This is the first Star Trek production with an explicitly comedic bent. (Although previous shows and movies frequently included funny parts, they weren't outright comedies from start to finish.)
This is the first Star Trek production to be primarily set in the 24th century since Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002, a gap of 18 years - exactly the same span of time that Star Trek was in continuous production on television (1987-2005).
This series has the lowest-ranked protagonist of any Star Trek series in Ensign Beckett Mariner. Before this, the lowest-ranked protagonists were Commander Benjamin Sisko and Commander Michael Burnham (both of whom, it should be noted, were later promoted to Captain).
However, Mariner is roughly the same age as those of command rank, since her classmate from the Academy is a Captain. Mariner just wants to remain an ensign, since no one messes with her, or expects anything of her.
Mariner eventually accepted a permanent promotion to Lieutenant, Junior Grade. (This is still three ranks below Commander, and four below Captain.)
This has been the Kurtzman-era Trek series with the most consistent release schedule, with new episodes coming out every year, always premiering in late summer. Sadly, it appears likely that the lengthy WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of summer and autumn 2023 will disrupt this pattern for season 5. Each new season was also preceded, in early spring, with a renewal announcement for the following season until season 5, when it was instead announced that the fifth season would be its last.
Acting for Two: Jessica McKenna, who plays the voice of the Cerritos computer, also plays Ensign Barnes.
Eugene Cordero's primary character is Ensign Rutherford but he also voices Lt. Winger Bingston, Jr..
In addition to voicing Dr. T'Ana, Gillian Vigman also voices Captain Dayton in "Much Ado About Boimler" and "No Small Parts".
Fred Tatasciore, a veteran "chameleon" voice actor, very often voices at least one additional character besides his primary, Lt. Shaxs, in each episode.
Gabrielle Ruiz voices the Recurrer Ensign Castro but was also chosen to voice the one-shot character T'Lyn in "weJ duJ", which paid dividends for her as the character was extremely popular and was brought back as a regular for season 4. T'Lyn is now her primary character, but there have been episodes where she voices both T'Lyn and Castro.
J.G. Hertzler voices the Captain of the Drookmani vessel, in addition to appearing as a holographic version of his Deep Space Nine character Chancellor Martok.
Robert Duncan McNeill returns to his Voyager role of Tom Paris, but also reprises his role as Nick Locarno from TNG.
According to Dawnn Lewis, none of the actors knew what characters they were really playing until the announcement. In particular, she was told they were playing animal characters.
Both Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid have commented that, when they auditioned, they were given isolated scenes and asked to audition for specific characters, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Then when the whole cast was brought together for a table read, the two of them were placed at the center of the table and they each noticed they both had a lot of lines...
Quaid also admitted on Twitter that he had no idea Boimler would flash his nethers in the episode "I, Excretus".
Robert Duncan McNeill has gone on record to find that his TNG character of Nick Locarno was entirely irredeemable for his actions, unlike Tom Paris (whom Locarno was the prototype for). It seems the show runners agreed, as Locarno is revealed to be the main antagonist of Season 4.
Cast Incest: June Diane Raphael, who plays Billups's mother, is the wife of Billups's voice actor, Paul Scheer.
Channel Hop: Sort of. The first season was classified as a CBS All-Access original; between seasons the service was relaunched as Paramount+ and is now classified as one of their originals (though this is only reflected in the end logos; the CBS All-Access logo at the start of episodes in replaced by a still saying the show is "A CBS Studios Production").
Defictionalization: Right after an episode involving Boimler's love of a particular collectible plate (cleverly spoofing such collectibles in the real Star Trek merchandise scene) a manufacturer of licensed Star Trek collectibles announced their official replica of Boimler's collectible plate.
The Starfleet uniforms used by the Cerritos crew are an approximation of uniform designs that were intended for Star Trek: Generations but ended up scrapped due to a Troubled Productionnote Nothing concrete has been said, but it's believed the truncated filming schedule meant the new uniforms were not able to go through enough quality control to be ready for the big screen, causing the film to liberally reuse existing TNG and DS9 costumes. They were to be a blend between the TNG uniforms in coloring and style while evoking the TOS-movie maroon jacket uniforms with a double-breasted flap. The uniforms eventually made it to live action in the Strange New WorldsCrossover episode "Those Old Scientists", albeit tweaked slightly (the reds were made darker to avoid clashing with the TOS-era uniforms, and the collars were adjusted on the expert advice of director Jonathan Frakes).
Cetacean Ops is based on an idea for TNG where Stafleet ships would have whales on the ship as they are naturally gifted with traveling in three-dimensional space, but was never realized due to budget. Here it is staffed by a couple of beluga Starfleet officers.
Executive Meddling: VFX artists working on Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard tried to include California-class and Parliament-class starships from Lower Decks like the Cerritos and the Vancouver in the background of certain establishing shots but were ordered to remove them by executive producers for unspecified reasons.
Ink-Suit Actor: All of the main cast could conceivably portray their characters in live action with appropriate make-up, hairstyling and costuming. (In the case of Mariner her early concept art portrayed her as Caucasian with reddish hair, but changed to resemble Newsome.) This was underlined when Newsome, Quaid, Wells and O'Connell appeared at a Star TrekFan Conventionin character. This was taken to its logical extreme when Newsome and Quaid portrayed their characters in live-action in a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover, "Those Old Scientists."
