Original subtitles

Hey, everybody. This is Mike McMahan, creator of Lower Decks.

We didn't establish an order, but I'm Tawny Newsome.

I'm Mariner, and Mike and I are in a blood feud.

-True. -Why don't we go by rank here?

And being that I'm first officer, I'm Jerry O'Connell.

I play Commander Jack Ransom.

And then you should go-- Actually, Boimler should go.

Noël, you outrank me.

I'll go because Jack is very polite and he's gonna let the lady go.

Noël Wells, D'Vana Tendi.

You outrank me, technically, at this point in the show.

I am Jack Quaid, and I play Bradward Boimler.

Hi, everybody.

Hi.

Hey, Jack, everybody here is an ensign except for beautiful Mr. Jerry O'Connell.

-So don't worry. Nobody's outranking-- -Correct.

I know, but she's going through the training.

I feel like she's, like, a notch above me at this point.

She's going through changes.

-Yeah. -That's true. That's true.

Well, in this episode, she captains up. In the movie episode we're watching.

Which, just gonna call out right at the top,

the art team does an amazing job, the directing, and the character design,

and even the comp team that makes it look like a movie

with all the lighting and the kind of the--

They added the-- What's it called?

Somebody who's smarter than me? The black bars at the top and the bottom?

-Letter boxing. -The letter boxing.

Yeah.

I didn't mean to immediately jump in, being like,

"I'm clearly smarter than you. I got this."

But I did.

I also wanted to shout out those Romulan triplets

played by my friend, Alice Wetterlund,

host of a fun Star Trek podcast, Treks and the City.

Yeah, she knows Trek.

I love somebody who comes in

and I don't have to explain to them what a Romulan is.

-They're like, "Got it. I'm on it." -"Understood."

She's like, "Got it. I'm like the Duras sisters. Got it."

Oh, man. These are the best opening title sequence.

I love it so much.

There's Cerritos just getting pummeled. It's my favorite. God, I love it.

-Never skip it. -Gets sucked into the black hole.

I never skip it. I watch it every single time.

Me too.

I like that it's a accurate-to-real-life,

what-we-know-about-black-holes black hole.

And I keep thinking that if they ever let us do a movie,

I'll take the scenes from this

and make them different beats of the movie.

I love when the engine sort of breaks there a little bit.

Mike, including this absolute--

-Yeah. It's all in there. -Look at this. A battle.

"Let's get the heck out of here, guys!"

That's so many plot threads. There's a crystalline entity in it now.

That's awesome. I love this big worm thing.

I know. It's like an alien squid sucking on our engine.

It looks right at us too. I love that.

I wonder what that thing's name is.

Yeah, you gotta name it.

Anthony or Bruce or something.

Anthony. I think it's Anthony.

Anthony is nice.

-"Mike McMahan"! -Hey, Mike. It's Mike.

-Hey, Mikey. -That's my mom's favorite part.

Wow, that's a pretty-looking ship.

-That's so good. -You sound so much like Boimler.

I know. I'm so proud of my fictional ship.

This episode was inspired

by how Leonard Nimoy got to do a bunch of Star Trek movies,

and then Shatner had contractual parity,

and so they had to let him direct a Star Trek movie.

So, Mariner got a Star Trek movie first season,

so now Boimler gets his own movie, in true Star Trek fashion.

I love how we establish contractual parity in the pilot of Lower Decks.

Like, "Do we have contractual parity?"

It's part of Starfleet.

Yeah, with any holodeck movies they may make.

I love this reading from Dawnn.

I was just gonna say I love the uniforms.

-They look so good. -They look awesome, right?

Yeah.

There was a lot of fan hubbub

when they were seeing clips of this in the trailer

before the season came out,

trying to figure out where these uniforms were coming from.

I have a question: Where do you find the fan hubbub?

Is there a central hubbub? Or do you collect hubbub?

Well, there's this terrible site called Reddit

that's really awful and scary.

There's an equally bad site called Twitter.

-Okay. Yeah. Cool. -A cesspool.

And sometimes people send it to me or people verbalize it to me.

So I really get it from all fronts.

