This Sunday at the annual Star Trek convention, showrunner and creator of Star Trek: Lower Decks Mike McMahan took the stage in Las Vegas to introduce the forthcoming new animated series to assembled fans.

Only the second public event for the show — following the first reveal at San Diego Comic Con in July — McMahan and his writing team spent nearly an hour telling us all he could about the animated adventures of the USS Cerritos crew.

McMahan, who got his start in Trek with this book Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season, graduated to the televised side of production last year with the Short Trek episode “The Escape Artist,” which he briefly discussed at the beginning of his stage panel.

That was super fun. I mean that was the very first time I got to play in the real ‘Star Trek’ world — and it was also the first live action thing I’ve ever done. Getting to work with Rainn [Wilson] and the Secret Hideout [production] folks, getting to go to set in Toronto, the [‘Discovery’] set, you can just keep them running in circles around it. Like, everything is connected. So I would FaceTime my son back in Los Angeles being like, ‘Hey, I, I’m still at work, I’m still on a spaceship!’ and I’d just be walking the corridors and he’d be wide eyed. Like, well, this looks amazing. It was awesome.

Before Warped, of course, McMahan first started flexing his Star Trek comedy muscles through his TNG Season 8 Twitter feed, which he described as having been borne out of a spec script he wrote some years ago.

When you’re trying to find a writing job, you have to, like, write pilots, and get your voice out there — and you have to choose between writing an original thing, or writing your version of something that already exists. What I really wanted to do was write a ‘Star Trek’ script and like get it out there, like a comedic version of it. I wrote one, and I’d given it to my manager, and her first note was, ‘Why are these people on a spaceship?’ And I was like, Oh crap, I should maybe not be trying to get a job off of writing comedic ‘Star Trek’ — or I needed a new manager. Instead, I started all of the things I wanted to write for that script I would pour into this Twitter feed. The thing I really liked about it was like they were always a stories that sounded like a real ‘Star Trek’ episode… and then it was a funny story that was like about Geordi and Data, which is what I’m there for. That’s what I like.

The producer also shared his thoughts on the humorous aspects of Trek that drive his enjoyment of the franchise.

The fun thing about that was being like, to me, ‘Star Trek’ is funny. When you’re watching a TNG episode and there’s funny stuff happening in it, that’s intentional. That’s what I really love about ‘Star Trek,’ and I think [that while] we all [ask questions like], ‘What’s your favorite episode?’ or ‘What’s your favorite series?’ or ‘Who’s your favorite captain?’… my favorite thing about ‘Star Trek’ are the B-stories. When you’re watching an episode [and] Picard is being tortured for information by aliens who have have tricked him into not even knowing that he’s being captured, [I] love that story. But then when they’re flipping over [to the other story] and it’s like, ‘Data accidentally locked himself in the bathroom, and he’s freaking out!,’ that’s what I’m there for.

He also revealed that the Next Generation episode from which this new series gets it’s name — Season 7’s “Lower Decks” — is his favorite entry in the franchise to date.

That ‘Lower Decks’ episode is so deep into the run of TNG, and [the writers] were firing on all cylinders in a lot of ways — the actors were so comfortable in their roles, the stories they had told were like… they knew what they were doing. ‘Lower Decks’ is my favorite episode of TNG — and of any ‘Star Trek’ — [because] it’s like, we get to see the characters… on the Enterprise that felt like if I were on the Enterprise, that would maybe be me.

Joining McMahan on stage were five members of the series’ writing team: co-executive producer Chris Kula, story editor M Willis, and staff writers Garrick Bernard, Ann Kim, and Ben Rodgers made their first public appearances representing the show — and McMahan described some of the challenges that go into forming a comedy show’s writers room.

I’ve put together comedy rooms before, and it’s really hard. It’s really complicated, because there’s just a lot of stuff that you’re trying to balance. You want people that are going to write towards the voice of the show that you pitched, but you also want to bring in people that have different comedic voices and different kind of access points — and you want to put together a room that like isn’t gonna mind being together for 12 hour days to solve problems together. On top of that, we have an animated ‘Star Trek’ show that isn’t for kids. That is a comedy that’s 20-something minutes long, [and] we want to get a full dramatic ‘Star Trek’ episode happening in it, but [just] not focusing on it. What we’re focusing on are the social, emotional stories happening to the ‘Lower Decks’ crew. […] While staffing this group of people, I wasn’t just looking for people who absolutely knew everything about ‘Star Trek,’ because what I wanted to do was put together different comedic voices and people who just felt like they either love ‘Star Trek,’ or they wanted to watch it all the time and learn about it as we were writing it — because the folks who wrote the first ‘Star Trek’ didn’t have ‘Star Trek’ to base it on.

