Earlier this year, Star Trek: Discovery ended after a five-season run, and how we’re about to say goodbye to another show from the sci-fi franchise. Star Trek: Lower Decks is just a few weeks away from concluding on the 2024 TV schedule, and while the humorous animated series accomplished a lot over its own five seasons, including gifting the world with the outrageous Boimler Maneuver, there was plenty of material that was never touched. In supervising producer Barry Kelly’s case, he told CinemaBlend that he wished one of Star Trek’s most iconic duos could have visited the USS Cerritos: Geordi LaForge and Data from The Next Generation.
I learned this when I recently interviewed Kelly about his work on Lower Decks Season 5, which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription. When I inquired about if there were any ideas, concepts or premises he wish could have been explored on the show, and here’s how he answered:
I was always hoping to get Geordi on the show. I would have loved to have seen not only that, but Geordi and Data would have been awesome. The engineering bromance of those guys and maybe interacting with Rutherford and Tendi, or Billups even in Engineering that would have been awesome.
Geordi and Data certainly made for an effective duo during Star Trek: The Next Generation’s seven seasons, the four follow-up movies and even in Picard Season 3 last year. Like Barry Kelly said, these two were whizzes when it came to solving engineering-related problems, so Sam Rutherford, D’Vana Tendi and Andy Billups would definitely have welcomed having them around. The friendship between LeVar Burton and Brent Spiner’s characters was also endearing to watch, from Geordi giving pointers to Data on what it means to be human, to the two of them acting out Sherlock Holmes stories on the holodeck. It would have been great to see their friendship alongside the camaraderie shared with Lower Decks’ main characters.
Alas, seeing this pairing again just wasn’t in the cards, but at least there were various other Next Generation alums who appeared on Lower Decks, including William Riker, Deanna Troi, Wesley Crusher, Q (John de Lancie’s version), The Borg Queen (Alice Krige’s version) and Zefram Cochrane.Last season even brought back Nick Locarno, the character Robert Duncan McNeill played before he was cast in Voyager to play Tom Paris, who also once stopped by the Cerritos. Outside of The Next Generation, Lower Decks also spotlighted The Original Series’ Hikaru Sulu and the Deep Space Nine characters Kira Nerys, Quark, Rom and Leeta.
There are just four episodes left to go in Star Trek: Lower Decks, although the adventures of Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford, Tendi and the rest of the Cerritos crew will continue in a new ongoing comic book series from IDW. As far as upcoming Star Trek TV shows go, Strange New Worlds Season 3 and Starfleet Academy are next on the docket, and the Paramount+-exclusive movie Section 31 will debut on January 24.
