Spoilers How literal is LD in your headcanon?

In the novels, Kirk had to sleep in his ship's engine room when he was an ensign. Bunks in the corridor is not some whacky idea Lower Decks came up with for comedic value.

 

My question here isn’t whether or not this is canon, but simply whether it’s a liberty taken because the show follows in the tradition of prime-time animated comedy and not live-action drama.

So Lower Decks is designed for fans who have watched the canon shows and read enough tie-in novels to have gained a different overall impression? Even so, space was tighter on older starships (as remarked upon in “Trials and Tribble-ations”, although Ensign Garrovick did have his own quarters) and also the bunk beds on the smaller Defiant were in separate quarters.

 

Can we accuse Lower Decks of being wholly original? I thought was doing the typical sitcomesque over the top gags based upon real life? Like MASH.

 

I've always wanted to to see cots stretched over photon torpedo tubes like in a ww2 submarine

 

If anything, that made the Defiant unusually luxurious for a warship. While I can see the officers bunking two to a cabin, the crew should have been if not sleeping in the corridors, then in a special area with a dozen bunks in them.

Hell, look at BSG, that's supposed to be an aircraft carrier in space yet aside from the CO and XO, everyone sleeps in berthing spaces with a dozen or so assigned each. Admittedly, they probably took it a bit too far there, where even the CAG was sleeping in these berthing spaces. On an actual carrier, IIRC, the CAG gets their own stateroom comparable to the CO's.

 

I don't have an specific source on this, but given that the CAG is a Commander (O-5) at minimum (as the Ship's Department Head for aviation ops [WWII to 1980s]), and nowadays is typically a full Captain or Colonel (O-6), often with a Deputy CAG (also O-6), an OPS (O-5 or O-4) and at least a couple of Warfare Officers (O-4 or O-3), I'd be shocked if they don't have at least one stateroom (Ship's CO generally have two in modern day, up to three on some of the old battleships).

 

Until its events are verified to be canonical, I see Lower Decks as a parody. A very fun parody, but a parody. I just wish some existing episodes in other Treks could be declared the same. Starting with Threshold, A Night in Sickbay, and Sub Rosa.

I say this as a heavy parody writer, so I know the signs.

 

You can declare all of them that if you want. It has exactly the same amount of legitimacy as declaring LDS that.

 

I can totally see a scene from LD being referenced, or even shown, in a live-action series (most likely PIC or a Short Trek)...but that time, played straight.

 

I would love Jack Quaid as a broken bitter 100% serious version of Brad Boimler on Picard, after a Seven-style tragedy. Basically his character from The Boys.

 

I'd rather see him as boisterous and still having his demented view of how Starfleet and the universe works. Broken and bitter is way overdone in modern TV and Trek.

 

Yeah, I'll pass on the bitter unless it is Passover.

 

Even then, it's still canonical. Being contradicted by a later canonical episode is not itself enough to de-canonize an earlier canonical episode.

 

I voted mostly.

My grand unifying theory of Star Trek that I think I've stated before is to use the analogy that it's like different historians writing about the same history. Each of them selects which aspect of history they want to highlight and injects their own personality into it. Some of them take liberties to make the story more entertaining, like they way the Beautiful Mind movie cut out the least likable aspects of John Nash like sexually assaulting his male college roommates.

Lower Decks is like a biopic with the humorous and reverential aspects embellished. Only, this particular history being written about happens to not have really happened.

 

There is no poll option that I agree with. I would go for "completely canonical," but I can't go with a qualified "completely" option, when I don't agree with the qualification. LDS episodes are not like lost Doctor Who episodes restored with animation, because LDS episodes were never filmed before. The idea that there is any attempt to represent lost live action is therefore a non-starter, and that is only one of the problems.

What we're seeing in LDS are canonical and original presentations of original stories.

 

Which was actually kind of the point in the episode....

 

This. People need to realize canon and continuity are not the same thing.

 

Then the episode proved it quite well.

 

"Back in the sixties he was part of a free speech movement at Berkeley...I think he did a little too much LDS."

 

This was also the case with the Excelsior in STVI, shame we didn't see more of it in later shows.