Hey, nerds, I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is The Ready Room,
your official behind-the-scenes hub
for all things Star Trek Universe.
Now, we had a nice little shore leave
after Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 ended back
in January, but I am ecstatic to be back
for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2,
and just like Next Generation,
it only gets better after the beard shows up.
This week, we'll be talking about everything
that happened in the premiere episode,
very appropriately called "Strange Energies."
And if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend
that you watch that first before you watch us,
lest you get spoiled by the Ancient Ones.
Today we have an embarrassment of ensigns joining us
in the Ready Room, voice cast Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid,
Eugene Cordero, and Noël Wells will all be stopping by
to give us the scoop on Season 2.
Then, be sure to stick around
because we'll have an exclusive clip
from next week's episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
But before we get to any of that,
we have some of the voice cast
and series showrunner Mike McMahan
to tell us why Season 2 is bigger and better than ever.
Control room? Oh, I missed you too. Engage.
How is Season 2 gonna kick Season 1's ass?
Season 2 is bigger.
It goes to places boldly
we haven't gone before in the show.
What does that even mean?
[Mike] We hit the ground running, and it never looks back.
I think the first season, we got to know the characters.
They were really comfortable with each other.
Well, it seems like everything's back to normal.
But then, Season 2, we get to see all the characters kind
of have a level of their own independence.
Mike and Chris Kula and the whole crew
and the writers are like,
"Oh, great, Season 1. We can touch with these,
and you guys will get it, and you'll get it if you're fans
and you'll get it if you're not fans, great.
So we'll do more ridiculous stuff.
We'll make bigger things happen,
explore the worlds a lot more, and be a lot more minuscule
when it comes to the Star Trek-y stuff."
I told you not to deviate from the mission.
Looks like you took a full load
of strange energies straight to the cortex.
So, the true, true fans can tip their hats
to those moments, and then the ones
that are just there for the comedy can just keep laughing.
The main thing I noticed when I saw a little sneak peek
of the first episode was
that the animation has gotten quite a bump.
I texted Mike McMahan and said,
"Did Mariner get new facial expressions?"
Why are you squatting? We're going to die!
It's leg day.
She seems more expressive, so, yeah,
that's all a tribute to Titmouse and the animators,
and to Mike and the team for pushing that.
So Season 2 starts a couple months
after the end of Season 1.
We've got Mariner and her mom working together,
at least they've been trying to.
I don't think it's great for either one of them.
[Mariner] Mom, you don't have to keep a trinket
from every side mission we do together.
They'd gotten pretty used to their dynamic before,
as dysfunctional as it was,
and now this getting along thing doesn't super serve either
of their purposes.
I think you'll see it's not gonna last.
We've missed some of their adventures.
It's getting a little exhausting for the both of them.
He's right.
What?! Well, I do actually feel the exact same way.
Especially to Ransom, who was used
to being the captain's number one,
and now it seems like Mariner is.
That does tend to happen a lot these days.
You've got Rutherford, who's having memory problems,
but he's still the Rutherford we know and love.
And the good thing is, is by his restart,
there's aspects of his work that he's trying to figure out,
but he's so professional in the way
that he wants to do it, and I think it's gonna be a fun ride
to watch him realize certain things.
Uh, went the wrong way again.
[Eugene] And I'm excited for Rutherford
to find some more of his memories,
but also see some fun things that weren't there originally
with Tendi and him.
But Tendi is getting a little upset that--
you know, is he different?
Is this new version of Rutherford
with his new memories the Rutherford she knows?
And that's something she's grappling with.
Does Rutherford seem off to you?
Yeah, always.
Obviously, it was sad for Tendi
when Rutherford sort of lost all the history,
but because Tendi's so optimistic,
this is just an opportunity for her
to become friends with him all over again.
If anything, it's going to make their friendship better
and stronger, and it takes them on some new adventures.
It's nice to know no matter what, we still love science.
And how.
Also, don't date Barnes.
I think that Tendi, in the first season,
it's not that she had a backseat position,
but she definitely was more of a wallflower
in the sense that she was taking everybody else's lead.
It looks like I'm gonna have to resort
to more extreme methods.
