Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 aired to Paramount+ subscribers earlier this year, and among the highlights was the sixth episode, “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” a tribute to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Not only did Lower Decks characters visit the title space station, they met two of Deep Space Nine’s main characters, Armin Shimerman’s Quark and Nana Visitor’s Kira Nerys. Having recently had the opportunity to speak to Cirroc Lofton, another Deep Space Nine star, I asked for his thoughts on “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” and he didn’t hold back on sharing his them, including one key way this Lower Decks episode made Fred Tatasciore’s Shaxs shine.
Cirroc Lofton starred as Jake Sisko, son of Avery Brooks’ Benjamin Sisko, for the entirety of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s run, and these days he’s keeping his feet firmly planted in the franchise by co-hosting The 7th Rule with Ryan Husk. The podcast is wrapping up its run going through Deep Space Nine’s episodes and will soon dive into Star Trek: The Next Generation, with Denise Cosby, who starred as Tasha Yar, joining Lofton and Husk for all of her character’s appearances in Season 1. On the subject of “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” Lofton started off by praising Lower Decks for how it paid tribute to Deep Space Nine, saying:
The DS9 episode was a real good homage to the work we did on the show, and I love to see Armin playing Quark and I love to see Nana bringing back Colonel Kira… I thought the ship looked beautiful in the exterior shots. If I could ask Mike McMahan for one souvenir, it would probably be a cel from that Deep Space Nine animated episode, one of those animation cels. But yes, I thought they did a fantastic job in paying homage to really great characters. It’s a wonderful thing.
This was the first time Star Trek fans had seen Quark and Kira Nerys on the small screen since Star Trek: Deep Space Nine concluded in 1999, and not only was Cirroc Lofton happy with how they were used in Lower Decks, he also praised the design of the space station. Fingers crossed he can obtain one of those cels of the iconic Trek location. Lofton then focused on Nerys’ dynamic with Shaxs, the Cerritos’ chief of security who was revealed in “Hear All, Trust Nothing” to have served alongside Nerys in the Bajoran Resistance. Lofton explained:
One of the things I recently said to a friend of mine in a discussion was seeing Kira’s character playing a kind of pal with Shax’s character on that episode gave a kind of credibility and legitimacy to Shax’s Bajoran roots that I don’t think he could have ever gotten from any other kind of storytelling. So that fact that Kira has been in the trenches with him and they fought in the resistance together and she’s validating that that’s her pal, that made me all the more confident in his claims to his Bajoran ancestry. So it’s kind of strange how that played in my heart and how it touched at those strings.
Kira Nerys and Shaxs are among the Star Trek franchise’s few leading Bajoran characters, so pairing them together in “Hear All, Trust Nothing” and have them try to one-up each other on who was more indebted to the other was a smart move from the Lower Decks writers. Finally, another standout aspect of the Deep Space Nine tribute episode was that various characters were seen wearing outfits similar to what Jake Sisko wore back in the day, and Cirroc Lofton got a kick out of that, saying:
And seeing myself and some of my wardrobe pieces have caught on finally, I’m glad to know that my style didn’t just go swept away under the times, that it caught across the quadrants and somebody likes those asymmetrical, multicolored shirts [laughs]. Finally!
Hey, just like art, fashion is subjective, but it’s good to see Jake Sisko’s unique style has been adopted by so many people by the time Star Trek: Lower Decks rolls around. More importantly, with Lower Decks having dipped into the Deep Space Nine waters, maybe this could pave the way for other cast members from that Star Trek show to reprise their roles.
You can watch Lower Decks’ first three seasons, as well as Deep Space Nine and the other Trek shows, on Paramount+. Not only is Lower Decks Season 4 is expected to premiere in 2023, and there plenty of other upcoming Star Trek TV shows on the way.
