Star Trek: Lower Decks Remains A Galaxy Brained Spoof In Its Fifth and Final Season

After a long, painful post-Enterprise drought, the streaming era has brought a whole bunch of Star Trek to the small screen, so much so that even many diehard Trekkies may have fallen behind. Sure, much of this output has been divisive, especially in an internet era where fandoms have become nearly impossible to please, but quite a bit of this output has been great, like the throwback Strange New Worlds.

But of these, the biggest surprise for me has been Lower Decks, a hilarious animated series that focuses on the kinds of red shirts who would normally bite it within 15 seconds on an away mission. The centerpiece of this show’s success is how it balances parody with the type of earnestness that Trek is known for, poking fun at the franchise’s storytelling conventions while still embracing its core utopian beliefs. And thankfully, at least through the first five episodes of this final season, showrunner Mike McMahan and the rest of the team continue to deliver jokes so funny they could (almost) make a Vulcan grin.

For those unfamiliar with the premise, this story follows a crew of junior officers, “lower deckers,” on Starfleet’s USS Cerritos as they “seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Or that’s the overall goal, at least, because a lot of the time, they’re too busy having existential breakdowns, dealing with imposter syndrome, or going AWOL. Of these lower deckers, the main group we follow consists of Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), a former loose cannon learning to live with responsibility, Boimler (Jack Quaid), a chronic over-preparer attempting to go with the flow more, D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), a medic who’s a bundle of positivity, Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), a ship-obsessed engineer, and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz), a banished Vulcan.

Over the last four seasons, we’ve watched these lovable doofuses grow into their careers, and as with most great workplace comedies, this one is excellent at focusing on character relationships and job-related minutiae. In particular, this latest run manages the tricky task of continuing to focus on their foibles while also highlighting how much they’ve grown, such as how Mariner has come a long way in accepting responsibility but still gets anxious about being in command, or how Boimler still beefs it sometimes even though he’s become much more confident. Star Trek may traditionally focus on grandiose philosophical inquiries involving funky-looking aliens, but this show is often more interested in how these strange happenings influence its characters and their bonds with each other, which these episodes continue to do well.

Specifically, while I was worried that it seemed like Tendi was getting written out of the story after events in Season 4, these first few episodes focus on her more than ever, which is a big plus considering that she’s a delightful character whose optimism and dorkiness is a perfect stand-in for the franchise writ large. We get to see plenty of her pirate adventures, including scenes that focus on her surprisingly wholesome bond with her marauding sister, and the rest of the episodes after this have similarly fun hooks that involve Klingon farming, a planet transitioning away from capitalism, and an extended Apocalypse Now reference.

Across these escapades, the series remains as humorous as ever, laughing with instead of at Star Trek’s endearing goofiness. There’s no denying that this longtime-running sci-fi story is defined by many cheesy details (like the space whales), and Lower Decks is excellent at needling these cartoonish extremes without undermining the setting. Perhaps this success largely stems from the fanboy/girl glee applied in every detail, and this latest run draws from classic staples like the Riker chair maneuver and plenty of one-off episode callbacks, like that time Geordi almost got mutated into a blue alien. Basically, the endless easter eggs work because they’re used to deliver ultra-specific, ultra-funny jokes, and the constant gags land because it’s clear this teasing comes from a place of love.