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alt title(s): Minor Character Episode An episode focused primarily on otherwise minor characters, using their point of view to give an outsider's perspective on the central plot or characters. Not coincidentally, the principal actors are needed a lot less for this sort of episode than in a typical episode. Lower Deck Episodes usually arise when the crew is behind on their film schedules and have to shoot two episodes at the same time. The main character/s are seldom entirely absent, since they have to get their Mandatory Line in somewhere.
Named for "Lower Decks", episode #167 of Star Trek The Next Generation, an episode that is notable for both revisiting the life of a minor character from an earlier episode and killing off that same character before we actually see the changes previous events have wrought.
Compare to A Day In The Limelight, Villain Episode, Elsewhere Fic. May overlap with The Greatest Story Never Told.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- When Hayate The Combat Butler does these with recurring minor characters, the fact is usually stated enthusiastically by said characters. Sometimes with the main characters complaining that they've been pushed to the sidelines. Of course, this is a given since the series has No Fourth Wall.
- The entire concept behind the OVA Gundam 08th MS Team.
- Shinkon Gattai Godannar has an episode dedicated entirely to the bridge bunnies and maintenance crew. (mostly centering around the bustier female member of the maintenance crew as she got called for an arranged marriage that she later turns down, IIRC)
- Pokemon Chronicles — While Ash is advancing the story in the main series, this side series focuses on the friends he left behind and their problems back home (e.g. Misty, Professor Oak, Mrs. Ketchum, Tracey, Ritchie, etc.)
- Most of Pluto by Naoki Urasawa is told from the perspective of Gesicht, a one-shot character from the original Astro Boy series.
Comic Books
- Used in the comic-book PS238, which is set in a school for 'Metaprodigies' - superchildren. In the 'Return of the Rainmaker' arc, rather than focusing on the aspiring superheroes of the main school, the focus shifts to the "Rainmaker" program - children with metahuman powers not fit for superheroics. In true Chekhovs Gun style, each of the children ends up having to put their unusual abilities to creative use before the end...
- Comic book example: one issue of Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits focused on a week in the life of New Age co-worker Sylvia, while main character Midge (aka 'Bitchy Bitch') was on vacation. While her relentlessly positive attitude is a source of annoyance for the perpetually cranky Midge, here we see her as a much more three dimensional character who is just as much, if not more so, stressed out by her job as Midge is.
Film
Literature
- The Eighty Seventh Precinct novel He Who Hesitates By Ed McBain is narrated by the criminal (and is the only one of the novels to have a first person narration) and the reader only gets to see the cops of the 87th precinct as they appear to him.
- The Doctor Who novel "Who Killed Kennedy"
 (available for free online-reading at the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club webpage) takes a Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead approach to the early Third Doctor era, notably the Master episodes, from the POV of a London Times reporter whose career is sent into a tailspin when he attempts to uncover the truth about UNIT, and later gets recruited by The Doctor to stop The Master from interfering with the past during the Kennedy assassination.
Live Action TV
- The fifth-season Babylon 5 episode "A View from the Gallery" took the idea to its logical extreme by focusing on janitors on the space station, characters we'd never seen before and never saw again.
- The episode also hangs some lampshades. Ever try to figure out the purpose of those vaguely mop-like things are you see random crew members using in the background? So do they.
- Stargate SG-1 has done this a few times.
- The 5th season episode "Proving Ground", about some previously unseen cadets in a Stargate training program (one of them had appeared in the 4th season episode "Prodigy", but three were genuinely new).
- The appropriately-titled 6th season episode "The Other Guys", which was also a subversion of All Up To You.
- The 7th season's "Avenger 2.0" featured the same characters from "The Other Guys".
- The 8th season's "Citizen Joe", in which a mild-mannered (I know it's a cliche to say, but this guy was really mild-mannered) barber gets psychic images of the SG-1 team and tells the stories to his wife and friends — thus also allowing for a Clip Show.
- The revived Doctor Who has one Lower Deck Episode per season, due to the series' production time constraints and the additional burdening of them by the now-traditional Christmas Special. Usually called "Doctor-lite" episodes in the fandom, they focus on Muggles with only peripheral access to the Doctor's world, and how those characters react to High Weirdness without the Doctor around to explain things. (Series 4 takes a slightly different tack by spreading it over two weeks - a Donna-lite episode followed a Doctor-lite episode.)
- Unlike the Doctor-lite episodes of Series 1 and 2, the Series 3 entry, "Blink" is incredibly popular among fans. It features the debut of one of the scariest monsters in recent Doctor Who history, the Weeping Angels, and the episode's protagonist, Sally Sparrow, who many believe would make a perfect future companion for the Doctor. Plus, it was written by Steven Moffat.
- The spinoff Torchwood did the same thing in its first season with an episode titled "Random Shoes". It was actually narrated by the protagonist to differentiate it even further from the normal episodes.
- And it seems the other spinoff, The Sarah Jane Adventures is also getting in on the act in season 2, with the "Mark of the Berserker" story. Sarah Jane herself takes a leave of absence at the start of the first episode, leaving her young co-stars to tackle the problem on their own.
- From the classic series of Doctor Who, there is "Mission to the Unknown", which doesn't feature any of the regulars at all. It's a set up for the twelve-parter (six in modern terms) that is "The Daleks' Master Plan", which has the first companion deaths in the series.
- Homicide Life On The Street's final third-season episode, "The Gas Man," follows two new characters as they stalk main character Frank Pembleton and his wife around Baltimore. A variation on this trope, as it wasn't done to free up the main cast for other episodes, but as a screw-you to NBC for the show's constant near-cancellation.
