Is Lower Decks Literal Canon?

I always imagined the series is a future Mariner telling stories to a group of new cadets. Captain Boimler keeps complaining "I did not cry THAT much!"

I've always seen Lower Decks as the retellings the characters give down the pub after the fact.

"Exaggerated canon" has always been my personal explanation, too. If Lower Decks were played straight as a live action 90's Star Trek show, it would probably be similar to TNG, VOY & DS9 but with some lighthearted humor here & there. Like the first two seasons of "The Orville."

Honestly, the events on Lower Decks are no more crazy than say, running into an alternate universe that makes crews of starships become the cast of a musical, going warp 10 "evolving" you into a salamander, a seemingly entirely human crewmember "de-evolving" into a spider monster, meeting Space Abraham Lincoln or parasitic aliens taking over several admirals who are then never mentioned again. Some Star Trek stories are just crazy, no matter the medium. It's just part of the franchise, and we love it!

If an Enterprise can encounter something strange new and dramatic every week and no one questions it, I'm okay with the Cerritos encountering something odd, unrealized, and comedic each week. Great video as always.

speaking of the comics, Shax gets his own one shot set during the middle of a major story arc. It's stylized in the Lower Decks style and features his more animated personality, but it's ending is directly tied to the next issue which goes back to the normal style, and even features proof of his deeds in the background. Not sure how much this adds to the point of the video, but I thought it was worth pointing out

"Exaggerated canon" is how I always headcanon'd Star Trek V. It was a story Scotty told a gathered crowd in Ten Forward off-camera during "Relics."

Maybe what we see is historical docu-comedies consumed by the far future class that rightfully venerates O'Brien as the most important person in Starfleet.

I think the best way to think of Lower Decks is by thinking of the as crew reports from people, exaggerated in some places, simplified in others.

My headcannon/speculation was always that the show would end with Mariner IRL retelling the stories to new cadets or someone as obvious exaggeration. Like a more serious Boimler eould come up and say something like "you know it didnt happen like that" and Mariner responding "I know, but you know I learned to tell stories from Klingons. It makes it more entertaining..." And the show would end.

I think "same story, different story teller" is how I would reconcile things. If a Lower Decks episode were to be replayed as an episode of DS9 – somehow – we would get a familiar, but very different product.

The badge dark outer edge in the live action was a real life representation of the dark lines used to draw the badge.

I’m fine with it as canon. It’s dialogue tempo is obviously much faster and zippy. But the live action shows frequently get pretty goofy and slap stick so in terms of tone it’s not really that much of a stretch.

I think we ought to extend this "stylized retelling" perspective to every Star Trek series. Every show is canon, but it's also a fictional world that's reinvented with every new iteration, with different sensibilities, budgets, and styles. If we relax how seriously we take every moment we see on screen, we'd find it a lot easier to make this half-century-old franchise coherent and enjoyable

How could it be less canon than Spock's Brain, Plato's Stepchildren, Up the Long Ladder, Move Along Home, that Enterprise episode where Phlox did a genocide? Life is not any one genre and neither is a good show. Comedy moments absolutely work. Pick any two Voyager episodes written by different people. The characterizations there are very likely to be far more different than those between Lower Decks and live action. (Also lots of stuff happening to one ship is ... standard Star Trek stuff seen in every other series? Not sure why that is suddenly unusual now)

A good interpretation might be that Lower Decks is specifically Mariner's retelling of events. Given the common use of logs as a framing device in Trek, we can assume that this is the logs of Beckett Mariner. That said, the unlikely coincidences to make things so comedic all on one ship could easily be changed to making things dramatic and applied to any Enterprise.

I mean what you gotta consider for a lot of this is - it has to be stylised because it's animation. You can't do scene-blocking or shot composition the same as you could in TNG, just in the animation style, say. Everything would look static and wrong in a way that it simply doesn't in live action. But because you gotta make the movements and stuff more exaggerated, you need the vocal performances and writing to match that so you don't have dynamic, bouncy characters reading their lines in a way that clashes with that. Essentially the conclusion I drew from the crossover is - everything in TLD happened exactly as it happens in the show, people just spoke slightly slower and moved slightly less. Cuz those are the only things that change about Boimler and Mariner when they transition into live action, their personalities and actions stay basically the same - the performance the actors give just suits the medium they're being recorded in.

Older treks all had silly moments with various Space Nonsense but it was happening to top of the line crews. Like the Enterprise in all of the various forms is the literal flagship of the federation. And they get musicals, tribbles, a takeover by the hologram of Doctor Moriarty. Trek is silly enough for Lower Decks to be canon as is, even unimbelieshed, with a smaller and less top of the line crew Also as for Shaxs... The Shaxs' Best Day comic should be required reading

I think there is enough room in Star Trek for a ship full of eccentric weirdos and what Lower Decks does is acknowledge how weird and odd Star Trek is and has fun with it. Seriously, they even call it out in a few episodes like the one about Voyager where the joke was that everything in the episode happened in the other series. As for Shax his behavior change isn't that unusual. The man depicted in the cartoon is a bombastic loud man who knows when to turn it off and go into action when it matters for the crew. He never seems like the type of guy who would entirely let his hot headed nature get to him when its an important mission like what's in the comics.

Reminds me of military stories. If I remember an incident in the desert, I remember basically what happened to the best of my ability. If I'm telling it as a serious story, it's like one of the movies. Real serious, fairly accurate, reused props, and plenty of lens flare. If I'm telling the same story after a few beers, yeah, that's coming out Lower Decks style. Lower Decks actually feels more realistic than most other Star Trek, but then they slap a comedy filter over it and let it run.