Star Trek: Lower Decks Creator Mike McMahan Season 4 Changes and Rutherford-Tendi Romance (Exclusive)

Star Trek: Lower Decks is about halfway through airing its fourth season on Paramount+, and this one has been a little different than previous seasons for a few reasons: the season premiere saw the lower deckers getting promoted from ensigns to lieutenants junior grade, the Cerritos has welcomed a new member to the crew in the Vulcan T’Lyn, and there’s a mysterious ship destroying other ships throughout the galaxy in a subplot running through almost every episode of the season thus far. In this week’s episode, “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine stars Max Grodénchik and Chase Masterson reprise their respective roles as Rom and Leeta as the Cerritos heads to the Ferengi homeworld of Ferenginar on a diplomatic mission.

This week, ComicBook.com had the opportunity to speak to Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan about these changes, plus how it feels to see Lower Decks characters appearing in Star Trek tie-in comics and other places. Here’s what he had to say:

Jamie Lovett, ComicBook.com: We’re about halfway through Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, but since this is the first chance you’ve really had to discuss it. When you sat down with your writers to talk about the season, what were the goals you had in mind? Did you have specific thoughts about where to go, or did you just turn to your writers and were like, “Hit me with your best shot.”

Mike McMahan: I don’t like to do the “hit me with your best shot.” I think writers work best if a showrunner comes in and says, “Okay, I want to do A, B, and C, but I need to know how to do those, and I need D, E, F for these characters that I haven’t quite figured out yet.” Then everybody’s coming in and being, like, “Here’s a goal, but then let’s figure out different ways to do it and see it and laugh.”

When I started this season, I was like, “All right, obviously, we’re going to end Season 4 with people getting promoted.” And then pretty quickly, I was like, “You know what? Let’s promote them, end of Episode 1.” And everybody was like, “Whoa, then what stories do we tell?” And I’m like, “That’s the feeling I want the audience to have. That’s the feeling I want the characters to have. Let’s get to it.”

Who knows how many more seasons of the show I might get to do? I’m writing Season 5. That might be our last season, so if that’s something I want to do, let’s get it done and be surprising, and I hope that was a surprise. It feels like people are responding to it, and it really is like it doesn’t change the spirit of the show. It just changes the types of stories we can tell. It pushes me into a Mariner storyline for this season that you’ll be seeing expressed more on the back half that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, that’s been cooking for a while and that mirrors these attacks happening in the beginnings of the episodes, that something is building.

You mentioned that you were thinking about sending the season with the promotions. Why was that? Did you know at the time you were thinking about going that way that there would be a Season 5? Did you think that might be where the series should end? Why was Season 4 the right time to make them lieutenants?

I’m never thinking the series is going to end because I don’t want to write and compact. I would rather feel like the last episode feels like a series resolution once I’ve found out that that’s happening, and then instead, you get a season where you’re writing up to these characters who will continue to exist after the series is over. For me, it felt like we had been writing episodes about them being ensigns, but we had seen them accomplish so much that it was starting to feel like two things were happening: that it would become curious that they weren’t up for promotion and that would start to have a little bit of a gravitational pull on the attention of the audience, and then at the same time it was starting to feel like, “Oh, I always want to surprise everybody.” I want the show to feel delightful, and there are different ways to do that, but a big way to do it is to open up new storytelling abilities for us and to get to watch these characters do the things they’ve said they wanted to do.” And it doesn’t mean they have to be victorious about it, it doesn’t mean they don’t backslide.

Instinctively, I thought we had another season of goofing around as ensigns, and then I just decided you only live once, so let’s see if this show can handle them being promoted and see how it feels. And after a couple of episodes, I was like, “This feels great!” I shed a tear when you say goodbye to the bunks because I love the bunks. It’s like losing a character. It’s like losing a part of the storytelling, but realizing I could give Rutherford and Boimler bunks in a room that feels like college felt really good to me. It opened up stories that felt fun to me. I went outside of my comfort zone to do it, but I’m really happy we did because it resulted in something that was unexpected for me, too.