Writer Ann Kim spoke about her fairly recent introduction to the world of Trek, having only come to the franchise as a viewer thanks to her participation in Lower Decks — sporting a fun STAR TREK EXPERT hat on stage.

I feel like his hat is ironic, but also it’s the most earnest hat ever — because the past six months in my life have been dedicated to ‘Star Trek’ in the most passionate way…. Growing up it wasn’t really something that I was exposed to… when I had my first staffing meeting on the show, to prep for it, I watched an episode that my friend recommended — “Darmok” — and literally cried. I’m a very emotional person to begin with, but it truly affected me in a way that I was so shocked by. It’s amazing how like my mind is just kind of been blown by this entire experience, and even my writing style has changed, and I feel like I can be like… parallel dimensions and universes? Before, I’d been like, ‘Whoa, that’s so crazy,” [and now] I’m like, “Oh yeah, been there, done that,” like I’ve watched somebody else said it. I just feel like a different brand new person.

Story editor M Willis revealed that early on in the pre-production process on Lower Decks, she distributed copies of the late Michael Piller’s in-depth book on screenwriting, Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection, to the staff for review.

I sent that [book] on our first day to the writing staff, and Ann read it in one night.

McMahan and Garrick Bernard shared a laugh over Bernard’s first experience with Star Trek: Voyager after the young writer joined the Lower Decks team.

McMahan: Garrick, you gotta tell them about watching that episode of ‘Voyager.’ Bernard: “Oh my god — the first episode I watched [from] ‘Voyager’ was ‘Living Witness.’ I go in watching Janeway be, like, this badass, she’s like, ‘I’ll just kill whoever, I don’t care!’ And I was like, ‘I love ‘Star Trek’ now!” McMahan: “Garrick came in and was like, ‘I’ve now seen ‘Voyager,’ and it is awesome!’ Then he came in the next day and was like, ‘Not every ‘Voyager’ is like that episode.’

The showrunner moved on to talking about the crew of the USS Cerritos, the hero ship of the series, a new-design California-class support ship operating in Starfleet during the year 2380 — and referenced others in its fleet, such as the USS Fresno and USS Sacramento — operating under a mission of “second contact” with new alien races.

‘Lower Decks’ takes place on a ship called the USS Cerritos, and it’s new class of ship, [one] that’s always been out there, but maybe [just] hasn’t been important enough to have had screentime yet. A called the California class of ships… and the specialty of the Cerritos is second contact. That’s their gig. It’s super important! You show up to [a new alien planet for] first contact, super important, really dangerous. You don’t want to set off any wars. You don’t want to ruin anybody’s lives. Second contact, you’re showing up to the planet, you’re finding all the good places to eat, you’re setting up the communication stuff. (Writer Chris Kula jumps in: “Find the good breakfast spots!”) Yeah, you’re like the Yelp of Starfleet. I mean, it’s still important. I want to do explore like, oh, first contact happens, but then when you’re starting to join the Federation, you already have warp capability. That’s the only reason they’re talking to you. You don’t wanna break that Prime Directive…. but, like, what’s happening next?

While no new ship or character artwork was revealed to the Las Vegas audience — as McMahan said he preferred to show off the series “for what it’s supposed to be, instead of what it could be [at this early stage]” — the now-familiar character cards were at least updated with animated blinking effects.

Before involving the writers in talking about each new character, McMahan spoke for a moment for the philosophy behind the crewmembers, how even though they may be low-ranked officers, they still embody all the great things about Starfleet that we’ve come to know.

