Lower Decks & the curse of ending too soon
It is not my intention to ignite an EMACS/vim war; I will say that I find it baffling that Lower Decks is ending while Strange New Worlds is being continued. I like Strange New Worlds, despite disagreeing with some of the artistic licenses being taken. But if I had to choose between the two shows, it'd be no contest. Not only as a viewer do I prefer LD, but it has to be the cheaper show to produce. The fact that next season is the last (both by design, it only being contracted for 5 years; and announcement) is sad and incomprehensible in the same way the cancelation of Firefly was - except LD is popular and successful, whereas Firefly merely had a fanatical (ποΈ) fan base.
I don't understand it. Yes, you want to end on a high note. Maybe the writers are running out of plot ideas. Perhaps, given an initial life span of 5 years, the actors have all made other arrangements and aren't available. But I just can't believe the One Big Plot Arc that's been building would necessitate ending the series by its resolution.
LD is a strong show. It's lighthearted. It's a breath of fresh air after the more decidedly darker, ethically challenging, and emotionally straining runs of TNG, Voyager, DS9. And Strange New Worlds... the Gorn are basically Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise.Who, despite being the existential threat of the show, somehow get entirely forgotten about by the time in TOS.
But I digress. I'm going to miss Lower Decks, badly. How can this happen? And why?
55 replies
While I understand and can appreciate your thought, I do admire shows who end on a high, instead of withering and ruining themselves from trying too hard. I think the show will go out on a high and will remembered and appreciated for a very long time.
It is sad though.
Nano gang rise up!
i feel that way about the it crowd
i desperately wanted more content, but realize how that would just tarnish the run. its still so re-watchable
Gravity Falls is another good example
o0o0 yes! i love that weird al had a part. ...such a wild ride
I bet they could have made like three more seasons. There is no shortage of nerd topics, stories from IT admins... I used to read those stories. And there are a lot of them that'd make it for a nice story arc for a 25min episode. And I mean there are also some american series depicting silicon valley programmers and stuff. I feel finding good content isn't an issue. But things also get lame for other reasons. And British TV series always end a few seasons too soon. They seem to do it differently than the Americans. Bediedict Cumberbatch also didn't return as Sherlock. And I would have definitely liked more The IT Crowd, Dirk Gently's, ...
sobs in Firefly
Is this you?
That is an easy way to learn vim!!
I agree with you. People need to remember that TOS had a terrible third season, ending with a bad final episode and TNG's final season had a lot of clunkers. And then there were the final episodes of Enterprise and Voyager.
Game of Thrones would have gone down in history as one of the greatest shows in history. Then the last season happened, and it's an almost forgotten show.
It will be forever hilarious to me just how the end of GoT wiped it from our collective consciousness. There were so many memes and references for years- Hodor, MUH KWEEN, Da king in da norf, R+L=J, "Winter is coming!"- and the second the last episode aired it just fucking vanished.
To your point though, I would argue that had the last season not happened, we would think of GoT as a great show that ended poorly due to the decline in quality for the last couple of seasons.
For a more in context show, Baylon 5 had a great "last season" once the end of the show was rushed and a really lousy one after they decided to postpone the end by another year.
On the other hand we have Futurama.
You may be thinking of TNG's second season, which ended with the abysmal "Shades of Grey". The third season ended with "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1"
No, I was thinking of episodes like Masks.
Calling on all four nano gang membersβ¦assemble!
babi
While I agree with your logic, I donβt think thatβs the reason theyβre canceling it before the βtraditionalβ seven seasons. I am betting that itβs because the Paramount beancounters are so far up their own ass about streaming metrics that they are unable to see that itβs built a cult following, which can be a very powerful tool if you use it the right way.
Funny enough, I think I liked LD because it felt closer in tone to 90s trek than modern trek. Like sure, those were serious shows, but in between the drama there was some pretty natural feeling levity based on character interactions, slice of life stuff, etc. Stuff that doesnβt take you out of the story, but gives you a breather and makes you care more about the characters when serious stuff does happen. Most of modern Trek feels like Marvel movies: End of the world level stakes and melodrama all the time, but constantly undercut with self-aware quips to keep things from ever being too sincere.
LD feels like a return to what I liked about those earlier shows: See the lives of some interesting characters in an interesting setting going on adventures. Itβs not perfect and itβs not what Iβd want to see entirely replace those old kinds of shows, but it stands in pretty stark contrast to the other new stuff.
100%. And the funny episodes feel forced. Like, everyone remembers the Trouble with Tribbles episode for the Tribbles, but they were almost a side story; there was an entire main plot revolving around the Klingons.
I agree. Maybe it's the audiences, maybe it's the studios, but your Marvel simile is apt.
I think Lower Decks was always limited in how long it could run. They couldn't all be Harry Kim. They eventually will rank up. I think spin offs are the natural next step, so I really hope Paramount is onboard.
