Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 1 Review - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second half of Star Trek: Lower Decks' first season. Well, I mean I already wrote about each episode right after watching them for the first time, I'm just posting all my reviews in one block under the assumption that it's more convenient somehow.

If you'd rather go back to the first block of reviews and read about the first five episodes, then you should click THIS LINK.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling the events of every episode I review and probably something from earlier Trek episodes as well.

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Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being around the point where I start losing interest.

Lower Decks
1-06	Terminal Provocations	7
Captain Freeman struggles to find an ethical and diplomatic solution to a salvage claim before the shields fall, Rutherford's attempt to impress Tendy leads to them being stalked through the holodeck by a serial killer version of Clippy, and Fletcher's attempt to make himself smarter creates a hostile AI. Wait, who the hell's Fletcher? Doesn't matter, he's promoted off the ship after his A plot inadvertently resolves Freeman's C plot. Fletcher is a man of many mysteries. If he's Mariner and Boimler's friend then where was he during the previous five episodes? Why did he start acting like a different person halfway through and why didn't anyone notice? Did plugging the core into his brain mess him up or was he always this strange? If so, how the hell did he make it through Starfleet Academy? In fact Fletcher is so mysterious that for the first half of the episode I thought this was a Conundrum scenario and he'd edited the crew's memories so he could infiltrate the ship and sabotage the computer core. The best part about the Fletcher plot was Boimler and Mariner working together as a team the whole way through, entirely on the same page. If they're going to be paired up in every single episode like this it's nice that they sometimes don't hate spending time together. I also like the comedy routine they loved that meant absolutely nothing to us... maybe because it reminded me of when Babylon 5 did the same thing. Meanwhile Rutherford was paired up with Tendi again, like always, and he's definitely falling for the hyperactive Orion. Trouble is he'd accidentally created an evil AI just like Fletcher, except via a completely different and unrelated method! The holodeck got Big Goodbye'd by the incoming trash colliding with the hull, it wasn't actually due to the computer core sabotage taking place at the same time at all, weirdly. I was expecting Tendi to come and save Rutherford at the end when he went to face his creation, but it was unnecessary as it turns out that evil badges freeze quicker than cyborgs. The C plot is pure Star Trek, with Freeman just letting the ship tank damage while she tries to find a peaceful solution. Most captains wait to something like 47% before saying a one liner and kicking ass, but Freeman lets the shields go all the way down to 0%... and then decides to abandon ship when the guns don't work. Not really her finest moment, and I really felt for poor Shaxs as he suffered like Worf had many times before. In fact I don't think we've seen him get to fire the phasers in any episode so far. Overall I liked this one. It wasn't my favourite, I'd put it in the middle of the pack maybe, but the quality of this season's been so consistent that my ranking doesn't really matter much. I was a bit surprised though at how the episode kept setting things up and then not delivering on them. There's the mysterious cargo that we never see inside of, there's all the times someone mentioned Q without even a cameo appearance by the guy, and there's Fletcher being transferred to the USS Titan without us getting to see Riker's ship! C'mon Trek, it's been almost 20 years, just show us the damn Titan already, let us know if it looks like the ship on the book covers! At least we finally got to see Delta shift, and it turns out they're not actually so bad! • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION The Starfleet wreckage was of a ship from the first animated series.
1-07	Much Ado About Boimler	6
Rutherford's transporter upgrade leaves Boimler phased (but not in the cool way which makes you invisible and lets you walk through walls) so he joins Tendi and her 'dog' on a trip to a paradise planet where he can recover. There's a bit of an attempted mutiny on the ship but it otherwise works out fine, until he recovers too fast and is thrown out. Back on the Cerritos, Mariner's friend from the academy takes over as substitute captain for a while and makes her the first officer, which goes terribly until she steps up and helps save another crew from an energy-hungry alien investing their ship. It's a strange episode this one, as for the first half it's deliberately trying to seem wrong. The Division 14 plot makes Starfleet seem like monsters who just lock people away when warp 10 incidents turn them into salamanders... but then it turns out they were actually doing the decent thing all along and the captain was being needlessly sinister. Meanwhile in Mariner's plot, she's not just acting childish this time, she's straight up inept... up until she has to drop the act. Even the title's wrong, as there isn't all that much ado about Boimler! We're only seven episodes into season one here and Mariner's been promoted to the senior staff twice now. But this gives us more context for the character, as here we learn she's actually old enough to have made captain by now and her friend from the academy is surprised that she didn't. I don't think it's an accident that her friend is basically her identical twin, as she's a glimpse at the road not travelled. She's Mariner if she had actually grown up a bit. It flips the character on her head a bit, as so far Mariner's experience and abilities have seemed inexplicably exceptional. Now we know it's not her competence that's weird, it's her refusal to leave the lower decks. Seems weird how we keep coming back to this, it's like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wasn't all that keen on Boimler's plot, because it could've only gone two ways: Starfleet is secretly terrible and Star Trek is ruined forever, or the Osler is dressed up like it's run by Section 31's even more evil cousin for no reason (it was the second one). Though they're apparently still putting people in those Captain Pike beep chairs 100 years later and that's horrible, especially when they stretch a bikini over one of them. Also