-Nice. -Yeah.

Is Elon a fan of the show?

-I don't think he is. -We should ask.

He's a fan of Rick and Morty,

so that was a whole thing,

but we have not encountered Elon on Lower Decks.

Okay.

-So we're in the clear. -We should fix that.

Do we need to?

-Yeah. -I don't know. No.

I feel like nothing needs to be fixed.

He's like, "I can write the best holodeck movie.

Mine's gonna be the funniest holodeck movie ever."

If he wanted to do a voice, would you let him do a voice?

We have to give a shout out to Meg Treviño whose name just came up.

I run a lot of my lines with her, because we record by ourselves,

and so you try to make it seem like you're in dialogue.

And so, Meg and I really go back and forth a lot with dialogue.

-Yeah. -She's very helpful.

Yeah. She and-- Kayla Pavia does that.

There's the big, beautiful logo.

I love that-- these fake names

that I think Ben Rodgers and Chris Kula came up with for the cast.

I love Rutherford deciding to play it straight.

-It's so good. -Yeah.

'Cause Eugene himself famously cannot really do an accent.

So I love the in-joke of him trying and bailing.

"Who am I? Me, doing an accent? Who am I?"

"What did I say to you just now?"

Sad Boimler just came back in.

We don't know that he just found out off screen

that his transporter duplicate died from gas.

I would love if you just were watching this, and you're like,

"Wow, Jack Quaid really just gave up."

And they animated to his weird vibe.

This is from Wrath of Khan.

A lot of these interiors are direct Wrath of Khan sets.

-Wow. -We actually suspended a laser beam.

Yep. Coming up, we had to license a piece of Wrath of Khan

to put on-screen.

I'll call it out in a second,

but we literally used a held cel piece of Wrath of Khan

to make it feel very movie-esque, which is very silly.

Probably a waste of money, but made me laugh.

-I love it. -Here it comes. Ready?

The sides there are from Wrath of Khan, the very sides.

What?

Those are just clipped from Wrath of Khan.

And you have to pay for that?

-Yeah! That's a cel of Wrath of Khan. -Isn't it all the same...

-And then we changed-- -It's the same company.

Hey, listen, man.

It's all gonna be one company someday, you know?

-It already is! -You got to set the precedent now.

-What are you talking about? -That's why you should pay for it?

Because it's all gonna be one company someday?

This makes no sense.

Whoever produced and made Wrath of Khan like that,

those people are not the us people.

So whatever it is, we had to license using it

like how you'd license a song or whatever.

Good Lord.

Did they cut you a deal?

Yeah, we got a great deal.

On the Wrath of Khan sides.

On the sides. That was the original...

In Wrath of Khan, that was the original--

I think it was the first thing that Pixar did.

No, Industrial Light & Magic did it.

Yeah, I just watched that documentary, the whole thing.

I loved that documentary.

Wrath of Khan was industrial Light & Magic's first film?

The first fully CG scene was the Genesis Device going off,

and that's what we were making fun of with, "Whoa, look at the graphics!"

I do have to say, I recently watched Wrath of Khan.

I thought it was a pretty sexy movie.

-Very sexy. -I did.

I thought the same thing.

People don't rank the Star Trek movies by sexiness enough.

You know what I mean?

Number one being First Contact.

Speaking of sexiness, who plays this hot blonde that Boimler is ignoring?

I believe that the credits can answer that.

But I feel really bad for her in this moment.

I feel so bad for that NPC, essentially.

Who does the hair design? Because the hair design is amazing.

Character designers do the hair design.

Marisa-- Oh, my gosh. What's her last name?

Also in the credits. I always just say, "Hi, Marisa."

I don't say her last name ever, but she's awesome.

Livingston. Marisa Livingston.

Nollan Obena, as well, doing amazing stuff here,

giving us great robes we never see in Lower Decks.

Can I just say that I was so happy

we named a planet after Fred Tatasciore?

I was just so excited to see that in the script.

It did not disappoint when we actually got to it.

Fred Tatasciore deserves it.

He plays Shaxs. He plays a number of roles.

He's in all the video games I play.

