When we last saw the USS Cerritos on our screens in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season One, it was getting blown to bits,
but thankfully was saved by Captain Riker and the timely entrance of the USS Titan,
but the ship has changed in Season 2, so let’s see what juicy Trek improvements has happened!
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
Ship upgrades and refits are something us Star Trek fans always love talking about,
weather it be the tactical upgrades, exploration features or just random changes that production designers throw in from time to time,
it’s all cool in our books,
so what have they changed on the USS Cerritos for Season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, let’s dive in and show it all to you!
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Let’s be honest, it’s Star Trek, so we knew the ship would probably be blown to bits at one point,
i mean it happens in every series and to every main ship.
So it was sorta expected.
The season one final did not disappoint, and while it might have seemed like the ending for the California-class USS Cerritos, It wasn’t,
as she was saved and towed back to spacedock for repairs, though not too many repairs,
, I mean as Captain Freeman pointed out she did not want the ship to come out all “Sovereign looking” after the refit...
So what’s changed in Season 2,
well thanks to Episode One we have our new look at the starships updated and changed design.
So here we go!
Thanks to the updated Lower Decks title sequence, we’ve got some fantastic shots of the updated USS Cerritos.
Let’s take a look at our first upgrade and that would be the nacelles, which have been enlarged to be longer than the original pre-refit version.
While the nacelles may seem almost identical, clearly there have been upgrades and changes,
such as warp-grills which have been added., which you can see on screen now.
Taking a look at the side profile, the difference between Seasons One and Seasons Two is that the starship's shuttle bays are now much clearer to the eye.
A blue illuminated rectangle, likely a force-field, can be seen highlighting the starships shuttle bays.
Furthermore, looking at the underside of the starship, we can see the difference between the pre-refit and the refit
in the fact that additional escape pods have been installed. Likely due to the situation the Cerritos found itself in during Season One.
Additionally, the structure on the underside of the saucer-section is more pronounced now,
clearly showing more detail and likely being entirely new.
Looking at the dorsal-side, more escape pods have been installed, this time around the bridge of the Cerritos.
These escape pods are likely to be used for the command crew and could be compared to the “Kelvin pods” from the Kelvin-Timeline in the Star Trek: Universe.
The name plate of the USS Cerritos has also been upgraded, with a new light at the back of the bridge now illuminating the ship's name and registry,
clearly showing off it;’s beauty to all who may pass by.
We can also notice that the Impulse Engines are not as wide as they previously were. The bridge-window has been upgraded to allow for more illumination.
Looking at the secondary-hull of the ship, we can see the changed bussard collectors are updated having more detailed and differentiation in colour.
Likely a full upgrade due to the damage sustained in the Battle with the Pakleds.
We can even see the Nacelles glowing. More details include escape pods and also a phaser-strip,
which we’ll go into more detail about in a moment.
Given the Nacelles and secondary-hull had to be rebuilt for the USS Cerritos, following the Pakleds destroying those sections, we can see the pylons attaching the saucer-section to the secondary hull have more of a section that locks and attaches them to the saucer-section.
Perhaps this is reinforcing it
Armaments wise, as we mentioned earlier that the ship has an additional phaser-strip on the secondary-hull which is an upgrade.
On the dorsal-hull, near the bridge of the Cerritos, we see two rectangle looking shapes which appear to be Torpedo-launchers installed,
again likely showing more of a tactical upgrade to the starship.
The ventral-hull phaser strip is also more visible, as well as the phaser-strip on the Dorsal hull.
Obviously out of lore the design of the USS Cerritos has been updated for Season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
The ship has almost been relit and slightly retextured to appear more natural looking in the show. It’s a small difference, but helps the look of the ship.
Talking more about the updated texture-detail of the ship, we can see thanks to this screenshot that the aztecing has been increased on the hull-design.
Clearly visible on the ventral side of the hull, which is a similar hull-texture to that of the Sovereign-class starships
such as the USS Enterprise-E.
The windows are a feature of the update, no longer are they sticking out on the hull of the starship, instead they are now slightly smaller and blending into the hull and make the ship look slightly bigger.
Personally I would say it’s clear that the render-detail of the starship has been upgraded for the second season of the show,
adding more detail which really brings out the design. Allowing for a side-by-side comparison, gives us plenty of room to notice the changes of the ship.
The shrinkings of the windows almost hints towards the side of the starship a little more.
So far, at the time of writing this video, we do not have an actual size of the USS Cerritos and it’s California-class design.
Instead we could make a comparison that perhaps the ship is similar in design size to that of an Ambassador-class starship,
such as the USS Enterprise-C, seen in The Next Generation.
Though, while the size of the Cerritos may be up for debate currently, two new sources have given us accurate estimates of what the size of the California-class might actually be.
Thanks to the book, Star Trek: Starfleet Ships 2294 to The Future,
it lists more details about the USS Cerritos.
The book was written before Season Two of Lower Decks was released, so therefore the information might be out of date.
Hero Collector’s book lists the California-class as 794m, which would make it larger than the Sovereign-class USS Enterprise-E at 685m,
with the USS Vancouuver coming in at 641m.
At first glance, this is a rather odd size for the ship, considering it looks small on-screen in the series of Lower Decks.
Series creator Mike McMahan confirmed via Twitter, thanks to another Lower Decks colleague, that the USS Cerritos is actually 535 meters long, with it being 121 meters tall.
This would make it very close to the original comparison of the Ambassador-class USS Enterprise-C, at 520 meters long.
According to Hero Collector’s Ben Robinson, the reason for the confusion surrounding the actual size of the Cerritos is due to the design process of it.
He explained that long-time Star Trek designer, Mike Okuda, who worked on the MSD for Lower Decks,
has initially come up with a much larger figure for the Cerritos, “an overall length of about 2,605 feet.”
But Robinson explains, “he was told the producers wanted the Cerritos to be a little smaller than the Enterprise-D.
So maybe the Cerritos has very small windows?””
Speaking with Inverse, Mike McMahan said the following - “Well, look, those dimensions are slightly off.
It’s a very nerdy reason, and I’ll tell you why. The first season CG budget didn’t let us do the windows the size we wanted to.
If you extrapolate by window size and deck size, the ship is a totally different size than it actually is. [Hero Collector] does great work, so that’s totally on us.””
So there we go, the actual size of the California-class USS Cerritos is 535 meters long, making it close to the size of the USS Enterprise-C,
still smaller than the galaxy-class Enterprise-D and the Parliament-class USS Vancouver.
Closing out on our details of the Cerritos refit for Season Two we’re Thankfull,
it appears that the Starfleet Engineers did follow Captain Freeman’s request and did not make the Cerritos refit “too Sovereigny…”
What do you think of the Refit upgrades and changes to the USS Cerritos? Let us know in the comments below as always, because if you’re talking Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
Don’t forget that you can watch STAR TREK: Lower Decks every Thursday on Paramount and Crave, then Fridays via Amazon Prime Video!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media, or join our Community Discord Server!
For now, I’ve been Captain jack thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!