Starting in late October 2024, the final season of Star Trek Lower Decks will be released on Paramount Plus. After season 5 of Lower Decks is complete, there may not be any more animated Star Trek content for a while. Star Trek Prodigy recently concluded its second season on Netflix and it’s unclear as whether it will continue for a third season. I have some doubts: “Prodigy” has been bounced around from Nickelodeon to Paramount Plus and then to Netflix. All of this is a real shame, because Star Trek is one of my favorite fictional franchises, and I think the world could use some more Star Trek animated content.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the live-action Star Trek content (well most of it anyway, I like some of the movies and TV shows over others) and frankly, the lower live-action budgets worked to their advantage sometimes. The Borg were originally supposed to be insects until budget concerns turned them into cyborgs and their cyborg nature made them iconic villains. There have also been some great low-budget bottle show episodes, like “The Drumhead” from the 4th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and “Duet” from season 1 of Deep Space 9. However, there were plenty of times when the budget was a hindrance, like say most of the third season of the Original Series.
I do think some interesting things are easier to do in animation than in live-action, like having more alien-looking designs for the aliens. I like most of the alien designs in Star Trek, even something as simple as the Vulcans and the Romulans ,who are just guys with pointy ears, kind of harkens back to elves and dark elves from fantasy, their alien attitude comes from their culture and the ways they relate to humans. I think the later Klingons, the Cardassians and the Ferengi look more alien, without hurting the ability of the actors to emote through the makeup.
However, by the third season of Voyager, I was getting sick of aliens who were just humans with bumpy foreheads. One thing that was interesting about Star Trek Prodigy is that it brought to life a Brikar, an alien race of rock creatures from the Star Trek novels, onto the TV screen. Adapting the Brikars would have been hard to do in live-action.
I think most of the Star Trek animation efforts have been good. I think Star Trek Prodigy is a pretty successful attempt to make something that is suitable for kids (or older kids) that was true to the nature of Star Trek and still dynamic and exciting. I think Lower Decks was an amusing adult animated series that is true to the nature of Star Trek despite its humorous nature.
I even think the Star Trek the animated series from 1973 had a few good episodes, Yesteryear expanded Spock’s backstory and The Slaver Weapon was an interesting adaption of the Soft Weapon short story by Larry Niven. Star Trek the Animated Series was a product of its time, held back by a tiny voice cast and very limited animation. But it did try to tell Star Trek stories in animation, and had far less censorship than other Filmation cartoons like He-Man.
There’s an article from the Memory Alpha Wiki about animated Star Trek projects that were never developed. Some of them seem more light-hearted like a sitcom, featuring some of the Ferengi characters from Deep Space 9 as teenagers, but others sound quite epic. There was a proposed CGI Star Trek series back in the 90s inspired by the success of the Starship Troopers animated series.
There was a proposed CGI animated movie from 2003 called Star Trek: Lions of Light that would have featured Captain Sulu taking command of the Enterprise and having to deal with the Kzinti (the cat-like aliens who were the villains of Larry Niven’s Known Space series and the Slaver Weapon episode) invading the Federation. Lions of Light sounds like an epic tale that only could have worked in animation and could have paid tribute to the works of Larry Niven. It got to the concept stage and there were character designs, but alas it was not meant to be. I think it would be fun to revive some of these ideas on Paramount Plus.
I know Paramount is in a tough spot compared to other media companies, but perhaps after the buyout by David Ellison, some of Paramount’s new resources could go towards new animated Star Trek projects. Star Wars seems to be able to have an output of both live-action and animated content, perhaps Star Trek can too. I think we could use some more animated Star Trek content and I think some of the past Star Trek animated content and pitches demonstrate that this content can work.
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