Second Contact

Move over, Star Trek: Picard. There's a new new Star Trek TV series in town. (The town called CBS All Access.) Star Trek: Lower Decks is the first animated Trek series in over four decades -- and the first Trek series period with a primary mission of humor. In these respects, Lower Decks is very different than the rest of Star Trek. But in another way, it feels very much like most Star Trek: we'll probably look back one day on this first episode, "Second Contact," and say "that wasn't really the series at its best."

To be sure, there's plenty about this first episode that I did enjoy and find promising. There were a lot of characters thrown at us, but they do seem to be interesting people with interesting relationships to mine in future stories. The late revelation about Mariner's ties to Captain Freeman was fun; Star Trek has a long, proud tradition of main characters who don't get along with their parents, but we don't usually get to see that play out over multiple episodes. The odd couple pairing of relaxed Mariner with stuffy Boimler is a classic comedy formula. Wildly enthusiastic Tendi, newly-minted cyborg Rutherford, pompous first officer Ransom, and quintessentially grumpy cat Doctor T'Ana all seem like fun flavors to toss into the stew.

But the balance of "Star Trek vs. humor" didn't seem quite calibrated yet. Lower Decks might be the show we all expected The Orville was going to be before we saw the first episode and learned that Seth MacFarlane was pretty earnest about just wanting to make more Star Trek: The Next Generation. There's nothing wrong in principle with a Star Trek that wants to take itself less seriously, and indeed, some of the jokes that worked best were the ones that took an irreverent view toward some franchise staples: for example, how the holodeck would totally be your first stop on a starship... and what you'd really use it for.

Yet a lot of the episode really didn't feel like Star Trek at all, from the gore-tastic zombie plague sweeping the Cerritos to the alien sliming endured by Boimler. That material had a Rick and Morty kind of vibe... without really being a Rick and Morty level of funny. Yes, that's a high bar, but I feel like this first episode was all but begging you to make that comparison.

And my husband tagged it all with, I think, the perfect word: this episode was hyper. From the breathless way it crammed a full hour's worth of Star Trek plot into a half-hour format, to the way most of the actors seemed to be yelling their lines with a Cartoon Network level of intensity, to the dozens if not hundreds of one-off Trek references there to test/delight the fans, this episode was pretty intense. I could stand taking the volume (literal and figurative) down a notch or two, at least until I get better acclimated to all the characters.

To be clear: I'm certainly not trying to be a guardian of Star Trek, trying to keep this new series out. I think there's potential here. Hopefully, Lower Decks finds its way faster than, say, The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine did. I'd give "Second Contact" a B-. It did have a few genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, but I'll be rooting for it to grow more consistent over the next nine episodes of its first season.