Well I say "recently" but the second season started in August 2021, so it's actually been almost a year now. Funny thing is, I actually wrote about each episode immediately after watching them, so I've just been sitting on these reviews all this time. It never felt like the right time to finish the article and get it published, because I had all those other series to write about first. Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop remake took priority!
SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling the events of every episode I review and probably something from earlier Trek episodes as well.
Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being where my attention starts to fail a little.
| Lower Decks - Season 2 | ||||||||||||||
| 2-01 | Strange Energies |
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Mariner has been working with her mother to do side missions, but neither of them are enjoying the arrangement much and her latest plan to clean up buildings on an alien world accidentally turns Ransom into a god. And not a nice kind of god; he's a Gary Mitchell/Charlie Evans kind that erases the moon and turns the city into his personal gym. Ransom forces Captain Freeman and Mariner to realise their arrangement isn't working, while also chewing on the nacelles with his giant godlike head, and Mariner forces him back to mortality by repeatedly kicking him in the balls. Then Dr T'Ana drops a boulder on him. Meanwhile Tendi chases Rutherford around the ship trying to remove his brain and Boimler finds that life on the USS Titan is terrifying. They've redone the title sequence! It's almost completely the same, aside for the Borg incursion getting even more crowded, but they've replaced the original Cerritos with its new refit... which is also almost completely the same. The hull's a bit more reflective, the warp nacelles have a bit more detail, there's more escape pods... there are changes all over the ship basically, but they're all really subtle. The theme music has also gotten an upgrade, sounding 15% more epic. They re-recorded it with a live 60 person orchestra, because for some reason the two comedy Star Treks (this and The Orville) are apparently also the most obsessed with their music.
The end of season one set up a new status quo for season two, with Mariner and her mother actually working together on her side missions. And this episode is all about throwing that new premise straight into the trash. Well okay there's also a Tendi and Rutherford B plot as well, but the A plot is entirely focused on trashing that new premise. Seems like it wasn't really working out for anyone, for reasons that are thoroughly explored. More thoroughly than you might expect from a story where Ransom gets Gary Mitchell powers and then detaches his giant head so that he can bite the ship. Mariner was even working through her issues during her Cardassian interrogation in the teaser and I'm a total idiot for not figuring out that it was another holodeck program. Sure they cheated and included an establishing shot, but Boimler straight up says that he's a hologram! I guess was too busy going "Hey it's a Galor-class cruiser! Hey it's a Miranda-class starship! Hey that runabout's too big! Hey she shouldn't be able to pilot that giant 23rd century starship without a lot more people pressing buttons!" Man it was great seeing that Miranda-class in action though, especially considering that the action was great. At first I thought Mariner's escape was a bit too easy, but the reveal that she was playing a video game shut that part of my brain up immediately. And then they revealed that the side missions she's been doing are still really small harmless things like power washing a building, which was also good. Well, it was harmless until one of the buildings turned out to give people godlike powers when it's clean. Bit of a stretch that maybe. In fact the whole Ransom God sequence was a bit on the cartoony side, with him creating gym equipment, making a moon disappear, and surviving a boulder being dropped on him. Not to mention all that force applied to his neutral zone. Ransom was the villain in the first episode of season 1 as well now that I think about it. In fact Strange Energies has a few ties to Second Contact, with the most obvious one being Rutherford going on a date with Ensign Barnes again. I hope it works out better for them this time, and I also hope Tendi calms down a little because trying to remove someone's brain to make sure they still like you is not the kind of conduct that leads to promotions. Speaking of promotions, it seems like we're going to get a bit more time with Lt Boimler on the Titan before he comes back to the Cerritos. He's still there, living the dream. Or his nightmare. Overall this was a pretty average episode of Lower Decks I thought. Nothing special, nothing terrible. Though it gets bonus points for not being obnoxious with its references. I mean sure they mention how Kirk dropped a boulder on Gary Mitchell, but that turns out to be the solution this time around as well, so it just makes sense. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
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| 2-02 | Kayshon, His Eyes Open |
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Jet tries to find a place in Mariner's group of friends during a mission to catalogue weird artefacts left by a dead collector, which gets complicated when their new Tamarian security chief Kayshon is turned into a puppet. Meanwhile Boimler goes on a daring mission with the Titan crew which ends with him being duplicated, demoted and transferred back to the Cerritos. He didn't even do anything wrong!
