Can the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks overcome its obvious hurdle? Star Trek's SDCC 2022 panel mapped out the franchise's immediate future (on TV, that is) with all the pomp and bluster you'd expect after Strange New Worlds' sweeping critical success. Despite a nostalgic teaser for Star Trek: Picard season 3 and a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" for new Captain Kirk, Paul Wesley, arguably the day's biggest Star Trek news proved to be confirmation of a crossover between Captain Pike's Enterprise and the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks gang.
The inter-show showdown is scheduled for Strange New Worlds season 2, and will be directed by William T. Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes. In an ambitious mashup, the episode shall incorporate live-action and animated elements and, most importantly, will feature the live-action debuts of Star Trek: Lower Decks' Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid). No further story details were provided at SDCC 2022, but Mariner and Boimler feel like a perfect fit for the lighter tone of Strange New Worlds, with its alien LARPing and pirate impressions. Live-action Cerritos crew cameos would prove far more challenging to execute in, say, Star Trek: Discovery.
Nevertheless, transporting Mariner and Boimler into Strange New Worlds creates a problem of its own. Captain Pike's Star Trek story is set in 2259, shortly prior to Kirk's adventures in The Original Series. Star Trek: Lower Decks is set after The Next Generation (with Riker as captain of the Titan), and takes place around 2380, putting over a century between the two shows. Strange New Worlds must somehow bridge this gap to convincingly explain how two hapless Cerritos crew members from the future wind up poking their noses into Starfleet history.
How Mariner & Boimler Can Appear In Strange New Worlds Season 2
Let's face it, Star Trek is hardly in unfamiliar territory when it comes to mashing up characters from conflicting timelines. The time travel option is very much on the table here, and Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 SDCC trailer footage actually shows the Cerritos approaching a wormhole while it admires the pylons of Deep Space Nine. The upcoming Strange New Worlds crossover could be as simple as one of the ships (probably the Cerritos given its track record) bumbling through a portal into another era.
Of course, the slingshot maneuver is always available too. Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 ended with Captain Freeman no longer a free woman, arrested by Starfleet for a crime she didn't commit. Mariner and Boimler - aided by Rutherford's computer brain, maybe - could slingshot into the past to save their captain, but miscalculate the distance by 100 years or so. From red matter to the Nexus, Star Trek is packed with time travel possibilities. All of them are risky, but in the madcap world of Star Trek: Lower Decks, does that matter?
Time travel isn't necessarily to blame for Strange New Worlds' Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover. The landmark episode may adopt a format akin to "The Menagerie," where the Cerritos crew encounters a planet/villain/space oddity that Starfleet records show Pike's Enterprise crew dealt with over a century prior. The episode could play both timelines out simultaneously, perhaps with Mariner and Boimler working from clues left behind by their Enterprise predecessors, sending messages through time to tackle the same problem across eras. Or maybe it's just a holodeck thing...