Hey, welcome to the Star Trek: Lower Decks portion
of San Diego Comic-Con At Home.
I'm Mike McMahan,
I'm the Creator and EP of Star Trek: Lower Decks
and I'm so proud to be a part of this Star Trek family
with all the stuff you guys are seeing.
What you're about to see is people talking about
a show that takes place in 2380,
it's in the TNG era,
it's right after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis,
but it's way before the events of Star Trek: Picard.
The TNG era is what I feel most comfortable in.
Today, we're gonna be joined by
the voice talent of Lower Decks
so that they can talk to you as well
about what it feels like to be in a Star Trek
and to tell you a little bit about the show
and to start off with,
we'll be showing you a clip of a scene
from the first episode
that just gives you a little bit of a taste
of what the show feels and looks like.
We tried to fit it into canon
so that it doesn't break anything,
but we tried to do something new with it at the same time.
We tried to keep it exciting,
but we also tried to keep all of the ethical sci-fi
sort of stuff that makes Star Trek Star Trek
without breaking it
and I think we've come up with something
that a lot of people are gonna really enjoy.
So, just to start off, let's watch this clip
and then we will introduce
the voice talent of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Captain's log.
Stardate 57436.2.
The Cerritos is docked at Douglas Station
for routine maintenance and resupply.
We will soon set course for
the capital planet on the Gala System
where we're scheduled to make second contact
with the Galadonian High Council.
First contact is a delicate,
high-stakes operation of diplomacy.
One must be ready for anything
when humanity is interacting
with an alien race for the first time.
But we don't do that.
Our specialty is second contact.
Still pretty important, we get all the paperwork signed,
make sure we're spelling the name of the planet right,
get to know all the good places to eat.
Oh my god.
-What are you doing? -Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Are you pretending to do a captain's log?
We're all supposed to keep logs.
Okay, let me listen to it.
No, go away, leave me alone!
I can't believe you're wasting your shore leave on this!
Privacy, please!
Time to go, come on,
-get out of the closet. -Privacy.
Are you drunk?
Yeah, dude, you should be too!
I mean, this station is amazing
and they have Romulan whisky
and I bet you thought it was gonna be green,
but it is actually blue,
it's this very beautiful color.
Romulan whisky is against regulation.
Yeah, 'cause it's awesome!
Oh, man, they got all sorts of great stuff.
Oh, oh!
Come on, check this out.
Be careful with that!
Pretty sweet, right?
Yeah, it's a Klingon bat, um, bat, uh, bat,
I don't know, I'm not a scientist,
it doesn't matter, shut up.
I got it from an old guy with an eye patch.
-Come spar with me, come on! -No, come on, hey!
Oh, we could be Klingons,
we could have crimped hair and wrinkled foreheads.
-War, war, war! -It's got
crusted blood on it!
I love honor, I demand honor!
[screaming]
Listen, I promise you, people do not
get chopped in the leg by a bat'leth every episode,
but it is always a possibility
when you're serving on a Starfleet ship.
All right, now, let's meet some of our voice talent
from Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Tawny Newsome, thank you so much for joining us.
Oh, thank you, I can feel the virtual throngs of people
crushing my body as I push through the crowd.
[Mike] Hey, Jack Quaid!
Hey!
[Mike] Thanks for joining us.
Eugene Cordero, glad we got to do this, this is cool.
Me too, me too.
[Mike] All right, so we have Noel Wells here.
Hi!
[Mike] Dawnn Lewis.
I wish I could see you in person,
but we will be together again soon, I'm sure.
I'm looking forward to it.
[Mike] Jerry O'Connell, thank you for joining us
from what appears to be a beautiful verdant hill.
It's just, no, it's a green screen,
I'm actually in my basement.
Oh, that's, yeah, so am I.
Hey, Fred!
Thank you so much for having me, Mike.
[Mike] Gillian Vigman, thank you for joining us!
Oh, it is my pleasure to be here, Mike.
So, there are all kinds of officers in Starfleet.
There's engineers, there's scientists
and there's all sorts of different commanders
and then, even in those ranks,
you never know what you're gonna get.
