Star Trek: Lower Decks' Jack Quaid Clarifies Strange New Worlds Crossover Details
Star Trek: Lower Decks star Jack Quaid is clearing up some details about the series' crossover with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, the crossover sees Ensigns Boimler and Mariner from the USS Cerritos coming aboard the USS Enterprise under Capt. Pike's command. While the episode of Strange New Worlds may feature some animation, Quaid and his co-star, Tawny Newsome, will be in full live-action while aboard the Enterprise. It will not be a situation where the live-action Enterprise crew is interacting with still animated characters from Star Trek: Lower Decks.
"So Tawny Newsome and I are playing live-action versions of Mariner and Boimler," Quaid tells Variety. "We're coming on to Strange New Worlds. We're coming aboard the Enterprise. I won't get into the plot details of how exactly that happens. But we got to be on the physical set. We got to actually be in the bridge and the transporter bay and the hallways. We got to go all over the ship and interact with that amazing cast. There are some animated elements to the episode, but it's not like a Roger Rabbit where, like, there's an animated Boimler following Pike down a hallway. It's not like that."
Speaking to ComicBook.com previously, Newsome admitted that she may have broken a few pieces of the Enterprise while on-set. Oh, and yes, Quaid will be sporting Boimler's purple hair.
"Oh it's purple," he confirms to Variety. "Definitely purple. We made sure of that. Yeah, it was really, really cool. That was such an interesting challenge as an actor to take something that I usually just do with my voice but then inhabit every bit of him. I studied the way the animators and artists rendered Boimler and his movements and certain little gestures he would do. I tried to bring as much of that into the episode as possible, but trying to do things [that] were a little too big, a little too animated in a live-action setting, but still keep it within the Boimler range of movement. That was such a cool challenge. But I think the real blessing shooting that was having Jonathan Frakes as the director. He's just a legend, and he just absolutely nailed it. He directs so much Star Trek, and just to have Riker telling you what to do — if Riker is saying that you're on the right path, you probably are. So that was just a dream come true."
Star Trek: Lower Decks' third season premiered last week on Paramount+. New episodes debut weekly on Thursdays on the streaming service.