An important part of this show is figuring out how can you be Starfleet but also be funny because as [‘Lower Decks’ writer] Dave Wright says often, you don’t want a mortgage your characters for the sake fo the story you’re writing. What we want to do on ‘Lower Decks’ [is make it feel] like you were watching a fast good episode of TNG — and what that means is that there’s nobody in Starfleet, no matter what deck you work on on the ship, that isn’t excellent, who isn’t the best of us… who doesn’t embody that optimistic goodness. That is what we love about ‘Star Trek.’ So when writing a comedy about ‘Star Trek,’ you can’t be “punching down” on ‘Star Trek’ stuff. All of the people you’re writing about have to love Starfleet as much as we do, which is why we love watching [these] stories.

Ben Rodgers spoke about Ensign Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome, a character who’s been demoted from higher ranks multiple times but is “the Star Trek nerd” of the group.

She’s kind of a classic ‘Star Trek’ hero — she’s a little bit Kirk, a little bit Riker. [She] doesn’t really play by the rules necessarily, thinks outside the box a little bit, but gets the job done and is really, really good at Starfleet stuff. She’s like the ultimate ‘Star Trek’ nerd. She knows a little bit about everything… but she has been demoted so many times, [and] that’s why she’s on a lower deck. Despite knowing everything, she is really bad at taking orders — she’s kind of like Maverick from ‘Top Gun’ a little bit.

Ann Kim weighed in:

She also reminds me a little bit of an Ensign Ro… that vibe of, ‘I’m really talented, I’m really smart, I know what I’m doing, but this institution is flawed and I’m going to have to kind of bend the rules to make things work the way they should — at least in my opinion.’

Writer Chris Kula spoke about Ensign Brad Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid), a “straight shooter” who’s “neurotic” and “obsessed with rank.”

He is our by-the-book, obsessed with rank, wants-to-be-a-captain-one-day [character] and thinks that following protocol is the only way he’s going to get there. He’s wound super-tight, which makes him a perfect foil for Mariner who is more and more freewheeling, you know, [that] ‘Maverick’-type spirit. He will get in the captain’s chair one day… if he can take a page from [Mariner] and learn there’s more to Starfleet than just following the rules.

Green-skinned Ensign Tendi (voiced by Noël Wells) was the next subject of conversation, was officially confirmed to be Orion by showrunner Mike McMahan:

Let me just say, Tendi is, intentionally, huge ‘Star Trek’ fan — so to speak — who has just gotten into Starfleet. [She] is anOrion, and this show is her first day getting to work on a Starfleet ship… and it is wish fulfillment [for us]. It is! We are channeling the feeling of, like, what if one of us got to be on a Starfleet ship? [That’s] the original pitch for her — there’s no job too ‘lower decks’ that she isn’t losing her mind with joy over. [It’s] like the optimism of Starfleet was turned into a person.

Ann Kim continued:

[Tendi] just brings joy to any scene [because] there’s that happiness and joy there that is not annoying, somehow. Like, you think that it would be, but it just comes from such a real place of being such a fangirl for this amazing institution that is [Starfleet].

McMahan then touched on Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), a member of the USS Cerritos’ engineering team that isn’t exactly a miracle worker.

[Rutherford] just recently became a cyborg and isn’t used to it yet — [he’s] only complaining about his implant because he doesn’t really understand how to use it. He’s kind of like a Geordi La Forge [who doesn’t] always solve the problem in 40 minutes. It’s fun cause every episode he’s like, “I got this!’ but he sometimes does NOT have it and it’s fun to see. ‘Oh crap, we have to figure something else out. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.’ It’s like, ‘I need 20 minutes’ and [the captain says] ‘Well, you have 10!’ [and Rutherford will say,] ‘No, seriously — I need the full 20…. I probably need 30.’

Moving to the USS Cerritos’ bridge crew, McMahan spoke towards the inclusion of a Caitian (in the form of Dr. T’ana), a species first seen in the 1970’s Animated Series, and how she won’t be the only familiar alien we’ll see as Lower Decks moves forward.

The original Animated Series — it has its ups and its has its downs — but it was important to us to feel like when you’re watching our show that it treats all of ‘Star Trek’ equally. So we have characters and alien designs — [some seen only] casually and [others] featured — in our episodes that are from TOS and TNG, and from the Animated Series showing up. So it really feels like we’re kind of like tightening the bootlaces on like making the Animated Series feel like it’s actually even more canon than it was before.