Voyager brought back the cure to being a salamander, that should be totally treatable now! And damn this episode for acknowledging Threshold! On the positive side they actually paired up Boimler and Tendi for a change... well, almost. The two barely interact in the episode. Plus Tendi's dog was adorable, even when it was coughing up bats, and they should've been allowed to keep it! My brain was determined to take issue with the fact that Tendi's just creating life from scratch (organic life, not an AI for a change), but then the dog turned into a cube and I stopped caring. I cared a bit about how dogs shouldn't be able to turn into a cube, but hey it's a dog-shaped shape-shifter so it can do what it wants. Another good thing about this plot: the needlessly sinister captain was the same alien species as Lt Arex from the Animated Series! Overall this wasn't my favourite episode to be honest, though it had a lot to like it in. I thought the peaceful alien wearing the wreck of the other ship was cool, and the callback to Chain of Command with the senior staff all going on a covert op was great... right up until they spoiled it by having Mariner name-drop Jellico. I think I'll like the story more on a rewatch now that I know Starfleet hasn't suddenly turned evil. Though those Starfleet officers on the Osler were pretty bad; they literally flushed Boimler out an airlock for snitching on them! • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION The USS Rubidoux had a red stripe, so we've seen California class ships with all three colours now. And every one of them besides the Cerritos has blown up and had to have their crew beamed away in the nick of time.
1-08	Veritas	7
The crew find themselves held prisoner in a place that looks like a Klingon courtroom and are forced to testify on events they recently witnessed. Each of them has their own story, but it turns out that Boimler and Mariner were late to the bridge and missed what was going on, Rutherford was on autopilot for most of it and was only conscious for glimpses, and Tendi accidentally ended up on a covert-ops mission and didn't know what she was doing. It ends with the reveal that this 'trial' was actually supposed to be a celebration of a daring rescue, but the crew couldn't tell the story because they didn't know it, and no one's all that happy about how it worked out. Poor Romulus. This episode takes place in 2380, which means there's only seven years left before the entire Romulan homeworld gets incinerated in a supernova. So really the crew rescued this guy from the planet in the nick of time. It was great seeing all the old ship designs again here, and not just the Romulan ones, as they had an old school Original Series Starfleet shuttle and a Next Gen shuttle in the same shot at one point... which means the Original Series designs are still canon. Though there was a bit of a scale problem with their stolen antique Bird of Prey as it was tiny! This is probably the closest the series has gotten to mimicking the original Lower Decks episode of Next Gen, with each of the crew involved in a larger Star Trek plot without knowing the full story. I thought it was going to be a Rashomon kind of episode at first, with everyone remembering events differently, but it turns out they didn't really have much to remember. Both the framing story and the flashbacks are a series of misunderstandings caused by a lack of information, with everyone trying their hardest regardless. Rutherford even does a sexy Final Frontier fan dance to distract a museum guard, that's how Starfleet he is. On the plus side he actually got to leave the ship for once and go places... like a Gorn wedding. And Boimler got to save the day for once with a Star Trek speech! Well, kind of. We got some new Star Trek facts in this story: we learned that Tendi is just as good at fighting as Mariner and Rutherford (or so she claims), we learned that Giant Spock is canon, and we learned that everyone knows about Dr Crusher's relationship with a ghost candle. Fortunately that last fact wasn't forever etched onto the great history stone. We also learned that Q's gone back to testing humanity with dumb games, which he hasn't done since John de Lancie's last appearance in the role 19 years ago in Q2. Actually I don't think he did that after season one Next Gen. Overall this episode was pretty decent I thought. Sure a lot of it made no sense because we still don't have all the information about what happened, but context is for kings, not for folks in the lower decks. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION Shaxs wears a very Voyage Home style robe and headband to presumably disguise the fact that he's not Vulcan... but does nothing about his Bajoran nose and earring. Rutherford has the same disguise but only has to cover up one ear, because his cyborg ear is pointed.
1-09	Crisis Point	8
Mariner gets sent to therapy, and decides to use the holodeck to get her revenge on her virtual mother and the rest of the crew in an elaborate action movie. Meanwhile Boimler tries to get clues on how he can impress her real mother in an interview he'll be doing later, Rutherford fantasises about running off with Billups, and Tendi gets offended by Mariner's thoughtlessness. But Mariner's psycho rampage is stopped by Virtual Mariner, who self-destructs what's left of the virtual ship to save virtually everyone from her evil self, leaving real Mariner with a healthier outlook on her real life. The moral of Crisis Point is that violent video games are better than therapy, at least when your therapist keeps using food references. I thought Mariner's violent outburst at the end of Temporal Edict was a bit jarring, but it was only a taste of what we get in this story, as she gleefully murders everyone, including Boimler! Well, his replacement, Shempo, anyway. Thankfully though the episode wasn't full of Star Trek video game references, instead it's a loving homage to the Star Trek movies. Pretty much all the movies in fact, especially the ones with lens flares, saucers crashing on planets, and a plot about revenge. The episode makes fun of the excessive flashiness of the Kelvin movies and the extended VFX shots of The Motion Picture, but the end result is that it's a flashy beautifully animated action-packed thrill ride. It even sold me on the design of the Cerritos with that suitably endless shuttle pod scene. The episode's got a decent story, some great lines, and the surprise return of Lieutenant Jet (who's still the man), but what elevates it into a genuinely great episode is the appearance of Virtual Mariner at the end. After a whole episode of Mariner at her most petty and