Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover on Strange New Worlds gets surprise early premiere

If you weren't able to be in San Diego this weekend to catch the first public screening of the Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover episode of Strange New Worlds season 2 at Comic-Con, you're in luck.

Paramount+ is releasing the episode, titled "Those Old Scientists," on Saturday to coincide with the Star Trek Universe Comic-Con panel, a little over four days in advance of the show's traditional Thursday premiere slot. You can go to the streamer at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT to catch Jack Quaid's Brad Boimler and Tawny Newsome's Beckett Mariner appear in live action alongside the likes of Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and "Hot Spock" (Ethan Peck) — which is a joke Newsome ad-libbed during the shoot for the episode.

Directed by Jonathan Frakes, and written by Kathryn Lyn and Bill Wolkoff, the crossover sees the Lower Decks crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos (still in animated form) investigating a time portal. They accidentally activate the tech and send Boimler back through time. He arrives in the timeline of Captain Pike (now in live action), and the U.S.S. Enterprise has to figure out how to get him home without Boimler drastically changing the course of history. Once it seems like they've figured things out, in comes Mariner.

CBS The opening animated sequence of the 'Lower Decks' episode of 'Strange New Worlds'

We already know the upcoming fourth season of Lower Decks will address this epic crossover, even if it's just in a small way. The new trailer that dropped Saturday during the Comic-Con panel revealed footage of animated Mariner telling Boimler, "Dude, this is nothing compared to, you know, that Pike thing we aren't supposed to talk about."

The early drop also means that there's been a slight change to the schedule. This coming Thursday will now see the premiere of Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 8, which puts the season finale on Aug. 10. Also announced at the Comic-Con is news that the ninth episode of Strange New Worlds is a full musical episode, a franchise first.

In interviews conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, EW spoke with Quaid, Newsome, Peck, and Frakes about the making of the long-hyped crossover.

"We were guests in their house," Quaid says of the Strange New Worlds cast. "We were trying to simultaneously be respectful, but also really make sure we did carry forth our tone in the proper way. I think the person that made sure that it was all balanced was Jonathan Frakes. My motto became: I'm gonna see how far I can push this and how unrealistic and cartoony I can be, and I want Jonathan to bring me down after that. I'd rather go too far and then have him adjust me and go back than it not really quite feeling like he's enough of Boimler from the cartoon."

Warning: The remainder of this article contains spoilers from the episode

Michael Gibson/Paramount+ Tawny Newsome's Mariner and Jack Quaid's Boimler meet Captain Pike (Anson Mount) in 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'

There were certain highlights for the cast. For Quaid, one of them was getting to jump on a horse saddle on display in Pike's quarters and exclaim, "Riker" — a nod to Frakes, the man behind William Riker. "Boimler would be such a nerd to say, 'Riker,' as he is doing a Riker maneuver," the actor says. "And also Jonathan was in the room and he loved it."

For Newsome, it was getting a sugar rush while filming a bar scene with Gooding and Melissa Navia (Lt. Ortega). The green makeshift Orion Hurricanes were actually just green Gatorade "with some purple yogurt splashed in there or something," according to Newsome. "We drank probably 40 of those. The sugar from that absolutely made us lose our minds because you also kind of have the Vegas effect. When you're inside a brightly lit set from morning till night, you have no idea what time it is. You're just there losing control. I feel like Celia was singing Donna Summer and spinning around on a chair while Frakes was trying to talk to Melissa about the scene. I was like, This is delightful. We're all out of our minds."

Peck remembers filming the slow-motion shot of Spock smiling, which occurs in the episode when Boimler believes, to his horror, that he might have broken the typically apathetic Vulcan. "When I am that emotive as Spock, it feels really wrong, right? Because Spock is so contained and controlled," Peck says. "When we were filming that, I remember the first take I think I did something much smaller that was like a smirk to Boimler. Frakes was like, 'Bigger, bigger!' I remember telling him, 'This feels wrong. Are you sure?' He's like, 'Yes, that's good. It should feel wrong.'"

Michael Gibson/Paramount+ Rebecca Romign's Number One, Ethan Peck's Spock, and Christina Chong's La'an in 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'

Peck is also taking his Hot Spock status in stride. It's a nickname that came out in the moment when Newsome and Quaid were shooting the sequence on the Enterprise where they think no one else in the room can hear them. "I'm gonna keep this, like, 100 percent profesh, but I was thoroughly unprepared for how hot young Spock was going to be," Mariner says, which was the scripted line but Newsome then embellished it with, "The body, the face, the ears. What?!"

"My head is always appreciating hot people just at any time," Newsome says of that moment. "I know I can improvise about Jack and we'll be cool no matter what, but you're talking about someone's physical appearance. You want to make sure everyone feels okay. So, I pulled Ethan aside and I was like, 'Hey, after the hot line, do you mind if I just list off some things? It might feel like I'm lightly objectifying you. Are you cool with that?' He was like, 'Absolutely. And thank you for asking.'"

"I'm very flattered, very honored," Peck says of holding the moniker of Hot Spock. "Jack and Tawny have a lot of experience in improv, and they definitely brought those skills to the table when we filmed that episode. It was so new and fun to us, because I personally always stay exactly and precisely to the script because I kind of need to. So, they had a really great time improvising and bringing their own spin to it."

The episode ends with another small animated sequence, similar to the opening, except this time it is the Strange New Worlds crew who were animated after drinking some of those Orion Hurricanes. "Voiceover acting's really hard for me," Peck admits. "I don't do much of it, and it's a very different art medium. I was really excited to try it out. I actually asked Jack for advice on it, but it's just something you need to do a lot, I think, to understand how it works and where to put emphasis on how to communicate emotion through using only your voice."

"Talking to Celia and Rebecca after [the voiceover], I can't remember who said this, but they were like, 'It feels weird to not have your face and body, but to have to act,'" Newsome recalls. "I cannot say I prefer it. I love Lower Decks. I don't think I prefer doing animation 'cause it is just like a weird mind thing that you have to do. But I think they all did so great, and I love their animations. They all look so cute."

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• How Star Trek brought the 'chaos bomb' of Lower Decks to Strange New Worlds

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• Jack Quaid formed a 'Spoimler' bromance with Ethan Peck on Star Trek crossover event