The Star Trek star has revealed a little more of how his animated Lower Decks character will crossover onto the live action show Strange New Worlds. 

Of all the news that flowed from San Diego Comic Con this year, there was one which really surprised us. It was the revelation that two characters from the animated Star Trek series Lower Decks would be crossing over to appear in a season 2 episode of the live action Strange New Worlds.

The Star Trek prequel has not been afraid of comedy so far – the glorious ‘The Elysian Kingdom’ comes to mind. However, quite how it could incorporate the cartoon Ensigns Brad Boimler and Beckett Mariner, from the post-ST:TNG era, boggled the mind.

Luckily, actor Jack Quaid has confirmed a few details in interview with Variety, allaying some concerns:

“Let me just clarify. So Tawny Newsome and I are playing live-action versions of Mariner and Boimler. We’re coming on to “Strange New Worlds.” We’re coming aboard the Enterprise. I won’t get into the plot details of how exactly that happens. But we got to be on the physical set. We got to actually be in the bridge and the transporter bay and the hallways. We got to go all over the ship and interact with that amazing cast. There are some animated elements to the episode, but it’s not like a Roger Rabbit where, like, there’s an animated Boimler following Pike down a hallway. It’s not like that.”

He also talks about bringing the cartoon to life, as well as confirming that Boimler’s signature hair colour:

“Oh it’s purple. Definitely purple. We made sure of that. Yeah, it was really, really cool. That was such an interesting challenge as an actor to take something that I usually just do with my voice but then inhabit every bit of him. I studied the way the animators and artists rendered Boimler and his movements and certain little gestures he would do. I tried to bring as much of that into the episode as possible, but trying to do things [that] were a little too big, a little too animated in a live-action setting, but still keep it within the Boimler range of movement. That was such a cool challenge.”

There’s plenty more in the Variety interview, including praise for the episode’s director Jonathan Frakes and how a writer on Quaid’s other CultBox favourite The Boys provided the spark to bring the two Star Trek shows together.

Strange New Worlds Season 2 is expected to land in 2023. In the meantime, Lower Decks Season 3 releases weekly on Paramount+ in the US and on Prime Video elsehwhere.