Star Trek: Lower Decks Cast, First Look Unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con 2019

At San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Star Trek: Lower Decks co-creator Mike McMahan announced the cast members and released the first look for the upcoming adult animated comedy series that follows “the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships”. Jack Quaid (The Hunger Games), Tawny Newsome (Brockmire), Noël Wells (Master of None), Eugene Cordero (Tacoma FD), Dawnn Lewis (A Different World), Jerry O'Connell (Sliders), Fred Tatasciore (Tangled), and Gillian Vigman (The Hangover) are part of the Lower Decks voice cast. Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere in 2020.

“It takes place right after [Star Trek:] Nemesis. Voyager is back,” McMahan said at the Star Trek: Lower Decks Comic-Con panel on Saturday. “We have a brand-new ship design and class. It's called the California class.” Lower Decks will focus on four (funny) ensigns in the lower decks, appropriately. They are Ensign Brad Boimler (Quaid), Ensign Beckett Mariner (Newsome), Ensign Tendi (Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Cordero). Lewis, O'Connell, Tatasciore, and Vigman play the ship's bridge crew Captain Carol Freeman, Commander Jack Ransom, Lieutenant Shaxs, and Doctor T'Ana, respectively.

Created, written, and executive produced by McMahan — once the head writer on Rick and Morty — Star Trek: Lower Decks is the first animated series for CBS All Access, the streaming counterpart of CBS, and the first animated Trek series since 1973-74's Star Trek: The Animated Series from Gene Roddenberry himself. While that served as a sequel to The Original Series, with most cast members returning to voice their characters, Lower Decks is a spin-off that's set in the larger Trek universe.

Star Trek TV chief Alex Kurtzman has previously said Lower Decks won't be “Rick and Morty in the world of Star Trek” despite McMahan's credentials. Instead, it will have its own “slightly more adult” tone than the rest of Trek, with the intention being that viewers “laugh with Star Trek and not at Star Trek”.

CBS All Access has given a two-season order to Star Trek: Lower Decks. McMahan's fellow executive producers include Kurtzman, Secret Hideout's Heather Kadin, Gene's son Rod Roddenberry, Roddenberry Entertainment's Trevor Roth, and CBS Television's Katie Krentz.

The 10-episode first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere in 2020 on CBS All Access. There's no word on what platform it will release on in India, where Netflix has the rights to Star Trek: Discovery and Amazon Prime Video has picked up Star Trek: Picard.