Star Trek Lower Decks: Amazon Prime Video Review

Created by Mike McMahan, who wrote for Rick & Morty, you'd expect Star Trek Lower Decks to be a bit more tongue in cheek and prick the pomposity that sometimes comes with Gene Roddenberry's six-decades spanning franchise.

But it's fair to say that Star Trek Lower Decks doesn't quite boldly go where it should on the humour front.

While its opening titles poke fun and intimate the crew of the USS Cerritos aren't quite the full Star fleet deal (hitting asteroid rocks, running from fights with Borg cubes), the actual plots don't quite follow the zany ideas that are set out from the start.

Centring on a group who inhabit the lower decks and whose menial work powers the ship, Star Trek Lower Decks focuses on Jack Quaid's by-the-book Brad Boimler and the freewheeling thorn in his side Beckett Mariner (series standout Tawny Newsome) as well as the misadventures they get caught up in.

From dealing with a second contact situation to taxiing a Klingon to a meeting, it's about the menial misadventures of the group, but Star Trek Lower Decks never quite manages to catapult it into warp speed during each 30 minute episode.

It may flirt with some Star Trek The Next Generation characters and clearly owes a debt to the long-running chapter of the franchise, but Star Trek Lower Decks never quite finds its own feet in the galaxy.

But that's not to say it's without fun. The workplace comedy element works fine and the animation is fine as well - however, that's part of the problem as the show never develops legs of its own as it powers through ten episodes, and very little character development.

It's more a case of setting phasers to slightly less than stunning for Star Trek Lower Decks, but for fans of the sci-fi franchise, it may just prove to be enough. Anyone else raised on the likes and smarts of Futurama and Rick and Morty may find this space-set series wanting.

Season 1 of Star Trek Lower Decks is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video