Mike McMahan on Carefully Using Easter Eggs in 'Star Trek: Lower Decks' | Variety Studio presented by Google TV
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00:00The show is so filled with all of these great,
00:04I wouldn't even call them Easter eggs,
00:05they're just like gifts to Star Trek fans and references.
00:09I think the best version of that
00:11is when you incorporated Cedar Jaxa
00:13into the end of last season.
00:16Yeah.
00:17What is that process like, of finding,
00:21as you're putting together the story,
00:23finding the threads of Trek lore
00:25that you want to bring into it?
00:27We're really careful on Lower Decks
00:29about what we're going to use from Trek lore
00:31and what we're going to add to it.
00:32It's kind of like going to Yosemite.
00:34You want to enjoy it while you're there,
00:35but you don't want to change it.
00:36You don't want everybody to be able to enjoy it
00:38as much as you did.
00:39So you have a pack-in, pack-in, pack-out world.
00:42We're cleaning up all our trash from the Trekiverse.
00:46Leave no trace.
00:46Take only pictures, leave only footprints.
00:48So it's sort of a combo of stuff, right?
00:51Sometimes I'll talk to Tanya
00:52and we're just geeking out about what we love
00:54and it inspires ideas for the show.
00:56And other times, there's stuff I want to do,
00:58like the Cedar Jackson storyline,
01:00where I'm like, I don't know if we can do that.
01:02That might be stepping on something
01:03that somebody loved growing up.
01:05And then we got far enough where I was like,
01:07I feel like we've earned the ability
01:08to tell those kind of character stories.
01:10And then sometimes the artists put in stuff
01:12and it makes us laugh
01:13and it's because they love Star Trek as much as we do
01:15and it's unexpected.
01:16And we're like, no, no, no, move that forward.
01:18Like, get more of that in there.
01:20It's really everybody working together on that.
01:21So what's an example of that,
01:22of one of the artists sneaking in
01:25something that you didn't expect to be there?
01:27There's this bowl.
01:29There's a bowl on the show.
01:30It's a fruit bowl that they put the engine nacelles
01:33from the Enterprise on,
01:34because they thought that was funny
01:35and I fought it forever.
01:37And if you, you can spot it in scenes.
01:39It's like, they have a bowl that looks like the Enterprise.
01:41They also put in a cheese board
01:43that they sell on StarTrek.com.
01:45I was like, why would you do that?
01:47But they were like, it's like if Star Trek
01:49used a prop that they had in storage
01:51that was like around, you know?
01:52So little things like that and little background details
01:55that when you're gifted that stuff,
01:57you don't turn it down, you know?