Let's get un-prescious!

I'm sorry. I have failed you. I missed this year's Federation Day. I don't know what happened. Maybe I was just distracted by the unremitting horror that is the news, maybe I was too busy commenting on how Klingons have hair again. Whatever it is there's no excuse for-huh? What's...what's Federation Day?

What's...? I...I don't know why I bother...

Pictured: all walks of life from
original series fans to DS9 fans. 

Federation Day, he said pedantically, is the one day a year where people from all walks of life, -well, not all walks...really just the nerds, come together to celebrate the future founding of the United Federation of Planets. You know, the space U.N. on Star Trek? Anyway, it falls on October 11th and traditionally I mark the occasion with a blog post about Star Trek, but since like every third post on my blog is about Star Trek anyway, I'm not going to sweat it this year. Instead we're going to talk about the new Star Trek show.

"It's probably cancer."

-WebMD

No, not Discovery, the other new Star Trek-no, not the new Picard show, the other other new show: the animated Star Trek comedy series. No, you're not having a stroke, there's actually going to be a Star Trek comedy series. Although incidentally, you might be having a stroke, unrelated to the news of a Star Trek cartoon, I don't know. I'm not a doctor, and can't see you. That's not how blogs work. If you think you are having a stroke please seek medical attention, or go to WebMD or something. Now, what were we talking about?

Oh, right, the Star Trek animated sitcom. It's going to be called Star Trek: Lower Decks and was created by Mike McMahon, the head writer of Rick and Morty, which...yeah, but he also has a Twitter account called TNG Season 8 which is a bunch of hilarious episode summaries of Next Generation episodes that never existed and has a much less toxic fanbase.

Yeah, you're not really supposed to like Rick...

Laughing at yes. With? Ehh...less
often, but sometimes I guess.

But still, Star Trek as a cartoon? Ok, yes, there already is a Star Trek cartoon. If you're unfamiliar, it was a half-hour animated series from the 70's voiced by most of the original cast reprising their roles from the series. It's not bad exactly...but you kind of have to be a fan. It also wasn't a comedy. Like, all Star Trek things have at least some humor, and there have been at least some comedic episodes. Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales is probably the closest to a straight up comedy, but for the most part, Star Trek takes itself more or less seriously.

"Aw, c'mon, we're right here..."

-Babylon 5

Well, ok, a Shatner level of seriousness anyway. The show will follow the nameless lower-ranked crew of an unimportant starship and in that respect, Lower Decks sounds more along the lines of something like a combination of Futurama's working schlubs in a sci-fi universe and The Orville's we're the Bad News Bears of Starfleet premises. But I guess the difference here is that instead of some thinly-veiled, off-brand, similar to-but legally distinct from Star Trek setting, this show gets to take place in the real Star Trek universe.

Which begs the most important question in the minds of fans, and the least important question in the minds of everyone else: will it be canon? Like, if it's about the janitors on the U.S.S. Michael Dukakis getting up to zany hijinks involving Steve Urkel and or Glomer from the Punky Brewster cartoon is that supposed to sit in the same continuity as dramatic episodes of other Treks like TNG's The Inner Light and DS9's The Visitor?

"Suck on this, verisimilitude!"

-Steve Urkel

"Women...amiright fellas?"

-Star Trek

And if so, will we, as obsessed fans, be ok with that? Probably not, but then we are fans, as in short for fanatic. There probably is a tendency among the trekiest of us to be a little precious about our dumb show about future people. I mean, the Star Trek canon already includes some questionable things: the crew of the Enterprise-D hanging out with Mark Twain, Captain Janeway and Tom Paris de-evolving into alligators and mating and the original series' finale was about an insane woman body swapping with Captain Kirk and taking over the ship because Starfleet doesn't let women be captains apparently. Like, that's how TOS went out, on a 'women be crazy' episode.

So if you're not sold on the idea of 'toon Trek, and I'm not sure I am, let's not let it be because the Star Trek canon is somehow precious or would be ruined by a comedic take. Because goddamn, Star Trek is already pretty bonkers whether we like to admit it or not.

Yeah, we're not even going to talk about this nonsense.