Key Takeaways
- Tawny Newsome is developing a live-action Star Trek comedy series unrelated to Lower Decks.
- The sitcom will focus on resort employees on a 25th-century planet, featuring intergalactic reality antics.
- Newsome’s project is still in early development, aiming to include connections to other Star Trek series.
Star Trek: Lower Decks actress Tawny Newsome may be done with Beckett Mariner, but she’s not done with the Trekverse. This week, Newsome dropped an update on her new project — a live action Star Trek comedy series.
Newsome first announced the project at San Diego Comic-Con in July. She also revealed that she’s developing the Trekverse sitcom with Justin Simien, best-known for his work on the Netflix show Dear White People. The show will mark a first for the franchise — a series that focuses on the galaxy’s civilians, not Starfleet. Though Star Trek: Prodigy’s main characters weren’t Starfleet officers or Federation citizens, their adventures quickly involved them in Starfleet business. Newsome and Simien’s project will instead focus on the employees of a 25th century resort planet whose antics are the subject of an intergalactic reality show. Essentially, The Truman Show, but funny and set in space.
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In an interview with Collider this week, Newsome gave fans some more information about where the show is at in the development process.
‘Please Keep Writing’
Though the show is officially in development, and has been for a bit now, Newsome confirmed that it’s still in the very early stages of the process. Right now, she and Simien are hard at work on story development and scripts.
“All I can share with you is that we keep writing it, and we keep turning things in, and they keep saying, ‘Please keep writing’… As long as they don’t tell me, ‘Please shut your laptop and throw it in the sea,’ I will keep working on it. It’s been such a joy,” she told
Collider
.
Newsome has already confirmed that the show will not be a Lower Decks spinoff, but she revealed to the outlet that there could be some connections: “I would love to put Lower Decks Easter eggs in it!”
Will There be Some Familiar Faces in Newsome’s Sitcom?
Since the sitcom will center on the day-to-day lives of resort employees on a pleasure planet, fan-favorite Star Trek characters aren’t likely to be regulars on the show. However, because the show takes place in the early 25th century — a few decades after the events in Lower Decks, and a few years after the events of Star Trek: Picard — seeing a few familiar faces is certainly a possibility. And it’s definitely something Newsome has considered, as she revealed in an earlier interview with CinemaBlend.
“I mean, I always wanna work with my friends,” Newsome said. “So yes… I can definitely say that part of my and Justin’s idea for setting it in the 25th century was so that everybody that we’ve come to love in the franchise, like everyone in the Picard era, all of our friends here from Lower Decks, like the possibility is definitely there. That was why I was like, this is the time period I want so that we don’t have to [de-age] Jonathan Frakes’ face.”
The idea of seeing Starfleet officers on shore leave on a pleasure planet from a completely different perspective is definitely intriguing. Several episodes in the franchise have featured Risa, the best-known pleasure planet in the Alpha Quadrant, but fans have never seen these planets from an insider’s perspective. Fans have probably never considered what it’s like to serve Admiral Picard drinks while he lounges poolside or clean Captain Riker and Counselor Troi’s room after a weekend of… whatever the two of them get up to on a pleasure planet. But now they’ll get to see what it’s like to serve Starfleet officers rather than serve in Starfleet itself.
The blend of a workplace comedy and the sci-fi shenanigans of Star Trek is also an interesting prospect. Lower Decks has done an excellent job at showcasing the wackier side of Starfleet’s operations, paving the way for more comedy within the Trekverse. But it was still firmly set within the world of Starfleet. It’ll take some clever storytelling to make a workplace comedy set planet-side, outside Starfleet fit into the Star Trek universe fans are used to seeing.
But if anyone can do it, Newsome can. She’s a self-proclaimed Trekkie whose love for the franchise deeply influenced her portrayal of Mariner. She’s also a veteran of the comedy scene, with years of improv, stand-up, and comedy shows on her resume. The combination of Newsome’s comedy and Star Trek expertise means the franchise’s first sitcom is definitely in the right hands.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Sources: Collider, CinemaBlend