Star Trek Doubling Down On Lower Decks As Star Tawny Newsome Developing Live-Action Comedy Show
Star Trek has been subject to a host of bad decisions since Alex Kurtzman took over the property for streaming programs. Now, it appears as if Paramount+ is doubling down as it looks like Paramount+ is moving forward with a live-action comedy show starring Tawny Newsome from Lower Decks.
In 2017, Star Trek: Discovery debuted as the first small-screen Star Trek show since Enterprise went off the air in the early 2000s. The show was met with criticism from long-time fans who saw an ignoring of established lore and a focus on identity politics, making it the lowest-rated Star Trek show on IMDB. The show only worsened over time, with IMDB ratings for episodes in seasons 3-5 performing the worst out of the entire series.
During this time, Star Trek also launched a slew of other shows, including Picard, which suffered with fans until Season 3, Strange New Worlds, and a comedy cartoon, Lower Decks which couples reference porn with edgy humor.
The brand has been damaged, though fans did begin to tune back in for Picard once Season 3 brought back The Next Generation cast for one final send-off, dramatically shifting the tone of the show to actually do honor to its past. With Season 3, Picard became the first Star Trek show on Paramount+ to break into the top ten streaming ratings.
Lower Decks has never charted, being a niche of a niche. Many fans have voiced the concept was funny at first but didn’t have staying power. For some reason, Paramount+ allowed it to continue for five seasons which is ending this year.
Tawny Newsome plays Beckett Mariner in Lower Decks, the series Mary Sue, who’s too edgy and good for Starfleet but manages to solve every crisis anyway. The character is the typical black female lead, also adding in plotlines to virtue signal her being bisexual for modern audiences.
Now, as Lower Decks is finally being canceled, Paramount+ is doubling down by allowing Tawny Newsome to develop a new live-action comedy.
She told Collider in an interview, “All I can share with you is that we keep writing it, and we keep turning things in, and they keep saying, ‘Please keep writing.’ So as long as they allow us to do that and they don’t say, ‘Stop. Close your computers and go home,’ we’ll continue making it. And yeah, as long as they don’t tell me, ‘Please shut your laptop and throw it in the sea,’ I will keep working on it. It’s been such a joy. I love Justin Simien with all my heart. I can’t wait to hopefully keep doing it.”
At San Diego Comic-Con this year, they gave a logline for the series, “Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant.”
It looks like, instead of giving fans what they want with a continuation crew of a next, next-generation doing honor to Starfleet, again, they’re going to focus on “outsiders and misfits” in this new comedy Star Trek.
With Lower Decks season 5 underway, it’s highly possible the new show might spin directly out of the cartoon. There are a series of “alternate realities” opening with rifts in space throughout the season, which could be used as a potential vehicle to dovetail into live action if Newsome is planning on still playing Beckett Mariner.
The Lower Decks characters were brought into live-action already in a crossover episode with Strange New Worlds during season 2.
Paramount+ has not moved forward with a decision on the comedy thus far, though Newsome is already working as a writer on Starfleet Academy, the upcoming show spinning out of Discovery.
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