The beloved animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks will end its run with its fifth season. For each cast member, it’s been quite the journey that first began with the launch of the show in 2020.
At New York Comic Con, CBR’s Kevin Polowy spoke about Star Trek: Lower Decks with series creator Mike McMahan alongside voice actors Jack Quaid (Brad Boimler), Tawny Newsome (Beckett Mariner), Eugene Cordero (Sam Rutherford), and Noël Wells (D’Vana Tendi). Those in the group observed how it was odd that this was the first time they had all been together in one room, given how they record their voiceovers separately. The actors then reflected on how they brought their characters to life and how the personal touch they each provided helped influence who they voiced as the series went on.
“It’s funny,” Quaid said. “We almost never record together, but we have gotten really close. I think that’s because Mike has assembled a beautiful team of weirdos.”
On his Boimler journey, Quaid added, “I remember, originally, he was kind of created… like the straight man foil to Mariner’s chaos, and now, I think Boimler has his own brand of neuroses, that I definitely injected in there, or that we found along the way. [Like] the Boimler scream alone.”
Playing Beckett Mariner Helped Tawny Newsome Learn About Comedic Timing
“I think I really started to learn the difference in Mariner’s speeds, of when she’s always in action kickass mode, that’s not always when she’s funniest,” Newsome then explained about her character. “She kind of needs to relax. But it taught me a thing about comedy, and how I do comedy, because there is something very symbiotic about needing to relax into jokes, and needing things to flow, and that being funnier than being too on top of it, or too loud and too fast.”
Wells went on to share, “For me, I feel like Tendi started out with me just trying to be as optimistic, reading a lot of scientific jargon, and that’s where I came in. Just like, optimistic, bright-eyed, kind of sweet, but as the season went on, and nas time went on, they would push me… So, then I started finding the levels of Tendi, and then they started writing storylines for her, so she became a lot more nuanced, and also they gave me the freedom to improvise more.”
“It was good initially that I didn’t know that it was a Star Trek show, and didn’t know that he had the cyborg implant, because I think I would have gone into it thinking, ‘Oh, they want this brooding, robot-ish guy,'” Cordero shared. “I think being able to come up with that energy, and then seeing what Rutherford is like, and then growing into doing the technobabble, but being really excited about it, was really fun to start playing in, because I feel like in a lot of sci-fi in general, the technobabble feels like people are just flowing through it, so to have an engineer who is like, ‘Oh my gosh, I get to say this stuff,’ and have it be a positive spin of, ‘Can you believe are doing this?’ It’s cool.”
It was good initially that I didn’t know that it was a Star Trek show, and didn’t know that he had the cyborg implant…
Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming on Paramount+ with new episodes from the final season debuting on Thursdays up until the finale on Dec. 19, 2024.