Let me lead with this: I've also grown tired of the samieness of adult animation genre. Rick & Morty was alright for a while, but that ship was basically sailed for me by the time other shows started jumping on the trend. I appreciate what R&M/Adult Swim did in opening up the field for animation to be taken more seriously in the pitch room, we'll probably have an entire generation of decent media because of that, but we've kind of hit the trough of this first wave. That said, I liked Lower Decks a lot, because it kind of got rid of the high-stakes high-adventure selling point and zoomed in on the stakes and adventures that every day, non-galaxy class Starfleet crews can get into. It's DS9 but with the adult animation vibe instead of the daytime TV soap opera vibe. I love the introduction of the Cali class ships that are just sort of your regular, everyday, multi-role ships. I love that the Cali fleet and the Cerritos are largely just focused on the normal, unglamorous stuff that has to happen in the background while the really cool people and ships do cool stuff in space.

I also liked that the permission to be goofy and work with low stakes felt like it gave Star Trek the room it needs to breathe. It's hard to do serious new Trek that meaningfully expands the canon while also respecting what came before, which, I think, is why we tend to get a higher ratio of prequels. It's just easier and safer to stay within the bounds of the canon and tell Captain Pike's story (I fucking love SNW, not dissing it). Case and point for new Trek, you've got Discovery, which I haven't really enjoyed because it very much feels like it doesn't have room to breathe and/or was written by focus groups. Maybe it gets better later, but I watched the first two episodes and found it less enjoyable than auditing lectures. LD's characters and premise felt much more interesting by comparison, and I've really enjoyed the storytelling. It's not perfect Trek, but I think it's a show that largely knew itself and focused on trying to be the best version of what it was, and that's what's going to make it hard to beat.