After five laugh-filled seasons, Star Trek: Lower Decks, has officially come to an end. With a final season filled with incredible guest stars like Alfre Woodard (First Contact) and Garret Wang (Voyager), thrilling multiversal adventures, and big character swings for our heroes, Lower Decks certainly took the high road on it’s way out with another spectacular season. As our adventures with Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and the chaotic but dedicated crew of the Cerritos come to an end, I sat down with series creator Mike McMahan to unpack the show’s final two episodes.
During my conversation with McMahan, we discussed that wonderful Garashir (Garak x Bashir) storyline in the penultimate episode, and how he managed to bring back returning Star Trek legends like Jolene Blalock (Enterprise), Andrew Robinson (Deep Space Nine), and Alexander Siddig (Deep Space Nine​​​​​​​) for a real love letter to the fans. He also spoke about landing each character’s series-long arc in the finale and how each of their skills came together organically to save the day. Finally, he dished on that heartwarming speech from Mariner that left us all in tears. You can read our full conversation below.
‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Penultimate Episode Was a “Thank You to the Fandom”

“I’ve always felt like Garashir was kind of canon.”

Image via Paramount+

COLLIDER: The penultimate episode of the season is actually one of my favorites, so I have to ask you a few questions about it before we jump into the finale.
MIKE MCMAHAN: Perfect! Absolutely.
Everyone I know is so thrilled that you made Garashir your canon. What made you decide to finally go there?
MCMAHAN: Well, what’s so funny to me is I’ve always felt like Garashir was kind of canon. I didn’t do the heavy lifting on that, you know? To me, the surprise was getting to do it in a way that made sense with when the show takes place, and I really don’t like to mess with what Ira [Steven Behr] did, you know what I mean? I’m very, very careful about what I do with other people’s characters. I think for me, getting to do a multiversal story really helped be able to tell the story without having to add any asterisks to it. I love the doctor from Voyager, so making Bashir a hologram was a treat for me. And then saying, “Yeah, Garak is one step away from being a surgeon, [as] a tailor.” It kind of involves sewing stuff, you know what I mean?
Absolutely.
MCMAHAN: Getting to have that added texture to it more than what anybody had ever seen in anything else that had been talked about with those characters, and then on top of that, getting them to have been in… It’s not a new relationship for them, you’re coming into a relationship where they have a pattern. I wanted fans who love that dynamic to feel like they were getting a feeling of, “We’re coming in in the middle of it, and they’re happy, and this is fun.”
That episode was really a thank-you to the fandom, and going out of my way because it’s really hard to schedule and get these legacy actors to do this and to do a big episode where every one of them has to have a story, as well, because we don’t want them just to be window dressing. They all have to be really thoughtful. This was like, “We’re ending the series a little sooner than I would have liked, but let’s do an episode that’s such a thank-you to the fans that we’re just going to go nuts. We’re going to fill it with Harry Kim’s, we’re going to have Lily Sloane come back, we’re going to have T’Pol.” It just was such a cool thing to get to do. I trusted that our fans would love it and that the thought we put into it would mean something to people, and it feels like it worked.
It absolutely does. It’s such a good episode. And speaking of that, for the rest of the team that you’ve assembled here, how did you choose which characters you would go with?
MCMAHAN: So that was scary because the people who are in that episode were the people who I originally wanted in the episode, and if any one of them weren’t interested in doing the performance, I would have had to change the character because I wouldn’t want an episode full of legacy voices and then one person to be different. Curzon is different just because we don’t really hear a ton of him. Also, I believe that René Auberjonois played him at one point, which obviously, he’s passed away, and I loved his performance, so that is the one difference. But if we had gone with somebody else, I would have had to rewrite everything because without Garak, you don’t get Bashir, and the Harry Kim story doesn’t make sense unless it’s Harry Kim.
Exactly.
MCMAHAN: So, I just wanted a mix of people that I had wanted to work with, people who were inspiring to me. I love Jolene [Blalock]’s work in Enterprise. She defined a lot of modern Vulcans for me; T’Lyn is like a direct response to how she performed that role. I love Alfre Woodard, I love Lily Sloane, I love First Contact. I got to watch First Contact with [Jonathan] Frakes and Alfre a couple of years ago at a special screening of it and was just like, “I’m in heaven.”
That’s the dream!
MCMAHAN: So it was like, what characters make sense for the story, what characters are going to get an audience jumping out of their seats, and what characters would you never expect to see, all combined in a big multiversal, interesting story where there isn’t even a bad guy — everything is meant out of best intentions. That felt really Star Trek to me.
The ‘Lower Decks’ Finale Was a Celebration of All Things Star Trek

“It just all felt right. It comes at you so fast, but it’s all there. It’s all Trek.”

