First though, new promos for both Lower Decks and Discovery promise a forthcoming 23 week period of new Star Trek. Here's the banner version:
And here's the trailer (also on Instagram if you're geolocked out), which features some new clips from both shows:
Of course for those of us not in North America, we're only getting half of those 23 weeks for the moment, with Lower Decks not available outside the US and Canada. Speaking to How To Kill An Hour (as spotted by TrekCore), the show's creator, Mike McMahan, shed some light on what's going on here, pointing the finger of blame at Covid, at the effect that had on Star Trek's release schedules:
CBS wants all you guys to see it too. I want to be careful here, because I usually just go radio silent because I don't want to speak out of turn because this business stuff, the deal making, is not something I'm involved in. I'm involved in making sure a Trill symbiont is called a symbiont and not a symbiote. But from what I know; here's the pieces of this I know, for you guys to hold on to: Is that there are, in the works, a way for you guys to watch it. I don't know the timeline, but the reason that you guys don't know yet is squarely because of Covid. Because the timelines for everything we've been doing for production have been completely thrown out, and are completely different.So I think we can infer from that that Discovery would have been coming first if the world hasn't gone crazy, and it was quicker to get Lower Decks completed remotely, which meant it ended up coming first in the end, ahead of the plans of the people in charge of international distribution. let's hope they get on with sorting those plans sooner rather than later!!
So stuff - Actually a lot of what we're doing unexpectedly got shifted two months earlier, because they were juggling around schedules and stuff. And a lot of the different groups in entertainment, when you shuffle that stuff around, they can't move as fast as you. My priorities were keeping everybody on the show healthy, keep the show being the best as possible, and get it into everybody's hands as soon as I can, because we're all fucking miserable right now. And I did not know that doing all that stuff was going to end up having to end up having to leave the UK and abroad (other than Canada) hanging for a minute. But it's not because we don't love you guys, it's not because we don't want to share Trek with you guys. You know, Star Trek is universal, Star Trek is global, and the characters in Star Trek aren't an American set of characters, they are an Earth set of characters, and, you know, we want everybody on the planet to be able to see this Federation show.
So I get the frustration, and I have been quiet on it only because, I don't want to step on the jobs on everybody else that is trying to get it to you faster, and accidentally slow it down, to calm people down on Twitter. Like the thought of having CBS be like "we were about to close but then you fucking said something, and now people have to wait an extra month", because we complicated some deal or whatever. But it's been in the works for a long time, and I'm fine at people tweeting their frustrations at me: I get it. I've been frustrated at deal making a million time before. But my priority is that you guys get it as soon as possible.
So I know it's frustrating, and it really is a symptom of our whole timeline moved up. Like I think, you know, we were not expecting to premiere this soon, but because of circumstances being what they are, it was important to us to get it out in the world. And we had the ability to do it safely. But the unintended consequence being, you guys are having to see us being pumped about it, and you're like "HELLO! What about us over here?". But trust me, it's a priority that you guys get it, and we're working on it.
It's a California class ship, which has always existed in Starfleet; is what we’re saying, that they're the utility support ships. In the California class, there's three types of hull painting: there's blue, red, and yellow - We've extended the visual metaphor of the uniforms to the ships. The Cerritos has yellow on the hull because it's literally a primarily a second contact engineering ship. They show up to planets that need engineering stuff done on them in order to be able to communicate with the Federation.Meanwhile CBS have released a few new stills from the first episode of the series, Second Contact:
There's also, you'll see in the show, blue-hulled California class ships, which are usually deployed for places where there has to be more medical expertise, and red-hulled ships, that have red paint on them, that are like for moving around ambassadors and doing more command-level stuff.
Plus a couple more mini-trailers:
Out in the real world billboards for the show can be found in several locations, as captured by the Daily Billboard blog. They've spotted a few distinct designs. There's this version of one of the previously released posters:
And this, being chased by a giant-space-spider image! Which can be found as both a regular rectangular billboard, or a more elaborate shaped billboard:
You can find many more examples on the Daily Billboard blog.
Back in the digital realm, CBS have released this series of promos for each of the main characters:
Also focusing on the main characters, Star Trek Online have revealed they will offering all four as free officers in the game. And that means we get a vision of what the characters might look like more naturally:
Finally, I saved my favourites for last, some cool Lower Decks art, from the creators of the show! Storyboard artist and character designer Marisa Livingston shared this polaroid style shot of the lower deckers:
Director Barry J. Kelly shared his own rendering of the crew:
And storyboard artist Will Heff brought in more of the characters for his image:
Lower Decks will be available on CBS All Access in the USA, and Bell Media channels in Canada. As mentioned above, the rest of the world is awaiting news.
To keep track of all the latest Lower Decks news, have a look back through my Lower Decks tag for previews, behind the scenes, tie-in fiction, and other merchandise updates.
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