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The four main Ensigns appeared in Star Trek Online as Duty Officer cards two days prior to the series' debut. It was here that Tendi's race was revealed, which interested many a player as Orions were Klingon-based in-game and the only other Orion in any Starfleet capacity was Cadet Gaila in Star Trek (2009).
While Carlos Alazraqui voiced villains prior to the series, they were frequently Laughably Evil bumblers and most of his roles tended to be comedic in nature. TheAledo is a Knight of Cerebus with no comedic traits and whose killing spree is Played for Horror. This applies to a lesser extent to Admiral Buenamigo, who has some humorous moments but is generally portrayed as one of the more serious villains.
Writer Mike McMahan is a lifelong Star Trek fan, and was previously the creator of TNG Season 8, which parodied the franchise's more absurd plotlines and/or its tendency for tonal mismatch between the A-plot and B-plot. Examples include "Picard must debate a copy of himself... to the death" and "Trapped in her patient's holo program, Troi literally battles a child's fears. Geordi starts tipping his visor when he says something cool." Now he's writing an officially licensed Affectionate Parody of the franchise he grew up with.
Tawny Newsome is also a huge Star Trek fan and has been known to geek out over the many references to past episodes and movies she encounters in the scripts - when she isn't adding in a few of her own along the way (see below). She is also one of the cohosts of the official Star Trek podcast.
The day the Season 2 main trailer was released, it was announced that they would also release a replica of Boimler's Tom Paris plate.
Eaglemoss released a U.S.S. Cerritos model the same week as “An Embarrassment of Dooplers”. In that episode Tendi and Rutherford were building a Cerritos model.
Referenced by...: This show, and the rest of the Discovery-era series have their characters featured in the Paramount+Mountain of Entertainment commercials. Mariner specifically shows up as one of the characters witnessing Sylvester Stallone climb up a part of the mountain with a sentient rock formation in the shape of his face ala Cliffhanger.
Role Reprise: Whenever possible they get actors to voice a role they originated in the live action works even if The Cameo is only seconds long. Due to the animated format and the time period of the show is off-centered by about 20 yearsnote TNG, DS9, VOY and the TNG movies were all linked together in a sequential timeline, taking place from 2364-2379 as the real world time covered 1987-2002, while LD begins in 2380 despite starting in 2019, this allows some actors to play their characters at a much younger age than they realistically could have in person. This ranges from Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis as Riker and Troi, to Robert Duncan McNeill as Paris and Nick Locarno.
Throw It In!: The voice cast — many of whom are experienced improvisational comedians — are generally permitted to ad-lib and riff in alternate takes, unusual for Kurtzman-era Trek which is otherwise tightly scripted. Some examples:
Some of Tawny Newsome's dialogue for Mariner was improvised, such as her line about "those sexy people in rompers that murder you just for going on the grass" in "Cupid's Errant Arrow". She is also the reason an Andorian is named "Jennifer", as she improvised the name when the script cued her to shove another character out of the way. She facetiously claims she would have come up with a more appropriate name if she'd been aware the character was supposed to be Andorian.
Jack Quaid improvised the Verbal Tic Boimler has of referring to Captain Freeman as "Cap'n".
Troubled Production: Though not as bad as sister series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Screen Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild strikes struck before Season 4 launched. As Season 5 was greenlit, it is possible pre-production for it was halted by both.
Unspecified Role Credit: The main titles and the end credits list the name of the actors, but not the characters they voice. It should be noted that this is unusual for Star Trek, as the opening titles generally credit the actors along with the roles that they play throughout the franchise. The only exception are characters reprising their roles from the old series, who get special mention in the closing credits.
Voices in One Room: Mostly averted, as the cast generally records separately. However on at least one occasion, Tawny Newsome's recording session overlapped with Jack Quaid's, allowing the two of them to act out their scenes together, riffing and improvising along the way, to their delight and what they admit must have been the horror of the sound editors and animators who had to wring usable material out of their takes.
Mariner was intended to be a character of European descent, and a ginger, to boot, before she was rewritten after Tawny Newsome was cast. This also affected both of her parents, who were presumably also originally written as white.
Early designs for the Cerritos, as seen here suggest that it could have been a smaller variation of the Galaxy-class with square nacelles. Another version of the ship class is closer to the final take but with fancier nacelles and the registry located on the underside of the saucer section. Also, the Cerritos would have been called the San Diego. (An actualCalifornia-class San Diego appears in the Season 3 finale.)
The promotion all of the main characters receive to Lieutenant Junior Grade at the beginning of the fourth season was originally planned to take place at the end of the season, though it's unclear at what point.
Jeffrey Combs voices AGIMUS in this series, but he was previously featured on other Trek productions as Liquidator Brunt (FCA) and later Weyoun on Deep Space Nine, and recurred on Star Trek: Enterprise as Shran.
J.G. Hertzler does reprise his role as a holographic version of Martok, but he also voices the Drookmani Captain. He also had guest roles on Voyager and Enterprise as other characters.
Robert Duncan McNeillreprises his TNG role as Nick Locarno after he previously featured on the series as his Voyager character Tom Paris. Naturally, the series lampshades the hell out of the similarity.
to Dawnn Lewis, none of the actors knew what characters they were really playing until the announcement. In particular, she was told they were playing animal characters.