It’s so Star Trek. I love that the finale sort of hinges on Boimler trusting himself, literally, as well as his friends, and I love that they each get their own hero moment. How did you decide that each of their skills would come together for that finale?
MCMAHAN: It really organically came together. We allow our characters to grow across every episode. Like, if Mariner has seen the holo program about Samaritan Snare, then why doesn’t she remember things that happened to her an episode ago? So, these characters have to learn and grow. But just like real people, they can slip up. Boimler can be bold Boimler and learn a lesson not to do that, but then he can meet a version of himself that has a Marty McFly sports almanac of things he can crib and he can be like, “Wait a minute, this is going to be how I do it.” A lot of us have to learn the same lessons over and over because our intent is right, but our tactics are a little off. So, of course, getting to see Boimler snap a pad in half and be like, “I’m just going to be myself,” is going to play. And Rutherford being like, “Wait a minute, it’s not that I’m mad at the Cerritos, I’m mad at the implant. I love the Cerritos.” I’ve got to lose a part of myself, and I have lots of stories I want to tell about what happens to him having lost that. Who is he without that?
Then, obviously, Tendi. Tendi had that whole arc, being an Orion at the beginning of the season and then, came back a little competitive, you see, across the season. You don’t command pirates for months and then not come back a little bit different. It’s like when somebody who has a semester abroad comes back with a British accent. But seeing her and T’Lyn have that moment where they combined to work together just makes you love them. It makes you want to see more of that stuff, you know? Then Mariner, of course, being the one to listen to Malor, Mariner being the one who has been in that position to be the person who saves the day because somebody listened to her, it just all felt right. It comes at you so fast, but it’s all there. It’s all Trek. It’s all very thoughtful, and it takes a lot of thought. Then you get to have fun and put jokes in, too.
We have a behind-the-scenes look at the finale. I love that you have Jack [Quaid] and Tawny [Newsome] recording the finale together. How often does their energy in that room change an episode a little bit?
MCMAHAN: We’ve only done it a very, very few times. Really, what it is is when we get an episode in, and we are doing pick-ups, meaning we’re rerecording a line, then they can hear the whole cast, and they match that energy. But I think a lot of it really is that Tawny and Jack are friends, and so are Eugene [Cordero] and Noël [Wells]. Their friendship is growing and you can feel that friendship in their performance. They’re great performers. They could have done it without it, but it does add this ineffable niceness to it that makes you know that even when they’re joking around, they love each other as friends.
I love Freeman’s “all hands brace for weird” moment. How did you go about picking which variants of the ship we would see?
MCMAHAN: A lot of them were ships that I just love, and a lot of them are ships that don’t get enough screen time. Then, some of them are pulled directly from versions of the Cerritos when we were figuring out what the ship was going to look like. Eventually, we’ll put out ship designs and stuff, and people will be like, “Oh, that’s why it turned into that!” I love that the Klingon ships all basically look the same, so they never super change except for the one that turns into a sail barge. But it was a celebration of Star Trek ships, both fancy and small.
Mike McMahan Says Celebrating ‘Lower Decks’ Is the Only Way To Get More of the Series

“I think that moment makes you tear up, not because you’re losing something, but because something really cool happened.”

Image via Paramount+

Mariner’s speech at the end actually had me in tears. What is the main thing that you hope folks take away from Lower Decks as a whole?
MCMAHAN: That speech makes me cry, too, and I made my wife sob. It was the last thing I wrote. We did the episode without it, and I was talking to our executive, and he was like, “I feel like we’re missing something.” I was like, “Can I go a little long?” And he was like, “Yeah.” So, that speech really is kind of a thesis for not only Lower Decks, the show, but also the friends you’re making as your life is growing and the worlds you’re finding. If you go back and look at the first episode of Lower Decks compared to that bit at the end, we always designed the show to be able to grow and find stuff. You’ve got Migleemo and Kayshon, and you’ve got Ensign Olly, and you’ve got the girls that are celebrating Beverly’s candle and her little lamp, and that little tour of the Cerritos and Mariner walking through it.
Lower Decks isn’t any one thing. I think if you wanted to be dismissive of Lower Decks, you can say, “Lower Decks is just about legacy characters,” or, “It’s just about one thing,” but Lower Decks is its silliest episodes, it’s its most dramatic episodes, it’s the legacy cast episodes, it’s the one that takes place on the bird planet with a robot. All of it combined is Lower Decks because Star Trek is big, and Star Trek is a family. The thing I’m going to miss the most about Lower Decks is getting to keep expanding, getting to spend more time with T’Lyn and Ensign Olly, and going back and seeing where Billups grew up and how he got into Starfleet — just this celebration of this world that we built that has its own in-jokes, like “Twaining,” you know what I mean?
I think that moment makes you tear up, not because you’re losing something, but because something really cool happened, and the fandom is a part of it. You guys knowing why that moment is good means that it was important to you like it was to us. It’s sad to see it go, but the reason you tear up at that moment is because you’re so happy that you were there for it and that you get it. That’s the kind of moment where I’m like, “Cool. Well, I’ve got to go back and watch the first episode again because otherwise, I’m going to be fucking sad. So, it’s time to relive it again.” [Laughs]
Exactly! Well, thank you so much for staying on and chatting with me today. I can’t wait for people to see the finale, and I hope that somewhere along the line, we get more Lower Decks at some point.
MCMAHAN: Thank you. I hope so, too. I’ll say, I’ve been saying this, the way to get more Lower Decks is to be enthusiastic and hopeful and celebratory. It’s not to say, “What moron canceled this show?” It’s not to say, “How dare you not give us more? You have to give us more.” The more people celebrate and want more in a way that’s respectful and joyful, I can show that to people and say, “Look at this fandom. Look at who’s going to show up.” These are people who are going to get more eyes on this show. Nobody watches a show that somebody goes, “I’m so mad!” You know what I mean? So, I’ll be working on my side to try to get to do more. There’s a lot more Star Trek coming on Paramount+, which I’m looking forward to, as well. If the fandom wants to help me get stuff going, do it in a joyful way. That would be really helpful. Just don’t don’t demand it like anybody owes us anything. That’s just not the Lower Decks way to do it.
All episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are now available to stream on Paramount+.

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Star Trek Lower Decks

Release Date

August 6, 2020

Seasons

4

Story By

gene roddenbury

Writers

Gene Roddenberry

Network

Paramount

Streaming Service(s)

Paramount Plus

Where To Watch

Paramount Plus

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Watch on Paramount+