I think for this season,
you get to see Tendi coming out of her shell.
What we wanted to see in this first episode,
we come back with this emotional story,
but also with this TOS-style, godlike story,
where somebody's imbued with strange energies.
So right off the bat,
it's something you haven't seen before,
but it's reflecting on Star Trek's past,
and every character has something--
fallout that they're dealing with
from the end of Season 1.
And at the very end of the episode, you get a little taste
of what you're gonna see in episode two with Boimler.
He's in over his head with the Titan.
Pretty quickly you'll see that the types of missions
that he does for Captain Riker are a little different
than the types of missions he does for Captain Freeman,
and Riker's a captain he's not used to.
And yeah, I think we set the bar high.
We rise to the challenge,
and you guys will see, across first season and then second,
it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,
all the way to the second season finale.
It's a lot of fun.
I am now joined by the Lower Deckers themselves,
Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Eugene Cordero, and Noël Wells.
Welcome back, my friends, to The Ready Room.
It's been so long.
I am so excited to talk to you
about your new season of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Y'all have had to play it pretty close
to the vest with Season 2 so far,
and I know that you cannot talk
about everything we're going to experience this season,
but between the trailers and this first episode,
what are you the most excited and relieved
that you can finally talk about?
Tawny, let's start with you.
I've said this a bunch, I'm super excited
about Kayshon, the Tamarian security officer.
This is the first Tamarian in Starfleet.
This is the first time we have seen a Tamarian
since the TNG episode "Darmok."
I sound like a broken record,
but I love the pairing of this critically acclaimed,
revered episode about humanity
and communication played by Paul Winfield,
who brought this incredible heightened type vibe to it,
paired with my goofy-ass friend, Carl Tart,
who people know from his role on Comedy Bang! Bang!,
other improv podcasts, great UCB improv actor.
But his goofy self saying these reverent memes
and things that the Tamarians speak in,
these metaphors, I think is the perfect pairing
'cause it's exactly what Lower Decks does best.
It takes a thing we remember
and that we love and that we miss,
and then it puts a silly voice actor behind it
to show how it can be very, very funny.
Rapunki, when he joined the seven.
So I'm excited to talk about that.
I am also incredibly excited for that,
if for no other reason than I don't have
to keep writing new Tamarian dialog
to use on message boards.
I'll just steal it from the show.
We're gonna have some new stuff for you.
What's on your mind, Jack?
Oh, man, I think the thing that I'm the most excited
that I can finally talk about is the fact
that Tom Paris is in this season
because when it was in the trailer,
I was very surprised he's in it.
I think when I recorded that episode, there's a moment in it
where I have to scream the name Tom Paris a lot,
and I did that in a closet in a hotel room
in North Carolina, and everybody thought that--
Brag.
There was something very wrong in my hotel room, so--
Did you get a knock on the door?
-Not a knock on the door-- -A concerned knock?
A text from another actor who was staying
in the same floor as me, saying,
"Are you okay and who is Tom Paris?"
Noël?
I think I'm just excited that we finally get
to see the cliffhangers, right.
We had all these cliffhangers,
and finally sort of get the tease
of how they're all getting resolved.
And you get to see the character arcs flesh out
in a bigger way because I've--honestly,
a lot of people have been asking me about Tendi
and her backstory, and I think that that definitely happens,
and then just getting to see Boimler on the Titan,
and now we all know that Mariner's the captain's daughter.
Where does that...We finally get to see all
that stuff play out.
Eugene, Rutherford is essentially rebooted
in this episode.
Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Yeah. The big question everybody had
for Rutherford going into Season 2 was,
does he like certain fruits,
-like pears and whatnot-- -That's a big question.
And it's like, guess what--
-Incredibly disturbing -Now that Season 2--
to see him eating pears.
It's gross. It's gross, it felt weird.
I didn't want to make the sound effects for it.
So you had to make a mouth noise?
I didn't want--they were like,
"Do you want a real pear?"
And I'm like, "I'm in my own house,
they're not here. So, no."
Go get a pear for this, yeah.
I'm not gonna buy pears for this.
