When you read that sentence back, it almost feels like the last act of "Lower Decks" was a DS9 episode and not TNG. DS9 dealt with the politics of the planet Bajor, and Sito was a Bajoran serving in Starfleet, lost during a top-secret mission with a Cardassian double agent. But because of that, the writing staff of Deep Space Nine did intend to bring her back in a future episode. In the 2012 book, Star Trek: TNG: 365, writer Rene Echevarria said, "There was a lot of talk about bringing her back, but we never got around to it."īecause "Lower Decks" happened in the final season of TNG, the mystery about whether or not Sito really died could never be resolved on the show. The break-out performance from Shannon Fill as Ensing Sito Jaxa caused such a stir in the fan community, that the producers of TNG immediately started talking about ways to bring here back. Ensign Sito was supposed to return on Deep Space Nine Wesley also ended up dropping out of the Academy and becoming an interdimensional space traveler in the episode "Journey's End." Any way you look at it, the tradition of drop-outs and slackers is firmly embedded in the DNA of all things Lower Decks.
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Therefore, if Wesley hadn't almost gotten kicked out of Starfleet Academy, the new series Lower Decks wouldn't exist at all. It's later revealed Picard was playing mind games with Sito to see if she'd stand-up to authority, but the larger point is that without a Wesley-centric episode two seasons prior, "Lower Decks" wouldn't have worked. This is pivotal in the "Lower Decks" episode because Picard pretends he doesn't trust Sito due to her involvement in that cover-up. In "The First Duy," Sito was one of Wesley's co-conspirators. Perhaps more significant was the reintroduction of the character Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill), a Bajoran Starfleet officer who had previously appeared in the TNG episode, "The First Duty." In that episode, Wesley Crusher was nearly expelled from Starfleet Academy for performing an illegal space stunt and then trying to cover it up. One of the "Lower Decks" characters was Nurse Ogawa (Patti Yasutake) who had already appeared in numerous TNG episodes. That said, the episode wasn't entirely without continuity. In other words, like the episode "Data's Day," the concept was to show mundane, normal stuff happening all the time onboard a giant starship.
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The basic concept was to follow the lives of four junior officers aboard the Enterprise as they stressed out over upcoming performance reviews that would result in them getting promoted, or not. The story of "Lower Decks" was conceived by Ron Wilkerson and Jean Louise Matthias and the final teleplay was written by TNG staffer René Echevarria. "Lower Decks" was a sequel to another TNG episode Sito in "The First Duty," before her reappearance in "Lower Decks." CBS 5. Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan has publicly cited "Lower Decks" as his favorite Trek episode ever, and the influence on his series is fairly clear.īut what do you know about the classic TNG episode that inspired the new animated show? Here are five things you may have forgotten about the original "Lower Decks," and why you should give it a rewatch faster than someone can say "Make it so!" It's not a comedy like the new series Lower Decks, but because the episode looks at the lives of supposed "nobodies" living on the Starship Enterprise, it has an endearing, heartwarming vibe that made it a TNG classic. It's a fantastic episode about numerous "background" characters who are briefly given the spotlight. That title comes from a Next Generation episode of the same name that first aired during TNG's final season in 1994. Which brings us to the title: Lower Decks. And it will be the first ongoing Trek series designed specifically to be an homage of the '90s Next Generationera. It will be the first Trek series that's primarily a comedy. It will the first animated Trek series aimed at adults. When Star Trek: Lower Decks premieres on August 6, 2020, it will be a first for the Trek franchise in more ways than one.