Star Trek: Lower Decks' Showrunner Wanted A Bigger Budget For A Joke You Probably Missed

In the "Star Trek: Lower Decks" episode "Crisis Point" (October 1, 2020), which /Film once ranked as one of the five best of the show, Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) hijacks a holodeck training program created by Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid), and repurposes it into an adventure "movie" that she calls "Crisis Point: The Rise of Vindicta." Mariner uses the holodeck movie to enact some very ... questionable fantasies, some of which involve inflicting acts of extreme violence. Mariner, we learn, has a lot of internal issues she needs to work through. 

The "Crisis Point" adventure, as was the wont of "Lower Decks," contained a lot of insular references to extant "Star Trek" episodes; every episode of the show was a veritable Easter egg hunt for Trekkies. "Crisis Point," for instance, has scenes of Leonardo Da Vinci on the holodeck, which is a reference to his holodeck appearances on "Star Trek: Voyager" (when he was played by the venerable John Rhys-Davies). 

There is a scene in the episode wherein the crew of the USS Cerritos, on board a shuttlecraft, take a cruise around the Cerritos itself, gazing through the windshield and basking in how glorious the ship looks. For a 30-minute animated series, the sequence goes on a long time. The crew dabs their eyes, crying at how wonderful the Cerritos is. The music swells. It's pretty ridiculous. 

Trekkies will instantly recognize this moment as a reference to the extended flyby of the USS Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," of course. Indeed, series creator Mike McMahan said in a video interview with StarTrek.com that he had to ask the studio for a little more money just so he could make that sequence a little bit longer, making it (to his eyes) even funnier.

For the record, the flyby sequence from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is over four minutes. That's a very long time. One can see why the makers of "Motion Picture" included such a lengthy sequence in their movie; it was the first time anyone had seen the USS Enterprise on the big screen. The ship needed to feel large, functional, and full of grandeur. "Motion Picture" isn't boring. You're just watching it wrong. 

Mike McMahan, not to be outdone by "The Motion Picture," made his sequence about one minute and four seconds, which, in animation terms, is interminably long. McMahan, of course, loved every second of it. The longer the sequence went on, the funnier it would be. Sadly, it seems that the "Crisis Point" episode was already running over its allotted time, and adding more to the sequence would simply require more money all around. McMahan felt it was worth it, saying: 

"That long sequence where we circle around the ship — the quote-unquote ship porn sequence — is so reminiscent of 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture.' It was making us laugh so hard in editorial that I actually called the other producers and said 'I think we might need to ask for a little more budget on this one, 'cause I want to extend that sequence, and we've already gone long.' It's the silliest, stupidest but most awesome callback to 'Star Trek' moviedom." 

There is, of course, a note of irony to the entire "Lower Decks" sequence, as the Cerritos is generally depicted as occupying a lower tier in Starfleet's estimation. The grand treatment only makes the show that much funnier. "Lower Decks" wasn't just great comedy. It was great "Star Trek."