Who Is Star Trek’s Lower Decks Crew? Everything You Need To Know Before Season 4
While there has been plenty of new Star Trek content in recent years, we think the animated series Lower Decks may be the best franchise foray into the final frontier. Rather than focusing on the bridge crew making constant life-or-death decisions, this show focuses on ensigns who are stationed on the titular lower decks. If you’re ready to learn more about who they are and what to expect from the upcoming fourth season, we’re ready to beam down all the info you need to know.
The Crew of Star Trek: Lower Decks
In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Boimler is the de facto main character of the quartet of ensigns. He is an in-universe franchise fanboy who geeks out over fan-favorite characters and ships and even uses the holodeck to create his own Star Trek movies.
While the character is played for laughs, he’s been through some major events, including having a transporter clone of himself (later recruited into Section 31) and having accidentally traveled into the past with Ensign Mariner to meet the Strange New Worlds crew.
Speaking of Ensign Mariner, she is the rebellious leader of the Lower Decks crew whose mother happens to be the captain of their ship, the USS Cerritos. Despite her low rank, she has more history than the others: she has served on DS9 and even with Commander Riker, who she claims needed help scoring illegal goods like Romulan Ale.
Her primary character trait is being a rebel who hates protocol, and she has lost her brief-lived promotion to Lieutenant and even been transferred to the career-ending Starbase 80 over previous insubordination.
Tendi is an Orion science officer, and she’s here to make you rethink everything you know about her race (which Star Trek has always portrayed, alternatively, as piratical men and sexually omnivorous women): in Lower Decks, she’s a little too into science, and she once made an intelligent dog out of spare parts just for fun.
At one point, she studied closely under Dr. T’ana, the ship’s cat-like surgeon. However, when the good doctor saw just how proficient Tendi really was, she used her influence to secure the young ensign out of Medical service altogether and into senior science officer training.
Last but not least, Ensign Rutherford is an engineer with a shady past that belies his gentle spirits: in Star Trek: Lower Decks, we discover he was a hardcore rulebreaker in Starfleet Academy who helped shady Starfleet member Les Buenamigo with an illicit project.
When healing from an explosion related to the project, he was fitted with a cybernetic device that erased his memories and gave him a brand-new personality. His implants still act up from time to time, but Rutherford is mostly known for being a kind and brilliant engineer who loves impressing his boss, working with Tendi, and saving the ship from threats like Pakled attackers.
The crew of Star Trek: Lower Decks have a depth to them that offsets the comedic setting of the series.
We love that these Star Trek: Lower Decks characters have such different personalities but still work together as a team, and toward the end of Season 3, some of their pasts begin catching up to them.
Rutherford, for example, confronted Les Buenamigo, who was now an admiral with more power to commit evil than ever before thanks to a fleet of powerful drone ships. Mariner, meanwhile, returned after leaving Starfleet in shame to help save the day. Boimler’s decision to make “bold” decisions pays off during some key moments, and we see Tendi excited about the senior science officer training opportunity she has been given.
Star Trek: Lower Decks ended Season 3 with a lot of character growth and little in the way of cliffhangers.
Ultimately, Star Trek: Lower Decks ended Season 3 with a lot of character growth and little in the way of cliffhangers (unless you count the revelation that Rutherford’s psychotic creation Badgey is still functioning). And it looks like fan-favorite Vulcan character T’Lyn is going to become a permanent addition to our Lower Decks crew. As she might say, it’s only logical for you to binge-watch all of the show so you can be ready for its season 4 premiere on September 7, only on Paramount Plus.
