The thing I enjoy about Lower Decks is that, up until now, the wiki curators who are determined to shoehorn every piece of Star Trek lore into a single coherent universe mostly only had to do bullshit worldbuilding gymnastics to make that work when dealing with the Original Series, a couple of the more egregious Star Trek: Voyager episodes, and some of the novels, and in a pinch they could get away with declaring the novels "secondary canon" – but now Lower Decks is throwing them multiple unhinged curveballs in every single episode, and the wiki articles are getting interesting again.
Especially when it comes to koalas and the Black Mountain.
Sometimes I'll watch an episode and immediately check the relevant articles on Memory Alpha to see if they've hit their "oh, come on" threshold yet.
The koala is a great running gag in Lower Decks. But it doesn't necessarily take away from taking the Trek universe seriously if it's part of the canon. In the past in Trek we've seen very advanced god-like beings take on an appearance that would be relatable to lesser beings. BTW, has anybody else noticed in the opening sequence when the Cerritos is flying around to trace out the Starfleet chevron, one of the interstellar dust clouds in the background seems to be koala shaped with a couple of stars for eyes?








