'Star Trek: Lower Decks' Hits CBS All Access This August; See Teaser Art Here

Star Trek: Lower Decks isn't the first animated Star Trek series, but it's the first that was designed as an outright comedy – and now we know exactly when the sci-fi-tinged laughs will begin. CBS All Access has announced the show's release date, and the streaming service has unveiled some new teaser art to boot. 

Star Trek: Lower Decks will beam on to CBS All Access on August 6, 2020. After the premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode first season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays for CBS All Access subscribers in the United States. Here's the new teaser art, courtesy of StarTrek.com:Rick and Morty writer and Solar Opposites co-creator Mike McMahan is at the helm of this particular series, which is just one of many that the young streaming service is making to help boost Star Trek back into the popular consciousness and give re-establish it as one of the company's crown jewel franchises. But while many of the new live-action Trek shows feel pretty straightforward, this animated comedy is taking a much different approach. Instead of telling the adventurous story of a typical bridge crew, this show is shifting the focus to characters who aren't even important enough to be seen in the background of a traditional Trek episode.

"I'm never gonna write a serious Star Trek, so the way that we handled it is it's on a ship that isn't the capital ship," McMahan told us in a recent interview. "It's not about the bridge crew. It's about the lowest officers on that ship. But when we're breaking stories for the lower decks, every episode also has a proper Star Trek episode that's happening to the bridge crew, and our lower deckers aren't involved in it. However, you can't have a big sci-fi thing happening on a starship and not have it effect them because that's their whole world. So if you're watching Lower Decks, you're getting a full Star Trek episode from the perspective of people who are having their own social and emotional stories and their own sci-fi stories, but they just aren't on the bridge. They don't have the information the bridge is getting, and they don't have the responsibility."

The Starfleet crew residing in the "lower decks" of the U.S.S. Cerritos, the unimportant fleet ship where this show takes place, includes Ensign Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome, Ensign Brad Boimler, voiced by Jack Quaid, Ensign Tendi, voiced by Noël Wells, and Ensign Rutherford, voiced by Eugene Cordero. The Starfleet characters that comprise the ship's bridge crew include Captain Carol Freeman, voiced by Dawnn Lewis, Commander Jack Ransom, voiced by Jerry O'Connell, Lieutenant Shaxs, voiced by Fred Tatasciore, and Doctor T'Ana, voiced by Gillian Vigman.