This week the adult animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks wraps up its five-season run. We have a handful of preview images and more details on the final episode of season five to get you started.
“The New Next Generation”
The tenth and final episode of season 5 is titled “The New Next Generation.” In a TrekMovie interview, creator and showrunner Mike McMahan said, “the finale WILL make a lot of people tear up.” And supervising producer Barry J. Kelly confirmed the finale has an extended runtime. The few preview images show us we are seeing some characters returning, specifically the Klingon brothers Malor and Ma’ah, last seen in episode 504 “A Farewell To Farms.” Episode 10 was written by Mike McMahan and directed by Megan Lloyd. It arrives on Paramount+ on Thursday, December 19.
Synopsis:
Season finale where lots of wild stuff happens!
New images:
L to R Jerry O’Connell as Jack Ransom, Paul Scheer as Andy Billups, Eugene Cordero as Rutherford, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Gillian Vigman as Doctor T’Ana, NoÎl Wells as D’Vana Tendi and Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler in episode 10, season 5 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo credit: Paramount+.
L to R Sam Witwer as Malor and Jon Curry as Ma’ah in episode 10, season 5 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo credit: Paramount+.
L to R Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Jerry O’Connell as Jack Ransom and Gillian Vigman as Doctor T’Ana in episode 10, season 5 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo credit: Paramount+.
NYCC trailer
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
I am so sad this is ending. What a wonderful series this has been!
Agreed!
“The New Next Generation” ? This show and Picard really are quite shameless aren’t they.
I will put my life savings on the final shot being another retread of the TNG poker scene, as opposed to doing something original and giving this crew their own legacy to the franchise.
This crew’s legacy is already assured.
I’m going to miss this show so much.
And Paramount+ is going to miss me.
For the last couple of years I’ve had a yearly subscription; with new Trek nearly year-round it made sense.
No longer. I will not be renewing my subscription. I am joining the churn.
spoken from my heart. from now on, I’ll stay in the past and celebrate my blu rays from tng voy ds9 ent … and ld!!
After last week’s cameo-a-thon, I’m hopeful we might get Shatner playing Kirk one last time, or maybe even Avery Brooks (if they could get Jolene Blalock…). Or maybe a Kelvin universe appearance!
Brooks is firmly retired.
Blalock is, mostly, but she still has a fondness for Star Trek and she is one of the ENT cast members most ticked by the fact that they were dismissed in the finale of their own show in favor of a couple of guest spots.
So it doesn’t come as a complete surprise that she might have come back in the form that she did,
Maybe you’re right about Brooks, but Lower Decks has a secret weapon: it’s a voice-only gig. No makeup, no days on set away from your kids, you can wear whatever you like, take your time, go line by line, most guest spots on a show like this are a day, two days MAX. Voice recording is also something you can do fairly easily remotely (I used to do ADR stuff for a major network show, there are booths all over the world that you can connect to w ISDN). It’s a really sweet gig if you can get it regularly, very low stress. You don’t even have to do much to get into character because you can take it line by line. You have more freedom to play around and try things. Actors always talk about how much fun voice gigs are compared to live action sets which are a supremely annoying way for an actor to work.
I am 1000% confident Jolene doesn’t return in live action (she is more retired than Brooks is generally) and 1000% confident Brooks will never play Sisko in live action. But I could absolutely see him coming back for like 5-10 lines at the end of a show, moreso than I could have seen Jolene come back. I also think that voice-only is the only way Shatner would be able to reprise Kirk at this point.
All long shots for sure, but with the whole multiverse plot happening anything is possible, and bringing a beloved character back for 30 seconds to do a callback is something this show does really well.
I do think it being a speaking role has got a lot of the legacy actors back, especially people like Armin Shimmerman who has said he doesn’t have an interest in wearing the Quark make up anymore due to his age.And Robert McNeil said he couldn’t do Picard because they couldn’t fit into his schedule. But with Lower Decks he was able to record in his own home and took only a few hours.
So it probably does make a big difference for people who don’t want to put back on a uniform or don’t have time to shoot on set.
Just remember, at one point so was Nimoy.
Pot, kettle, anthracite, and all that.
Or here’s a wacky idea… how about *zero* cameos, and instead give this crew a proper send off on their OWN terms. Standing on their own feet without constantly referencing past Trek for cheap nostalgia and fan service.
I’ll keep dreaming.
I just don’t think that would work for this show, though. The people that enjoy it want to see cameos. Those of us who don’t have probably mostly tuned out by now.
I say let the devotees have their moment in the sun; everyone else can ignore it, consign it to non-canon, or “an alternate version of Star Trek,” or whatever.
Star Trek is a valuable property for Paramount, and I hold out hope that one day someone will come along with a thoughtful, non-zany revival of it, like Bryan Singer did with Superman, or “The Living Daylights” and “Casino Royale” did (twice) for Bond.
ooooh! woukd love that, all of it.