Story editor M Willis gave a brief description of each of the command staff, starting with Lt. Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) and Commander Ransom (Jerry O’Connell):

We’ve got Lieutentant Shaxs who is our beefcake Bajoran right there, and then we have Captain Freeman in the middle, and then commander Ransom, who I think Mike described at Comic Con as a kind of ‘California Riker.’ (McMahan: “Like a chill, smug Riker!”) Yeah, yeah… and then we’ve got Dr. T’Ana… our doctor.

McMahan went on to describe Dr. T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) further, comparing her to cranky Star Trek physicians of years gone by — and how Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) isn’t quite as important as leaders of series past either:

[T’Ana] does not purr. She is not friendly. Like, M’Ress [from the Animated Series] was on the bridge being like, ‘Prrrr… Oh, captain!,’ you know, Dr. T’Ana is more like, ‘Get out of there!’ She’s a bit more of like a Bones McCoy or a Pulaski. She’s kind of like a Super Pulaski, like a cat from a junkyard. She’s not purring at anybody — she’s a good doctor, but she’s unpleasant. Captain Freeman is as capable as a Starfleet captain as you would want [one] to be, but she’s just not on the most important ship in the fleet — and the stories we’re telling about these guys are like, you know, the show is about the lower decks of a ship, but since the ship is in charge of second contact, these guys are kind of the ‘lower decks’ of crews too. It says interesting and tell stories about them.

The panel then shifted to Q & A time, where the writing team laughingly told the audience — in response to a fan question — that the worst jobs on the USS Cerritos include “scraping carbon off of slightly harder carbon” and “cleaning the holodeck… a lot of weird stuff happens in there.”

One fan wondered why after more than fifty years of Star Trek, it’s taken until now until a series has been created as a “purely comedic Trek,” to which McMahan addressed thoughtfully:

We’re all reading the 50-year history right now, and doing a deep dive on what the thinking was, on where every series of ‘Star Trek’ [came from]… When I met with Secret Hideout, I never expected the show to get made. So I went in and just told them — as a fan of the show and as a writer of animated comedies — what my personal dream ‘Star Trek’ would be: one that is straight-up comedy, but has ‘Star Trek’ in it, and doesn’t “punch down” on ‘Star Trek.’ If you watched it and you had never seen ‘Star Trek,’ you would go, ‘Wow, I want to watch as much Star Trek as possible!’ after that. I think the reason is Gene Roddenberry didn’t want to write comedies, and everybody that was writing ‘Star Trek’ before, [those shows were] their voice. It was coming from their specific joy of writing, and what kind of stories they want to tell. And ‘Lower Decks’ is [just] what my voice is, and I’m just executing it in a way that brings me joy as a Trekkie. […] Before, you had to have a ‘Star Trek’ that spoke very clearly, ‘This is Star Trek!,’ this fits in a box. But now, it’s like, let’s let people who love ‘Star Trek’ explore a different side of ‘Star Trek’ in all these different [upcoming] shows. And my voice is just the comedic one of them.

One of the big questions about Lower Decks — especially because there’s no need to worry about an actor’s aging or need for makeup effects — is if there will be any returning players from the franchise coming back to voice their characters in the animated show.

McMahan got excited when a fan asked about that very subject, but wouldn’t let slip any specifics about what might be happening behind the scenes.

I mean, come on, if you don’t think that we’re trying to get everybody in… like, oh man, I wonder if we should try to get Patrick Stewart? [Laughs] Yeah, we’re trying to get everybody. I don’t want to tease anything yet, but all I want to say is… it’s our dream. These are all our heroes. We would, if we could figure out a way to not mess up the show and get to geek out over a working with all of these people that we love, we would do it. All I’ll say to it is the show takes place in 2380 [two years after ‘Voyager,’ and a year after ‘Nemesis’] and we’re trying to make it as in-canon as humanly possible… because why do a ‘Star Trek’ show unless we’re going to be in-canon? It’s part of what makes it great, right? ‘Star Trek’ is about the characters, and even if there’s a bad episode of ‘Star Trek,’ I don’t care. I’m watching it because I love the characters. Our TNG crew is out there in 2380 – that’s all I’ll say. I will tell you, Mariner gets drunk at the bar and will start going, like, ‘You guys know who Worf is?’ And they’re all like, ‘Yeah, we know Worf, we’re friends.’ She’s like, ‘I love Worf so much.’ Our ‘Lower Decks’ characters are fans of these heroes, and Starfleet too.

