Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Cerritos You Need To Know
1. There Be Dolphins Here
The pilot episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks establishes that the USS Cerritos is chock full of ops... including Adam Clery's favorite ops: Cetacean.
For those who have somehow missed this famously obscure detail, the minds behind Star Trek: The Next Generation's USS Enterprise-D intended the ship to contain a facility called "Cetacean Ops" which would have housed a contingent of dolphins. The name "Cetacean Ops" was heard in a ship-wide announcement in TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" and LaForge referred to "the dolphins" aboard the Enterprise in "The Perfect Mate", but this potentially amazing section of the ship sadly went unseen over the course of the show's seven seasons.
Flash forward 30 years and "Second Contact" gave us our second official reference to Cetacean Ops, this time aboard the USS Cerritos.
Speaking to Wil Wheaton for CBS All Access' The Ready Room, Mike McMahan told us that while Lower Decks season one failed to give the writers an opportunity to finally show Cetacean Ops, fans (and Clery) can hold out hope the lower deckers make their way to see the dolphins in season two.
Flippers crossed.