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Star Trek fans have always enjoyed the franchise’s tech-driven socialist utopia, so it’s only fitting that the cancellation Lower decks exposed capitalism’s biggest lie: if you build it, they will come. That means we spend our lives being told that being successful is just a matter of proving your talent and doing amazing work. For this Star Trek fan, Lower decks was a nearly perfect show, but its cancellation reveals two bitter truths: being great doesn’t mean being profitable, and modern Trekkers just don’t have a clue what they want.
Do fans want Star Trek: Lower Decks?
Paramount understandably didn’t like to discuss the numbers that motivated them to cancel the Star Trek show early Discovery and Lower decksboth of which unexpectedly had to make their fifth seasons final seasons. The main assumption about Lower decks it is, although it is much cheaper to produce than shows like Strange new worldsdidn’t get enough views or bring in enough new subscribers Paramount+. And while Paramount’s mishandling of the NuTrek realm is partly to blame, I can’t help but think that my fellow fans just don’t know what they really want out of this franchise.
Star Trek characters like Michael Burnham like children’s fairy tales like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandso I think it’s only suitable for viewing Lower decks in terms of another children’s fairy tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. While Discovery finished strong, initially turning off new fans by focusing so much on old lore that it disrupted existing canon regarding everything from the Klingons to Spock’s tangled family tree. Simply put, soon Discovery he stumbled because he was trying to concentrate too much known characters and events rather than trying something new.
for comparison, Picard had the opposite problem. Patrick Stewart himself reportedly wanted the show to avoid too many tie-ins A new generationwhich is just one of the reasons why the first two seasons were a hot mess. Only after the failure of the previous seasons did Paramount and Stewart give the fans what they wanted, turning Season 3 into LPG reunion. Before that killer final season though PicardThe biggest failure was that he was constantly trying to do something completely new instead of focusing on what made his title character so great.
Another main Star Trek series was Lower decksand he managed to find the Balance Goldilocks that the fans wanted. Each season was full of hilarious callbacks to beloved characters from Q to Harry Kim, and the show always had great Easter eggs that older fans appreciated (I almost spit out my drink when I saw the giant skeleton Spock Two, unclear Animated series character). At the same time, the show introduced amazing new characters like Boimler and Mariner, which proves it Lower deckslike Goldilocks’ preferred bed, she was “just right” in her ability to focus on something old and something new at the same time.
So much potential
Another thing the show got “just right” was finding the sweet spot between providing silly comedy and creating killer canon. Every episode Lower decks provided his share of hilarious laughs, but the show was never afraid to change the canon in a big way (I especially loved the return of Nick Locarno). And the series finale ended with Starfleet having a stable wormhole into the multiverse, which is more or less an open invitation to future Trek writers to go absolutely fierce with all that juicy storytelling potential.
As a Star Trek fan who fell in love with the franchise during TNG’s original run, the word “potential” is what I associate most with it. Lower decks. The show lived up to all of its potential and then some, combining divisive comedy with exciting storylines that transcended the boundaries of the franchise. Honestly, if Star Trek is all about infinite variety in infinite combinations, Lower decks deserves a permanent spot in Stovokor for being the only NuTrek show (sorry Strange new worlds) fully embrace this Vulcan ideal.
Unfortunately, the premature cancellation of the show means that the fandom either doesn’t appreciate the best NuTrek has to offer, or worse yet, has no idea what it really wants from this venerable franchise. Star Wars understandably gets heat for not delivering what fans want, but the general premise is Disney Execs are (for whatever reason) ignoring the proven, fan-favorite formula in favor of stuffing our own branded action figure-optimized content down our throats.
However, Star Trek is now in a much worse situation, with no one seemingly knowing what they want from the franchise and a world where fans have rejected Lower decks is one where the franchise is doomed to die a slow death. With any luck, Paramount will bring Mike McMahan’s seminal show back in one form or another so we can get our favorite science fiction universe back on track. Otherwise, the phrase “Star Trek Into Darkness” simply won’t describe the franchise worst movie. It will also accurately describe how the Gene Roddenberry universe is dying at the hands of careless managers who can’t stop failing the fandom.
