'Star Trek: Lower Decks', 'Strange New Worlds' Bring New Clips To New York Comic-Con
The pressure is mounting, Becky
Sure, the Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comic-Con saw Star Trek: Starfleet Academy announce it’s been renewed for a second season before its first, where Tatiana Maslany became the latest guest star announced, could even premiere. And yeah, Star Trek: Section 31 finally got its premiere date. That doesn’t mean the active (and Paramount+-acknowledged) series, Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds don’t have anything to bring to the table, and they most certainly did.
Lower Decks in particular is less than a week away from premiering its fifth and final season, and has gotten both of its homage posters to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier out there. So even though they seemingly won’t get to do any Undiscovered Country homages, at least they have that “final” synergy. Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, and executive producer and showrunner Mike McMahan were on hand for the panel, which included a screening of the season premiere, one of two episodes that will be released on Thursday, October 24. A 90-second clip from that episode was released to the public, which saw the USS Cerritos drawn to an interdimensional portal from which alternate versions of themselves emerge, led by Beckett (Newsome)’s counterpart, Captain Becky Freeman, keen on nicknames and evidently closer to her mother.
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 the main quartet, 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. This underdog crew is dangerously close to being promoted out of the lower decks and into strange new Starfleet roles. Lower Decks’s bridge crew included Captain Carol Freeman voiced by Dawnn Lewis, Commander Jack Ransom voiced by Jerry O’Connell, and Doctor T’Ana voiced by Gillian Vigman.
Meanwhile Strange New Worlds, which follows the Enterprise crew during the Christopher Pike captaincy, played by Anson Mount, is expected to be secure through 2026, having been renewed for a fourth season while season three awaits a 2025 premiere. Its panel segment had Ethan Peck (Spock), Carol Kane (Pelia; having her first Comic-Con experience), and executive producers and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers on hand. Because a trailer isn’t ready, at least to be shared and that 2025 premiere is expected to give some breathing room for Section 31’s late January premiere, it’s still going to be a bit. So like the panel’s San Diego counterpart, the New York crowd got a sneak peek clip of its own. This seems to pick up straight from the season 2 cliffhanger, facing the Gorn onslaught and must find a creative way to get out of it. The series also had its own guest star to share, with Rhys Darby in a yet-to-be-revealed but seemingly pre-existing role. He’s known for Flight of the Conchords, Our Flag Means Death, Jumanji: The Next Level, Voltron: Legendary Defender and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was also the voice of Crash Bandicoot on the Skylanders Academy animated series.
Strange New Worlds also stars Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun and Martin Quinn, along with special guest stars Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk. Both series are produced by CBS Studios (the Eye Animation arm doing so for Lower Decks), Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Jenny Lumet, Aaron Baiers, Dana Horgan, Davy Perez, Frank Siracusa, John Weber, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth all serve as executive producers on Strange New Worlds in addition to Goldsman, Kurtzman and Myers. Just Kurtzman, McMahan, Baiers, Roddenberry, and Roth EP on Lower Decks.
