Star Trek is getting the adult cartoon treatment in Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated series from Rick and Morty writer Mike McMahan. The show will go where no Star Trek series has gone before ... and follow a group of self-proclaimed “scrappy underdogs” who work on the lower deck of a Starfleet ship.
While most of the Star Trek canon has honed in on heroic captains like James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard, Lower Decks is about the arguably least important people in Starfleet. Per Star Trek: Discovery creator Alex Kurtzman, McMahan pitched the series by saying, “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.”
CBS All Access has picked up the series for two seasons. It will be the first original animated series to hit the platform and will be predominately produced by the company’s new animation studio, CBS Eye Animated Productions, in addition to Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout production company. CBS All Access also hosts Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere on August 6.