Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 2, 2023

Lower Decks enters its third season (see also seasons one and two on Blu-ray) as a mature-in-stature animated show that has embraced its tonal immaturity within the Star Trek canon. The show, set in the TNG era, tries to find a delicate balancing act between serious Trek and sophomoric Trek, looking at the lighter side of life on a starship and aiming to build on and expand from preestablished material while also introducing its own content and ideas into the Trek canon. The show always has its tongue planted in cheek, even on the "serious" side of the narrative ledger, so it's certainly not Trek for all. It does know its universe and it always has a lot of fun playing around the fringes of taste and tempo. It's like a hardcore Trek fan's silly imagination run wild, with few constraints, while penning a love letter to the entirety of the franchise with a significant self-awareness at work. Season three builds on all of this tradition but really doesn't go anywhere, simply telling stories that feel like castoffs or rejects from bigger Trek, but the general emptiness of the stories really only serve to frame humorous moments and character building while having fun at the expense of the full spectrum of Star Trek history.

The season three premiere episode wraps up the intense cliffhanger from season two within a fairly neat and tidy 20-something-minute timeframe that is the season highlight. From there, season three essentially follows the various episodic misadventures of the Cerritos and her lower decks crewmembers in particular as they wrestle with various life and duty issues on the ship, and beyond. There's not a standout episode in the season beyond the premiere and the DS9 episodes because those episodes are the richest in callbacks and callouts to various Star Trek fan service moments. That is something that the show does very well: build in popular, and sometimes obscure, Trek lore and make it an integral part of an episode or larger idea, allowing for both a grounded place in the Trek canon while also running with its own interpretation of various events, people, and other odds and ends from the long established Star Trek universe.

With a soaring score that would be feel welcome and at home in any mainline live action Trek, colorful and attention-filled animation, solid voice work, and fun characters, Lower Decks overcomes its otherwise bland storylines that feel more like mainline Trek rejects and rehashes than they do worthwhile tales. This is in part because the episodes have half the time as live action to build a story with careful attention to plot detail, but also because half of the fun with the show is its willingness to play things on the goofy side of the coin and build stories -- often more like vignettes -- that reflect familiar Trek and tend to have fun poking at the giant's soft spots. Season three does this through the fullness of its run. The stories are infinitely forgettable in most all of the episodes, maybe minus the aforementioned ones, but story always takes a backseat to the silliness and character moments and interactions that really define the show.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The third season of Star Trek: Lower Decks unsurprisingly looks magnificent on Blu-ray. The 1080p image delivers a healthy and bountifully colorful palette that explodes with ample vividness and intensity, especially when the screen is flooded with bright colors, which defines the vast majority of the show's ten-episode run. The level of screen-popping brilliance pushes the SDR grading about as far as it can go, especially when considering bolder shades of pink, orange, and red. The TNG era Starfleet uniforms are nicely bold as well. Black level depth is superb, whether star fields or lower light corners and shadows throughout the ship and beyond. Whites are bright and the characters' skin tones, which range from the normal human spectrum to also include Orion green and Andorian blue, for example, look wonderful. Overall image clarity and sharpness is excellent. The animation is clear and robust, yielding exceptionally good visible detail to a number of surfaces in the ship, on various planets, and on character uniforms and skin textures. Certainly, the animation style disallows for the sort of high-end intimacy one would find in a modern digitally animated film or in live action, but there is no mistaking that the Blu-ray offers as much source definition and detail as it can. There are precious few drawbacks. A few instances of banding can be seen in very low light shots and the odd jagged edge is visible, but otherwise this is a brilliantly rich and stable image from Paramount.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack delivers a high-quality listen. It offers plenty of good opportunities for surround placement with both discrete effects and fuller, more immersive elements alike. The track is always on-point in delivering the show's audio engineering with precision, making full use of the five-channel configuration to immerse the listener in everything from open worlds to the somewhat crammed lower decks living quarters. Action scenes are rich and robust, offering good depth and plentiful surround engagement, with everything in balance in terms of positioning as well as subwoofer support. The low end is never overly worked, but never does it feel underdeveloped, either. Music is full and satisfying with the show's iconic score the highlight during the title sequence. It is well spaced with wide front side stretch and healthy surround support. Dialogue is clear, well prioritized, and centered.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This two-disc Blu-ray set of Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 includes extras on both discs, but the vast majority of them appear on disc two. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not include a slipcover. Disc One:

• Audio Commentary: For "Grounded:" Jonathan Frakes, Tawny Newsome, and Mike McMahan.

Disc Two:

• Audio Commentaries: For "Hear All, Trust Nothing:" Nana Visitor, Armin Shimerman, Tawny Newsome, Noel Wells, Jack Quaid, Eugene Cordero, and Mike McMahan. For "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption:" Barry Kelly, Kether Donohue, and Mike McMahan. For "Crisis Point 2: Parodoxus:" Tawny Newsome, Noel Wells, Jack Quaid, Jerry O'Connell, and Mike McMahan. For "The Stars at Night:" Jack Quaid, Dawnn Lewis, and Fred Tatasciore.
• Docking at Deep Space 9 (1080p, 12:21): Loving on the DS9 universe, animating the station and the wormhole, getting small details just right, writing and voicing the episode, and more.
• Lower Decktionary: Season 3 (1080p, 33:06): Deconstructing the season in detail.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This third season of Lower Decks remains something of a mixed bag of wonderful Star Trek callouts but fairly vapid stories with only partway interesting characters leading the way. It's more fun than not. It adds little of significant value to the Trek canon but does offer enough to keep hardcore franchise fans laughing and interested. This two-disc set includes excellent video and audio presentations, paired with a nice variety of extras. Recommended.