STAR TREK: BELOW DECKS
CBS All Access, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: CBS All Access already has launched two Star Trek spinoff series as exclusives: Star Trek: Discovery and the more recent Star Trek: Picard, both of which are live-action dramas that are still running. Now comes a third new franchise entry, but Star Trek: Below Decks is different. It’s animated, not live action. And it’s a comedy, from Mike McMahan of Rick and Morty. The concept is to take the kind of stories that have propelled all previous Star Trek series and push them to the background. In the foreground: the lowly crew members in the lower decks, whose tasks include repairing the food replicators and doing follow-up work on planet exploration. It’s a clever idea, and this new series has fun with it, while sprinkling enough Star Trek Easter eggs to fill a genre TV basket. Not for very young viewers, because the language and action can be a bit rough – but worth watching for even the mildly curious.