One of Us! One of Us!
That's the feeling I got sitting across from Star Trek: Lower Decks creator and showrunner Mike McMahan this past Saturday at New York Comic Con. Taking part in a roundtable interview after the Star Trek Empire Stage panel, I never felt like I was talking to a showrunner, but instead, someone who shared the same love for sci-fi and Star Trek that I did growing up. This was never more evident than at the end of our chat when Mike was asked what his "comfort food" Trek was and wound up bringing up one of my favorite series, Stargate Atlantis.
"What I really like about Voyager and about Stargate Atlantis is those are shows that people are having to come up with new stories after tons and tons of episodes have come before them, and the creativity that it takes to find those characters and stories, like, really lights me up. It's like really really hard, and I was watching those when I was writing TNG S8, and that was my first inkling of, like, wait, writing Star Trek is hard."
McMahan also talked about this early on during the roundtable when asked about changing the status quo of Lower Decks this season (the core four being promoted) and how he was worried it could "change the basic DNA of the show." But McMahan was quick to point out that there are still plenty of original stories to tell on Lower Decks, just like there was on Voyager and Atlantis.
"In producing this season, not only did it give us a ton of very lower decks feeling situations that still feel lower decks; cause, like I still feel lower decks. Kurtzman is my boss, you know what I mean? I'm still getting notes from the network. There's very few times in life that you don't feel lower decks, and I think that knowing that's a strength, not a weakness, and that there's people you meet and things you learn and there's things you learn about yourself when you are a lower decks in life that you end up carrying more than what you learn when you're at the top of your game. And there's a lot more paths for Lower Decks to go where they're not captains."
It's no secret how much I and the rest of the SNP have loved this season of Lower Decks. As Mike mentioned above, giving Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi that one extra pip has opened up a lot of fresh paths for our lower deckers. McMahan has such a clear understanding and love for his characters. Whenever he was asked about a specific Lt. junior grade, (juniors grade? whatever), he had an answer ready at warp speed. That includes Mariner, who had more trouble adjusting to her new rank than her friends.
"You know, Mariner I'm not really worried about because I have a long-term plan for, and you'll see in, ya know, we haven't released the last two episodes of the season, but they are I can say pretty Mariner focused. And we've been kind of leading up to them across the season and across the series. And what I really love about Mariner as a character is really unlocked by Tawny Newsome because I wrote Mariner before having met Tawny, and then having worked with Tawny, I've adjusted her to really embody the way Tawny loves Star Trek, the same way I do, ya know? Cause, again, it's not really making fun of Star Trek, it's having fun with Star Trek. So, I have an internalized backstory for Mariner, and I know why she's been behaving the way she has, and I know what she's working on, and the ways that it's expressed has changed and grown and gotten better. So Mariner's an easy one; I know where we're going with that."
Dear Mike, I didn't say this to you in person, but it's time to un-internalize that back story, K? In all seriousness, going off of those comments, it seems like the final two episodes of season four might very well see that happen. After all, we've already gotten some of it, along with Rutherford and Tendi's own backstories as well. But besides the raisin farm ("Just the raisin farm?! It is a vineyard I'll have you know," McMahan playfully reminded me), we still don't know much about Brad Boimler, something I asked Mike about. The answer, however, might not have been what you were expecting.
"Ya know, Boimler's backstory is not steeped in mystery to me. Boimler is all of us. Boimler is, 'Oh my god, I'm on a Starfleet ship. I better have studied. This is my chance. I couldn't love this more. It's funny cause, like, I write Boimler as a straight man who's being stymied by comedy around him, but then Jack Quaid is so funny that he ruins that and makes him funny and then makes you want to know more about him. And it just speaks to the character and to Jack and to his friendship with Tawney and Mariner that, you know, you want to know about Boimler, but to me, especially writing season five, what we learn about Boimler on the show is always going to be better than Boimler was before he ended up in Starfleet. We could tell those stories, and I like throwing in a little mystery of, like, 'man, those raisin maidens.' "
And while McMahan has thought all of this out: whether to give more on Boimler's backstory and when is the right time to finally reveal Mariner's, the addition of T'Lyn in season four has fans raving about the character and Gabrielle Ruiz's performance. Mike was asked about the amazing chemistry T'Lyn has with these four characters that we've known for years now.
"I'm just stealing from Nimoy. I grew up watching Wrath of Khan, I love Kirk and Spock. They're the perfect tonal combination for comedy; they play it for comedy all the time, you know what I mean? And playing T'Lyn exactly like that and then treating the rest of the lower deckers like Kirk. They're fiery, they're emotional, they are strong-willed, and then T'Lyn just explicitly calls [that] out. They're so deadpan; it's just a great comedic tool to have when everybody else is so BIG and FAST, and then she can say four words, and it makes you laugh. It's a superpower that Vulcans have."
As I said at the top of the article: One. Of. Us. Mike McMahan loved Star Trek; he loves the characters he's created. If you've reached the end here and need more evidence, I can tell you sitting just a few rows behind him during the screening of this week's upcoming episode, "Caves." Although I couldn't see his face, getting to sit in the crowd and watch the episodes with his people, Trek fans? He was having the time of his life. And so was I.
