When Mike McMahan first announced he was making a cartoon about the people who scrub the bio-filters on the Enterprise—well, the Cerritos, but you get the point—the collective groan from the Trek fanbase was audible from the Gamma Quadrant. People were terrified. After the grim, high-stakes trauma of Discovery and the existential dread of Picard Season 1, the last thing anyone thought we needed was a "Rick and Morty" style riff on Gene Roddenberry's utopia. It felt like a recipe for disaster. But then Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 actually premiered in 2020, and something weird happened. It was actually good. Not just "funny for a cartoon" good, but "this actually feels more like Trek than anything else on TV" good.
Honestly, it’s the show that saved the franchise from taking itself too seriously.
The premise is basically the antithesis of every Trek show that came before it. Instead of focusing on the bridge crew—the heroic Captains and the logical Commanders who make the big, galaxy-altering decisions—we’re stuck in the "lower decks." We’re with the Ensigns. These are the guys who sleep in bunk beds in the hallway. They do the "Second Contact" missions. That means they arrive after the big hero ships have already made the fancy first contact and left. They’re the ones who have to actually set up the subspace relays and fill out the paperwork while the planet's bureaucracy slowly grinds them into dust. It’s gritty in the most mundane way possible.
The Chaos of Ensign Mariner and the Rules of Boimler
At the heart of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 is the dynamic between Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler. If you’ve worked a corporate job, you know these two. Mariner is the overqualified slacker who has seen it all, done it all, and been demoted more times than Harry Kim. She’s voiced by Tawny Newsome with this incredible, caffeinated energy that shouldn't work in Trek, but somehow does. She’s the person who knows the rules are stupid because she’s seen how the sausage gets made.
Then there’s Boimler.
Jack Quaid plays him as a walking anxiety attack. Boimler is the guy who memorizes the Starfleet manual. He wants to be a Captain so badly it hurts, but he lacks the "it" factor that usually defines a Trek lead. He’s a brown-noser, but a lovable one because his heart is genuinely in the right place. He believes in the dream. Watching these two clash throughout the first ten episodes provides the emotional spine of the show. While Mariner is busy smuggling contraband or mocking the Captain’s "log-worthy" speeches, Boimler is trying to ensure his uniform is perfectly pressed even while being chased by a giant spider.
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The brilliance of the writing in this debut season is how it balances the cynicism of Mariner with the earnestness of Boimler. It doesn't mock Star Trek. It mocks the absurdity of living in a universe where god-like entities turn you into a lizard or trap you in a giant game of hopscotch. It acknowledges that, yeah, Starfleet is a military organization, but it’s also a workplace. And workplaces are usually pretty weird.
Why "Second Contact" Actually Matters for the Lore
One of the biggest complaints early on was that a comedy would "ruin" the canon. It didn't. In fact, Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 fixed a lot of the world-building issues that had been lingering since the 90s. Think about it. The Enterprise visits a planet, solves a 5,000-year-old civil war in 42 minutes, and then just... leaves? Who checks if the peace treaty held? Who helps them build the new power grid?
The California-class ships do.
The U.S.S. Cerritos isn't a sovereign-class battleship. It’s a support ship. By focusing on these low-priority missions, the show explores the "flyover states" of the Alpha Quadrant. We get to see the fallout of TNG episodes. For example, in the episode "Envoys," we see what happened to the Klingons when they aren't in a state of constant war. They’re just... bored. They’re hanging out in bars, feeling like their culture is becoming a parody of itself. It’s a level of nuance you don't get when the stakes are always "the end of the universe."
The Tendi and Rutherford Subplot: Pure Optimism
While Mariner and Boimler represent the conflict between rebellion and order, Ensigns Tendi and Rutherford are just pure, unadulterated joy. This is where the show really leans into the "humanity is better in the future" vibe. D'Vana Tendi is an Orion—a species usually relegated to "space pirate" or "slave girl" tropes in older series—who is just a super-excited science officer. She loves everything. She thinks the ship is the coolest place in the world.
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Rutherford is a human engineer with a fresh cybernetic implant that he’s still learning how to use. Their friendship is the most wholesome thing in modern sci-fi. They don't have a "will-they-won't-they" romantic arc in Season 1; they just geek out over ship specs and medical procedures. It’s refreshing. In a TV landscape obsessed with "prestige" grit, seeing two characters who genuinely love their jobs is almost revolutionary.