What I’m hearing is that you feel like the Lower Decks characters have outshone Harry Kim, the eternal ensign. They are already past him.

[Laughs] Listen, Harry Kim on Voyager is different from Boimler on the Cerritos. It’s a little harder to get promoted on slightly more important ships. I feel for Harry Kim.

You mentioned this, but there is a secondary ongoing story in the mix, and that feels new and different. Obviously, you don’t want to give anything away regarding where that’s headed, but can you talk about how you decided to implement that in this season and why?

I wanted there to be a breadcrumb trail of something that led to a really cool season finale. I think that’s a fun thing, on a rewatch especially, to get to watch go down. I also really loved and wanted to get more of the storytelling we saw in “wej Duj,” which was the three-ships episode, Season 2. Getting to do a little breadcrumb thing that replaced, if you go back and watch the first season, there were more cold open bits, standalone comedy bits that you would open the show with, and then it would get into the episode. I missed the modularity of that a little bit. We had also just experienced Season 3, where we had been building up the story of Rutherford and the Aledo and Buenamigo all season, and getting that to all work resulted in the second to last episode feeling like I had to do it instead of I wanted to do it. I still love that episode, but we needed 11 episodes that season to really resolve all of that. I told myself we would do a comic book run that filled the gap between those two episodes for Mariner being out and adventuring, but I think that I should’ve triggered that one episode earlier, but it’s hard to navigate all that.

Then this season, I wanted to give our characters time. Now, by just having the modularity of doing these little sketches, of seeing lower deckers and bridge crews on other alien ships and popping into them and having them be removed from the narrative, except in the Betazoids are being affected by it. You’re going to see other people being affected by it, but it doesn’t drive the narrative of any individual episode. It’s existing within it, and it’s causing changes to happen within the show, but the Cerritos isn’t directly being targeted by it. That was really fun for me because then I could start an episode and be like, “All right, we’re going to see some Ferengi lower-deckers.” That was really cool. And then it gets to a place which is really like… I don’t want to give anything away. I’m going to stop there.

Fair enough. The other big difference this season is we have T’Lyn on board, as she’s now part of the Cerritos crew. Can you tell me a little about the decision to bring her onto the Cerritos and what she offers into the storytelling mix?

T’Lyn was based on the cosplay of one of my writers, Kathryn Lyn, who used to go as a Vulcan named T’Lyn to comic cons and to Star Trek cons. She wrote “wej Duj” and asked if that could be the Vulcan character because we were seeing a Vulcan lower-decker and a Klingon lower-decker among the various lower-deckers. In that episode, even in the script, it was so fun to write T’Lyn, and then when color came back, and we put the music in, I was like, “Damn, I just love this character.” I knew I wanted to bring her into Lower Decks, but I thought it was going to be way far out. Then the episode aired, and people lost their bananas loving that character, and I was like, “Oh, I don’t have to wait. I can do this sooner.”

I brought her in at the end of season three, but I wished I had done it a little earlier because I love the very Spock, T’Pol, Vulcan sense of humor that she has, and it’s a different tone, but it’s still comedy. You still laugh hearing lines that are so deadpan, and it also feels very Star Trek.

She’s accepted by the main characters. It’s like a new friend joining the friend group that fits in, and it feels like another person that makes sense. We’re trying to write up to her to give her her own story to give her her own point of view, but she’s so Star Trek through and through, and she’s so Lower Decks that it was really seamless. It was really fun to add her.

You mentioned comic books, and I feel that between Season 3 and Season 4, Lower Decks really became enmeshed in the Star Trek expanded universe. We got a miniseries. We got a whole RPG sourcebook about . We got characters like Shaxs showing up in a whole different . It’s interesting to see them integrated that way. I don’t know how much of this you are following or directly involved with, but I was wondering how it feels for you to see these things you created really become part of this bigger, franchise universe in that way.

