I've come around on Star Trek: Lower Decks. I find it to be a charming, relatively inoffensive offering from Star Trek. It's not 'Star Trek' as I would want it, but it catered to a small group within the fandom that wanted something different than what they were getting from Star Trek's Discovery or Picard. Of all the new shows, it snuggles directly into the middle of all the new shows.
Still, with Star Trek's Strange New Worlds and Prodigy out, it's hard to say that Lower Decks will have the same effect on the fandom as those two new shows. The reason for that is pretty simple, as our own Brian T. Sullivan pointed out; it lived in a world of callbacks. It over-relied on the concept. To the point that each episode felt like it was just a delivery service to get to the callbacks.
It helped the show at the moment, as we saw the same thing benefit Star Trek: Picard. Yet, like with Picard, the constant callbacks and attempts to tie itself to the beloved past properties will make it age poorly. Sadly, once you experience the high of the returning characters or callbacks to past series, there's little left. After all that is the story, and the jokes. Things that we don't get a lot of discourse about after the fact.
The online conversation never seems to discuss the characters or the storylines. Just the returns. Just the attempt to attach itself to a more popular, beloved version of Star Trek. Now, every show does this to some degree, but Lower Decks and Picard did it as part of their show's identity.
Not just as a fun callback, but something more integral and necessary. An issue the franchise has to avoid going forward. In today's day and age, shows don't have the same footprint as they did 15 years ago. We're no longer in an era of television where a single show can generate discourse for a week straight before a new episode debuts.
Major shows have short shelf lives and ones that don't captivate with strong stories and intriguing characters are forgotten faster than ever. Sadly, I fear that's the fate of Lower Decks. That's not to say that the storyline and characters weren't well written, it's just that the show was built around the cameos, returns, and iconic Star Trek moments of the past.
It didn't create its own footprint. instead, it served as a Star Trek docent. This is great if you're a new fan looking to experience new and other forms of the franchise. It's not great if you're looking to cement itself as a new anchor of the franchise.
For Star Trek, it needs to find new tentpole franchises. We have Strange New Worlds, sure, but other shows didn't live up to the hype. Prodigy can, if given the time hit a few more seasons, but for the most part the new series haven't established themselves as shows that show the best of Star Trek.
Strange New World has and hopefully, Starfleet Academy can as well. The best way to achieve that is to have Starfleet Academy worry about establishing its own identity. If it can do that, it'll stand out alongside the other grand series of the franchise. Now, balancing a unique identity with the expected demands of Star Trek is hard, but finding a middle ground between the two is what makes a series great, and not just good.