‘Rick and Morty’ writer hired for new Star Trek animated series

By Rick Marshall Published October 25, 2018

Morty! Morty! There’s going to be a new Star Trek animated series!

CBS has given a two-season order for Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated series from Rick and Morty writer and executive producer Mike McMahan that will focus on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s “least important” ships. The series will feature half-hour episodes airing on the CBS All Access streaming platform.

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The series gets its name from a 1994 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that chronicled a mission from the perspectives of several junior officers working in less prominent roles aboard the USS Enterprise.

“Mike won our hearts with his first sentence: ‘I want to do a show about the people who put the yellow cartridge in the food replicator so a banana can come out the other end.'” said Star Trek: Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman, who will also executive produce Lower Decks, in a statement. Kurtzman currently oversees the expansion of the Star Trek franchise for CBS.

“[McMahan’s] cat’s name is Riker. His son’s name is Sagan. The man is committed,” continued Kurtzman. “He’s brilliantly funny and knows every inch of every Trek episode, and that’s his secret sauce: He writes with the pure, joyful heart of a true fan. As we broaden the world of Trek to fans of all ages, we’re so excited to include Mike’s extraordinary voice.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks will be the first original animated series for CBS Eye Animation Productions, the recently launched animation studio for CBS Television. It joins several Star Trek projects currently in the works, including the ongoing, live-action series Star Trek: Discovery — which returns for its second season in January 2019 — and an upcoming live-action series featuring Patrick Stewart’s iconic starship captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

“As a life-long Trekkie, it’s a surreal and wonderful dream come true to be a part of this new era of Star Trek,” McMahan said in a statement. “While Star Trek: Lower Decks is a half-hour, animated show at its core, it’s undeniably Trek — and I promise not to add an episode at the very end that reveals the whole thing took place in a training program.”

Lower Decks will be the second animated series based on the Star Trek franchise, following 1973’s short-lived (but appropriately titled) Star Trek: The Animated Series.

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7 most underrated Rick and Morty episodes ever, ranked

Rick and Jerry fighting in "Rick and Morty."

Rick and Morty has become one of the most surprising and entertaining cartoons running today. Each adventure the Smith family goes on throughout the multiverse is an uproarious and mind-boggling tale guaranteed to make viewers laugh, gasp, and even cry.

While not every episode can be perfect, there are still some that have been overlooked by fans or deserve a reappraisal. Now that the saga involving Rick Prime and Evil Morty seems to have come to a close, it's a good time to look back at the most underrated adventures that have come out of the show so far.
7. Anatomy Park

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The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

Captain Janeway gives a speech on the bridge of the Starship Voyager

As much as fans love to praise Star Trek as groundbreaking science fiction, it’s important to remember that, for most of the franchise’s history, Trek was weekly procedural television. Until the streaming era, each series was churning out roughly 26 episodes a year, and by the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, some of the creative crew had been in the business of making Star Trek for over a decade. The franchise was a crossover commercial success, the kind of success that the money men like to leave exactly as it is for as long as it’s doing steady numbers.
The operation was essentially on rails, and there was a lot of pressure from the studio and the network to keep it that way, which accounts for the general blandness of Voyager and the early years of its successor, Enterprise. The waning years of Trek’s golden era were plagued by creative exhaustion and, consequently, laziness. Concepts from previous series were revisited, often with diminishing returns, and potentially groundbreaking ideas were nixed from on high in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
That’s not to say that Star Trek: Voyager isn’t still a solid television show, and even many Trekkies’ favorite. The saga of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her gallant crew finding their way home from the farthest reaches of the galaxy may not be as ambitious as it could have been, but it is steadily entertaining, which is why new and nostalgic fans alike enjoy it as cozy “comfort viewing.” For our part, however, we tend to enjoy the episodes that have a certain emotional intensity or creative spark, that feel like conceptual or stylistic risks. As such, you might find that our list of the 10 best Voyager episodes differs greatly from some of the others out there. We like when Voyager dared to get heavy, or silly, or sappy, or mean. So, without further ado, let’s raise a glass to the journey ...
Like Star Trek? Then check out how do I get into Star Trek?
10. Counterpoint (season 5, episode 10)

Counterpoint drops the audience into the middle of an ongoing story,in which Voyager is boarded and inspected by agents of a fascist government, the Devore. The Devore treat all travelers through their space with suspicion, but are particularly concerned with capturing and detaining all telepaths, who they view as dangerous. Despite the risks, Captain Janeway is attempting to smuggle a group of telepathic refugees to safety, all while putting on a show of cooperation for smiling Devore Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik). Much of the plot takes place in the background, obscured from the audience in order to build suspense. The real focus is on the evolving dynamic between Janeway and Kashyk, a rivalry that simmers into one of the Voyager captain’s rare romances. Kashyk works in the service of what are, transparently, space Nazis, but when he offers to defect to Voyager, can his intentions be trusted?
Beyond its intriguing premise, Counterpoint is a particularly strong production with a lot of subtle hints of creative flair. Director Les Landau and director of photography Marvin Rush, who had been both working on Star Trek since the 1980s, shoot the hell out of this story, breaking from Voyager’s even lighting and predictable camera moves to make some very deliberate choices that build a great deal of tension around what is essentially a bottle episode. The makeup team, supervised by equally seasoned Trek veteran Michael Westmore, supplies a memorable and imaginative makeup design for an alien astrophysicist who appears in all of two scenes in this episode and is never utilized again. Most of all, Kate Mulgrew provides what may be her most subtle, human performance in the entire series, embodying Janeway’s famous conviction and strength of will while also granting a rare glimpse at her more vulnerable side without ever straying into melodrama.

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The 10 best Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, ranked

Captain Kirk, upset, buried waist-deep in Tribbles.

It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the late 1960s, the original Star Trek was not considered a hit. The ambitious science fiction series was constantly on the brink of cancellation and was cut short only three years into its planned five-season run.
However, it’s important to put Trek’s apparent failure into historical context as, given that most markets in the U.S. had only three television channels to choose from, even a low-rated show like Star Trek was being watched by about 20% of everyone watching television on a Thursday night, or roughly 10 million households. This year’s season of HBO’s Succession was viewed by roughly 8 million households a week, which makes it a hit by today's standards. Star Trek’s audience only grew once it went into reruns in the early 1970s, and by the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters in 1979, it was a genuine cultural phenomenon. Today, the Star Trek franchise is considered one of the crown jewels of the Paramount library.
Though arguably outshined by its most prosperous spinoff, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series holds up remarkably well for a vision of our future imagined nearly 60 years in our past. It’s a space adventure series that tackles social or political issues from what was, at the time, a daring and progressive perspective informed by the contemporary civil rights movement, sexual revolution, and backlash against the Vietnam War. Conveying these values through fanciful science fiction didn’t only allow its writers to get away with a lot of subversive messages, it also delivered them in a way that remains fun to watch decades later — fun enough that fans are willing to forgive when its ideas, or its special effects, crumble under modern scrutiny.
These 10 episodes, however, unquestionably stand the test of time, and thanks to the continuity-light nature of mid-20th century television, any one of them could be your first Star Trek episode. (Be aware, however, that the order in which classic Trek episodes are listed varies depending on the source. For our purposes, we’re using the numbering from streaming service Paramount+.)

10. Mirror, Mirror (season 2, episode 4)