I agree. LD is great, but it's also feeling like the story is nearing a logical endpoint. The main cast has already ranked up and learned to deal with their issues. It's only a matter of time before they're split up and I'd rather have the show deal with that directly and end conclusively while it's still a great show, than to last another 10 seasons.
Now there's an excellent idea!
Star Fleet Academy show, but animated like Lower Decks!
What I read is that the writers are sad it's ending so soon, they wanted to go for longer, but they are setting things up to be open for possible spin-offs, so maybe we'll get something new in the future in the same vein.
I agree that its wild paramount is canceling a successful, and very cheap to produce show, their entire business model as of late seems to be shooting themselves in the foot and then wondering why they keep losing blood.
Edit: clearly vim.
i love both shows but i don't think they're really comparable. LD is a very very very good spinoff but it can't be the tentpole Trek series, whereas SNW was more or less engineered to be that for this generation
I agree. Lower Decks is a great show in it's own rights and I know lots of people who like it without any previous experience in Star Trek, but it is very much a love letter to the series.
SNW is an outstanding show for first timers and a younger crowd. In a lot of ways, I kind of wish I could experience Trek with SNW as my first show.
SNW hasn't had 5 seasons yet. LD will when this one is over. 5 seasons seems to be what Paramount is willing to give a Star Trek show.
5 year mission.
Whereas if Fox hadn't royally screwed up Firefly's production and release, it would easily have been "popular and successful". Feels like apples and oranges to me.
However, I do agree that Lower Decks is a great show and cancellation makes little sense to me as well. But Strange New Worlds also is a great show, including the artistic license (which I'll be the one to say "Subspace Rhapsody" was amazing, I don't care what anyone says) and I'm happy it is continuing.
I just thought Subspace Rhapsody was a bit boring, with too much "Look, it's this character, but singing!" and not enough actual Star Trek plot. When we only get 10 episodes a season, the plot of each one is very important, imo.
Other than that, I've mostly loved Strange New Worlds. The Lower Decks crossover especially. I love grapplers.
I haven't seen strange new worlds, but there's an entire episode in voyager dedicated to the doctor singing. Not my favorite episode, but I didn't hate it either.
I liked that one, because it was an intense personal story for the Doctor. The SNW episode was just shallow
πΆ "Hail the Klingons, Uhura!" πΆ
Hail!
Please, can't we have just a little emacs/vim war?! :-P
Nvm, I will preemptively win it here:
For anyone interested in its history:
Good old xkcd - I knew this would show up, e eventually:-), though the concept has since been simplified:
Though I really like the look of this one:
And I'm not so sure about this one but there's a funny extension to programming:
Long live the wars - bc it means that we have so many great options to choose from!:-)
You could just put "(with vim bindings)" after everything, including EMACS. I have them on in Firefox.
M-x insert-gene
...pico / nano
Oh so you want to play it like that then!? (/s)
Pic didn't load but something something emacs whore. Oh yes, i know the ancient texts my son.
Okay then a different one:
Jim from the office, watching and smiling as people argue over vim vs. emacs.
He knows the truth - that you should use whatever you want and enjoy the most:-).
I'm going to miss LD, but I'd rather a show go out strong than with a whimper.
I agree. I just fell like there were still places they could have gone with it. Apparently, even with promotions. Getting a half pip, or even a full one, doesn't necessarily automatically get you out of lower decks... and how fast do promotions come? Once every year or two - no faster, certainly.
And if we can have shows about the bridge crew, and shows about lower decks, we could certainly have shows about the in-between strata. An (original) Enterprise class had a crew of CA 400 people. Most of this didn't spend any time on the bridge; bridge crew was, what, 3 dozen people, max? The Ceritos is a California class; I've seen estimates of a crew compliment of 160. If we assume a max of 40 bridge crew (on rotation, with alternates), that leaves 120 people in other categories. Plenty of room for new assignments, duties, experiences; hell, except for re-assignments to other ships, they could drag the show out indefinitely. The bridge crew characters would take the most attrition.
My objection is that this will cap LD at five seasons. It's seven for a trek series dammit.
Eh 5 seasons these days is like two seasons of traditional Star Trek.
There's less filler on the shorter seasons. Maybe 1.6 seasons?
Paramount has been trying to get bought out by Skydance, so they've been cutting costs to make themselves look more attractive. They probably believe that the long term earning potential of the Star Trek property is in the SNW brand and not LD. I personally suspect that when SNW is over we'll see a rebooted TOS using the lore foundation SNW has laid. (Also I could be misremembering, but wasn't Balance of Terror supposed to have been the first time the Federation interacted with the Romulans in a long time? That would also be a contradiction created by SNW.)
900% agree. And it's not like I could switch and watch The Orville instead for some occasionally lighthearted / funny / wholesome episodes. I think it's also not clear if they return at some point.
unpopular opinion: i found lower decks frenetic, shrill, and unwatchable
You're correct. That is an unpopular opinion.
I barely just got to watch the first season on Amazon Video as a Prime member. Someday Iβm hoping the rest of the seasons will be included in Prime, because Iβm not subscribing to Paramount.