McMahan also weighed in on the participation of Star Trek novelist David Mack, who announced last month that he’s consulting on the show as a Trek history and canon expert.

Sometimes we’ll be writing something, and everything is going exactly right, and it just feels really Starfleet to us. And then we’ll send [David] Mack the script, and he’ll give us a note and we’ll be like, ‘Oh, we should not have been calling that character ‘Lieutenant.’ It doesn’t make any sense.’ What Mack is amazing at is taking what we’re doing and really like clicking it in place [so that] you can watch a TNG episode, and then bounce to [‘Lower Decks’], and back to TNG and it doesn’t feel like you’re making two different kind of entities.

"Star Trek: Generations" was to feature a set of new Starfleet uniforms, dropped before primary production began due to budget issues – but they were seen on the Playmates Toys #StarTrek TNG action figures from the film, and in one brief shot of @levarburton, cut from the movie. pic.twitter.com/iZTZjQhKse — TrekCore.com 🖖 (@TrekCore) December 27, 2018

Next, the design of the Lower Decks crew uniforms came up from an audience question; a fan asked about influences that lead to the new Starfleet look for this show. McMahan explained how

It was important to me to mirror, to match [the styling to what has come before in ‘Trek’]. There were designs that weren’t used for [‘Star Trek: Generations’] and [there have been designs] used across all the series — and we wanted to do something that felt like if you saw somebody cosplaying it, you’d immediately be like, “Wait a minute, that’s [like] TNG… and that has to be the animated show.” But it doesn’t NOT look like Starfleet, you know? Plus I just love that [jacket] flap. Like, when they’re like getting down and dirty, and unbutton that flap, you know, it just looks awesome…. and Ithink on the bottoms of the [matching boots] is the Starfleet delta.



After the questioning fan somewhat uncomfortably tried to press McMahan about if the Lower Decks uniforms were really going to be “officially canonized” as Starfleet’s style after the Star Trek: Nemesis time period, the producer responded diplomatically:

All right, listen. [Audience laughs] There’s a lot of stuff going on with [‘Star Trek: Picard’]. ‘Picard’ is doing a lot. What I’ll say is: if you’re on a California-class ship in the year 2380, you’d better be wearing [this] uniform.

Finally, a fan asked McMahan how the Lower Decks writing would differentiate itself from Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, a comedy space show which has been frequently compared to Star Trek: Discovery since each premiered in 2017.

Seth MacFarlane is the perfect person to be doing [‘The Orville’] because that guy literally used to build Enterprises in his basement made out of cardboard, and he obviously has such an opinion on the kind of show he wants to make. I think what he’s doing with it, it’s like magical. Like I can’t believe that show exists, because it’s like it fell out of another dimension from the 1990s. It’s insane. My comedic voice really different from his, and the types of stories we’re doing… like, if ‘Deep Space Nine’ feels like drinking a nice cup of coffee, just expertly made, [‘Lower Decks’] feels like getting a cup of coffee thrown in your face and then you fall down stairs, and you’re like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ But you still got the coffee! I just think that there’s like a million different reasons why the shows are gonna feel different… we’re doing different things, but it’s a great time to be a comedy sci-fi nerd all of a sudden.

Wrapping up, McMahan summed up his thoughts on why he cares so much about Star Trek, and how even with an added focus on humor, this animated crew will still be one of aspiration and hope:

I mean, listen, how many ‘Star Trek’ episodes have you seen where the point of it — especially if Q is involved — that humanity is out in space, but we haven’t abandoned what makes us human? To me, it’s really important right now, especially when you’re talking about what ‘the best of us’ is, is that yeah, we have paths. We have all this amazing technology, but the world is an uncertain dark place, and so to me when, when we’re telling a ‘Star Trek’ story, it’s important that people feel like people, that they have emotional things going on, and that they’re funny — and they CAN be funny, [or] they can be serious and be doing sci-fi stuff — but you’re reminded all the time why they’re human and why we’re following these characters, or human-adjacent characters, that we love.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is in production now and is slated to arrive on CBS All Access sometime in 2020.