watching Star Trek: Lower Decks

Whenever we visit my in-laws, it’s a tradition to put any kids who are present to bed and then gather around one of the big TVs to watch something together. Sometimes it’s something that one family is watching and introducing to another, sometimes it’s something that we’re all watching and are at the same place in the season, and every once in a while it’s something new.

When we drove down to visit in January, I took advantage of that third possibility to get everyone to try Star Trek: Lower Decks, which I’ve wanted to watch for a while but never had the chance to. It’s vaguely been on my radar for its entire run, but I don’t watch a lot of TV and the only TV I watch is with my spouse, and I just was never sure that it was going to make it onto our screens. My spouse is not entirely Star Trek-averse—she was a big fan of Zachary Quinto as Spock in the Abrams movies—but we have different preferred nerddoms and I’m not even as Star Trek literate as I’d like, so even though the show sounded interesting, it just didn’t seem feasible.

Just before visiting family, though, I’d listened to an episode of The Incomparable that recapped the entire series and decided to make a push for it. My spouse, her brother, and I watched the first two episodes of the first season, and I think we all fell for it. It is a raucous and very funny show, and I think that won my spouse over even if some of the Star Trek inside jokes weren’t as funny.

Anyway, she and I continued to watch the show since that visit and are now most of the way through the first season, which we’ll probably finish sometime this weekend. We’re both invested in the goofy characters, and having a show with a short runtime is also really helpful. Changes in work schedules have made it even harder to watch TV than usual, but having the option of a 25-30 minute episode makes it more reasonable that we can find something to do together instead of heading to bed as soon as kiddo is finally down. We’ve also been using episodes as “chasers” after watching a longer episode of Silo on the weekends.

I’m thrilled about this development and really excited to (hopefully) make it through all five seasons of the show.

• Star Trek
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
• The Incomparable
• Star Trek (2009 film)