What kind of Starfleet officer is your character?
I've joked before that she's not very different from me
and that is a testament to you, Mike,
for liking my personality, I guess,
and just kind of writing it into a cool Starfleet officer.
But yeah, she's a little,
I don't know, she doesn't always play by the rules,
even though she could, 'cause she's good at things.
It's kind of like when you're the class clown
because you are ahead of the lesson in school
type of a thing.
A lot about Star Trek is about the humanity
in the characters that are on the ship.
They can be spouting all this technological stuff,
but you really, you wanna care about the characters
and you really make that character fun.
Thanks, man, it's a team effort.
Yeah, Ensign Brad Boimler is the ultimate Starfleet nerd.
He's a complete fanboy for
all the captains and the first officers,
basically anyone who works on the bridge
and he wants to be like them so bad,
that he's obsessed with rank and ranking up
and he figures the best way to do that
is to go as by the book as possible,
so he follows every Starfleet rule to a tee,
he has no demerits at all,
he logs even when he's really not supposed to
because he's an ensign.
-But he means well. -He means so well
and honestly, it's just a guy talking to his friends
that are giving him a lot of guff.
I like that Tawny calls you Boimler,
or she calls you Boims on Twitter, it's so cute.
Ensign Tendi is the fresh eyes on the Cerritos.
She's excited by everything, she's unflappable,
even if there's weird things happening,
she somehow turns it into this optimistic point of view.
So, she's just very excited.
Ensign Rutherford is the cyborg but I mean, I guess,
he loves the fact that he is half-mechanics
'cause he loves the mechanics.
He's an engineer guy, he's all about the tech talk.
He's the guy you want on your trivia team talking about
every single ship that's ever been in the galaxy,
or beyond, yeah.
So, Dr. T'Ana, who is, I would say she's
the head medical officer on the Cerritos
and because of that, she has an extreme responsibility
to take care of basically everybody on board.
Dr. T'Ana, she might be great
at solving space medical mysteries,
but she's also a scary, crusty alley cat,
which is why we love her.
Dr. T'Ana may have the gruffest bedside manner,
but she loves to dig in and get to the problem.
[hisses]
-Lieutenant Shaxs. -Yes.
What kind of Starfleet officer is he?
Well, he is a definite shoot first, ask questions later.
He is no-nonsense.
He is a Bajoran that's got a chip on his shoulder,
as he should.
He's hard-core,
but in some ways, terrible for security
because he's just like,
"Oh, someone's hailing?
Fire!
I suggest we hail fire on them!"
You know, and it's like, and you know,
but at the same time, he kicks ass
and he gets the job done.
My character, Ransom,
as a number one, has a pretty short fuse.
I don't think he's the easiest person to work for,
but he does deeply care about Starfleet,
he just does and says things
that I'm not sure we could get away with
on other Star Trek franchises.
Since we're the first comedy Star Trek, we figured,
we're not on the most important ship in the fleet,
so why not have them really be people?
'Cause Star Trek is always about
-people who are- -Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Whoa, easy.
The Cerritos is super important to Starfleet, come on now.
[Mike laughs]
Everybody knows that.
[Mike] Alright, I'm sorry, I know.
And you know, it's funny,
as the Captain, I never feel confident
and I never feel in command,
I always feel like I'm talking for talk's sake
and people are just gonna do
whatever they're gonna do anyway,
but I take myself very, very seriously.
Captain Freeman is vital, she's important,
and she is in control and in charge
and the Cerritos and our mission to do second contact,
which is almost more important than first contact,
because first contact, no one knows you're there.
Second contact, we make sure things are running smoothly,
things are running right
and Captain Freeman, she's in charge
and she's gonna make sure
everybody knows that she's in charge.
-Okay? -Whoa, listen,
alright, alright,
I shouldn't have made it sound
like you guys weren't the most important,
the unsung heroes are still heroes.
Thank you!
So, fans of Star Trek have always
dreamed about serving on a Starfleet ship,
and now you kind of have done that through your character.