I mean, it’s fucking awesome. I always hoped that that would happen, but it’s really not in my control. I mean, I know Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing. I’ve talked to them about the comic books and wanting to utilize all these different characters across different shows, and that you can plug in Lower Decks characters into those other situations means I’m doing something right because if they can wield those characters in a way that doesn’t feel like Roger Rabbit; if it feels like they’re fleshed out, thoughtful Star Trek characters, then that was part of the goal of Lower Decks was to build on the Star Trek pantheon, not to consume it.

Part of what I love about Star Trek is all the ancillary materials, and I even pitched that we do a series of really cheap, fun novels, almost like dime-store novels, based on the backstories of the bridge crew. I was pitching that Season 1, and I was like, “Let’s hire all new authors, all fanfic authors, and put together a box set of these really pulpy fun Lower Decks books that have fun with that.”

I put the collectible plates into the show! The ancillary fun of being a Star Trek fan is part of what I love. I’m using the whole buffalo. I want all that stuff to be involved, including in the episode that’s coming up that’s airing this week. They go to a Ferengi version of the Vegas Star Trek Experience restaurant that I’ve now canonized in Star Trek. That stuff, those details, are part of the fun of making a Star Trek show to me.

Speaking of this week’s episode, there are more Deep Space Nine characters and actors showing up. Can you talk a little bit about the genesis of this episode? Did this come from the previous DS9 episode, where you still had ideas and thought you should do more with those characters, or was it something else?

I really wanted to do an episode for Chase Masterson. I love Chase. I’ve met her multiple times, and I’ve been dying to work with her, and I was like, “How do I get Leeta and Rom into Lower Decks?” And that started the conversation. I love what Deep Space Nine built about the Ferengi, and I wanted to do something that touched on that but also furthered the lower-decker story. Part of what I like about Lower Decks is we get to go to planets and spend more time on them than other shows really got to. Getting to go and be on Ferenginar and see it through the lens of our show was the impetus for that, and really to get to work with Chase. On top of that, I wanted to do an episode that had a little bit more of a comedic flair to it, that was a little bit more separating the characters to get these mini-stories in.

You see a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story with Tendi and Rutherford, you get to see Boimler going outside of what you expect him to do, and you start seeing more hints about Mariner’s long story for the season. It was important to me to get that in there, too. It was all those things combined that made it make sense to do this episode that isn’t really high stakes, but you do get a lot of funny stuff and a lot of information about the characters that speaks to the season as a whole.

Since you mentioned Tendi and Rutherford, I will ask: modern fans love a ship. Is that a storyline we’ll see see teased out more as the season progresses or was that a one-off funny situation for this episode?

I’m dying to get those two together, but if I do, it could potentially really mess up the storytelling I like to tell with them. It’s a delayed-gratification torture for me to be, like, “Obviously, let these two be happy and be together.: But they’ve always been defined as they are in love because of their shared love of Starfleet and this ship, and I, right now, have a lot more stories I want to tell about them, that even though they’re an amazing friend couple, I don’t know if I want to take them to a couple couple because I don’t want them to feel like they got married too young and they didn’t get to have and experience the stories we wanted to tell with them. This episode is me making fun of myself for being, like, “Be careful what you wish for.” If they coupled up, what would that feel like? How ill-fitting would that suit be for them, just like you see them in this episode?

I think shippers will read into it, and look: I love that there’s this community of people who feel for these characters and want to see them in these combinations. Sometimes, online folks will say, “Hey, you need to make these two characters get together.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s not my vision for the show,” and then they get mad that I’m betraying them. But this stuff isn’t made to order. I’ve got things I’m doing with it, and while I love that they love the characters and it really speaks to me that they’re so passionate about it, I don’t think anybody wants to watch made-to-order TV. That’s why we’re fighting AI. It should be what I feel we need, and what the actors have brought to the table. This is my little cautionary, be-careful-what-you-wish-for tale to me, but I’m sure people online will see it as me dogging on them — and I’m sorry in advance — but I’m not. I love that you guys all love these characters. It’s just things happen at different rates than people want.

And from what you’ve said, it sounds almost like you were shipping them before anyone else.

Yeah! You don’t think I want all the characters to make out? Think how easy that would be. Come on!

Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+. New episodes debut weekly on Thursdays.