American comedy writer and producer who created the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Mike McMahan is an American comedy writer and producer who wrote for Rick and Morty and co-created the animated comedy Solar Opposites. Long before he worked on the franchise, he gained a following among fans for his parody Twitter account imagining an eighth season of The Next Generation.
McMahan created Star Trek: Lower Decks, the franchise's first animated comedy series, and served as its showrunner across five seasons from 2020 to 2024. The series follows the junior officers of the USS Cerritos, a California-class support ship that handles second contact missions, and began with the episode Second Contact.
Under McMahan, Lower Decks blended rapid-fire comedy with deep affection for franchise history, and its characters crossed over into live action in the Strange New Worlds episode Those Old Scientists, an unprecedented animated-to-live-action crossover.