It pulls off making fun of the old franchise while also being nostalgic about it.
But it’s simplistic with characters who are so dumb and childish that there’s no Star Trek in Lower Decks either.
Not a single character on the show is an adult. They’re all edgy and nerdy tweens vying for influence in the middle school yearbook club… in adult bodies. This includes the captain and bridge crew.
Lower Decks would be a phenomenal Star Trek if they would mentally age all the characters by 10 ~ 20 years, especially the captain, XO, security officer and every alien.
Well... i wouldn't completely disagree, but it's a cartoon comedy so it seems fitting, the characters might be dumb and simplistic but they make fun of themselves; unlike Discovery where the characters are also dumb and simplistic yet pretentious and serious with terrible acting making it unbearable.
The whole thing with Star Trek is competent "culturally evolved" professionals exploring the universe and representing the best of us.
There's no way any Starfleet character from Lower Decks could have made it through the academy entrance exam or psych eval from TNG. They're not competent and they're driven by childishness, which is what makes the show a comedy and not good Star Trek.
I wouldn't. I tried, not once, not twice, but three times to watch it. The speech from all characters is just way to fast for me to understand.
I actually reinstalled Far Cry 2 (which was widely lambasted for speech being too fast) to compare, and the speech in lower decks is a lot faster than Far Cry 2.
I think it was targeted at kids, but they had an all-star series of writers.