Star Trek Lower Decks: Every Easter Egg & Hidden Reference From 'Second Contact'

Seán Ferrick touched on this in his breakdown of the Lower Decks trailer and his description still stands: The Cerritos is an entirely new, funky design.

But it's also soaked with Star Trek: The Next Generation style.

The California-class USS Cerritos appears to be a spin on TNG's Galaxy-class starship, but with a decidedly ungainly configuration and yellow pin striping, a first for a Federation ship. According to series creator Mike McMahan on Marcus Bronzy's How to Kill An Hour podcast, the Cerritos' yellow stripes are analogous to the yellow, blue, and red uniform color coding of Starfleet divisions. The Cerritos is an engineering support ship and is therefore marked yellow.

Lower Decks takes place a year after Star Trek Nemesis in 2280, but it's possible the Cerritos was in service long before, as, according McMahan, she's intended to be a contemporary of the Enterprise-D. The Cerritos' saucer section and deflector dish are nearly identical to those of the Enterprise-D, but they're bridged by some very low-slung nacelle pylons, designed to reflect the look of the Miranda-class USS Reliant from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The USS Cerritos was named for the Los Angeles suburb, which is home to the Cerritos Auto Square and one very clever(?) slogan.