Season 3 is literally just fan service. They reused the V’Ger sound/theme for the enemy. They brought back a character from another show in the franchise. They brought back a character who appeared in two whole episodes of TNG. Large parts of the sound design were lifted from the TNG-era series. Seriously, almost as much fan service as Lower Decks.
Honestly with the train wreck that was Seasons 1 and 2, going full fan service was about the only path forward for the last season. I liked Season 3, but it certainly was NOT original.
As for Lower Decks…brah…how is Lower Decks fan service? There are references and stuff, but its got its own vibe now going on.
To be fair, I haven’t watched the latest season of LD, but up to that point, it really was “get this reference? See? Giant Spock’s skeleton! Remember this energy being that escaped the Enterprise-D?” However, I went into LD knowing that that was what I was going to be getting, and while I won’t say it’s my favorite nu-Trek series, I do really enjoy it.
It definitely has some inside jokery going on and references to other shows, but I’d argue it’s more organically done than just calling it “fan service”. It’s also a comedy SciFi, so I feel like it has more leeway than I’d give most shows, though.
The show has progressively become it’s own thing as each season progresses, though.
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.
