Star Trek: Lower Decks

The second animated Star Trek series, after Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: Lower Decks is an adult oriented animated series penned by Mike McMahan (Solar Opposites).

First airing on August 6th 2020, the series focuses on four mismatched ensigns (Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, Sam Rutherford, and D'Vana Tendi) aboard the USS Cerritos "one of Starfleet's least important ships" while also being among its lowest ranked members.

Like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, it airs on CTV Sci-Fi channel in Canada and on the French sci-fi network Z while being available on CBS All Access in other regions.

Tropes used in Star Trek: Lower Decks include:

• Actor Allusion: Q's antics are very Discordian.
• Affectionate Nickname: Shax calls Rutherford "Baby Bear".
• AI Is a Crapshoot:
  • Badgey wants only to kill Rutherford, his creator.
  • Peanut Hamper is a full on sociopath.
  • AGIMUS is a hilariously petty and catty example. He's an Omnicidal Maniac with ambitions of conquering the universe, but thanks to being disconnected from any power system he settles for snidely mocking Boimler and Mariner and unsubtly trying to trick them into plugging him into a computer system.
  • The Texas-class ships. They're based off the same base code as Badgey and have the same emotional issues as he does.
  • Averted with Vexilon. Despite many Fauxshadows, he is honestly benevolent.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Mariner thinks Khan was the greatest badass in the galaxy.
• The Alleged Car: The Cerritos needs constant maintenance to fly.
• Alliterative Name: Bradward Boimler.
• Ambiguously Human: Boimler is seen as "near-human" in many episodes by aliens. Whether this is a Running Gag or something else has yet to be revealed.
• Anachronism Stew: The series is packed with Continuity Porn but it does sometimes has some overlap with the uniforms. Justified though. As Starfleet is galaxy wide, not everyone can get the new digs all at once. This gets lampshaded in "Reflections".
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: O'Connor in "Moist Vessel". It sounds uniquely painful an experience.
• Back From the Dead:
  • Shaxs in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris". The process is not fully explained but it involved fighting three faceless apparitions of his father at the Black Mountain after which the surviving father made Shaxs eat his heart. Most of the crew treats this as an Unusually Uninteresting Sight given how frequently senior officers return to life.
  • Boimler in "In the Cradle of Vexilon". Judging by his dialogue, Ransom has also died more than once.
• Badass Adorable: Tendi is the cutest thing in the galaxy yet she can walk over a platoon of Romulan elite troops.
• Bait the Dog: "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" at first seems to show Peanut Hamper is genuinely redeeming herself, but it's all an act. In reality, she's gotten worse.
• Be Yourself: The moral of "Envoys." If you love your job, then that's where you're meant to be.
• Become Their Own Antithesis: Rutherford was the polar opposite of what he is now before his implant.
• Benevolent Boss: Every department head on the Cerritos is insanely supportive.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just like in Star Trek: Picard, Riker saves the day in the first season finale.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Literally. Rutherford and Shaxs steal a TOS-era Romulan bird of prey from a Vulcan museum in "Veritas". The ensigns later question why they had to steal it. The Vulcans probably would have just lent it to them had they asked.
• Brilliant but Lazy: Mariner could be so much more if she took the rules seriously.
• Butt Monkey: Boimler.
• Canon Immigrant: The USS Titan from the Star Trek Novel Verse arrives to save the day in "No Small Parts."
• The Cavalry: Captain Riker shows up in the USS Titan to save the Cerritos from the the Pakleds in the Season 1 finale.
• Continuity Nod: Every episode overflows with nods to past Trek media.
• Cool Starship: Averted with the Cerritos, it's a piece of crap. The Parliament-class however is something to admire.
• Crapsaccharine World: Why Mariner hates Earth. It's so wonderfully perfect that all there is to do is eat Soul Food and drink wine.
• Creepy Good: Division 14. The Edosian spokesperson admits that maybe they should turn the Osler‍'‍s lights on and paint it in brighter colours. Doesn't help that he does an Evil Laugh whenever he's happy.
• Culture Justifies Anything: When Tendi asks why the command crew let the ensigns boil in eel-infested water, Ransom plays this card.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Tendi. Best shown in "Moist Vessel."
• Cyborg: Rutherford's implant.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Tendi was once an Orion pirate queen known as the "Mistress of the Winter Constellations".