psychotic, we get to see who she'd be if her mother really was in danger and of course the good Mariner wins. Now we know that Mariner would actually sacrifice her own life to save the crew and she's just learned it as well. In fact she's feeling a lot better after the whole violent experience, so it turns out that fighting yourself is good therapy! But then I already knew that from that Superman movie. I'm just glad she didn't seriously damage her friendship with Tendi in the process. It's rare that the two of them are paired up together like this and she was really pushing her luck with all those Orion pirate references. Though personally I've been waiting all season for some comment about Tendi being an Orion and what that means, as she's mostly just been a green human with weird ideas about dogs so far. I'm hoping that we get to learn more about them next season, seeing as we've finally got one as a main character after 50 years. The Orions are like the third oldest alien race in Star Trek, after the Vulcans and the Talosians, and yet we've barely seen anything of them. Overall this episode was awesome and a sign that Lower Decks has more potential than it's been demonstrating so far. Though it's still uncertain if any of this character growth is going to stick. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION If you freeze frame the script Mariner's writing, it turns out she wrote the joke about her cape getting caught in the breaching pod herself. She also deliberately dropped the pod on Winger Bingston, Jr, because screw that guy. Also this is the only episode of Star Trek with two opening credit sequences.
1-10	No Small Parts	8
Boimler manages to ruin Mariner's life on the ship by revealing to everyone that she's the captain's daughter, leading to her trying to get promoted and transferred off by being a better Boimler than he is. Meanwhile the USS Cerritos responds to a distress call from the crew of the doomed USS Rubidoux, who are now serving on the equally doomed USS Solvang. This time though the ship is lost with all hands because the Pakleds aren't a joke anymore, and the Cerritos is soon being carved up herself. The new lower decks ensign, Exocomp Peanut Hamper, turns out to be exactly who they need to go on a dangerous mission to destroy the Pakleds with a virus. But she turns out to be a big disappointment and Shaxs and Rutherford have to go in her place. Unfortunately Badgey rigged the program to kill them and Shaxs dies while saving Rutherford's life. More Pakled ships arrive but the Rikers on the USS Titan swoop in with the Next Gen theme playing to save the day. The episode ends with Mariner and her mother forming an alliance to help fix civilizations without getting her fired for breaking the Prime Directive. Also Boimler gets promoted to the Titan and Rutherford's lost his implant, along with his memory of season 1. I knew that this episode was likely going to be a bit of a disappointment after Crisis Point, but I was hoping that it'd at least carry on Lower Decks' unbroken streak of 'pretty good' stories. You don't want to trip up right at the finish line. It wasn't a disappointment though, it actually might have been better than Crisis Point. In fact I'm sitting here trying to decide if this is the greatest first season finale in Trek history. It's up against Operation -- Annihilate!, The Jihad, The Neutral Zone, In the Hands of the Prophets, Learning Curve, Shockwave, Will You Take My Hand? and Et in Arcadia Ego, so it's top 10 by default, but I think it may have a legitimate claim to the number one spot. And not just because Number One turns up in a surprise cameo with the actual USS Titan! We've been waiting 18 years to see the ship in action after Riker and Troi moved over to it in Nemesis, and now here it is, looking exactly like it does on the covers of the Titan novels! So this is one of the very few times that book canon has made it to TV canon. From the start Lower Decks has been throwing out Trek references constantly, as if just mentioning Gary Mitchell was enough to win the hearts of Trek fans. But now it's been on long enough for it to start referencing itself, so we get the return of Badgey as one of the main badguys, the compartments full of contraband have a pay-off, and they finish rebuilding the shuttle Sequoia! Plus the character development has actually stuck, with post-therapy Mariner and her mother finding a way they can work together. Seems like the next season is going to take the references up to the next level, with the ship returning to worlds and races from previous series that have already been interfered with to help give them a shove back on track (or blow them to pieces if they're Pakleds). The Prime Directive doesn't entirely count if Starfleet has already messed with a society, we learned that from episodes like Patterns of Force and Who Watches the Watchers, so second contact could get more interesting from now on. And possibly more serious as well. The episode's got plenty of comedy, but it's got some real stakes to it that previous episodes haven't. And not in a ridiculous 'the entire galaxy is about to explode' kind of way. The USS Solvang is the latest California-class ship to get blown up, but this time no one was around to beam the crew off. They're all dead! And Shaxs is dead as well! I was totally blindsided by his heroic sacrifice, as I never would've suspected they'd blow up such a great character so early in the series. Especially as they already blew him up last episode! They gave Shaxs the clichéd heroic death that the writers on earlier shows tried to avoid for departing lead characters and as a result it's way more satisfying. I didn't want to see him go, but if he had to go out, this was the way to do it! They could've let him fire the Cerritos' weapons once before he died though. I've barely even talked about what actually happened in the episode; they packed too much into 30 minutes! I liked the plot of Mariner trying to out-Boimler Boimler to claim his promotion, 'Wolf 359 was an inside job' guy cracked me up (well, it was!), the cute Exocomp did not live up to the highest ideals of Starfleet, we got Riker and Ransom in the same scene, plus Tendi's reaction to the Exocomp outdoing her and Rutherford's memory loss was adorable. The term 'TOS era' is now canon! The Spock helmet is canon as well! Also they called back to These Are the Voyages with absolutely no shame like that's a thing that's acceptable to do. I love this series, it's pure joy. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION The 'photo' of Kirk and Spock is right from The Animated Series, meaning that the show is canon now.

