Spoilers How literal is LD in your headcanon?

For me, it honestly doesn't matter in the end. People obviously can, and always have and always will ignore the parts they don't like.

The thing I find really bizarre, though, is how many of the people who want LDS to be not *really* real can seriously and with a straight face say stuff like 'Ok, maybe some version of it actually happened in the Trek universe, but it's *obviously* way too over the top/ridiculous to possibly have happened exactly as shown.' Not because there's anything wrong with that statement but because it always comes with an inherent implication that this somehow makes Lower Decks different from all the other series. It really doesn't.

None of the shows can actually have happened exactly 100% as shown without inventing a whole hell of lot of hand-waves and deus ex machina justifications for all the blatant contradictions and bizarre absurdities. This is literally built into the basic concept of what the Star Trek canon is in the first place. And at the moment, realistically, Lower Decks is really a far lesser offender than most of the other shows, if only because it's just 10 episodes in so far.

 

The comparison here isn’t with story logic of excellent scriptwriting, but simply with that of live-action Star Trek on either side of the timeline (and TAS to a lesser degree even though it’s further away on the timeline, since it was written fairly close to live action). Would LD have happened exactly like this (as the first level of comparison) in the TNG era or on PIC? Even if certain elements could appear, would they be depicted with such regularity? Or does the show take advantage of The Simpsons tradition in order to go over the top in a number of specific ways live-action Star Trek wouldn’t, thus making it difficult to perceive as a literal component of a shared universe that is mostly live-action drama?

 

If the framing device is still a comedy then yes it largely occurs as presented. Save for the dog.

 

With today's CGI, the dog would work, too.

 

None of the situations in LD would have been written quite like they were if they were being written for TNG or PIC because those shows are essentially dramas where LD is essentially a comedy, so they're trying to emphasise different elements of the situation.

dJE

 

If TNG or Picard or any of the live action shows were to show the life of junior officers on one of Starfleet's smaller and less prestigious ships, why wouldn't they show them sleeping in the corridors? Those at the bottom of the pecking order don't get luxurious accommodations, and if it's a small ship to begin with, than probably the higher ranking officers aren't living as luxuriously as officers of comparable positions on other ships.

Likewise, if the live action shows were showing the officers hanging out on their free time, it's not unheard of to see some goofiness like someone recording a fake Captain's Log, or whatever. Hell, I see things go on at my workplace while people are on the job that are nothing compared to what the Cerritos crew do in their spare time.

Aside from the fact that Lower Decks is animated and places more of a focus on comedy there really is nothing about it that distinguishes it from the other Treks and no reason why it would be at all incompatible with the things we see in the other shows.

 

Because my sense of canon then connects with the much smaller and rarely crewed Defiant, where everyone at least had quarters for their bunk beds, so I interpret the situation as a comedic exaggeration of their living conditions.

Sure, but as a viewer who’s seen everything with an eye to how it fits together, I’m also asking “what would a showrunner supervised by Rick Berman depict in 2379?” and “what would Michael Chabon under Alex Kurtzman depict in the 2380s?” These two constraints are always there, so while on the one hand I’m seeing excellent research and respect for continuity, on the other hand I’m also seeing elements consistent with prime-time animated comedy, but not necessarily live action.

Realistically, what will probably happen is that Memory Alpha will continue to report everything as dry fact (what else could it do as a wiki?), while production or tie-in writers may look at that, look at the animation, then decide how to work it into their stories, if at all. By asking well-informed fans about their sense of how LD fits into the continuity, I’m trying to get a feel for how future writers might approach LD, because they would come up with stories in accordance with their own feel for the canon.

Well, my exercise is to imagine Picard on PIC-S2 requesting security footage of the relevant Cerritos corridor on stardate 57436 (“Second Contact”), then watching the scene with the bat’leth in live action, given the premise of a shared franchise continuity which is dominated by live action. Would I see that with the audio practically unchanged and the animation serving as the blueprint for live action, or would it be toned down or even rewritten? For me that’s always somewhere in the background, even as on one level I’m watching the show the way I would The Simpsons.

 

That would be horrifying. So, to be blunt, I don't want the dog. It would not be cute in anything but animated form.

 

Lower Decks is entirely non-canon. Except for the future scene with all the children and talking about the greatest Starfleet officer of all time, Miles O'Brien.

 

('Twas obviously a joke, I believe)

 

Alas, the Internet has taught me to be cynical.

 

43.278% canon.

 

I entirely agree. Flashback, VOY, if nothing else, established dorm rooms for lower-ranked personnel (was Tuvok addressed as "ensign" in that ep?) so an integrated design like on LD is entirely plausible. Geordie and Data were both pretty senior but appeared to have fairly small living quarters on the E-D, so dorms seem actually likely for ensigns on the Ceritos.

I can imagine a scene like the one with the bat-leth between Jadzia and Worf - the difference being that it would fade to black before they started filming the porn-hub version.

dJE

 

Recall that Rutherford pulled a panel OFF to find that button. If the implant installers intended for a mood altering device to be external they would likely have explained that to him when he got it. Or included a sticker: No user serviceable parts inside.

 

I take it as literally as the rest of Star Trek.

"No, Frylock, The Highlander was a documentary, and events happened in real time."
-Shake Zula, the Mic Rula aka Master Shake, Aqua Teen Hunger Force
New Jersey, 2002

 

Indeed. And the TNG episode Lower Decks established that even on the Enterprise D Ensigns had to share quarters, as one of the reasons Ensign Lavelle was hoping for a promotion was so he could finally get his own quarters.

 

It was onscreen, so it's Canon.

 

As noted, my problem is largely with bunking in a corridor, not even in shared quarters. It’s a significant step down from what I’d have expected. We must also consider the overall impression from the franchise that even ensigns get individual quarters in episodes not specifically designed to emphasize their junior status. The situation in “Lower Decks” (TNG) comes across as more of a Ron Moore invention, introduced because he needed that distinction for the story, regardless of the fact that a Galaxy-class starship can evacuate 15,000 people in an emergency. And now we have a series as a spin-off in spirit from that one episode.

Off the top of my head, Ensign Garrovick had individual quarters with a clearly visible nameplate in “Obsession” (TOS). So did Harry Kim on VGR at 22. When Wesley Crusher remained onboard during Season 2 of TNG, was he forced to move? I don’t think so, despite only being an acting ensign. So what are we to make of this? There are ensigns and then there are ensigns? All of it accumulates, so when I see corridor bunks on the Cerritos, I can either interpret that as officers seriously lagging behind in… some way, or just a bit of comedic exaggeration upon a one-off TNG episode.

Let’s also review the bunk bed article on Memory Alpha: it’s not like there are a bunch of random examples scattered throughout the franchise, which would be needed in order to create a different overall impression.

 

You listened to the Starfleet recruiter's too, huh.

Anyway, your expectations have nothing to do with canon. If it's on screen, its canon until successive onscreen modifies said canon. We're not pondering over fragments of dead sea scrolls, here.