• Darkest Hour: "No Small Parts". The ship is near completely torn apart, by the Pakleds of all people, Rutherford gets amnesia and Shaxs dies.
• Deconstruction: All those cool Star Trek moments are now shown from the perspective of the lower decks. All those people who have to brace for impact and fix the ship or rewire stuff for modifications.
  • Across the franchise, it's been a great source of Snark Bait that Starfleet just casually walks towards potentially hostile situations without proper protection and turns away when it's solved, never double checking or keeping tabs. "No Small Parts" shows why both are a bad idea.
• Denser and Wackier: It's the first Star Trek comedy series.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After the events of "Veritas", the ensigns tell Q to leave them alone.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Tendi's dog is called "The Dog."
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Captain Freeman's usual attitude.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Riker and Troi knew Ransom and Freeman in Starfleet Academy.
• Fantastic Racism: As only Mariner has really been to other planets, Boimler often puts his foot in his mouth with assumptions about species.
• First Contact: Averted. The Cerritos handles "second contact" which is mainly paperwork and setting up Federation infrastructure on the newly joined planets.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Mariner and Boimler handle the A-plots while Rutherford and Tendi deal with the B-Plots.
• Genre Savvy: Everyone, Mariner in particular, knows the various trappings of Trek.
• Good All Along: Division 14. Creepy Good yes but they do honestly want to help everyone.
• Gratuitous French: Q of course.
• Hate Plague: The Cerritos suffers one in the opening episode.
• Hero of Another Story: Riker has a subplot in Season 2 hunting down the Pakleds.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Shaxs sacrifices his life to save the Cerritos from the Pakleds. It doesn't last.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: The Vancouver once time travelled to kill the guy who was worse than Hitler.
• Hostile Terraforming: The Cerritos crosses paths with a generation starship in "Moist Vessel" that has a goo that does this.
• Humans Are Flawed: Arguably the point of the series. All of the crew are flawed and prone to error, but they're ultimately good people genuinely dedicated to the ideals of Starfleet and do their best to do the right thing.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Commander Jack Ransom per Troi's analysis.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Ensign Peanut Hamper starts off as a cowardly Jerkass, but she does have a point that asking her to sacrifice herself to save the Cerritos is unfair even if she was an asshole about it. When she returns in Season 3, she very quickly degenerates into a narcissistic sociopath willing to get people killed for the sake of her ego.
• Killer Rabbit: The Moopsy. Yes it's absolutely adorable but it also drinks your bones.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Ripping out Rutherford's implant erases his memories of the first season. They're slowly trickling back in Season 2.
• Last-Name Basis: All of the main four.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Takes full advantage of being an animated series to have the Milky Way be populated by a wide diversity of life.
• Lower Deck Episode: Even named after the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that named the trope.
  • "Veritas" is arguably the straightest example in the series and a Spiritual Successor to the original "Lower Decks". The four ensigns each have some link to the dangerous mission that the command crew was on and each contribute something but the four never learn the full story.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: As it turns out, the bridge crew does not do everything nor do they come up with all the ideas. Makes one wonder how many people were snubbed when Picard praised Geordi for saving the day.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", maybe Barbara just wanted to study the parasite (which may or may not have made her attracted to Boimler in the first place) or she's letting him down gently.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In "Second Contact", Boimler covers for Mariner, against direct orders, because the captain didn't give him, or any of the lower decks, any credit for stopping the Hate Plague (he being the one who brought the cure to the ship).
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
  • Tendi is an Orion but is a helpful medic instead of a sexual predator. She's rather annoyed in "Crisis Point" when Mariner forces her to play the role of an Orion Pirate Queen but does later concede that most of her people suck.