Yeah.

You were there when I found out that he was Soldier: 76 in Overwatch.

I had no clue, and I freaked out.

And he's the guy who cuts you a deal on weapons in Destiny.

He's everywhere.

-He's everybody. -Yeah.

We just breezed through Knicknac. I love Knicknac. I'm so sorry.

I know. We didn't talk about Knicknac. He'll be back.

-Knicknac is so ridiculous. -He'll be back.

I love how Knicknac is just background filler

who just gets fleshed out.

Yeah, he gets to have a moment.

Who voiced Knicknac?

I actually don't know. It's so funny.

We have so many people that do multiple roles...

-That's Rodgers. -I feel like that's Ben. Yeah.

That's Rodgers for sure.

-You think that's Rodgers? - 100%.

-That does sound like Rodgers. -There's no doubt in my mind.

Rodgers definitely did the temp for it, and he wrote this episode.

So if it isn't him, then it's-- It must be him. Right?

No, I'm 100%. I've heard him on enough podcasts. For sure.

Look, Ben Rodgers was my UCB 201 teacher that I attended three classes of.

I will remember that voice forever.

Why only three classes? Why'd you leave?

I had things to do three days in a row-- work.

He booked something. Come on.

And they make you drop out after that. And I was like, "Damn."

-Well, Ben was cool. -Good for you.

-He kept introducing himself as Knicknac. -You stay booked and blessed, king.

It was really interesting.

Jerry, is it hard that you're more jacked in real life than you are in this cartoon?

How do you keep up the physique?

Hey, listen, I keep up the physique

knowing we are eventually going to do a live action of this at some time.

Yes!

I'll be damned if you try and cast Henry Cavill. Not gonna happen.

Okay, all right. No Henry Cavill.

That's who you think you're gonna get replaced by?

What if we dubbed him with you?

Not gonna happen.

It would be funny.

I have constant nightmares of being replaced by Henry Cavill.

We all do.

He's the perfect Boimler, if you think about it.

Noël, if we do a Lower Decks movie for real real,

do you want to be painted green

or do you want us to use computers to make you green?

I wonder, aesthetically,

I think it would just have to depend on what we're trying to accomplish.

You got to paint it.

As someone who was married to a woman who had to be painted green every day...

You'd be green.

...you gotta go through that whole process so people know you really worked for it.

I know it, and I would not look forward to that

unless it made it look better than CGI.

If CGI looked good--

Yeah, but it's got be a painful experience.

Then people know that you really sacrificed. I'm telling you.

All right. All right.

I've decided I'll do whatever the fans want.

-Wow. Selfless. -Maybe a bit of both.

Yeah. I'm here for you guys.

For the computers to paint you green, though...

We do have to paint you green for the computer to register you on-screen.

-Perfect. -So I hope--

All right.

Look how funny the direction and everything is.

I don't know if you saw, but Jack Ransom,

his face was just peeking through a couple of those railings there.

It's so clever how...

Just the direction and all that stuff in the framing.

You're about to see here, when Mariner and Boimler get in a fight,

Mariner hitches her cloak up

to step over the aspect ratio bars,

which is so funny.

Very funny.

I love that.

That skin, man.

Yeah, people freaked out about that bit. It's so good.

And this skin map is based on the skin map from Waterworld,

when they find out that the little girl in Water World has a map on her skin.

-I always thought it was very funny. -How weird.

I love how that guy was just swatting at Mariner while approaching her.

Like, "I am gross."

Look at him. Look at his face.

He's a mess.

He's delightfully untrustworthy.

Great idea, Boimler.

"Great idea." That's how I said it.

Look, even Knicknac thinks this is not a good move to make.

I remember when the trailer for this season came out,

people were like, "Why do they have four pips?"

Right. Yeah. "Wait, are they lieutenants and captains now?"

-Yeah. -"They ranked up so fast."

Here it is.

"You hated mine so much you had to make a sequel."

-So good. -Love that.

Such a good read.

Mariner changed into her uniform, rolled up her sleeves...

Jerry, so you know in Star Trek that people have different things they say

when people need to enter their quarters.

