Upcoming animated series ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ has got it’s first trailer, along with a US premiere date of Thursday, August 6, on CBS All Access. We don’t yet know where or when it will land in the UK.
Developed by Emmy Award-winner Mike McMahan (‘Rick and Morty’, ‘Solar Opposites’), ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ focuses on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, in 2380. Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi have to keep up with their duties and their social lives, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies.
The Starfleet crew residing in the “lower decks” of the U.S.S. Cerritos, includes Ensign Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome, Ensign Brad Boimler, voiced by Jack Quaid, Ensign Tendi, voiced by Noël Wells and Ensign Rutherford, voiced by Eugene Cordero. The Starfleet characters that comprise the ship’s bridge crew include Captain Carol Freeman, voiced by Dawnn Lewis, Commander Jack Ransom, voiced by Jerry O’Connell, Lieutenant Shaxs, voiced by Fred Tatasciore and Doctor T’Ana, voiced by Gillian Vigman.
The series is produced by CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, CBS Television Studios’ new animation arm; Secret Hideout; and Roddenberry Entertainment. Secret Hideout’s Alex Kurtzman and Heather Kadin, Roddenberry Entertainment’s Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) serve as executive producers alongside creator and showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout), who brought McMahan to the project, serves as a co-executive producer. Titmouse (“Big Mouth”), the Emmy Award-winning independent animation production company, serves as the animation studio for the series. ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ will air exclusively on CBS All Access in the United States and is distributed worldwide by ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group.
Mike McMahan has worked on a number of animated series including ‘Rick and Morty’, ‘South Park’ and ‘Solar Opposites’. It’s not his first ‘Trek’ project either. As a long-time fan of the series, in 2011 McMahan started a Twitter account where he posted episode plots to a fake season of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’. They were such a hit that Simon & Schuster hired him to write a readers’ guide to a fictitious eighth season of TNG titled ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation: Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season’. He also has a cat named “Riker” and his son is named Sagan… As head of all things ‘Trek’, Alex Kurtzman, said when the show was commissioned “The man is committed. He is brilliantly funny and knows every inch of every ‘Trek’ episode, and that’s his secret sauce!”
‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ is the first animated series to join the CBS’s new, ever-expanding ‘Star Trek’ franchise which includes original series ‘Star Trek: Picard’; ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, returning with Season 3 later this year; the recently announced U.S.S. Enterprise set series ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’, featuring Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck; and the development of a Section 31-based series with Michelle Yeoh. A CG-animated ‘Star Trek’ series aimed at younger audiences is also in the works for Nickelodeon.
‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ premieres Thursday, August 6, 2020 on CBS All Access in the USA. Hard to say where it may end up in the UK, as the other Star Trek properties are split between Netflix and Amazon, but we’ll let you know when we hear something.
