Star Trek: Lower Decks Is Looking To Up Its Body Count In Season 4
For many years, death in "Star Trek" was a permanent event. To cite a notable example: when Captain Kirk's brother Sam (William Shatner) was killed in the episode "Operation — Annihilate!" (April 13, 1967), he was dead forever. There wasn't a storyline later in the series wherein Sam was cloned or resurrected somehow.
In 2023, the tune on death has changed, and multiple characters have now died and returned. Naturally, "Star Trek III: The Seach for Spock" surrounded the resurrection of the title character (Leonard Nimoy). Every Trekkie can tell you the saga of the death of Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) and her subsequent return in the form of her half-Romulan daughter Sela.
Neelix (Ethan Phillips) was killed and brought back via Borg technology in the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Mortal Coil," and Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) was salvaged from a mushroom dimension. More recently, In "Star Trek: Picard," Data (Brent Spiner), who had died in "Star Trek: Nemesis," was actually salvaged and kept alive on a hard drive, only to be killed and rebuilt again for season three. Picard himself also died and was resurrected in an android body. And who could forget the Khan-blood-instigated resurrection of Kirk (Chris Pine) in "Star Trek Into Darkness" back in 2013?
Death and resurrection now happen so frequently on "Trek" that the makers of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" have joked about it. Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) died at the end of the show's first season but reappeared without explanation in its second. The lower-ranking officers were told to never ask about the common death-and-resurrection thing, as it's very, very personal.
In fact, "Lower Decks" supervising director Barry Kelly wants more death on his show. And he's getting his way.
Those are people who died, died
There has been a continuing story arc throughout the current season of "Lower Decks" wherein alien vessels — out doing their own personal galactic business far away from the U.S.S. Cerritos — are attacked by a mysterious white UFO equipped with a ship-destroying phaser weapon. Already, Trekkies have seen the destruction of multiple starships, including a Klingon vessel previously seen in the episode "wej Duj" (October 7, 2021). This sort of multi-episode story arc is a new wrinkle for "Lower Decks," a series that aspired to be episodic in the tradition of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Kelly noted the novelty of this structure, and how it is — excitingly — bringing death to the show in a new way. In a recent interview with Inverse, he said:
"We really try to homage TNG in being more episodic. [...] Meaning, that the through-line of our episodes is really just the characters' progression and development. But yeah, this time there's a new mystery through-line, and we're getting to see two things happening in each episode. There's this new overhanging threat. This ship showed up and destroyed a Klingon ship. Who is this? It's not Starfleet. It's some weird organic-shaped pearl-looking ship and we don't what that is, or what alien made that."
So far, that mysterious UFO has blown up a Klingon ship, a Romulan ship, and an Orion ship. The pattern is already clear, and Kelly notes that viewers are being warned not to get too attached to the characters in the UFO segments. "You'll quickly learn," he said, "after the first episode, maybe after the second, you'll be like, uh-oh, our new victims."
wej Duj
"wej Duj," it should be noted, followed the characters on the above-mentioned Klingon ship — called the I.K.S. Che'Ta' – quite closely. It was specifically about a character named Ma'ah (Jon Curry), and his aspirations to gain respect as a lower-ranking officer aboard his own ship. Given the amount of attention and time given to Ma'ah, it was quite shocking to see him destroyed.
Indeed, Trekkies may have been lured into a sense of comfort and complacency by the appearance of another "wej Duj" character. A Vulcan named T'Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz), previously a lower-ranking officer on the Vulcan vessel the Sh'vhal, has, as of this season, been assigned a post on the Cerritos. One might easily assume that the crew of the Sh'val and the Che'Ta' were going to all become part of the big, happy "Lower Decks" family. Not so.
With the deaths of minor characters, the stakes are raised immeasurably. One might even argue that the deaths of minor characters are more dramatically effective than the deaths of major ones. When a major character dies, it feels like the show's writers ran out of ideas. When minor characters die, it means that death is real; no one will be so invested in Ma'ah to ensure he is resurrected in 30 years times. Dead is dead now. Kelly requests that you bid them all farewell.
As the season progresses, who knows who else might die? It's all very thrilling.