The third season of the American adult animated television series Star Trek: Lower Decks is set in the 24th century and follows the adventures of the low-ranking officers with menial jobs on the starship Cerritos, one of Starfleet's least important starships. The season was produced by CBS Eye Animation Productions in association with Secret Hideout, Important Science, Roddenberry Entertainment, and animation studio Titmouse, with Mike McMahan serving as showrunner and Barry J. Kelly as supervising director.
Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, and Eugene Cordero voice the lower decks crew members of the Cerritos, with Dawnn Lewis, Jerry O'Connell, Fred Tatasciore, and Gillian Vigman providing voices for the ship's senior officers. A third season of Lower Decks was ordered in April 2021. Writing was underway by the next month and was completed in September, with voice recording taking around a year from June 2021 to June 2022. The cliffhanger ending of the second season is resolved in the third-season premiere, allowing new stories to be explored with the main characters. In addition to an episode that revisits the setting and some key characters of the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the season features many connections and references to other past Star Trek media such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, including several actors returning as guest stars.
The season premiered on the streaming service Paramount+ on August 25, 2022, and ran for 10 episodes until October 27. A fourth season was ordered in January 2022.
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Episodes
Cast and characters
Main Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler Noël Wells as D'Vana Tendi Eugene Cordero as Sam Rutherford Dawnn Lewis as Carol Freeman Jerry O'Connell as Jack Ransom Fred Tatasciore as Shaxs Gillian Vigman as T'Ana
Recurring Carlos Alazraqui as Les Buenamigo J.G. Hertzler as Martok and Drookmani captain Paul Scheer as Andy Billups Lauren Lapkus as Jennifer Sh'reyan Ben Rodgers as Steve Stevens Carl Tart as Kayshon Paul F. Tompkins as Migleemo Baron Vaughn as Maier Georgia King as Petra Aberdeen Jessica McKenna as Barnes
Notable guests James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane Phil LaMarr as Alonzo Freeman Susan Gibney as Leah Brahms Armin Shimerman as Quark Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys Jeffrey Combs as AGIMUS Kether Donohue as Peanut Hamper George Takei as Hikaru Sulu Sam Richardson as Vendome Gabrielle Ruiz as T'Lyn
Production Development and writing When announcing the premiere date for the second season of Star Trek: Lower Decks in April 2021, Paramount+ also officially ordered a 10-episode third season of the series. Writing for the third season had begun by late May, with creator and showrunner Mike McMahan knowing the direction for half of the season's episodes at that point. All of the scripts for the season were completed by mid-September.
The series focuses on the low-ranking support crew, or "lower deckers", of the USS Cerritos. By the end of the second season, McMahan came to feel that the ship's senior officers should be explored more in the series because they are "the top of the USS Cerritos but they're one of the bottoms of the fleet. That makes the Cerritos itself a lower decker." Following the second season's cliffhanger ending, McMahan said the third season would depict Captain Freeman's trial for allegedly bombing the Pakled homeworld. The third season also explores the new relationship between Beckett Mariner and Jennifer Sh'reyan, but the focus for Mariner's character remains her friendships and her relationship with her mother, Captain Freeman. McMahan said Mariner and Freeman had grown closer in the second season and the latter's arrest would lead to a new dynamic, with Mariner using her energy in non-constructive ways. Freeman's trial is resolved quickly in the season premiere, during a montage of events that the main characters were not involved in featuring the well-known characters Morgan Bateson and Tuvok from previous Star Trek series. McMahan said there was an "amazing episode" of Star Trek happening in the background of the premiere which the main characters were not aware of because they work in the lower decks, aligning with executive producer Alex Kurtzman's description of the series as having the "A story" of a typical Star Trek episode taking place in the background of each Lower Decks episode.
McMahan said the third season would take the first steps towards moving the central lower deckers up in rank, showing each take a different path to become the people that he planned for them to be at the end of the series. These new personal missions for the main characters are introduced across the first few episodes of the season: Mariner has to navigate answering to first officer Jack Ransom rather than her mother; Brad Boimler decides to be less cautious than in the first two seasons which leads him into some dangerous situations; D'Vana Tendi starts a new job in the sciences division after McMahan felt there was no room for her to grow in the medical division; and Sam Rutherford discovers the secrets behind his mysterious cyborg implant. The friendships between the main characters are further explored in "Room for Growth", which was inspired by the room lottery system at McMahan's college. He wanted the episode to be about the journey rather than the destination, similar to the 1986 coming-of-age film Stand by Me, and based several of the episode's locations on scenes from that film.
