Star Trek: Lower Decks is one of many shows ending in 2024 and beyond, but there are tentative plans to keep comedy a part of the franchise. It was announced at SDCC that Tawny Newsome is developing an upcoming Trek show with Justin Simien that’ll be a live-action comedy. Little has been said about it since, but Newsome’s latest update sounds quite positive.
We don’t know a ton about this series’ narrative, though we did learn it involves two resort workers discovering their day-to-day lives are being broadcast to an entire quadrant of the galaxy. Newsome also told CinemaBlend she’d love for her Star Trek: Lower Decks friends to appear, but the show would have to get the greenlight first. For more on that front, here’s what she said about it to Collider recently:
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.
It still doesn’t sound like there’s any guarantee that this show will be greenlit, but the fact she’s being encouraged to turn in more writing has to be a positive sign. That said, it also feels like we’re a long way out from seeing anything from this show, which the upcoming slate of Trek shows backs up. We know that Star Trek: Section 31 will premiere in the new year, and we expect to see Strange New Worlds Season 3 on the 2025 TV schedule as well.
While Star Trek has featured comedic moments all throughout its history, a live-action comedy series is new territory. One can’t help but wonder if this idea was born from the Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks crossover, which brought the over-the-top antics of the animated series to the other live-action.
It’s an experience Cinemablend learned was invaluable to members of the Strange New Worlds crew, and it may be of great benefit to Tawny Newsome as well. She spoke to us about the Mariner-isms she couldn’t pull off in the crossover, and while she may look to Lower Decks to see how comedy works for Star Trek., the live-action crossover may have shown her the constraints.
It’s also worth noting that Tawny Newsome is a member of the Starfleet Academy writing staff, so she’s dealing with writing for that fantastic cast as well. In short, I don’t think it’s wild to assume we’re at least a couple of years out from seeing anything from Star Trek’s live-action comedy. I’d love to be wrong, though I don’t think Newsome will be the person who spills the beans on anything about this series.
While she works on that live-action comedy, be sure to catch Tawny Newsome in the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which streams new episodes on Thursdays. With only a few episodes remaining, make sure to catch up and experience the series finale with the rest of the fans keeping up.