I'm not gonna put a mask on to buy a pear for this.
I hate pears again!
They're so mealy and bland. F*** pears.
You talked about not having pears in your home,
which is a great segue to my next question.
You all recorded the entire season
from your homes.
So you--do any of you--You're accomplished voice actors.
I presume you have booths in your house,
but what was that process like,
and did it change over the course of the season?
Do you prefer to work at home,
as opposed to going into the studio?
Noël, let's start with you.
Well, no. It's funny, I've done a lot of voiceover work,
but I've never made a booth.
And so during lockdown, it became--
it's like, okay, you have to figure this out.
It can't just be this... 'cause normally,
if you're recording one time,
you'd put yourself under your blankets and record,
but you can't do that for 10 episodes.
It would just be untenable.
And so I had to clean out--I had to make a space
in my closet, set up my computer in there,
and my closet's truly this big.
So my computer's like--I had a little station,
and, I mean, it was really great.
I think one of the benefits I saw was
that my character had...She seemed
to have a little bit more confidence this season,
and while that is definitely part
of the character development, I think also for me,
it was just because I was in my closet.
No one can hurt me in my closet.
But I will say, I did accidentally get locked
in my closet, one of the records,
and it was probably one of the scariest things that...
I mean, look, it was fine because I had my computer,
so I had to email to get somebody
to come help me get out of my closet.
There's just something weird with my knob.
And so I was locked in my closet
for about 45 minutes after recording,
and so it was super funny.
My cat was just putting his paw under the door
and trying to help me, and I'm like,
"There's nothing you can do, bud.
I'm locked in my closet."
-Oh my God. -You really took one
-for the team, I admire that. -Totally.
Also, who is this hero cat of yours?
-I know. -It's so cute,
I have video of him, just literally,
his little paw. He's like, "What's going on in there?
Where have you gone to?"
"You still working on your show?
Will you feed me?"
Truly, he was just like,
"Why are you not paying attention to me?"
I just want Star Trek fandom,
I want Trekkies around the world to understand
and appreciate the very real sacrifices y'all made
to bring this show to life.
And how very lonely we were in the process.
Let's talk about the premiere episode,
which just dropped. It is brilliant, it is so funny.
I want to share a few clips from the episode
and get your reactions.
So we're gonna start with Mariner on a holiday.
Check this out.
[Tawny] Outfit.
[Tawny] I like when she gets to be in new little outfit.
Oh my God, Mariner, you gotta get me out of here.
They keep showing me lights.
No, I am still mad at you.
[Tawny] Is that you?
[Jack] It's me, that's Boimler.
You knew I wanted to get a promotion.
You're supposed to be my mentor.
You snuck off in the middle
of my shift without saying goodbye.
You know who my best friend is now?
My mom. It sucks, it's like work.
Look, I'm a hologram, okay?
I'm sure real Boimler had his reasons.
I don't know, maybe, did you ever intimidate him?
What? No! Shut up.
No, no, no, Mariner.
You're abandoning your fellow officer?
Yeah, well, he did it first.
When he says that they're--they just keep showing
him lights, I was like, "I get that reference."
There are...
four lights!
Tawny, Mariner is clearly working some stuff out.
Yeah, literally, physically. Yeah, for sure.
Wow, so her best friend, her cha'DIch, has left her
for the Titan. She is working with her mom,
who's her best friend, what a bummer that is.
Do you think we're starting to see a more vulnerable side
of Mariner? Is she maybe lowering her shields a little bit?
She's definitely lowering her shields
in the way that, like--she's lowering her shields
so that she can beam over somewhere
and then be super aggressive and whoop somebody's ass.
She deals with vulnerability by being aggressive.
So we're gonna see her being...She's hurt.
She's hurt by Boimler leaving, she feels abandoned,
she feels betrayed, and she's very honest about that.
She says the words, "You abandoned me, I feel abandoned,"
which I do think is growth, but then the next words out
of her mouth are something very rude.
She's usually yelling at him.
So I don't feel like it stays soft for very long.
She's definitely still her aggressive self.
Okay, so we have Mariner over here.