What would you say is one of the most fun things
about serving on a Starfleet ship?
I think I would be a bit more
of a nerd, even, than Mariner
and I think I'd be really focused on ascending rank,
'cause I just would wanna get to that sweet, sweet bridge.
I don't need to be the captain, but I just wanna be,
I just wanna be someone on the bridge
who's in charge of something medium-important,
'cause I want enough responsibility
so that I can have an ego,
but not enough to where, if something crashes or burns
or people die, it's my fault.
I'd say maybe the most fun thing
would probably be the Holodeck
and I know we got a lot of
cool mileage out of that during our season.
Well, we did, but people don't know yet,
but I guess this is a,
-Jack Quaid has promised fans -No!
you'll be seeing some stuff happen on the Holodeck.
It's fine, what else would we tell them?
The leaks are real!
[Mike] But now they know we turned it on.
Huge drops for Comic-Con.
It's crazy and it works.
What?
Well, most of the time.
Hey, so, was there a moment Season 1 that you loved
that you think you can tell
the San Diego At Home Comic-Conners today?
My favorite thing that Rutherford does
is when the [beep]
and all of that, and it was just going and [beep]
couldn't get it quite right, [beep]
for what was happening.
Mariner, who is always such a screw-up,
always trying to undermine me
and trying to see what she can get away with,
I am constantly, as Captain Freeman,
trying to come up with ways to get her back in line
and I realize the most fun episode for me
was that episode where I came up with this plan,
you know what?
Instead of continuing to cut her off at the knees,
promote her.
That's the last thing she wants to do, is work.
There are many and I don't wanna blow too much of it,
I just loved how he just comes in
at full-force, no matter what.
"You're too loud!
Captain says you're too loud!"
Breaking instruments.
Stop me if I'm giving away too much about this episode,
but there's an episode where we meet Boimler's girlfriend
and that was maybe my favorite episode to record
because this guy in any kind of romantic scenario
is just hilarious to me.
But this is really a whole cast, this is an all-skate.
I love Episode 8, [beep], so much.
It is maybe, I don't wanna pick favorites,
but it really grabbed all the things that I love about Trek
and then all the absurdity
that you've injected into this world,
with, [beep] what happens at the end.
This is the greatest thing I could be a part of.
One, you guys let me be crusty, curmudgeon-y, bitter
and yet filled with sort of this
excitement and curiosity for learning.
My favorite part of the first season I would say
is when Ransom gets into a pretty vicious fight with [beep].
It's pretty gory, it's not for the faint of heart.
You have a very unique situation in your household,
because the last time I checked,
usually there's not two number ones,
second in commands, under one roof.
So, I play Ransom, the number one in Lower Decks.
My wife is the number one
on the recently-announced Strange New Worlds.
So, my wife is a number one.
We're also very, very good friends with Jonathan Frakes,
who's also a number one.
So, man, when the three of us get together,
I just, I mean,
I really should livestream it for everybody.
What would be your pitch for people who
maybe aren't Trekkies,
do you think that people who aren't Trekkies
are gonna like Lower Decks?
Yeah, I think that that's what's so great about the show.
Obviously, it's gonna be exciting
for people that are Trekkies,
but the show is a totally different perspective
and has this comedic bent that we haven't seen before,
so if you are into animation,
if you like dark comedic comedies,
there's plenty for everybody!
I think you're right, I think that people who like Trek
will find a lot to love in this,
and people who have never seen Star Trek,
it might be the first thing that makes them go,
"Wait, maybe I like Star Trek."
All right, and that's it.
Thank you, everybody, for joining us
and letting us talk to you about Star Trek: Lower Decks.
We can't wait for you to see the season,
which, again, premieres on CBS All Access on August 6th
and just personally, I know this is tough times
and I know that we're all looking for
a way to kind of get through it
and I know that we can,
just hang in there, take care of each other
and watch as many cartoons as possible.
Thank you, everybody.
Live long and prosper.
And now I want you to get in that car
and I wanna see you do a flip right over that hill.
-Watch this. -Oh, god, Jerry, no!