RICK AND MORTY'S SECRET WEAPON IS BUILDING A “WEIRD” SCI-FI EMPIRE (Mike McMahan)

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/rick-and-morty-mike-mcmahan-solar-opposites-interview

YOU’RE ALSO WORKING ON A NEW ANIMATED STAR TREK SHOW CALLED LOWER DECKS FOR CBS ALL ACCESS. CAN YOU GIVE US AN UPDATE ON WHEN IT’S COMING OUT?

I can't give you a specific answer on when that's coming out, but we’re still working on it and we're on track for when we have planned, which is this year. Animation is kind of uniquely suited for this moment. We didn't shut down production. Safely recording the cast was really our biggest challenge because we don't want them leaving their houses. So getting remote setups and stuff was something we had to solve, but it seems like we have.

LOWER DECKS TAKES PLACE DURING THE NEXT GENERATION ERA. HOW DOES IT CONNECT TO CAPTAIN PICARD AND THE REST OF THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE?

Lower Decks is very different from Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty. Within Lower Decks, there is a proper in-canon Star Trek show. It takes place during the TNG era. It's on a ship that feels like it’s always existed there and the bridge crew is dealing with big, never before seen Starfleet Star Trek type stories. So every episode has a thing like that happening in it. And then, on top of that, we've got A stories and B stories that are emotionally driven from the point of view of the lower deckers on the ships. So it was an area of storytelling that people had covered every once in a while on Star Trek, but never built a show around.

It was important to me that if you know everything about Star Trek and you watch this show then it fits into Canon and doesn't break Star Trek. In fact, it grows it. And if you know nothing about Star Trek, then all of the canon in Lower Decks feels like mythological, broad understandable sci-fi stuff. So you can still enjoy Lower Decks even if it's your first Star Trek show.