The reason I think Lower Decks does a fine job with its “fan service” is that none of those “get this reference? See?” moments matter. They’re just stuff that’s going on in the background, where an ordinary non-Lower-Decks Star Trek show would simply put a bunch of random meaningless gizmos or whatever to fill out the scene. The story that’s being told in the foreground works perfectly well if you don’t “get” any of the references. Often the story is enhanced by those references, but if you watch Lower Decks without any knowledge of the previous shows (aside presumably from a general gist of how shows like Star Trek work) you can still enjoy it.
The reason I think Lower Decks does a fine job with its “fan service” is that none of those “get this reference? See?” moments matter. They’re just stuff that’s going on in the background, where an ordinary non-Lower-Decks Star Trek show would simply put a bunch of random meaningless gizmos or whatever to fill out the scene. The story that’s being told in the foreground works perfectly well if you don’t “get” any of the references. Often the story is enhanced by those references, but if you watch Lower Decks without any knowledge of the previous shows (aside presumably from a general gist of how shows like Star Trek work) you can still enjoy it.
Exactly! Which is why I like LD, but not PIC S3.