BOLDLY GOING AGAIN

THE CREW OF THE USS CERRITOS ARE BACK! MIKE MCMAHAN TALKS ABOUT GOING WHERE NO ANIMATION HAS GONE BEFORE

- DARREN SCOTT

WHEN SFX OPENS A CHANNEL to communicate with Star Trek: Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan, he’s just seen a first pass at the season two finale and he’s a happy man. Words like “exciting” and “awesome” are being fired across the bow. It means he’s now seen the entire season and he’s evidently very pleased indeed.

He’s also been loving getting to do live recordings with an orchestra for the score, something world events prevented last year. He promises it brings a “grand, theatrical, cinematic feeling” to the show. On top of all that, season three is coming together already, with scripts and dialogue in the can. He beams a delighted smile, his eyes sparkling: “We’re having a blast.”

SHIP LIFE

Following the success of the first animated Trek comedy, two further seasons were commissioned – but McMahan says that fact didn’t change the way he wrote the crew’s second outing.

“I approach every season as if we’re going to get more seasons… you don’t want to be writing characters that have a terminal date to them,” he explains. “You want to think that these are living and breathing characters that have lives that extend past the end of your show.

“Stuff was layered in, but we didn’t know. When you’re writing that first season, you’re finding the show while you make it. You can even see when you’re watching the first season, some episodes are a little dry, some episodes are a little action-heavy, some episodes are really meta and crazy,” he considers.