If you’re a die-hard Star Trek fan, I totally get why you may abhor Paramount+’s Star Trek: Lower Decks animated series. It certainly doesn’t have the gravitas of the other entries of the franchise. Instead, Lower Decks is almost like a satirical look at all things Star Trek as it pokes fun at a lot of the tropes the series has used over the years. So I totally get why there is a strong contingent of hardcore Star Trek fans who dismiss this as everything the franchise is not supposed to be.

That fact does make it kind of ironic that Star Trek: Lower Decks made me want to watch more Star Trek now.

I actually started watching Star Trek when The Next Generation was broadcast here in the Philippines during my teen years and, as I fell in love with that show, it made me go back and watch The Original Series and The Animated Series as well as strive to watch other entries, such as Voyager and all the movies. Okay, I didn’t really like Deep Space Nine because it wasn’t all about exploring outer space as it was set in a space station. At the very least, I did try to watch it. I stuck around for a good season or two before calling it quits. I even went through the trouble of downloading Enterprise episodes when it was first released as no network in the Philippines were showing it. And if you know anything about how slow Internet speeds were way back in 2001, you know that requires some dedication!

I couldn’t say the same thing for the more modern entries of the Star Trek universe, though. When CBS and Paramount announced they were producing a new Star Trek television series, I was pumped. It had been more than a decade since Enterprise ended and I really wanted another Star Trek television series. Sure, the movies were fine but I wanted another weekly series like the good old days.

Then Star Trek: Discovery was finally released. And I didn’t like it.

I could certainly nitpick at it all day, like how the Klingons didn’t look anything like the Klingons we all know. Oh, they can try to explain the change by saying they’re the “purebred” Klingons but it just wasn’t necessary and they only made them look different to make them more monstrous looking. However, that wasn’t the main reason I didn’t like Discovery. The biggest reason is that it just didn’t feel like Star Trek. It wasn’t about exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilizations. No, it was more focused on a serialized story about an impending war with the Klingon Empire. It was filled with action, which does mean diplomacy and using wits instead of brute force, which is one of the reasons why I love Star Trek so much, got thrown out of the airlock. I pretty much quit after the first season.

All hope was not lost for me, though. Paramount then announced they were making another Star Trek series, this time with Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of the Enterprise during The Next Generation. Once again, I was pumped! After all, The Next Generation is the whole reason why I fell in love with Star Trek in the first place! And they were bringing back the captain from that very series? There wasn’t any doubt this was going to be a great Star Trek series. Well, I guess it was very naive of me to think that, wasn’t it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p2DoPpK2I&ab_channel=SandeepBelwanshi

Once again, this did not feel like Star Trek. Star Trek Picard was much more action packed, which is something I don’t really expect from a Star Trek series. What really ticked me off was how depressing it all felt and that was something I really couldn’t wrap my head around. For me, Star Trek was always about hope and how humanity always strives to do what’s right. Both Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard didn’t have this integral quality which makes Star Trek feel like Star Trek in the first place!

So, after watching the first few episodes of Picard, I just gave up. If they could mess up an entire season of Discovery and they couldn’t do a Star Trek with Jean-Luc Freaking Picard right in the first few episodes, why should I expect CBS and Paramount to make a decent Star Trek series in the future?

Then, just a couple of week ago, I was going through YouTube and a short clip was suggested to me. I mistakenly clicked on it because I thought it was from Rick and Morty. It was a clip showing two Starfleet crewmembers who were talking in a vineyard which one of them owns. They were discussing how to help their senior officers while various women were trying to hit on the owner of the field but the guy was too dense to figure it out.

Yes, this was my first taste of Star Trek: Lower Decks. And for some odd reason, I wanted to see more of it. Maybe it was the weird reference of how Picard also owned a vineyard. Maybe it was the awkward humor regarding how the guy could not take a hint. But what impressed me is, well, how it actually sounded like Star Trek. It was actually positive and brimming with hope! Something that was missing in Discovery and Picard!

Still, I was really hesitant since, as I watched more and more clips from Lower Decks, it has a stronger focus on comedy and it was not like any Star Trek series. It did not focus on the senior officers as much as the main characters were actually the lowly ensigns and that just felt strange. But the characters did still feel like Star Trek and, in fact, kind of reminded me of other minor characters from past Star Trek shows like Chief Miles O’Brien who was just a lowly transporter chief. But the character who really came to mind for me was Lieutenant Junior Grade Barclay, a recurring character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hardly an exceptional officer, Barclay was someone who just scraped by in Starfleet Academy. He wasn’t the brightest nor the bravest of the Enterprise crew. He didn’t have any real exceptional skills except for programming really good holodeck simulations, which he used to his *ahem* benefit.

It then struck me that not every character in Star Trek should act like they’re the best and the brightest. Not everyone in Starfleet would be striving to earn the rank of Captain. Some of them would be just fine with being part of the regular crew on a starship. This is what exactly Lower Decks was. This was a different way to look at Star Trek. It certainly helped that the jokes and the references were on point. But the idea of just focusing on the more mundane aspects of Star Trek was eye opening for me.

I have been watching the first season of Lower Decks for the past week and I have been enjoying myself. I then found out that Lower Decks had a crossover with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, another series I wrote off as it’s kind of a spin-off from Discovery. However, the mere fact that they were adventurous enough to crossover with an animated series by getting the voice actors to perform the roles in live-action is pretty ingenious. Well, it did lead me to watching a few clips of Strange New Worlds and it may look like I dismissed it without giving it much of a chance. Strange New Worlds does come off like it has the spirit of Star Trek as the focus is more of standalone adventures involving, well, strange new worlds.

In fact, I’ve put Strange New Worlds in my watchlist for now. But, for now, I’m going to be focusing more on finishing up Lower Decks. Lower Decks did open my eyes to how Paramount and CBS is handling the Star Trek franchise and it does look like they’ve turned a corner to, you know, make Star Trek feel like Star Trek again. So, yeah, a silly cartoon that pokes fun at Star Trek made me love Star Trek once again. Weird, huh?

What do you think of Star Trek: Lower Decks? Better question: what do you think of the current state of Star Trek now? Let me know in the comments section below!