Star Trek: Lower Decks should explore more unique ops.
Ever since the days of Star Trek: The Next Generation, fans have wanted to explore the world of the Cetacean Ops. Always a closely guarded secret, no one really knew what it was going to be. Geordi La Forge revealed the ship had dolphins on board and ever since then the fans and their imaginations have been working overtime thinking about what dolphin Starfleet officers would look like.
(Did the dolphins survive the Generations battle with the Duras sisters!?)
Now, thanks to the power of lower-budgeted animation and a show called Star Trek: Lower Decks, this has become a reality for fans to see. People were treated to see two Cetacean officers during the second season of Lower Decks. They are Kimolu and Matt and became two instant fan favorites during the events of the episode First First Contact.
Mike McMahon, the creator of the show, talked to Geek Girl Authority (via TrekMovie) and talked about how the Cetacean Op officers.
"Another fun question was about Matt and Kimolu, the two Beluga whales who staff the Cetacean Ops center on the USS Cerritos.RK: How did Matt and Kimolu get promoted to Lt. Junior Grade?MM: They put in a lot of star cartography time, and they pretty much are workaholics. They work hard, and they play hard. They love swim parties, but they love charting four-dimensional navigational paths through the stars. When you’re that committed to Starfleet, you just zoom up the ranks.Also, there’s not a lot of competition in their department."
Star Trek: Lower Decks should explore more ops like Cetacean
Star Trek: Lower Decks, for whatever flaws you may think it has, is one of the nicer-looking cartoons out there. It’s a very well made and fun fact, animated shows today are far less expensive than the high-budgeted series like Discovery or Picard. That makes it far easier to explore more complicated and out-there concepts like Cetacean Ops, as opposed to trying to do it in real life with CGI or practical effects.
That’s why Lower Decks should pursue some of these ideas more. Maybe Cetacean Ops isn’t the only species-specific portion of the Cerritos or other Starfleet vessels. Maybe there’s a Tholian Ops or a vulture-creature Ops somewhere.
With Lower Decks and even their new show Prodigy, the ability to explore complicated science fiction ideas is far more manageable financially than ever before. It’s part of the reason why Star Trek: The Animated Series introduced the Caitian and Kzinti instead of the original series. It was far easier to do in animation.
So Lower Decks should take advantage of the fact that illustrating a person drinking coffee costs just about the same as exploring a brand new alien race and exploring some concepts that have been hanging around the franchise for a while.