-Picard would go, "Come." -"Come."

And do you know what we have Ransom say?

I think I know. It's like...

-It's like some-- -Close.

It's like a noise.

Somebody rings the bell, and you go, "Yo, yo!"

-"Yo, yo!" -Yes! "Yo, yo!"

Yo, yo!

I remember, in one recording session, Mike and Kayla--

Shout-out to Kayla also--

Had me do just random-- like, a half hour of just going, "Yo, yo!

Yo! Yo. Yo."

And they're sprinkled throughout the show.

"I'm going in for a half hour of 'Yo, yos.'"

"Yo." Yeah.

We do one minute of "Yo, yo," and then one half hour of "Yo, yos."

I love the concept that, like,

with Freeman's "Work me" and Ransom's "Yo, yo,"

it's like all the good phrases and sayings have been taken.

Yeah.

So they kind of have to, "All right, I guess this will work."

They have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel

for something original-sounding.

Well, Frakes wouldn't let us say "engage" as Riker as a callback. He wouldn't do it.

-He was like, "That belongs to Patrick." -Really?

So, that kind of set up...

That's why he says, "Give me warp in the factor of 5678."

I love it so much.

I love it when there's rules and respect in the universe. I like it.

Lines that can't be crossed.

I like that Tendi gets to captain it up in this a little bit.

Yeah. I feel like that's a new, also, face design,

her being, like, sassy.

Yeah. I think she's learning something about herself in this episode.

-Yeah. -She's tough.

It takes her down a different path a little bit.

Is that Dawnn? I feel like that's Dawnn's voice.

That might have been.

Tawny, I like that you at least roundhouse kick two people a season.

-Yeah. -Yeah. Me too.

-I love that joke. "Acolyte 2." -How many roundabout kicks do you do--

-Yeah. You don't even have names. -Makes me laugh every time.

Tawny, do you roundhouse kick people once a year, would you say, in real life?

In my real life?

Yeah, I probably roundhouse kick at least two adults, two children per year.

So that's three adults, I think, if you add them all up.

When you stack the kids on top of each other and put a trench coat on 'em,

that equals three adults.

Surprisingly a lot of those going around Comic-Con.

I saw you roundhouse kick a ton of 'em.

Yeah. You gotta roundhouse kick at Comic-Con.

Keep your six-foot distance. It's safety first.

-This is the classic-- -We're just coming out of this.

This is the 16-minute Lower Decks sincere emotional bid moment

that makes all the silliness worth it,

that you guys always nail, and I love you all for it.

So, thank you for being able to switch from serious to silly.

I love doing it. It was such a...

I love every time we get to show just our hearts on our sleeves.

I feel like they're always there, but with this show,

I love when we have very tender, real character moments.

It's this, and there was that moment in episode 1 of this season

with Mariner kind of really confiding in us...

-Yeah, we just talked about that. -...that always hit so hard.

All the characters get a moment like that, which is amazing.

I love that they were just saying, "We love Starfleet movies,"

and it's so clearly, "Star Trek movies."

Sorry. His face when he comes through is incredible.

Also, what's fun is always playing the real stakes, you know? I love it.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

Yeah, the sincerity of the stakes for the characters--

I love that moment with Knicknac where he says he loves Boimler,

and instead of being like, "Weird," Boimler's like, "Yeah, I love you too."

It's like, "Yeah, cool. Let's keep it moving."

Was there ever a version where Boimler was like-- I don't know.

Yeah. The original version, Boimler was like, "All right, weirdo."

I think I recorded one where I was like, "Okay."

But I love that he's in love with him too.

-Yeah. -It's so good.

It didn't feel Star Trek, and it didn't feel Boimler.

-Yeah. -This is the better version.

No, I agree.

-Yeah! -That's my favorite line.

"Okay, third-act Knicknac reveal!"

This feels like a very Rick and Morty moment to me.

I don't know why this flashes me back to Rick and Morty season 1.

Like, sort of...

Because we're in a movie, we get to reference being in a movie.

It breaks a wall that we don't usually get to break, you know.

A sort of meta-ness.

