The Cerritos is getting a second life, and it’s made of cardboard.
Looney Labs has a product listing up for Star Trek Lower Decks Fluxx, a standalone card game that welds the rules of the classic Fluxx to the comedy and chaos of the animated series. It’s a heady combination on paper. We don’t know exactly what’s in the box yet, but the early signs look good.
Here’s the part that matters for anyone who’s never touched a Fluxx deck: you don’t need any other set to play. That makes it a fine entry point if you love the show but have zero experience with the game.
What the publisher is promising
The manufacturer posted a short description on its website:
“The funniest frontier! These are the voyages of the Starship Cerritos, its five-season mission: to inspire the fifth Star Trek themed version of Fluxx! Join Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi, plus of course the bridge crew and even Cetacean Ops and Peanut Hamper, as they take on Creepers like the Pakleds, Badgey, and the most fearsome Moopsy. Is your helmet big enough to win you the game?”
Moopsy getting billed as the most fearsome Creeper in the deck is exactly the register this show operated in for five seasons. And if the game plays anything like base Fluxx, expect constantly shifting rules and cards that get more outlandish the longer the table stays at it.
The weirdest Star Trek there’s ever been
Lower Decks is the most out there adaptation ever attached to this IP, and it worked. The adult animated comedy felt like a genuine breath of fresh air for old fans and new ones both.
It debuted in 2020 and did the noble thing: five seasons in relatively short order, then a clean finish in 2024.
Sad that it’s over, sure. But it left behind a solid legacy worth returning to whenever the occasion calls for it, and it’d be a shame to leave it entirely in the past. A card game isn’t a sixth season. It is, however, a reason to say “Moopsy” out loud again.
The franchise is in a strange spot right now
Everything else in Star Trek is winding down. Strange New Worlds is in its fourth season, with a fifth and final run expected next year, and that one’s shorter.
No entirely new projects have been greenlit so far. That leaves the future of the franchise in something of a no man’s land.
Sixty years of this
Star Trek is one of pop culture’s biggest multimedia franchises, spread across movies, TV shows, books, comics, video games and plenty more. Gene Roddenberry created it, and it started with the 1960s series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
Several equally popular series have followed over the decades, among them Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Discovery.
Which is a long way of saying the franchise has survived stranger detours than a card game where the rules change every turn. Boimler would take the deal.
