Star Trek: Lower Decks is lowest rated show in series history

After just one episode, Star Trek: Lower Decks is the lowest-rated show in franchise history.

Call it franchise fatigue, bad writing, an inept show-runner, or whatever excuse you can come up with to explain away the ghastly bad ratings for Star Trek: Lower Decks, what you can’t hide the fact the series is a flop. No amount of people screaming “You can’t just judge it off of one episode!” will change the fact that fans, and even critics, find this show to be bad.

To be clear, if you like it, that’s fine. No one is trying to take away your fun time.

The facts are that more than likely people who are defending it are doing so because they can’t admit their fandom let them down. Everyone who’s a big fan of a property has to admit that to themselves one day because it always happens. It’s inevitable. So ask yourself this; do you truly like it or are you just trying to not agree with those who don’t?

The show’s getting thrashed everywhere. Let’s start first with the Rotten Tomatoes scores. A lot more people put their trust in the fan scores these days, as a majority of reviewers seem to want the same thing from properties, while fans come at it from all different scopes. So for Rotten Tomatoes, we’re going to look at the average score of both the  “professional” critics and the fans.

Star Trek: Discovery got a suspicious 81% critic score, with a 42% fan score, for a mean average of 61.5%. Picard got an 87% critic score and a 57% fan score for a mean average of 69%. Enterprise has a 57% critic score but a good 77% fan score. That’s a 67% mean average. Voyager got a 77% critic and a 74% fan score for a mean average of a 75.5%. The Orginal Series got an 80% critic and an 88% fan score for a mean average of 84%. Deep Space 9 got a critic score of 90% and a fan score of 86% for a mean average of 88%. Finally, the Next Generation got a critic and fan score of 89%, which is also their mean average.

As for its animated cousin, Star Trek: The Animated Series? The Rotten Tomatoes critics give it a 94% and fans give it 80% for a mean average of 84%.

Lower Decks only mustered a 66% on the critic side of things, and a 35% on the fan side for a mean average of 50.5%. When even the more favorable reviewers are panning the show, you know you messed up.

Let’s look at IMDB, a potentially more accurate review site. Unlike the Rotten Tomatoes rating of a percentage out of one hundred, IMDB does it on star ratings out of a 100. Discovery has a 7.3, Enterprise has a 7.5, Picard a 7.6, Voyager a 7.8, DS9 a 7.9, The Original Series has an 8.3 and The Next Generation has an 8.6 (The Orville has an 8.0). The Animated Series got a 7.5

What does Lower Decks have? A 5.3 out of 10.

Now ratings do fluctuate and opinions change but comedy is pretty definitive. Either it’s funny or it’s not and the greatest slight you can give a comedy is that it’s just not funny. That’s the recurring condemnation of the show, that it’s just not funny.

It’s universally panned and that’s not a strong sign of anything. There doesn’t need to be more viewings of the show to know it’s not what people want. It’s going to be more of the same. So if the show’s something you enjoy, you’ll like the first season. Yet, most of the fans aren’t interested it appears and that doesn’t bold well for a second season.