Today we are saying goodbye to Star Trek: Lower Decks (with the series finale “The New Next Generation“), but the cast and others had a chance to say goodbye on The Ready Room. As for the official Star Trek after show hosted by TNG’s Wil Wheaton, the future is uncertain.
Lower Decks gang say goodbye
The first and only episode of The Ready Room for the fifth and final season of Lower Decks features cast members Tawny Newsome (Beckett Mariner), Jack Quaid (Brad Boimler), Noël Wells (D’Vana Tendi), and Eugene Cordero (Sam Rutherford) talking to Wil Wheaton about the finale episode, the final season, and their time on the series. The episode also features commentary from showrunner Mike McMahan and more reflecting on the end of Lower Decks. You can watch the full episode of The Ready Room on Paramount+ and YouTube, or just click play below.
Star Trek losing another companion show?
Traditionally episodes of The Ready Room tease what’s coming next (often with a clip) with host Wil Wheaton giving a sense of when his after show might return. However, his signoff for this new episode sounded like it could be a goodbye, at least for now:
“It really has been the joy of a lifetime celebrating the Star Trek universe with you. This latinum age of Star Trek has brought us so many wonderful characters and storylines and there is so much more ahead – Strange New Worlds, Section 31, and Starfleet Academy all on the horizon – and more adventures in the final frontier to come. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of an optimistic future has never been more necessary or brighter. In the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, “Let’s see what’s out there.”
It appears the show may be coming coming to an end, potentially becoming another another victim of big budget cuts across Paramount Global in 2024. Much of this new episode for season 5 of Lower Decks was produced months ago before many of those who worked on The Ready Room were laid off over the summer.
CBS All Access launched The Ready Room as a companion series back in 2019, premiering after the first two episodes of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. This first season was a lower-cost alternative following up 2018’s After Trek, a companion show with a live audience hosted by Matt Mira, with TrekMovie’s Laurie Ulster as supervising producer. After Trek ran immediately after each episode of Discovery, but was cancelled after the first season.
Host Matt Mira talks to Discovery producer Aaron Harberts and actor James Frain on After Trek
After one season of The Ready Room on Facebook Live (hosted by Naomi Kyle), the after show got an updated studio, a more elaborate production, and new host with Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wil Wheaton. The first episode of the revamped Ready Room debuted on CBS All Access and YouTube in January 2020 alongside the first season of Star Trek: Picard. Since then, there have been Ready Room episodes for each Paramount+ live-action Star Trek show episode (Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds) along with special episodes for each season of Lower Decks and the first season of Prodigy. Before today, the last episode of The Ready Room was released for the Discovery series finale in May.
Wil Wheaton hosting The Ready Room with Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart for Picard season 3
Of course there are big changes coming to Paramount in 2025 with the pending Skydance merger, so who knows what the future will be, but for now it looks like there may not be any after shows in the near future.
Keep up with all the news and reviews from the new Star Trek Universe on TV at TrekMovie.com.
It has been a great run for both Lower Decks and Ready Room.
It’s so strange. I actually wondered about the future of The Ready Room just last night. Not having read or seen anything about it stopping production. I hope they bring it back. Wil Wheaton is so fun to watch geek out and it feels like his interviews tie all the Star Trek universe together a little more with a legacy Trek cast member interviewing talent from the newer shows.
I thought that the The Ready Room may be in trouble when the episodes for Discovery season 5 were much shorter than they used to be during earlier live-action releases.
Wil Wheaton certainly gave it his all.
I have always had mixed feelings about this show. On one hand, I did like its format and of course having a very familiar legacy actor like Wheaton who is both a famous Trek and sci ti geek to lead it. But to be honest, the ‘interviews’ just felt more and more syrupy and the constant ‘everything is always amazing’ angle just felt overdone. I get its to promote the shows but it would’ve been nice to talk about what didn’t work or what could’ve been better at least some of the time. It would’ve been nice to have more real conversations and not just how much everyone loves each other.
For the last season, I basically just skipped all the Discovery actor interviews and just went into the behind the scene stuff and the clip for next week because it just all felt the same. The constant cheerleading and Wheaton acting like every sentence an actor said was profound became too grating for me..
But the writing was probably on the wall for awhile. People noticed the show running time was basically cut in half from 30 to 15 minutes. Nothing felt different but it was probably done to save money (but anything to cut down on the sappy interviews).
But I will definitely watch this interview with both excitement and sadness. And I guess because LDS tone is just more comedic, but the actors on that show just have fun and everyone is always laughing. But with both shows ending, is a reminder we are sadly losing way more Trek than gaining it these days.
This is the first Ready Room I’ve seen on YouTube. The Star Trek channel is global, Paramount’s is usually US only.
Funny the exact opposite for me. I’ve watched them all on YouTube with a few rare exceptions.
Honestly, how much could it possibly have cost to produce this show? Interviews on a couch and some clips. I can’t imagine that Paramount is suddenly going to reap huge savings; cancelling it seems gratuitous.
There’s a possiblity that future READY ROOM episodes could be/will be outsoursed production wise – studios have been known to do that with video press-kits for films, and extras on DVDs/Blu…
Paramount too broke to produce the Ready Room. Sad.
Maybe they can get Will Wheaton to work for a free Paramount+ subscription and Discovery blu rays to sweeten the deal.