Local Star Trekkers were thrilled to learn that Aledo has now entered the Star Trek universe via Starfleet’s latest fully automated New Class Texas ship, the USS Aledo.
The Aledo was unveiled on October 20, when “Trusted Sources”, the ninth episode of season three of Star Trek: Lower Decks aired on Paramount+.
Lower decks is one of the last Star Trek series and the franchise’s first animated series since the 1970s. It is also the first Star Trek series classified as a comedy. It follows the adventures of the junior crew of the Starship Cerritos, a California-class ship.
The series debuted in 2020 and received numerous nominations, including a Primetime Emmy nomination. It is in IMDbPro’s Top 200 Most Popular TV Titles 2020-2021, and recently Paramount+ announced that a fourth season is in the works.
But what was the inspiration for the USS Aledo?
The episode’s writer, Ben M. Waller, answered this question.
Waller, who has been with the series since its inception, was the driving force behind the name.
“At the start of season three, we knew we wanted to build toward revealing a class of ships from Texas,” Waller said. Community news. “The ethos behind the ships on our show is ships that might have been overlooked by Starfleet’s flashier large ships like Enterprises and Voyagers.”
In the California class of ships that originally populated the series, Waller said ships named after other California cities (besides Cerritos) have moved in and out of the show.
“But we knew we wanted to have a class in Texas. And at the start of each season, our showrunner Mike McMahon will decide who is going to do which episode. So he’ll say, ‘you write this episode, you write this episode’, and he assigns them to the beginning.
All of the writers then work together to come up with scripts for each episode.
“At the start of season three, with the Texas class coming out, I immediately knew what city I would call it, why I would call it that, and I just prayed to be assigned the episode where the Texas-class flagship was finally revealed, because I wanted it to be the Aledo,” Waller said. “I was given the ninth episode. And as I watched everyone start writing their episodes, I was reading the drafts as they came in. And we finally got to my episode, and we started talking.
McMahon decided that Waller’s episode would be the one to reveal the first Texas-class starship, and Waller was delighted.
“So I went home. I wrote it, I threw in the Aledo references as much as I could, because my wife and her family are actually from Aledo and I wanted to include it as a little heartfelt tribute to them.
Waller’s wife is Vicky Papa, who graduated from Aledo High School in 2003.
Waller’s inclusion of Aledo’s references in his episode was not done yet, however.
McMahon liked Waller’s draft, “but the problem with TV writing is that it goes through about 100 people before it finally airs,” Waller said. “And all the time I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know if they’re going to know about Aledo or I don’t know if it’s going to fit what they’re looking for in terms of the philosophy behind how we name our ships. And every time there was a new draft, I kept checking them because there was the producer draft, the studio draft, the network draft, the first animatic drafts, so on and so on .
“Because it’s animation, it keeps getting revised every time and every time the Aledo name was in it. And I was so happy that when we finally got to sound mixing, I was able to go to Warner Brothers studios and sit on the music stage and watch them add the music. And the Aledo name was still on the ship at that time. So I was like, ‘I did it! My wife knew about it, but her extended family didn’t and so when the episode came out, it was a really good time for me to pull that off.
In addition to Star Trek: Lower DecksWaller’s writing credits include the TV series Relationship goals and RocketJump: the show.
Waller grew up in Florida.
I think I started writing because I wasn’t so good at anything else,” he said. “I always studied television and cinema in high school. I learned that all the televisions in high school were hooked up to a single DVD player. So as long as I burn something to DVD, I can make sure every TV sees it. And I sort of became like my own information network.
Waller spent a year in high school programming his current affairs show.
“It just sparked a real interest in me for it. And I went to LA to USC, to film school there. And once I graduated, I already had a few jobs. And I kept going until I could finally become a television writer. That’s always been the goal. »
He started on YouTube and made a new video every week. YouTube wasn’t mainstream in 2011, but it had good success.
Waller went on to direct one of the first original series for Netflix.
“And then I just knew there was a ceiling there. And so I made the jump to TV, and I just haven’t looked back,” he said.
The USS Aledo’s overall appearance in the series was brief, but in the Star Trek universe, nothing is final.
You can watch Star Trek: Lower Decks on Paramount+.
#Aledo #enters #Star #Trek #universe #final #spaceship #animated #series #named #city