Take the episode "Crisis Point." It’s basically a love letter to the Star Trek films. Mariner creates a holodeck simulation to vent her frustrations about her mother, Captain Freeman. But instead of just being a therapy session, it turns into a parody of every Trek movie cliché—the lens flares, the dramatic slow-motion walks, the unnecessarily long ship beauty shots. But even in the middle of this parody, Rutherford and Tendi find a way to make it about their personal growth. It’s a meta-commentary that works because the characters are grounded.
Acknowledging the "Too Fast" Problem
I’ll be honest. The first two episodes are a lot. The dialogue is delivered at a breakneck speed that feels like the writers were afraid if they stopped talking for a second, the audience would realize they were watching a cartoon. It’s loud. It’s frantic. Some fans bailed after the pilot because they felt it was too "non-Trek."
That was a mistake.
By the time you hit the middle of the season, specifically episodes like "Much Ado About Orbs" or "Veritas," the show finds its rhythm. It realizes it doesn't need to scream to be funny. The humor starts coming from the characters rather than just the situation. You start to realize that the frantic pace actually reflects the life of an Ensign. They are constantly overwhelmed. They are small cogs in a massive machine that they don't fully understand. If they seem stressed, it’s because their boss is a Commander who might literally explode if the phaser banks aren't calibrated.
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The Finale and the Return of the Legend
If there was any doubt that Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 was "real" Trek, the finale, "No Small Parts," blew it out of the water. It’s an episode that features a legitimate, high-stakes space battle against the Pakleds. For the uninitiated, the Pakleds were the "dumb" aliens from TNG who "make things go." The show turned them into a terrifying threat because, turns out, if you spend decades stealing everyone else's technology, you eventually become a powerhouse.
The moment the U.S.S. Titan drops out of warp to save the Cerritos is one of the best moments in the franchise. Period.
Hearing the TNG-era theme kick in as Captain William Riker (voiced by Jonathan Frakes) takes command is pure fan service, but it’s earned. It bridges the gap. It tells the audience: "Yes, this is the same universe. These people are heroes too, even if they spend their days cleaning the holodeck." Riker’s presence isn't just a cameo; it’s an endorsement. He’s depicted exactly how we imagined him—jazz-loving, reckless, and deeply loyal to his crew. It was the perfect way to wrap up the season’s arc of the Cerritos crew finally proving their worth.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Rewatch
If you’re planning to dive back into the first season or if you’re a newcomer wondering how to approach it, don't just treat it like background noise. There’s a lot of depth here if you look for it.
- Watch the background. The animators at Titmouse packed every frame with Easter eggs. You’ll see Gorn skeletons, TAS (The Animated Series) references, and even obscure gadgets from the 60s show. It’s a visual encyclopedia of Trek history.
- Focus on Captain Freeman’s arc. On a first watch, Captain Carol Freeman might seem like a generic "mean boss." But look closer. She’s struggling with the fact that her daughter is a brilliant but self-sabotaging officer under her command. It’s a really messy, human parental dynamic that most Trek shows avoid.
- Listen for the score. Chris Westlake’s music is phenomenal. He manages to capture the orchestral sweep of Jerry Goldsmith while keeping it light enough for a half-hour comedy. The theme song alone is a masterpiece of "heroic-but-slightly-off-kilter" composition.
- Pay attention to the Pakleds. They aren't just a joke; they represent the danger of underestimated threats. It’s a surprisingly deep political allegory for how advanced societies ignore "lesser" powers until it’s too late.
Ultimately, this season proved that Star Trek can be funny without being a parody. It showed that the "Lower Decks" perspective is actually a more honest way to look at a utopian future. We aren't all Picards or Kirks. Most of us are Boimlers, just trying to do our jobs well and hoping the warp core doesn't breach on a Tuesday. It’s a show made by fans, for fans, but it has enough heart to stand on its own two feet even if you’ve never seen an episode of The Original Series.
If you want to understand where the franchise is going in 2026 and beyond, you have to go back to where the tone shifted. It shifted on the Cerritos. It shifted with a group of friends sitting in a hallway, complaining about their shifts, and dreaming of the stars.
Go watch "Crisis Point" again. It’s the moment the show stopped being a "Star Trek cartoon" and just became Star Trek. That’s the real legacy of the first season. It proved that the heart of the franchise isn't the ship or the technology—it’s the people, no matter what deck they sleep on.