Mike McMahan on the Twists and Turns of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 4
Star Trek: Lower Decks went through a change in season 4. First, we took the crew of the Cerritos out of the lower decks. And then, we went from episodes where we could easily pop in and out of the show and instead had it focused on a story that flowed throughout the entire season. The mystery really brought the season as a whole together and we spoke with creator Mike McMahan about the finale and what it means for the series as a whole.
In bringing the mystery of the season to life, McMahan didn’t care so much about the reveal as much as being able to visit other ships throughout Star Trek. “For me the mystery and the reveal wasn’t as fun as getting to do little pops on different ships that we otherwise wouldn’t have had an excuse to do,” McMahan said.
Getting a chance to do an episode of it back in season 2, he wanted an “excuse to get more of that.” So we ended up with a season filled with an overarching theme, a mystery that tied the whole season together. “I thought it would be fun and it was fun ultimately to tie it all together into this kind of new mystery ship and have it be a guy who is across the season finding lower deck crews from non Starfleet ships and convincing them to turn on their captains on these smaller ships,” McMahan said. “Knowing that it was gonna be an extremely Lower Decks season mystery, that it wasn’t a destroy the galaxy type situation, that it was a kind of a low person preying on the worst instincts of non-Starfleet Lower Deckers is like that’s the most Lower Decks you can get.”
When I asked about getting to do a mix of both the classic Lower Decks stories we’ve come to know and love mixed with this more serialized storytelling that is classic for Star Trek and which McMahan prefers for the show, he said “I like to do both. I like to mostly be surprising.”
Where we’re heading
Seeing the change in season 4 means that a new way of storytelling was brought to the series. When asked about what that means for the future of the show, McMahan said that season 5 brings it to life in a mix of both what we knew of Lower Decks and this more serialized world. “You’ll see, because season five is written, we’re in the middle of season five and we know season four took some serialized elements we had done before and kind of ramped them up across the whole season more,” McMahan said.
“Because we had this stuff with Admiral Buenamigo that we also seeded into episodes that if you just caught one episode, it wouldn’t bother you, you wouldn’t feel like you were missing anything. And this season, the cold opens were a little bit more, where is this going for? And it really rewards you going back and watching the whole thing. Which again, I love that on Paramount+ you have, unlike me growing up watching Star Trek, you can go back and watch all of it. You don’t have to wait for them to decide to release it. In season five, it’s a different mix and we do it a different way. But there is a little bit of serialization in season five, but not to the extent that you saw this season. This one’s was a special take on it.”
Exploring new worlds with characters we know and love
This season, we took our lower decks crew out of the lower decks. That means getting to explore new aspects of them, like Boimler (Jack Quaid) getting to briefly take on the Captain’s chair and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) finally admitting what has been bothering her for an entire season. When McMahan and I talked about Boimler in the captain’s chair (and particularly his captain’s voice), we talked about what it means for the future of how these characters are going to carry themselves on the show.
“The most fun to me is finding out that the thing that I feared, that letting Boimler be captain in an episode, or having Mariner admit the stuff she’s holding onto and having it be the things that are the things that are driving her most dark tendencies, having her admit that to a Klingon that she thinks she’s either gonna get killed by or kill, the thing I was worried about is that it would change the characters and I wouldn’t get to write these characters I love,” McMahan said. “Instead it actually enhanced them. Boimler’s been a captain now, he’s been a captain by sitting in a chair during an action sequence, but he hasn’t been a captain. It’s a box you check that then relieves you of the stress of that moment and instead you have to work on everything else.”
All of this does lead us to a cliffhanger in season 4 with Tendi (Noël Wells) going off after everything is said and done, even with Mariner coming back with her lower decks team. When I asked about the Tendi cliffhanger, McMahan said it was about giving Tendi that power. “That cliffhanger for Tendi I love too, because, you know, Chris Westlake, who’s our composer, turned in this music for that scene and it was so powerful and I was like, ‘I didn’t want to do this thing where it felt like Captain Freeman being taken off to be arrested, like this downbeat.’ I wanted to end the show on Tendi giving this look and having this music that we extended all the way through the end credits. That I hope says to everybody that over all this time Tendi’s been trying to figure out is she Starfleet or is she the Mistress of the Winter Constellations? And, at the end of this episode, she’s like, ‘no, I’m D’ Vana Tendi. I’m something new that that exists in both. And my sister wants me to come back to Orion. Well, she might’ve bit off a little more than she can chew.’ Who is she going into those stories? You’ll see a lot of Orion and you’ll see a lot of Tendi next season. So it’s really fun.”
Season 4 of Star Trek: Lower Deck is streaming now on Paramount+.
(featured image: Paramount+)
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