I love how it flashes. It flashes. Like, you've done it.

A true fan would get that tattoo and make you guys do that.

Right.

Now I'm just watching the movie, I just realized.

I was like, "What's gonna happen?"

This is a callback to Enterprise, Tawny.

That shot of the founding of the Federation

is from the finale of Enterprise.

Yeah. Sure.

You see they're in the Enterprise uniforms down there?

Cute. I did not catch that before, but that makes sense.

I saw some people on one of the horrible websites be like,

"No, there could have been an Archer cameo here."

I know. Everybody wants those cameos.

The slowest phase ring death of all time right here,

for movie purposes.

Anything works in a movie.

What an incredible final line of dialogue from Doctor T'Ana.

Like, that's incredible.

She died as she lived.

Man, Rutherford.

That is such a great moment with Tendi.

It's such a funny little story.

I love learning all this new stuff about her. It's so cool.

I wish we'd colored that slime something other than green though.

It's frightener green. What was I thinking?

-Could be another color. -You were thinking it's slime.

What are we gonna do? Reinvent the slime?

Well, if you make it red, it looks like blood.

If you make it yellow--

-Running out of colors. -Don't make it yellow.

Slime barrel.

-It's tough. -Make it pink.

-We did pink slime, in the first episode. -Okay, you're right.

You can't do pink slime twice. Those are the rules.

Chekhov said that. Yeah.

Aristotle. That's an Aristotle rule of drama.

-I just wanna say that was amazing. -All right, we're back to the beginning.

Very cool.

That rolled back through the whole episode.

These episodes feel really long.

Even though we're less than 20 minutes in, it feels like we've watched a whole movie.

-I know. -Jam-packed.

Jerry, what a line.

I love that line, Jerry. It's so good. It's so Ransom.

I think that guy looks like me, that professor.

Are you... Or is that you with your official cameo?

Yeah, that's me now.

I'm in there.

I'm in some episodes as a Starfleet admiral.

You are?

I just had to shout out that the one Kayshon line this episode

is just half of a Tamarian phrase.

Kayshon's going, "Temba!" before he phases someone.

The whole line is, "Temba," his arms wide,

which normally means to give a gift or to give something to someone,

and the gift he's giving is phase ring someone.

-It's so perfect. -Yeah.

"Temba!"

It's a whole new level when you have Tamarian slang, for sure.

Exactly. Tamarian sarcastic shorthand.

-Cool music from Chris Westlake here. -Shatanari.

Shatanari. You know where that's from, right?

In Star Trek V-- which a lot of this is based on--

They tried to get Sean Connery to play Spock's brother,

and he didn't want to do it.

But they named a planet after him in the script called Sha Ka Ree.

-What? -Yeah, that's what Sha Ka Ree is from.

What was that supposed to elicit from Sean Connery? Like...

Apparently, passing.

Yeah.

I love how this design came out.

Also, that's got to be Fred, right?

-It has to be. -It has to be.

Although, it could be Noël and we pitched it down.

Guys, I wanna hear the purpose. Yeah, it's me.

Mariner's expression.

This is, for sure, me.

We do a trick on the show a lot when I'm like,

"We have to know the characters are at the end of their ropes,"

and they just add circles under your eyes.

-Yeah. -That's it.

Look at his face.

-Oh, man. -He's stressed.

While we're recording this, I love that Jerry O'Connell is in his car,

and the car is filling with his daughters in the background.

Which is a batter move.

-There's a whole family in Jerry's car. -It's just filling with teens.

And by the way, listeners need to know, Jerry looks amazing today.

Jerry, do you have to go somewhere? Are you late for something right now?

No, I just had to pick my kids up. It's not a big deal.

Are you gonna start driving while we're still doing this?

No, I'm gonna watch this. We're sitting in a parking lot.

-I'm watching the end of this episode. -They just have to sit there?

All the people who are watching this because their Wi-Fi went out,

so they put in the DVD of this season,

need to know that Jerry and Noël came dressed for on-screen,

and they look awesome.

Noël looks like she can do actual magic.

Jerry looks like he's a blast from the past.

-Very impressive. -Yeah.