I would be happy to have any one of them plus Scott Bakula. Any of those three would probably be a ‘woah’ moment but obviously Shatner being the biggest.
Cameos from all sorts of legacy characters are inevitable but it is going to be a tough needle to thread. Unless they’re serving real narrative purpose and/or being used as CHARACTERS it just comes off as lazy ham-fisted fan service. Something the series has been guilty of too often. They’ve done so successfully and effectively at times. I was surprised and impressed that they managed to do last week’s hodgepodge of characters. That said, pulling that off most often requires the characters be given focus and screen time. When it comes to a series finale, I don’t know how you do that while giving the shows main characters the development and send off they deserve. It can be done, it’ll just be tough and my confidence in the writers is still rebounding from what for me were very weak third and fourth seasons. I’m sure they’ve had ideas bouncing around in their head for years of how they’d like to finish things out so that, combined with a stronger fifth season, gives me hope we’re in for a real treat.
It’s so sad, and quite pathetic that “cameos from all sorts of legacy characters” are all but guaranteed at this point. How far Trek has fallen.
Oh, for crying out loud.
The only thing that is quite pathetic that you keep parroting the same lines over and over again. It’s always the same with you, Emily. You’ve been warned about trolling, you’ve had threads locked and you still persist. Do you not get the hint? Do you not get bored? You’re a troll.
Have you not done exactly that with Discovery?
Once more, for the last time, that glorious closing fanfare of the main theme. 🧡
“The Last Generation.” “The New Next Generation.”
I don’t even love TNG quite as much as some do, but I still find it funny, and weirdly heartwarming, that both these shows have gone out with nods to its title.
(And I will keep the faith for more Lower Decks in the years to come!)
Heart-warming? Or creative bankruptcy that they can’t stand on their own two feet and instead constantly have to refer and steal ideas from past Trek?
Begone, troll.
Just because you don’t agree with a point of view doesn’t make me a troll.
No, the moderator locking threads you start for trolling does.
Ha, you think this is bad, try hanging out in (Democratic) foreign policy circles these days.
I have been burned at the stake here for comments that don’t align with the gen population.
No, but you coming here to provoke people and start fights makes you a troll.
Lower Decks has spent 5 years doing two things: 1) lovingly playing homage to all the great Trek from TOS to ENT, and 2) building their own collection of ideas, characters, and jokes. That you see a reprisal of 1 in their (purported) series finale a problem, or that you don’t trust that 2 will happen also, says more about you as a viewer of LDS than it does about any supposed bankruptcy of the show.
Bah.
I guarantee the series finale will be 90% of 1, and 10% of 2.
Yeah it’s like Matalas and McMahan had a talk and decided to have some fun with it!
Farewell to Star Trek: CliffsNotes.
I find it mildly interesting, as well as cautiously optimistic, that the synopsis says SEASON finale instead of SERIES finale…
* sniff *
My hope is the ending shows that Lower Decks continues, we just don’t get to see it — like the ending of Cheers.
If the show ends with the five Lower Deckkers in the bar chanting “Lower Decks” as the senior officers look on approvingly, and then pans outside a window and we see the chip sail into the sunset, I would be more than happy.
The show makers have said that they hope to continue the show in some way in the future. That indicates that it probably will be an open-ended ending, even if there is some closure for the characters in the finale. Look at Futurama; it has ended and come back like five times now.
I trust Mike. He knows what he’s doing. The ending will have heart and I am BETTING more than few real surprises!
I keep hearing this “have heart” line about Lower Decks; I’d love it if someone could articulate what, exactly, that *means*.
That you feel a connection to the shows optimism, kindness and positivity.
It usually gives you a warm feeling and maybe a smile by the time the credits roll; ar least for me.
I think that’s why for people who DO love the show are so positive on it because I don’t think people really thought that would be a big aspect of it when it started. And of course the more you get to know and like the characters it gets even bigger.
I reiterate my guess that the last episode will — “homage” all the previous Trek series finales. They might even “homage” Turnabout Intruder by having Boimler switch places with someone that hates him or something.
I’m sure we’ll see an homage of the cast signatures from the end of Undiscovered Country.
I wish they did promos for Lower Decks. A good event episode trailer adds so much to the experience.
I wish every Trek show would have promos after the credits, like Max’s originals do.
Yeah it’s going to be both exciting and heartbreaking this week.
I’m just happy to see so much love for this show. I really was hoping for seven seasons…and a movie but this was still a good run.
And like others I don’t think it’s completely over either. I think something else will be coming for the Cerritos and her fine (if dysfunctional) crew!
Hopefully someone from the TOS is in it dont care who
Legacy characters. All fans care about.
Goodbye
I know it was probably revealed before, but that is cool that Sam Witwer is playing Malor. I hope that Witwer gets to be in live action Star Trek someday, other than his brilliant performance as Kirk in OTOY’s Unification.
That said, I am so stoked for this finale. I am sure it will be great! I hope that Boimler loses his beard with some type of joke about it, lol!