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Star Trek: Lower Decks' USS Cerritos Name Explained
Star Trek: Lower Decks' starship has a name that will likely elicit giggles from savvy west coast viewers - the USS Cerritos. Star Trek's Federation starships have a history of bold, historically significant names like Enterprise, Voyager, Discovery, and Excelsior. Cerritos is a perfectly nice, blandly unimportant city in the Greater Los Angeles area. The idea that Starfleet would name a ship for such an innocuous location is certainly part of the joke.
The other, perhaps more pertinent part of the joke is one that all southern California television viewers know well - a commercial for the Cerritos Auto Square car dealership has one of the most incessantly catchy jingles ever conceived. It's the sort of random, nerdy humor that one would expect from Mike McMahan, a Rick and Morty veteran and Lower Decks' showrunner.
This is far from the first time Star Trek has indulged in a Californian oddity. Vasquez Rocks - a distinct, angular rock formation in the Sierra Pelona Mountains in Los Angeles - was used as a number of different planets in Star Trek: The Original Series; it even showed up as the actual location in an episode of Star Trek: Picard, as the place where Raffi Musiker parked her space winnebago and vaped snake leaf. The nearby Anaheim Convention Center also stood in for Starfleet Command in an early episode of Picard.
While some fans have expressed trepidation that an adult animated comedy might not be the right direction for Star Trek, Lower Decks' first trailer showed promise. Also, Star Trek is no stranger to comedy. TOS indulged in straight up silliness in episodes like "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "I, Mudd." Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, one of the most successful films in the franchise, is essentially an 80's comedy movie, more akin to Ghostbusters than Star Wars.
If nothing else, apprehension is built in to Star Trek fandom. When Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, fans were aghast that Star Trek could exist without Kirk and Spock. When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted, fans were annoyed that the static location meant no exploration, and later seasons were deemed "too dark" for Star Trek by a vocal minority. This sort of hand-wringing has survived to the modern iterations of the franchise as well - a significant chunk of fandom refused to even acknowledge the J.J. Abrams-directed reboot films, and were apoplectic at Star Trek: Discovery's tweaks to existing canon. Star Trek: Lower Decks is probably the most radical departure from Star Trek's usual M.O., but it deserves a chance to find its footing just like all those other shows. A joke like "the USS Cerritos" is definitely a good start, even if it will always be associated with a car dealership ear worm for California Star Trek fans.
