Accidental Star Trek Cosplay

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 3

Grounded - Commentary with Jonathan Frakes, Tawny Newsome and Mike McMahan

Hear All, Trust Nothing - Commentary with creator Mike McMahan and actors Nana Visitor, Armin Shimerman, Tawny Newsome, Noël Wells, Jack Quaid and Eugene Cordero

A Mathematically Perfect Redemption - Commentary with creator Mike McMahan, director Barry Kelly and actor Kether Dnohue

Crisis Point 2 Paradoxus - Commentary with creator Mike McMahan, actors Tawny Newsome, Jerry O'Connell, Noelle Wells and Jack Quaid

The Stars at Night - Commentary with actors Dawnn Lewis, Fred Tatisciore and Jack Quaid

McMahan: “Writer Ann Kim once told us that she thought that big hunky bird men in video games were really hot, so we intentionally set this episode on a planet of hunky bird men because she wrote this one.”

McMahan: “[The episode] really split the fandom. I, like, woke up the next day, and I had all these tweets where half the people were like, ‘Burn Lower Decks at the stakes for making us watch the bird people!’ And then the other half were like, ‘This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ which I guess means we’re doing our job right.”

Kelly: “I love that they were polarized.”

McMahan: “You’re not seeing a lot of exposed oblique muscles in Star Trek. We need to push that agenda more often… Rawda [the love interest voiced by Harry Shum Jr.] has not a lot of obliques. I think that would have been a muscle too far if we had added that… CBS doesn’t allow pelvic obliques. That’s not a CBS thing.”

Donohue: “My favorite parts of voiceover is when I picture it being live action instead of animation… You could picture this a live-action movie. When I watch this, I feel like I’m watching a $100 million, like, studio movie, live action.”

McMahan: “You can blow ships up, you can kill people, there can be, like, planets that are dying, but if you show a robot, implied off-screen, fellating a bird alien, oh, does that set [Star Trek fans] off.”

McMahan: “When I pitched the name Peanut Hamper, everybody told me I was an idiot. They were like, ‘Do not call this character Peanut Hamper.’ And I was like, ‘I wanna name a robot that will think it’s cool [but] isn’t cool,’ and then everybody begged me not to do it... In Donnie Darko, there was something where they were like, ‘Cellar door’s the most beautiful English phrase,’ and I was like, ‘That’s stupid. How about ‘Peanut Hamper’? I was just trying to think of a thing that wasn’t a beautiful phrase. Now I like it. Now I like that Rawda calls her Peanut.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2

Kayshon, His Eyes Open

An Embarrassment of Dooplers

Where Pleasant Fountains Lie

Wej Duj

Lyn on Captain Dorg's abusive treatment of his pet targ: "People who don't like dogs or are mean to their pets are never gonna be winners in life." (Dorg ends up getting stabbed to death by Ma'ah.)

Lyn: "I'm an Enterprise apologist, and I'm definitely a big T'Pol fan.” McMahan: "Are you a T'Pologist?"

Ruiz: "I grew up watching [Star Trek]. I grew up falling asleep to it with my mom."

Lyn on Commander Sokel's reluctance to view T'Lyn's shield amplifier project as logical: "I remember when we were breaking this episode, we kept saying it would feel like the Vulcan version of Crimson Tide."