CONCLUSION

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When I wrote about the latest batch of Short Treks, I said that it was great that the Star Trek creatives were experimenting and coming up with different kinds of Trek to appeal to different kinds of people, I just wished that they were coming up with things that appealed to me. Well they actually managed it this time! Lower Decks is exactly my kind of thing... kind of.

The series does have some real issues that I hope get worked out in season two. For one thing it doesn't give us enough of the cat doctor. Also it's not quite the series that they sold to us, with the lower decks characters being stuck in the B plots from Next Gen episodes and being generally oblivious to the Star Trek adventures the senior staff is dealing with. In fact they've saved the ship a few times now. Plus I could do with the writers toning down how dumb and cartoony the alien races are a bit. Not the Pakleds, they've nailed them, but the other ones.

Though the biggest problem I had with this season is the constant Trek references. Lower Decks presents a version of Star Trek where Starfleet officers are the only celebrities and everyone is obsessed with them, to the point where they're all big damn Trek nerds. I mean it's nice that they're aware of things that have happened in their universe, but a reference on its own isn't a joke, you need to take it a step further and do something with it to make it funny. "Surrounded by spears? What am I, Kirk in 2260s?" is not a good line! Fortunately the season got a lot better about this as it went on, with the movie parody episode demonstrating how to do references right. And the finale showed that Lower Decks had become proper Star Trek, as the series was now referencing itself!

