How does Lower Decks compare to Star Trek the Animated Series?

I imagine they could just ape alot of the basic character designs, while modernizing movement, dialogue, and special effects. Trials and Tribble-ations is a good primer, as they paid homage to the original episode, while developing 1990s-TV appropriate ships and stuff.

 

My comment was tongue in cheek. Obviously Chekov being on Enterprise is not a canon violation. He was also cleaning the urinals when Khan went to take a leak.

It would be cool to have Keonig finally do an animated Chekov. Looking back I wish they had used him as a voice actor instead of a writer. Didn't he write the giant Spock episode?

 

Farragut was a nice revival of the TAS style:

 

I didn't watch it either for a long time. Eventually I watched it when Nickelodeon started showing it. It is worth watching. Yes, there are some silly episodes, but some really good ones too that could have easily been TOS episodes. They had some good writers. They even got the great Larry Niven to write an episode, which added his Kzinti to Star Trek canon.

 

Maybe he went back to engineering for a rotation, or was working for something for Spock, or getting security training he'd use later...at some point Checkov really became a jack of all trades.

 

Apples and oranges, in my opinion.

It's like GRAVITY FALLS was an homage to Twin Peaks and the X-Files but also silliness and growing up with ridiculous energy. This is the Star Trek equivalent. I don't think of it as Rick and Morty-esque despite some similarities because it's much more optimistic despite its many horrifying zombie apocalypses or, as they say on the Enterprise, Friday's.

In my headcanon, Lower Decks is basically a children's television series adapting the experiences of some actual ensigns in the universe all shoved together. I would even go so far to say its a holodeck program written by Barclay for his kids and he is explicitly the inspiration for Brad Boimler.

 

Waiting for the episode they go back in time and it reverts to the old TAS animation style.

 

I think that makes three of us. So far.

 

Except it's not a children's series. It's aimed at older teens and adults, rated TV-14 for language and violence. Come on, we've only had The Simpsons for like 300 years now -- we should be over the myth that "animated" = "children's."

 

The animation is superior. So is the voice work.

Let's be honest, being made almost 50 years later, if LDS isn't superior to TAS on every technical level, then they're LDS-ing wrong.

Will LDS displace TAS on my list of ST favorites? Time will tell. I am certainly enjoying at least some of the LDS characters more than most of the TAS characters at this point. As for the stories? Well, I like the first two LDS eps better than some TAS eps, but not all. It's still early, yet.

 

I'm 40 so I consider teenagers to be children. These young whipper snappers with their tricorders and their holodecks.

It helps that the series literally came out while my 14 year old nieces were visiting.

 

I'm 52, and I quite clearly wrote "older teens and adults."

 

That’s a great idea.

LD is really Teen Titans in space

 

Do you mean 2003 Teen Titans, or Teen Titans Go!?

I'm not sure I see either comparison. I still feel it's more like Futurama in the Trek universe. And I've seen it described as an office sitcom in space.

 

A mix of all the above.

 

TAS was only a handful of years after TOS which inspired it, while LDs has been decades since TNG. There’s greater buildup of nostalgia and of time to mull it over. Also each series has different approaches, different target audiences, a lifetime of advances in animation and storytelling techniques. Both have a lot to offer, and I’ve appreciated the TAS callbacks in LDs.

 

Who first designated it as an office sitcom in a space?

 

It's a bit like comparing a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 to a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1....they are quite different from each other, but you want both in your garage.

 

I just watched The Survivor again - damn it was clumsy compared to LD!
The stories also seemed to have little relevance or meaning in the end, it's all quite shallow somehow.
I do remember some good stories that were more interesting, though.