Star Trek: Lower Decks Premiere Streaming Free on YouTube

The premiere episode of the latest series to join the expanding Star Trek universe, animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks, is streaming for free on YouTube for a limited time. Following the pattern established with Star Trek: Discovery andStar Trek: Picard, ViacomCBS will offer a taste of its new Star Trek content for free in hopes of drawing viewers who like what they see to CBS All Access, the show's exclusive streaming home. The YouTube stream is only available in the United States as there is currently no international distribution of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

ComicBook.com spoke to Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan ahead of the show's premiere about creating a series that reflects Star Trek's fans within the Star Trek universe. "We didn't go into it thinking we were going to do that," McMahan said. "It's just when we were writing these characters that love Starfleet but are a part of a larger world; it was impossible to not have them be geeking out for the same stuff that we all geek out over. If any of us were in a timeline where Data existed, how would we not all love Data? It's so easy to be a fan of Starfleet when you're in Starfleet, and that's a lot of the joy.

"When we were trying to find the comedic voice fo the show, it got so much easier once we realized that of course, the lower deckers would be huge fans of the thing that they're in because when you're in a comedy writers' room or Tawny, when you're doing improv and stand up and when you're doing your music stuff, you only do this stuff because you geek out over all of it. And Starfleet officers geek out over everything. They're all about knowledge and passing along information, and how could they not be geeking out over Kirk or Scotty or anybody? It just ended up fitting so well that it felt shocking that nobody had ever explored Starfleet officers that are huge fans of Star Trek within the world."

The first episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on YouTube. The first two episodes are streaming now on CBS All Access. New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks premiere on CBS All Access on Thursdays. The second season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is already in the works.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.

Source: comicbook.com