One thing the series nailed from the start is its look and feel. I'm not just talking about the animation, though it's great, I'm talking about the design of the ships and the general tone of it. Part of the magic that makes the Star Trek franchise work is its world building, with each of the series contributing to a shared imaginary history of the future. Some of it contradicts, some of it's better forgotten, some of it takes place in an alternative timeline where Kirk's an asshole, but there's been a real effort made to make it all feel like it's a historical drama set in a time that hasn't happened yet. Until Discovery anyway, which decided to reboot the visuals in a way that makes it feel disconnected to the rest of the story. Lower Decks, on the other hand, feels like coming home. It somehow feels more like legit Star Trek than the last few live action Star Trek series, without coming across as dated. Despite everything I just said about references, it was so great to see Deep Space 9 and the First Contact uniforms looking exactly like they should. It's an exaggerated, comedic version of Trek but it makes a statement every chance it gets that all the old Trek is still important, it all matters. This is an ongoing story to be passed along to the next generation, not rebooted and erased.

It's also really funny, which helps! The idea of turning Star Trek into a comedy isn't all that crazy as Trek is already a comedy a lot of the time. Even when it's not an outright comedy story like The Trouble with Tribbles, The Voyage Home, Take Me Out to the Holodeck, and Bride of Chaotica, there's usually a B plot with some comedy in it, and when there's no B plot there'll still be funny moments. It's rare to find an entirely humourless Trek story. It's also rare to find a Trek story where all the characters act like inept assholes for the sake of a joke and that's thankfully not true here either. The Cerritos crew is actually very skilled, almost too much so at times, with Tendi inventing a dog from scratch and Rutherford being able to defeat a room full of holoBorg. Plus they're all fundamentally decent people who wouldn't be out of place on the other series, if they were just toned down a bit. In fact it's a bit weird that the opening credits have the ship constantly screwing up when a: the ensigns generally don't make those kinds of fuck ups, b: they generally don't steer the ship either.

I love the opening credits sequence by the way, especially the theme. They even show episode titles on screen afterwards like Trek used to do! Funny thing is, with that imagery combined with that epic theme music it seems almost like a homage to The Orville (with The Orville opening being a homage to Star Trek: Voyager). But while The Orville plays its opening credits montage entirely straight, Lower Decks goes for the joke every time. I can't help but compare the two series because they're both comedy Star Trek, but Lower Decks is more like what I expected Orville was going to be. It turned out that the The Orville is trying to be a legitimate earnest Star Trek series and a sitcom at the same time, while Lower Decks is all-out comedy with a hint of action-adventure. It doesn't tell typical Star Trek stories, but it clearly lives in that universe (and worships it). It has gone back to classic Trek's stand-alone episode format however, to its benefit I think. There's some continuity, and Mariner definitely has a character arc, but it's nice to watch a Trek series that isn't building up to a galactic robot apocalypse for once.

It doesn't really matter what I think about it however, because it turns out that Will Riker is the universal judge of whether a Star Trek show should live or die. If he considers a series worthy he'll appear in the finale to swoop in at the last moment and save the day. If it's considered unworthy he'll tell the computer to 'end program' and make it disappear. Picard's first season was ultimately blessed by Riker and now Lower Decks has been too. It's a good omen, and I can only hope that Strange New Worlds and Prodigy also get a cameo, to bring them luck.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Lower Decks and I hope they continue to fine tune the series in future seasons until it's perfect.


My top three season 1 episodes:

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1. No Small Parts (8)
2. Crisis Point (8)
3. Cupid's Errant Arrow (7)

I didn't think season 1 was going to start throwing out 8s, but then it took a sudden turn at the end and paid off all the character development.


Bottom three season 1 episodes:

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8. Envoys (7)
9. Temporal Edict (6)
10. Much Ado About Boimler (6)

I could never hate Much Ado About Boimler, it had The Dog in it, but I really wasn't keen on the creepy ship and the Starfleet freak mutiny.


Next time on Star Trek: Lower Decks:

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What do I want from season 2? I want them to move on to telling a different story about Mariner, I want different pairings so it's not just Mariner+Boimler A plot, Rutherford+Tendi B plot every episode, I want the new security chief to somehow be better than Shaxs, and I want more cat doctor. Also if they're going to be following up on classic Trek stories then I want them to rescue Tom Riker already!

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NEXT WEEK

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, Babylon 5's back with Between the Darkness and the Light. Babylon 5 will ALWAYS be back, until I run out of it.

Thanks for reading, by the way. If you want to share your own observations and opinions on Lower Decks season one, now would be a great time to do it.