The sixth episode visits the Deep Space 9 space station from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. McMahan described the episode as "one last walk around Deep Space 9". He binge-watched episodes of that series before breaking the episode's story, to help decide which elements to include, and settled on a storyline featuring the Karemma from the episode "Starship Down". McMahan thought those aliens would "still be flirting with doing trade with the Federation" at this point in the timeline, about six years after Deep Space Nine ends. Similarly, he felt the character Kira Nerys would still be running the space station and wanted to feature her alongside main character Shaxs due to them both being Bajoran. The episode also brings back the Deep Space Nine character Quark, who had previously been referenced in Lower Decks as the owner of a bar franchise. The episode's title, "Hear All, Trust Nothing", is one of the Rules of Acquisition used by Ferengi such as Quark in Deep Space Nine. McMahan originally did not include Mariner in the Deep Space 9 visit because she used to serve on the space station and would not want to "go running back in there", but actress Tawny Newsome asked him to rewrite the episode's ending to include Mariner on the space station because Deep Space Nine is her favorite Star Trek series. The episode does not delve into key elements of Deep Space Nine such as the Dominion War or characters Benjamin and Jake Sisko, and McMahan acknowledged that the Karemma were not important characters from the series. He hoped Deep Space Nine fans would see the episode as a "little gift" that encouraged them to re-watch the series.
"A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" is the episode that McMahan felt was "truly [his] own" for the season, featuring the exocomp Peanut Hamper from the first-season finale. The episode begins with Peanut Hamper in space while the opening credits are shown instead of the normal title sequence. McMahan compared the character's interactions with the bird-like Areore to the films Dances with Wolves (1990), The Last Samurai (2003), and Avatar (2009), which he felt was new territory for Star Trek. He also compared Peanut Hamper's character arc to that of Maui from Moana (2016), though the episode ends with her "true nature" being confirmed as a "manipulative and cunning robot". This brings her into contact with the evil computer AGIMUS from the second season, setting up a continuation of their storyline in the fourth season.
After Mariner leaves Starfleet in the ninth episode, there is a time jump before the tenth episode during which she experiences life outside the organization. She realizes how important her family and friends are to her and that she would rather work to improve Starfleet's flawed systems. McMahan said because Mariner returns in the finale, she would not be threatening to leave again and would have to "figure out a way to make Starfleet work for her" moving forward. The exploration of Rutherford's implant continues an ongoing story from the second season that was inspired by the secret past of Deep Space Nine character Julian Bashir. This season reveals that Rutherford was given the implant by Admiral Buenamigo, who uses Rutherford's designs to create the fully automated Texas-class starships. Buenamigo is an example of the common Star Trek trope of antagonistic admirals, and is also part of the season's exploration of hierarchy and professional pressure in Starfleet. McMahan explained that there are a lot of exemplary Starfleet officers across the history of the franchise and characters like Buenamigo feel like they need to do something big to be able to stand out. This theme is further explored when the main characters learn that other California-class ships look up to the Cerritos, and when Freeman proposes "Project Swing By" to try prove that the California-class ships can be more than they are perceived to be by the rest of Starfleet. In the season finale, all of the California-class ships arrive to save the Cerritos from the Texas-class ships and the main characters accept the status of the California-class. Unlike the second-season finale, McMahan chose not to end the third-season finale with a cliffhanger so the fourth season could start "clean" with new stories.
Casting and voice recording The series stars a group of ensigns that serve in the lower decks of the Cerritos: Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as D'Vana Tendi, and Eugene Cordero as Sam Rutherford. The ship's bridge crew, who have supporting roles, include Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O'Connell as first officer Commander Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as security chief Lieutenant Shaxs, and Gillian Vigman as chief medical officer Dr. T'Ana. Newsome began recording voice overs for the season in early June 2021. She was able to work in a recording studio for the season, which was not possible on the previous season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she was still unable to record with Quaid, as she did on the first season, due to his commitments filming the series The Boys. Newsome said she had finished recording for the season by March 2022, and Cordero said in June that recording was mostly complete. Newsome was doing additional dialogue recording (ADR) for the season later that month at the same time as she was recording the fourth season.