She's sorting out her issues, and over here,
we have Rutherford and Tendi going through a little bit
of deja vu, which leads me to our next clip.
Let's go ahead and roll it.
What's an SMD?
It's just a cyborg thing, I'm fine.
Well, when you're cured,
just meet us outside Cetacean Ops.
I'm gonna go change into my swimsuit.
Wait, wait, wait, I can come with you.
Oh, no, you can't.
What's in those hyposprays?
Medical venom.
Stop, you can't just keep attacking me
and trying to surprise me into getting better.
If I do have this LSD thing--
SMD.
Whatever, you can't cure it like getting rid of hiccups.
You're right.
Thank you.
I'll have to get your brain out of your skull
and freeze it so I can nanosuture your dendrites by hand.
Tendi, please, I just want to go swimming with girls.
Then give me your brain!
[Rutherford] No!
So, from a voice acting perspective,
did you do anything differently?
Did you sort of start from scratch with him
and go in a different direction as you redid this date,
or did you keep things kind of the same?
I kept it pretty the same because I feel like...
all of him as a person was the same.
So I feel like his excitement
into a date would be the same way, so, in a way,
for the audience to kind of see
that even though his brain has been washed,
his personality is still the same, I'd make him the same.
It's not like he had any new information there on the date
because I know that if I was able to say the line,
"I just want to swim with girls" in Season 1,
I would have said it the same way.
And I think there's footage of me
in my real life where I've said that,
and it'd probably be the same take, so.
All right, I have one last clip to show you.
It gives us a very small hint of what's to come for Boimler.
Ah! Shields at 30%.
Red alert. I'm starting to think this jam session's
got too many licks and not enough comp.
What does that even mean?
More Pakled battle harpies just dropped out of warp.
They've got us surrounded.
Someone punch me a way out.
Punching.
I'm taking us into the anomaly.
Brace for gluonic disruption.
Gluonic what?
I love my job!
Okay, so Jack, going off of this small scene,
how do you think Boimler's fitting
into the more action-packed starship with Riker in charge?
So well, just so unbelievably well.
I for sure didn't scream all my dialog in that at all.
No, I mean, I think there's a little bit of,
be careful what you wish for this season.
To be clear, we saw him just jump at the chance
to get that promotion from Riker last season,
and that's just such a core pillar of his character.
He wants to rank up, he wants to get
into a captain's chair eventually,
probably way before he's actually ready.
And so it's a little bit--somewhat cathartic
to see him just kind of suffering a little bit
on the ship, considering how he left things
with Mariner and the rest of the lower deckers.
He just kind of left without saying goodbye.
So yeah, he's not fitting in too well.
He's used to kind of the second contact missions,
the stuff that requires...the sci-fi happenings
that happen on the Cerritos,
not so much the action-packed missions
that the Titan gets to go on.
So you see him, to put it lightly,
adjusting to his new...
Everybody thinks sitting in that chair is easy
until they actually do it.
Exactly, exactly, it's hard not to scream
when you're in that chair.
This is the last thing I'm going
to ask you before you all go.
As you all know, we are very careful
about spoilers, here in the Ready Room,
but just once, I would like each of you
to massively spoil something that happens in Season 2.
Then, in post-production, we're gonna either bleep
or not bleep your answer, depending
on what Mike McMahan deems is appropriate
for us to reveal. Okay?
-Okay, I like this- -Tawny,
let's start with you.
Okay, [beep] we get [beep].
It's such a funny nod
-to the original [beep]. -Amazing.
-I loved it. -I love that.
I was gonna say, you're probably gonna bleep this.
We finally get to see [beep].
Oh!
You finally get to see it, that's it.
Wow, we've been waiting for that for 35 years.
I know, they're gonna bleep this. It's okay,
-but you're gonna love it. -That's incredible.
We get to see Tendi [beep]. It is very sexy,
and, I don't know, is that a spoiler?
Yeah.
-I just see, okay, cool. -Sexy is a spoiler.
It feels so weird to say a spoiler.
I know.
[Wil] I know, right?
I'm like, did I do it?
I think--well, you know what, we'll find out.
[Beep] .
-Oh. -Whoa!
Okay.
That's the biggest one.