  • Most Bajorans are a calm people. Lieutenant Shaxs is not.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The best way to distract someone is to use Uhura's famous fan dance from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
  • "Crisis Point" has great fun mocking all the Star Trek movies.
  • The record of Kirk and Spock uses their depiction from Star Trek: The Animated Series.
  • Riker is still watching holodeck videos about Archer's Enterprise.
• Noodle Incident: The secret mission in "Veritas." The Cerritos crew rescued Clar from the Romulan Empire but why he was taken prisoner, or why his rescue was left to a low ranking ship and not something like the Enterprise, goes unexplained. What the audience, and the ensigns, are privy too is that the mission was needlessly complex.
• Not So Above It All: Riker is apparently a large supplier of contraband.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • The Season 1 finale changes everything. Everyone knows that Freeman and Mariner are mother and daughter who have agreed to work together, Shaxs is dead, and Boimler has been transferred to the USS Titan. By the fourth episode of Season 2, everything is back as it was.
  • "Twovix" and "I Have No Bones And I Must Flee" have the four promoted to lieutenants (j.g.).
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: It's never explained how it happened, but Rutherford did manage to escape the Gorn wedding.
• Older Than They Look: Mariner doesn't look that older from her friends but seems to have graduated from Starfleet Academy sometime during the waning days of the Dominion War. "Much Ado About Boimler" shows that one her classmates has already ascended to the rank of captain.
• Only Sane Man: Boimler is definitely this. Trouble is, he lives in an insane world.
• Pull the Thread: Upon being informed of the truth behind the events of "Veritas", the ensigns question why the plan was so needlessly complicated.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Keep overworking your crew. See how productive they'll be.
  • Ensign Fletcher was so dumb that he couldn't be left without Mariner and Boimler's constant supervision. When he's Kicked Upstairs, he doesn't last a week before he's fired.
  • Just because Starfleet, as an organization, is The Paragon, that doesn't mean ever single member signed on purely out of altruism. Some, like Peanut Hamper, signed on for petty reasons.
    • Peanut Hamper pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment and jumps into space, confident that, as a mechanical being, she'll survive the vacuum. She does but she quickly learns that she has no way of navigating space, drifting aimlessly.
  • As Mariner lampshades in the Season One finale, just because one generation found enlightenment, there's nothing stopping from the next one from falling back into savagery or the old ways, especially if what caused them to grow is now gone.
• Remember the New Guy?: Apparently most of the major cast of prior shows, such as Q and Riker, are personally acquainted with Mariner.
• Seen It All: Virtually everyone on the show is perfectly aware of how madcap things can get in Star Trek to the point that they engage in Conversational Troping and Lampshade Hanging on the reg.
• Self-Made Orphan: Badgey would love nothing more than to kill Rutherford.
• Ship Tease: Rutherford and Tendi.
• Shout-Out: A Monolith appears in the Vulcan museum.
• Take That:
  • Badgey relentlessly mocks Microsoft Office's infamous Clippy.
  • In "Hear All, Trust Nothing", needing to kill time, Ransom has the Cerritos lazily circle Deep Space 9, mocking the show's simplistic title sequence.
• Take That, Audience!: Klar, like many a Trek fan who is displeased with the Discovery era, is of the belief that all Starfleet officers have to be perfect. Boimler spells out why this doesn't have to be the case.
• Took a Level In Badass: No one ever would have guessed that the Pakleds would ever be something to take seriously.
• Token Heroic Orc: D'Vana Tendi. She's an Orion who wants to help people whereas the rest of her species are usually mercenaries and slave traders. When was the last time you saw an Orion suffer from "Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond" syndrome?
• Token Non-Human: Tendi is an Orion who befriended three humans.
• Underestimating Badassery: Everyone in the galaxy dismissed the the Pakleds as a non-threat but they prove they can throw their weight around in the finale. They even got their hands on Borg technology.
• Was Once a Man: Most of the Division 14 freaks are probably this. With all the weird stuff in Trek, even they can't be sure of every single one's origin.
• You Do NOT Want to Know: Shaxs avoids telling Rutherford how he came Back From the Dead because the knowledge will shatter his perception of the universe. When Rutherford finally learns how it happened, he's horrified.