I'm totally not okay with the series turning Kayshon into a puppet! A
series like Angel or Legends of Tomorrow can turn people
into puppets, but not Star Trek. Well, unless Q is involved...
and he wasn't! I don't like it. In fact I'm deducting points for it! Otherwise
this was a pretty good episode I thought. I'm really glad they've
figured out how to use Trek references now: you don't have
Mariner drop 40 of them a minute in dialogue, you visit the Trek
Reference Warehouse! At first I was a bit confused about why an episode called Kayshon, His Eyes Open isn't actually about Kayshon, but then I remembered that the episode Darmok isn't about Darmok. It's a metaphor! I don't speak Tamarian so I don't actually know what it means, but I feel like Mariner had her eyes opened by her experience on the collector ship. For once she found herself in the same plot as Rutherford and Tendi and realised that they are really good at Star Trek stuff as well. In fact they come up with the solution when she and Jet fail. The weird thing is, Boimler's really good at the Trek stuff too. Ever since he transferred to the Titan I've been wondering about how he was going to end up back to the Cerritos, and I figured it'd have to be due to an epiphany. Either he was going to realise that he missed his friends and ship, or he was going to realise that he wasn't ready for life on the Titan yet. The clues were all pointing in that direction, with him constantly freaking out on the bridge and wanting to get back to classic Star Trek missions. I didn't guess for a moment he'd single-handedly save his away team, decide he wanted to stay, and then get transporter cloned! The guy ended the episode a hero, with the respect of his crew, and still got sent back. Also demoted for absolutely no good reason. It was cool seeing Beta shift so happy to get the guy back though! I like it when people are happy. Even if it sucks for poor Jet. Though the trouble with Boimler's transporter accident is that it's a Tom Riker reference, which reminded me that the character's fate is still up in the air. Does he still need rescuing? Did he even survive the Dominion war? We've got five Trek series running simultaneously now and none of them are giving me answers! Speaking of other Trek series, I got a bit of a sense that the Titan was standing in for modern Trek here, with its serialised adventures, mind-blowing twists, and complete lack of string quartets, and Boimler was playing the role of the classic Next Gen fan who is nostalgic for the old kind of stories. Which means that the moral at the end of the story is that it's fine to stick with the kind of Trek that interests you, but if you split yourself in two you can enjoy all of it. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
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| 2-03 | We'll Always Have Tom Paris |
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Mariner and Tendi go on a girl's trip to collect a package for Dr T'Ana, but Mariner inevitably ruins everything by opening it and breaking the contents. They go on a mission to get it fixed, gambling with Nausicaans and hiring Orion pirates, but eventually decide to just drive their shuttle into the ship to make it look like the package was broken in the crash. Meanwhile Boimler is driven to frustration by the ship not acknowledging his existence and goes crawling through Jefferies tubes to reach the bridge. He survives, barely, but a visiting Tom Paris mistakes him for a Kazon and beats him up. And Rutherford's curiosity about Shaxs' mysterious resurrection leads to him learning truths that shake him to his core. So hang on, was Kayshon only introduced to be part of a fakeout? He's still on the bridge in this
story, but is he going to leave now that Shaxs has returned to take his job back? Not that I'm
complaining, because Shaxs is great, I'm just wondering.
