'Star Trek: Lower Decks' cast teases 'hopeful' ending to final season of Paramount+ series
Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells and Eugene Cordero talk about Season 5 of the show and how creator Mike McMahan "perfected" the "flavour of Star Trek"
It's the beginning of the end of a chapter for the animated Paramount+ series Star Trek: Lower Decks, with the show's final season, Season 5, premiering with the first two episodes on Thursday. Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, Jerry O'Connell and Dawnn Lewis continue to voice some of our favourite characters, with the first episode of the season involving crew members interacting with alternate versions of themselves.
But in a particularly interesting start to the season, we get to see Tendi with Orions, trying to make her way back to Starfleet. It's a great journey to take with the character and a perfect start to Season 5.
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"One of the things I took away from it was watching Tendi sort of ... A-B testing her leadership skills, things that she learned in Starfleet, her idealism, and then trying to apply it to her home planet, trying to make a difference and watching all the ways that was sort of failing before her eyes," Wells told Yahoo Canada about her character. "But then ultimately we see her sort of realizing, ... she is making an impact. I just liked watching that journey."
"I also liked being able to embody Tendi as a little bit more of her badass self. ... It was almost like Tendi's growing up, she's taking all the elements of herself and has alchemized it into this person that's very well rounded. It's almost like she had a shadow part of herself that now is fully integrated into herself."
'I love this show so much, I just want it to keep going'
While it's certainly a bittersweet moment for the show's cast to be entering the release of this final season, they also teased that the way creator Mike McMahan ends Season 5 leaves the door open for the continuation of this story, in some capacity, in the future.
Recalling what it was like to wok on the show's final episode, Quaid, who voices Brad Boimler, very much considers this the end of a chapter, not the end of the entire story.
"I know we all want to do this show and continue doing this show, because we love playing these characters," Quaid said. "So it did feel like a 'see you later.' It didn't necessarily feel like a goodbye, and the way that they wrote it left it open for us to continue telling stories with these characters, so that I loved."
"Animation works differently than doing live action, because usually when you end something, like you wrap a movie, everyone's there on the last day and everyone claps and goes, 'Hey, we did it. It's done.' But with animation, it's just kind of like a smattering of that, and also a lot of us are still going in and recording additional lines of dialogue. ... I love this show so much, I just want it to keep going, because these are incredible people here in this room with me. They're incredible people who work on the show, and it's just a true joy in my life to play this character and be a part of this team."
Watch Star Trek: Lower Decks on Paramount+ with 7 days free, then plans start at $6.99/month
Cordero, who voices Sam Rutherford, added that the series ends on a "hopeful" note.
"That last episode ends so hopeful for all of us that it does give me hope. It makes me feel like it is just a chapter," Cordero said. "It makes me feel like even if we don't continue the story in animation form, ... within the canon you'll be able to to follow where you hope they'll be going and it feels like it's in a positive place."
"I think Rutherford, over the five seasons, has really started to learn what and who he is, what meaning with or without his implant, and how important it is to him to find these friends and to be loving and doing what you love to do."
Something that's always been celebrated in Star Trek: Lower Decks is the way the show is incredibly invested in being a really thorough addition to the franchise, while also leaning into its comedy. It's something that has made the show particularly unique and exciting for its audience.
"What Mike has really perfected is the kind of the flavour of Star Trek," Newsome said. "It can be any genre. It can be about a variety of topics. The content can change. The point of view can change, as you saw with our show, being from the point of view of literally the lower decks characters that hadn't been done before. But at its heart, the flavour, the tone, the vision of unity for the future, these philosophical problems that we're trying to solve through a hopeful lens, that stuff is all what makes Star Trek, Trek."
"I think that my favourite workplace comedies are always coming from a hopeful place. When you look at like [Parks and Rec], or [Abbott Elementary], those are people trying to make the world better, and that's all Trek has ever been."