I'm wearing a sweater I only wear when I have the flu,

but I don't have the flu, so...

I'm wearing sweatpants, but a Lower Decks T-shirt.

Hey.

Let me do a little tidbit here.

We, originally, were going to use Shatner for this,

and then it didn't feel right.

We talked to everybody, and they're like...

And then we were like, "What if we used Chris Pine for this?"

-And we weirdly merged the Kelvinverse. -That would've been cool.

But then we were like-- We all are such huge fans of Takei

that this is the thing that really clicked in and was like,

"What an opportunity this would be.

We love him on Stern, we love him on Star Trek,

and he's just awesome."

Yeah.

He came in right after Shatner did that flight to space

and was talking a little trash, in the classic Trek fashion.

-Classic feud. -It just ruled.

So, this moment is so great with him and Boimler.

It's just awesome.

Jack, you played this awesome.

Thank you. It was just so insane to--

Even though I wasn't in the same room as George Takei, obviously, recording it.

I had met him a few times at conventions,

and I actually have a photo of myself and him.

Like, my convention guy was like,

"Hey, I'm gonna sneak you in to the photo op with Takei."

That rules.

I have a photo with him, and the fact that I got to do this scene...

I remember showing my mom this scene.

She was such a huge fan of the original series,

and she geeked out on my behalf.

I mean, I was already geeking out, but it was so cool.

I still can't believe this happened.

But then you get bitten by a horse, and she's like, "That's cool."

It's so-- No, it's so good.

Like, look at his disinterested "we got to wrap this up" face.

It's so good.

That hard cut of the horse--

It took us a long time to edit that down to the funniest cutout too.

The horse's face, Boimler's face-- It's so good.

And that you know that Boimler was in his subconscious

because he was wearing his actual Cerritos uniform,

and now we flip back to the costume he wore on the holodeck.

Little details matter, you know?

I love how in his subconscious, he's always wearing his uniform.

Lower Decks ends in three ways--

People hugging,

people in sickbay talking to Tendi,

or people in the bar chanting.

That's our three go-tos.

-Yes! Stevens' moment. -Okay, that's Rodgers.

Rodgers is Stevens. It means he was definitely Knicknac.

Mike, did I tell you I'm related to the Wright brothers?

Get out of here!

My great-grandmother's name is Vinnie Wright,

and she was their grandniece.

Well, you know what that means.

The opening credits of Enterprise, you're in it.

Your family's in it then.

-Yeah, that's my family. -You're in it twice now.

You've got the Wrights,

and you've got the current-day Tawny Newsome.

-This is wild. This blew my mind. -This is insane.

And this is not the Defiant,

it is a Defiant-type ship that they've made for this.

'Cause the Defiant is gone at this point?

It's definitely not painted black and being used by Section 31.

But I mean, how is this in the DS9 timeline?

This is way later. So the Defiant is blown up.

Yeah, this is seven years after?

-I can't remember. Something like that. -Yeah.

I just can't believe I got to close out an episode with an evil laugh.

That's insane.

It's like the cousin to your frightened scream.

-Yeah-- -I feel like I've talked over all of you.

I'm sorry. But thank you, everybody, for coming.

-Oh, my God. Mary Holland. -Yes, Mary Holland.

Sorry to shout. That's who the blonde scientist was.

I knew I recognized her voice. She's a very funny comedian. Super funny.

-Parks and Rec, right? -Yeah.

I don't know her whole IMDb, man. I'm not her agent. I just like her.

I used to be on the same sketch team as her, and she was at UCB.

She's amazing. She does everything.

Great.

Hey, Jerry. Really quick question for Jerry.

Jerry, are you dealing with headphones in the car?

Can anyone actually hear the episode or us?

No, it's just us. It's just headphones.

-It's just silent in the car. Okay, great. -It's just silence, other than...

Well, thank you, everybody, for watching,

and for us asking Jerry questions about being in his car for this.

-Bye. -Bye.

Thank you. Bye.

Pew, pew, pew!

"Important Science!"

-Can't believe we-- Wow. -Jack, that was a perfect question.

Good job, everybody.