This episode was a bit of a return to the season one status quo, with Boimler settling back in on the Cerritos, or trying to anyway, but it also broke with season 1 tradition and paired Mariner and Tendi for a change. In fact it got fairly meta about it and even found time to reveal a little more about Mariner's behaviour. Turns out that the reason she's been deliberately vague about her backstory is because every time she gets close to someone they get promoted and move on without her. Speaking of people getting promoted and moving on, it seems that William Boimler may have gotten Brad Boimler's dream posting but Brad got the collection of indestructible signed Voyager plates. I kept waiting for that Tom Paris plate to get destroyed, but it somehow survived everything Boimler put it through, even him walking into that wall at the end. That actually made me laugh for some reason, mostly because of Tendi's line about it just being a wall with a seam on it. I don't laugh all that often at Lower Decks to be honest, but this episode managed to get me a few times. Like Tendi telling Mariner to "talk like a pirate", Paris yelling "Kazon!" and T'Ana enjoying her box at the end. It was just a really good episode in general, even if it does reference the Orion pheromones introduced in the Enterprise episode Bound, which are a thing that probably should've been buried along with Paris's warp 10 jump (which also gets referenced here). I guess if there are any morals to be found in the episode, they're that you shouldn't use future technology to disguise yourself when paint will do the same job and last longer, you shouldn't let pride lead you to eat a bonsai tree instead of asking someone else to use the replicator for you, and you should never open the box you're delivering to your boss. Also don't ask bridge officers how they came back to life, that's an important one. I guess we'll not be learning what really brought Shaxs back, but we did get a lot of guesses (and a dream sequence). Poor Rutherford found out though and it seems like he's going to need another memory reset after this. The series is making a habit of hinting at the sinister truths that lie outside of our narrow perception of reality, which is a bit creepy for Star Trek. Also a bit too supernatural, and I'm not keen on that. Then again Shaxs is an earring-wearing Bajoran, so his faith is going to inform his understanding of his experiences. Man I hope he didn't run into the koala. Is senior staff coming back from the dead really that much of a thing in Star Trek though? Obviously Spock did it, and Scotty, Neelix and Harry Kim, but I don't think it actually happens often enough to be a trope. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
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| 2-04 | Mugato, Gumato |
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Boimler and Rutherford have to rescue the others from Ferengi who are illegally harvesting mugatos, which is complicated by the fact that they're worried that Mariner is a special ops agent who's snapped. Meanwhile Tendi tries to give reluctant crew members a medical exam, and Freeman is conned into giving away the contents of her ready room. Kayshon's still around! They haven't booted him off the series yet. Though he's not doing much here, as he's mostly
just another unfortunate victim of Tendi's mission to give everyone a
medical exam whether they like it or not. Which led to the best part of
the episode: Dr T'Ana doing the evil villain clap once her master
plan had been figured out. She's gotten very catty this season and
she's exceptionally feline when she makes her daring escape through the
Jefferies tubes. Tendi did well to keep up with her, though after mocking the other guy for his weak bones she ironically went and snapped one
or two of her own. Man that looked nasty. It also looked nasty when Mariner beat the crap out of Rutherford and Boimler in anbo-jyutsu, just to remind us that she's kind of nuts. I thought she worked a lot of that out of her system with her holodeck therapy, but I guess not all of it. She had to be a little scary though I suppose, otherwise it wouldn't have made sense for Rutherford and Boimler to be terrified of her the whole episode and believe the rumour that she was undercover black ops. This is an episode all about her mysterious past and her mysterious competency at everything, and it reveals... basically nothing actually. She served on the Atlantis, she's really good at fighting because it's an activity she can do on her own (thanks to holograms), that's about it. This was Rutherford and Boimler's episode though really, as they finally got their own team up! Their plot worked pretty well I thought, despite all the mugato... activity they had to endure. We got some throwback Ferengi who clearly haven't followed Grand Nagus Rom's example, a doomed Australian Tellarite who'd hadn't read quite enough books on the wildlife, and a projector made out of trash, Arena-style. Also this might be the very first time in Star Trek history that a Kzinti and a Caitian have shown up in the same episode. Now we just need to get one of those cat aliens from Star Trek V and a Vedala from The Jihad on the crew and they've got the set. Overall I thought this was a pretty decent story that benefited by splitting up Rutherford and Tendi again, and picking an antagonist suited to cartoon exaggeration. Though Shaxs was probably so disappointed when his Baby Bear saved him by coming up with a more profitable arrangement for the Ferengi instead of using spec ops violence. |
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| 2-05 | An Embarrassment of Dooplers |
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The senior staff of the Cerritos are stressed out after walking on eggshells around a passenger who duplicates at the slightest bit of embarrassment. They manage to get him to his destination without incident just in time for the Command Conference after-party, but then Captain Freeman screws everything up at the last moment and gets the ship put into quarantine due to being overrun with copies of their guest. Mariner and Boimler decide to sneak off to the party themselves and soon end up on the run from the law, but they make it there in the end. Unfortunately only Boimler gets in, and he soon decides to leave and join Mariner in a pub instead... which turns out to be a place that Kirk and Spock drank at 120 years ago. Freeman solves the crisis on the ship by yelling at their passenger until he recombines, but finds she's not on the list to get into the party. Fortunately Mariner spots her and the senior staff moping around outside and invites them to come in with them. Meanwhile Rutherford and Tendi try to build a model kit. When the episode jumped right into the opening titles without a teaser I
had a feeling something was up and this would be a little more dramatic
and monumental than your typical episode. Nah, not really. It was pretty
good though!
