Star Trek: Lower Decks

Our Review

The funniest Star Trek ever made, and secretly one of the most faithful. An animated comedy about the junior officers — the ensigns who keep starships running while the bridge crew takes credit — created by Mike McMahan, who loves Trek enough to make the jokes land because they’re true. The Cerritos, a California-class ship that handles second-contact missions (the boring, vital work of maintaining paradise), is a perfect setting: boring-ship energy gives the show its underdog soul.

Mariner (Tawny Newsome) — the brilliant, insubordinate captain’s daughter working twice as hard to avoid promotion — and Boimler (Jack Quaid), the by-the-book striver who wants to be captain so badly it radiates off him, are one of TV’s great comic duos. By season 3 the show stops being a parody and becomes genuine Trek — the live-action crossover with Strange New Worlds is fan-service perfection.

Verdict: Watch it. The Trek series that understands the utopia is funnier when someone has to schedule the holodeck time.