That's pretty cool.
What do you think about that?
But, try to bleep that 'cause I made
that happen real fast.
Oh my God, they just need one quick beep.
Yeah, you're right, I talk pretty quick.
We don't why and know how, but it's great,
and we get to figure it out.
Bleep out all of that.
That was an incredible,
absolutely incredible string of delightful spoilers.
I know that you guys are extremely busy.
I know that you're doing a lot of things today,
and I appreciate you making time to stop
by the Ready Room to hang out with us.
Thank you for your work on Star Trek: Lower Decks,
and thank you for your time today.
I believe the next time I'll see you,
we'll be talking about the finale, so--
Sounds good.
Maybe we'll even be in the same place,
'cause that's far away in the mysterious future,
fingers super crossed.
That would be cool.
So, sincerely thanks, you guys.
It's just been terrific to see all of you,
and congratulations on the premiere of Season 2.
Thanks, Wil, we'll see you
-in the future. -Thank you so much, Wil.
Ah, I think your friend is gonna shoot you.
What now?
[Wil] Want even more high jinks
from Star Trek: Lower Decks?
The Cerritos, oh, it's the very image
of Starfleet responsibility.
What do you want, Jennifer?
[Wil] Follow the @Startreklogs Instagram account
for weekly log entries from the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos.
[T'Ana] Chief medical officer's log.
Stardate who the f*** cares.
[Wil] In the immortal words of Beckett Mariner,
"There's sci-fi stuff happening over here."
Captain, there's a giant head approaching the ship.
[Rutherford] Shaxs and I saved the day,
but he got blown up and my implant got ripped off.
Brace for gluonic disruption.
Gluonic what?
Check it out now.
So we all know that Lower Decks is hilarious,
but it's also straight up gorgeous to look at.
I mean, just check out some of these establishing shots.
I want these as my background.
Nice.
Of course, this is animation we're talking about,
and it takes a lot of hard work to go from this to this.
So we wanted to show you a little side-by-side look
at Star Trek: Lower Decks from animatic to final picture.
Take a look.
Whoa, I never knew the Ancient Ones decorated
these buildings, are you seeing this?
Hmm.
Clean your public spaces, people, it's not that hard.
Who knows what you'll find under all this soot?
Uh, we got sci-fi stuff happening over here.
Mariner, get out of there!
[people screaming]
Sir, I'm reading a buildup of strange energies.
Mariner, Mariner!
Ahh!
Now, before we go, I promised you an exclusive clip
from next week's episode of Lower Decks,
and this one is extra exclusive
because you're getting a closer look
at the new Tamarian officer joining the Cerritos.
That's right, Tamarian, as in the metaphor speaking aliens
from Next Generation's "Darmok."
I guess you could say this is our second contact
with the Tamarians.
Anyway, Temba is arms wide, y'all.
Lieutenant Kayshon, we're your away team
reporting for duty.
It is a pleasure to meet you
and I look forward to, uh, oh, geez...
"Darmok and Jalad on the ocean."
Working with you?
Yes, thank you.
Apologies, my Federation standard is still shakey.
It's no problem, sir, or should I say,
"It's no beast at Tanagra."
More like "Suck up at Tanagra."
Hey, about time, Starfleet.
What'd you do, stop to debate the human rights of a robot?
I do not believe so, perhaps we should review our logs.
Hey, just busting your bile ducts.
Here's the deal, I need yous to comb
through all this stuff on the floor here,
but the high ticket items in these cases,
that stuff stays here.
Uh, okay.
All right, if we split up,
we can knock this out in an hour.
Whoa, big fella. This is just the first room.
Most of the collection's further in the ship.
There's more? Ugh, how much can one guy collect?
Sister, you've got no idea.
Sokath, his eyes opened. That was awesome.
More Lieutenant Kayshon, please.
And on that note, thank you all so much
for joining me here in The Ready Room today.
I cannot wait to see what the rest
of Lower Decks Season 2 has in store.
Now, we're gonna take another little break,
but we will be back with another installment
in a few weeks when the Season 2 finale drops.
You won't want to miss it.
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton. Live long and prosper.