That title had me thinking of tribbles and it turns out I wasn't far off there, as the Doopler emissary starts filling the ship with clones. The episode also features a space station and a bar, and an ending where the heroes use the transporter to dump their problem onto their enemy. The enemy in this case being a room full of people having fun without them. It's kind of unfair on the poor emissary who got tricked into the situation, as he can't help his nature, but I'm sure the Outrageous Okona will get it all sorted out in no time. It's what he does. We got a bit of a return to the 'ship in crisis' plots of season one here, plus we're back to the typical pairings of Mariner and Boimler, and Rutherford and Tendi, but it works. In fact it's ideal here, as the episode is all about resolving the issues left over from the season 1 finale, with Mariner still resenting Boimler for abandoning her to take a promotion (like all her other friends have always done), and Rutherford feeling as if he's competing against the previous version of himself which had an extra of year of memories. It's like a classic stand alone Star Trek episode, except with characters actually dealing with the consequences of past events! And more buggy chases. The animators were just showing off with that chase around the station, as it couldn't have been cheap to create. It had to be done though, as it was this episode's big excuse to reference things from other Trek episodes. Season two has done a much better job of including the references organically instead of having characters just list things from the Memory Alpha wiki, but here we got the best of both worlds, as Boimler kept yelling out the names of all the things they were driving through! It's such a Boimler thing to do that it didn't even bother me. And Freeman saving the day by yelling at someone is very her as well. I also loved the way she tried to make a Star Trek speech (with her crew posing heroically behind her) to get into a party, even if it was inevitably going to fail. Kirk and Spock going to a pub after being kicked out of a party and etching their names into the bar seems less in character, (it should've been Kirk and McCoy!) but I was cool with that too. I'm sure a talented writer could contrive a story where it happened and I'm sure it'd be even easier to come up with a story where the bartender etched the names herself to scam people (there's plenty of other Original Series memorabilia in there). It wasn't laugh out loud funny to see Boimler and Mariner work out their issues, or to invite the rest of the crew to join them, but it brought a big grin to my face. The series is heart-warming in a proper Berman-era way, and its love for its characters and its setting is obvious. Even if Starfleet itself doesn't seem to have much love for them. Back at the start of season 1 I thought the senior staff came off as jerks who looked down on the ensigns, but it's really obvious by this point that the Starfleet brass look down on the Cerritos crew in the same way and I've developed a lot more sympathy for poor Captain Freeman. Other good things:
• IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
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We (apparently) got to see the final resting place of Giant Spock
from The Infinite Vulcan and Abraham Lincoln from
The Savage Curtain. The collector seems to have been a bit of an
Original Series fan.
This is the first time we've got to see Lt. Tom Paris in the
First Contact-era Starfleet uniforms! Sadly it doesn't seem
like he's gotten a promotion, unlike Janeway who got bumped up to
admiral after getting back. Hopefully Harry Kim is a lieutenant now
at least.
Shelby's first officer is based on the original concept for Saru on Discovery! They realised that a big CGI-augmented animatronic head would restrict Doug Jones' ability to express himself a little too much, and ultimately gave him a much simpler look.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
PART TWO
NEXT TIME
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