. There’s all sorts of moments too short for context but they all look pretty exciting, some even heartwarming.
It’s another ten-episode season for the series, and its final leg premieres on Paramount+ with two episodes on Thursday, October 24 in the United States and internationally how internationally is unclear). Following the premiere, episodes will continue to be released every Thursday, leaving the series finale to be released on Thursday, December 19. Which means if one episode opened the season, the series finale would be premiering the day after Christmas.
McMahan said that the series closer will be of “a chapter” but not the conclusion of the characters’ stories. Think the Big Time Rush series finale, which didn’t contain a graduation, nor a move away to another city, nor a wedding, like so many other series finales do, but achieving a short-term goal, a dream that’s just a stepping stone to the bigger that lie ahead. He of course did not use Big Time Rush as an example but it’s definitely one intended series finale that is more low-key for those reasons. Asked what fans need to do to get that sixth season, McMahan said with a wry smile: “My safe answer for this is watch the hell of the season when it airs — watch all of Star Trek when it airs. And if you’re really loud and vocal about your support, after we air, I’ll think of other things to say when I don’t work for these guys.”
Star Trek: Lower Decks also stars Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, Fred Tatasciore and Gillian Vigman. It is produced by CBS Studios’ animation arm Eye Animation Productions as well as Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Other executive producers include the latter company’s Rod Roddenberry, Aaron Baiers, and Trevor Roth. The teaser can be watched below.
