Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Trailer Features The Voyager Joke All The Nerds Have Been Waiting For

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" is nearly upon us and it sure looks ready to go out with guns phasers blazing. The animated series took some time for more hardcore fans to warm up to it, admittedly, but it quickly proved to be one of the franchise's funniest and nerdiest entries in the canon. Now, fans will have one last victory lap to say goodbye to a crew of misfits who've somehow, against all odds, wormed their way into our hearts over the years. Their final mission stands to be their most complicated one yet, however. After season 4 finally resolved a lengthy mystery about a mysterious force targeting starships all across the quadrant, Starfleet and otherwise, season 5 looks to up the ante even more. What's the primary conflict this time around, you ask? Well, that would be the idea of our favorite crewmembers growing up a bit and looking to rise above their meager ranks. As the season's official synopsis puts it:

In season 5 of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with closing "space potholes" — subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Pothole duty would be easy for Junior Officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford ... If they didn't also have to deal with an Orion war, furious Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and scariest of all: their own career aspirations. This upcoming season on Paramount+ is a celebration of this underdog crew who are dangerously close to being promoted out of the lower decks and into strange new Starfleet roles.

Earlier this afternoon, Paramount+ released the first trailer for the upcoming season. Check out the new footage at the link above!

Let nobody ever accuse "Lower Decks" of lacking an expert knowledge of "Star Trek" history. The animated series has delivered some serious deep-cut references and Easter eggs over the years, and it's all been leading to the best one of all. No corner of the "Trek" universe goes untouched in "Lower Decks" and, well, that includes some of the more divisive elements, too. "Voyager" remains one of the less well-received shows in the franchise for all sorts of reasons, but that only makes it a more obvious target for "Lower Decks" to tackle. Notoriously, one of the funnier running gags in that maligned series was the fact that Harry Kim managed to spend years on that missing starship, lost in the vast reaches of the Delta Quadrant, and never once get a promotion from the always-strict Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). That wrong has finally been righted (in a manner of speaking) in "Lower Decks," as seen in the final gag involving multiple Harry Kims, with original actor Garrett Wang returning to voice the fan-favorite character.

Fans can safely expect all sorts of shenanigans to come (possibly involving alternate timelines?), following the exploits of Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), D'Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), the dashing Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), and all the other officers of the U.S.S. Cerritos. "Lower Decks" comes from showrunner Mike McMahan and supervising director Barry J. Kelly. Season 5 is scheduled to run for 10 total episodes, with the first two premiering on Paramount+ October 24, 2024.