Star Trek: Lower Decks

Go where?

There could still be a rights issue, in that paying royalties to a character's creator for one episode is probably a lot easier to swallow than doing it for an entire series.

But the idea that Locarno was too unsympathetic makes sense too, and it's not impossible for both to have been factors.

I’m not buying the unsympathetic character story. Spike was a fucking vampire and Whedon really hated him and created the character specifically to be unlikeable. Yet, the audience loved him.

Everyone hated Ahsoka at the beginning of the Clone Wars, yet now she’s right up there with Grogu.

Tafkats is right, paying the rights for a character for one episode vs an entire series expected to last at least 7 seasons is a more reasonable explanation.

In my experience, the characters creatives think people will love and the ones fans actually do are more often than not two separate circles on a Venn Diagram.

No.

It's tricky, because Wesley and Sito Jaxa were clearly still sympathetic afterwards.

I wonder if the Voyager writers/producers were obligated to come up with some additional excuse to protect the franchise from legal liability. Publicly admitting "it's the same character, we just changed the name to avoid paying royalties" might have opened them up to a lawsuit they couldn't win.

The heart of her irrational (seemingly) desire to never get promoted - something that wasn't played for laughs

Where they went.

What if they went nowhere?

Then this will be your chance to get away from everything.

Enjoying how the series has morphed into a semi-serious series, and managed to do so in a lot less jarring manner than Orville did. S1 was a series with a limited lifespan, and each series they've added a little more to the mix without spoiling the recipe, and gives it a shot of longevity.

I know they've planned for a 5 series, but hopefully they'll get a few more out of it.

And as punner who can play groans like Eddie Van Halen plays guitar, I am loving the titles.

Trekmovie pointed it out, and I wish I had caught it.
Locarno's jacket logo for his pirate group is the starburst from the trick he tried to do that got that kid killed, and him drummed out of Starfleet.

Locals starburst. Or something like that. Some kind of starburst.

I noticed the Star, but didn’t make the connection.

The Orville was hampered in that respect by MacFarlane's fondness for over-the-top grossout humor. Lower Decks would never have based an entire episode on a premise like "Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi are invited to watch one of their crewmates take a really long piss," so the journey to semiserious was shorter.

I think that some of is that Seth, but also some of that is possibly that Seth wanted to do TNG but politically incorrect, and the only way he could sell it to FOX (or the only thing FOX envisioned would work) was "Family Guy In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!"

Also, as far as I know, no one involved in Lower Decks has used it as their personal dating service.
I think that some of is that Seth, but also some of that is possibly that Seth wanted to do TNG but politically incorrect, and the only way he could sell it to FOX (or the only thing FOX envisioned would work) was "Family Guy In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!"
I think that some of is that Seth, but also some of that is possibly that Seth wanted to do TNG but politically incorrect, and the only way he could sell it to FOX (or the only thing FOX envisioned would work) was "Family Guy In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!"

Paste-memory fart?

Whoopsie! If only I could go back and edit the post. But someone had to make a baseless complaint that caused the admins to alter how we can edit our own posts.

Kolvoord Starburst.
That was driving me crazy.

It's pretty bold to adopt a depiction of the thing that got you booted out of Starfleet as your house sigil.

Anyway, some questions/speculation:
1. Does Locarno's involvement mean that we might see Wesley show up? After all, it's arguably Wesley's fault that Locarno's stellar career path got torched.
2. I saw some spec on a web that LD was going to reveal that Sito wasn't killed after all. I kinda hope not, but it would help (perhaps) Mariner get over her issues if Sito did in fact get to come back from the apparent dead.
3. Along similar lines, that website mentioned Tom Riker (the transporter "clone" of Will Riker that we last saw giving himself up to Cardassian authorities for his Maquis activities) as a person that Starfleet had concerns about the welfare of. Maybe he will come into play somehow.

I thought Tom Riker died during DS9 after joining the Maquis?

No he was sent to a Cardasian prison camp and Dukat promised Sisko that he wouldn't be executed.

Re: #2, the actress playing Sito has been.out of Hollywood since 95 and this far, TPTB do no seem inclined to have voice replacement for legacy characters who are unavailable for whatever reason

But even if so, pulling a soap opera trope that even The Bold and the Beautiful hasn't pulled in twenty years would be a pretty cheap way to resolve Mariner's story. Such a tactic would even be beneath the shit writing of Picard, and I expect better of LD than that.

I could be making this up, but I thought that during a random Voyager ep, there was a basically throwaway line that the Dominion slaughtered everyone of the Maquis, which would have implied that Tom went down with them. But LD said that Starfleet was looking for him for his protection,, so they had some reason to think he was alive.

Slaughtered or imprisoned.
It's just all the ones Chakotay and B'Lanna knew got thoroughly wiped out.
So Tom could have slipped through.
We know Ro did.

It’s one of the later episodes, they were “wiped out “, whatever that means. Sisko helped.

DS9 and VOY portray the thoroughness of the Maquis' fate a little differently. Both say that huge numbers of Maquis were slaughtered by the Cardassians and the Dominion, but VOY portrays their elimination as being near-total. Given that the dialogue in DS9 comes from people able to witness it, while in VOY it's filtered through Chakotay, in a funk, who got the news in a letter, you could argue thaty DS9's portrayal is the one to go with. On the other hand, you could also argue for VOY's version since it comes later in the war.

DS9, "By Inferno's Light," Stardate 50564: Dukat tells the people of Cardassia that "there will not be a single Klingon alive inside Cardassian territory or a single Maquis colony left within our borders." Of course this could be bluster.

DS9, "Blaze of Glory," Stardate 508xx or 509xx: Martok says "I thought the Maquis were wiped out by Cardassia and their new Dominion allies, but it would appear I was mistaken." Eddington says "the Dominion slaughtered the Maquis," but clearly they weren't all killed, since some of them are in this episode and launching missiles. Then at the end a bunch more of them die. Dax says "Is that what this is? The end of the Maquis?" and Sisko speculates "There could still be more of them out there."

VOY, "Hunters," Stardate 51501: Chakotay says "It's over, B'Elanna. There are no more Maquis," and later that "just about" everyone was wiped out and "a few lucky ones" are in prison.

It seems unlikely that the Cardassians and Dominion managed to kill every single Maquis except the ones who were in prison. Just the vast majority, and maybe everyone Chakotay and B'Elanna served with.

The difference was that presumably Tom Riker was in a Cardassian prison rather than a Federation one. It would make sebnse that the Dominion/Cardassians would not be able to/bother to execute/assassinate Maquis who had been arrested by the Federation. It makes little sense (to me, anyway) that Cardassians wouldn't execute prisoners under their control when they thought there would be no repercussions for doing so. Bloody Cardies.

Cardassians are also not prone to wasting potential resources, so I wouldn't be surprised if Tom Riker's file had a note on it saying "keep him alive, having him might come in handy someday."

Might have made a good DS9 ep towards the end - the Dominion capture a Starfleet prototype, and Weyoun and Dukat are bemoaning that they'd need a senior Starfleet office to get past it's security, and realisation hits them...