- The new Battlestar Galactica has many a Lower Deck episode, often coupled with a Day In The Limelight. Episodes focus on the literal lower deck with Chief Tyrol experiencing the troubles the of fuel shortages and labor disputes. There are also Day In The Limelight episodes focusing on less important pilots. The movie, Razor, is almost an entire Lower Deck/ Limelight of The Pegasus, its former Captains, and its XO.
- CSI had the lighthearted Breather Episode slash Bottle Episode "You Kill Me," about The Lab Rat Hodges (not himself part of this trope, being a credits-listed character by this point) running the other Lab Rats through elaborate (and absurd) murder scenarios as part of a CSI-themed board game he was creating. The previous episode featured the Put On A Bus departure of a main character, while the following episode concerned another main character breaking down after becoming addicted to prescription drugs.
- Another episode titled "Lab Rats" features said lab rats trying their best to solve the season's Myth Arc. They didn't do a bad job either, actually identifying a fairly important clue about the killer's psychosis.
- Pretty much all the supporting cast of the Classic Degrassi High series had an episode like this, if only to drive home the constant "Issue Of The Week".
- The Lost episode "Exposé" essentially recaps the series through the eyes of two hapless Red Shirts.
- The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Zeppo" focuses almost exclusively on Xander, despite the fact that the main characters are simultaneously averting an apocalypse.
- They even rub it in our faces, since the ending is the shell-shocked leads talking about how epic and amazing the battle was. "I'll never forget when that thing finally showed its face. I mean, its real face..."
- Not QUITE sure it counts, since Xander is one of the Main Four Scoobies.
- Desperate Housewives featured an episode specifically focused on the male characters of the show rather than the usual focus on the women, though everyone still had a sizable role. The most noticeable difference was that it was narrated by Rex Van De Kamp, the first major male character on the show to die, rather than the usual Mary Alice narration.
- A season 5 episode featured a look back at the life of a previously seen character, handy-man Eli Scrugs (played by Beau Bridges), with the main characters remembering their most significant encounters with him, ending with a flash-back to Scrugs himself visiting Mary-Alice just before her suicide, which opened the series pilot.
- The Star Trek Voyager episode "Good Shepherd" was a Lower Deck Episode that literally showed the lower decks — the dimly-lit, poorly-maintained areas where the real work of keeping a poorly-supplied refugee ship running was carried out. The three redshirts focused on were misfits who under normal conditions would have been transferred off Voyager long ago, were it not for the long walk home. (They don't get sole focus, though, sharing the episode with Janeway. On the other hand, their interactions with Janeway - and each other - make up the majority of the action, and their character development.)
- And there was the Star Trek The Next Generation episode told from the viewpoint of three ensigns.
- What was that episode called again? I've completely forgotten... If only I had some kind of hint...
- I know the name! And I'll tell it to you right now! The name was <Gaak> <Thud>
- The Scrubs episode Their Story is narrated in more or less equal parts by tertiary characters Ted, The Todd, and Jordan, instead of main character JD. (Other similar episodes featured main characters, and thus are part of A Day in the Limelight.
- Season 8 has "Their Story 2", focused on and narrated by the interns that have been slowly introduced since the beginning of the season. As a result, it's remarkably similar to a season 1 episode.
Theater
Video Games
- Video game example: Resident Evil 2 has Scenario B, a mode that allows you to play as the main character you didn't pick and see exactly where they were during the main story. Resident Evil 4 followed up with Separate Ways, which lets you see what Ada was doing the entire length of the main game.
Western Animation
- The Fairly Odd Parents episode "The Big Scoop" is a Lower Deck version of "A Wish Too Far", seen from the point of view of Chester and A.J., who are investigating Timmy's sudden wealth and popularity for the school newspaper.
- This is made annoying because this episode was also the first one with Chester's new voice.
- Phineas And Ferb - the episode "Science Fair Redux (Another Story)"
- BURN-E shows what BURN-E was doing while WALL-E had his adventures on the Axiom.
- Similarly, Jack-Jack Attack shows what was happening with baby Jack-Jack and babysitter Kari while the rest of the Parr family was off playing superheroes.
- In South Park:
- The episode where Jimmy and Timmy try to end the war between the Crips and Bloods. At the beginning of the episode, the main cast comments on how they shouldn't involve themselves, and at the end they comment that they're glad they didn't.
- "A Million Little Fibers", in which pot-smoking sentient towel Towelie runs afoul of Oprah Winfrey's talking genitalia;
- "More Crap", a parody of the documentary The King of Kong in which Stan's dad and Bono engage in a poop-size contest.
- "Butters's Very Own Episode" focuses on Butters, a minor recurring character up to that point. This is an interesting case in that after that episode Butters became a much more prominent figure; these days he gets more screen time than anyone aside from the main four. It is also notable for coming out of completely nowhere, being the last episode of a season when the preceding episode ended on a massive cliffhanger.
- A second season episode of Gargoyles features Vinnie, a disgruntled ex-Faceless Goon who blames the gargoyles for his unemployment. While plotting his revenge, he narrates clips of his prior encounters with the gargoyles, interjecting his own POV.
- Teen Titans has an episode which focused on the Titans East house-sitting for the main 5 when they were off in the arctic fighting the Brotherhood of Evil.
- The Simpsons had one of these in season seven's "22 Short Films About Springfield."
Web Original
- Arguably, any Loading Ready Run video featuring Kathleen and her kooky friends is one of these since they deviates from the usual cast and location so drastically. (Includes "Job Hunt" and "Stuck In A Car With Your Friends".) They're usually made due to filming constraints. Namely, the fact that Graham's in Prince George at the time.
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