It only took nine episodes, but after eight episodes of Ensign Beckett Mariner being simply awful and horrible, we finally have her realizing that she is, in fact, awful and horrible. The “Crisis Point” in the title of this week’s Lower Decks is Mariner finally exploding, her frustrations and neuroses all coming out at once.
The form they come out in? A Star Trek movie.
[SPOILERS AHOY!]
Having failed in all her attempts to get Mariner in line, whether promoting her or throwing her in the brig, Freeman decides to send her to therapy, thus allowing us to meet a new member of the Cerritos crew, Counselor Miglivo. Miglivo a) is a bird-like alien that might be a Skorr from the animated episode “The Jihad,” which makes me fifty kinds of happy and b) constantly uses food metaphors.
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Frustrated with therapy (she literally overturns a table), Mariner goes to the holodeck, and interrupts Boimler’s sucking-up-to-the-captain holodeck program. Boimler wants to apply for a diplomacy workshop, and he’s re-created the crew in a scenario that will allow him to test out certain ways of being brilliant to the captain.
But Mariner is fed up, and takes over Boimler’s program to create a movie! There’s even opening credits that whoosh from the background to the foreground (and knock people on the head if they don’t duck fast enough).
In Mariner’s movie, the newly refitted Cerritos is sent on a mission to find a vessel masquerading as a Starfleet ship. They encounter a pirate named Vindicta—Mariner herself—and her intention is to have Tendi, Rutherford, and Boimler as her hench thugs. Boimler chooses instead to stay with the Cerritos crew, so Mariner creates Shempo, a dorky guy whom Mariner eventually phasers on a whim to teach Boimler a lesson for not playacting with her.
Tendi and Rutherford play along, at least at first, but Tendi gets fed up with Mariner stereotyping her as an Orion pirate (yes, some Orions are pirates, but she isn’t), and also with Mariner’s generally psychotic behavior.
As for Rutherford, when he realizes that he can say whatever he wants to Billups without consequence, he runs to engineering and immediately tells Billups exactly what he thinks of him: that he’s awesome and the best boss ever. The rest of the episode has Rutherford and holo-Billups bonding (including helping save the ship when it crashes).
While Boimler keeps quizzing the holodeck creations for hints on how to brown-nose Freeman (for example, Ransom assures him that making cookies will help), Mariner takes out all her frustrations on the Cerritos in general and Freeman in particular by boarding the ship and phasering everyone in her path (including Ransom, who dies of a phaser blast before he can tell Boimler what Freeman is allergic to). Mariner has gone completely overboard, well beyond her previous awful behavior, so much so that it drives Tendi off the holodeck.
There is, of course, a climactic fight between Mariner and holo-Freeman, which Mariner wins—because it’s her program—but before she can deliver the killing blow by cathartically stabbing her own mother, the holodeck version of Mariner herself shows up and beams holo-Freeman to safety. In the end, the Cerritos crash-lands on the planet, though Rutherford and holo-Billups are able get everyone safely off.
Mariner and holo-Mariner fight to a standoff—they each know each other’s moves—but holo-Mariner has the psychological advantage because she brings up her self-destructive tendencies and her self-sabotage and how she actually likes it on the Cerritos but she keeps screwing it up, and that Freeman isn’t trying to screw with her, the captain is looking out for her daughter.
In the end, holo-Mariner wins the fight by blowing up the Cerritos, which causes the program to end and Mariner to realize she’s been acting like a crazy person. She, Tendi, and Rutherford go to the bar to relax. Mariner apologizes to Tendi and also is nice to Freeman (which confuses and annoys Freeman, thinking it’s another of Mariner’s tricks).
However, Boimler goes back into the program, hoping to find out more about Freeman for his interview, only to see the movie finish with a memorial service for holo-Mariner, with a eulogy given by holo-Freeman where she admits that Mariner is her daughter. This completely messes with Boimler’s entire worldview, especially since holo-Freeman says that if anyone had found out while holo-Mariner was alive, the captain would probably have them kicked off the ship in order to protect her daughter. Boimler is now a complete wreck, and he blows the interview for the diplomacy workshop. Because Boimler can’t have nice things.
The real test will be the season finale next week. Boimler now knows the Freeman-Mariner family’s deep dark secret, and Mariner supposedly has achieved some manner of (excessively overdue) enlightenment. Mariner’s idiocy has gone well beyond tiresome at this point, and we really need her to move forward before the season concludes.
But getting there is tremendous fun. TNG’s introduction of the holodeck as a regular thing (after we got it as a one-off in the animated series episode “The Practical Joker”) kept things very staid and boring and harmless. Just as Quark’s holosuites on DS9 finally copped to one of the most likely uses of the holodeck technology would be lots and lots of sex, “Crisis Point” also gives us the use of cathartic, consequence-free violence as a therapeutic tool. (We kind of saw that in First Contact, but it wasn’t nearly as therapeutic as it could’ve been, plus it wasn’t consequence-free, either.)
My favorite was still Rutherford, though. One other thing TNG showed us in “Hollow Pursuits” was that the holodeck allowed you to speak your mind to superior officers also without consequence, but where Barclay got to tell off Riker and La Forge, Rutherford simply takes advantage of the opportunity to absolutely gush at Billups. It’s hilarious, and one of the best moments of the episode.
Well, okay, my real favorite was how much fun they made of Star Trek movies. We had the following:
- A long, masturbatory look at the Cerritos by the senior crew (and Boimler) flying around it forever and ever while gaping at it, straight out of The Motion Picture. (Thankfully, it’s only for one minute instead of the nightmarish, endless four-minute-and-forty-four-second disaster from 1979.)
- Mariner as Vindicta taunting Freeman over the viewscreen, and quoting ancient literature at her, straight out of The Wrath of Khan (though Mariner quotes Shakespeare rather than Melville).
- The ship self-destructing and falling out of orbit with the saucer section on fire, straight out of The Search for Spock.
- The tag has Mariner as Vindicta in a torpedo tube on a lush planet, akin to the scene with Spock’s coffin at the end of The Wrath of Khan, with Vindicta breaking loose as Spock did in The Search for Spock. (However, holo-Leonardo da Vinci stops her in her tracks.)
- Mariner fights a doppelgänger of herself, straight out of Kirk’s fight against Martia in The Undiscovered Country. In addition, before the closing credits, we get the movie “cast” autographs, just like the actors did at before the credits of the sixth film.
- The saucer crash-lands on the planet, just like in Generations.
- There’s a climactic catwalk fight, just like in Insurrection.
- And finally, when holo-Freeman first boards the Cerritos after the masturbatory flyby, we get lots and lots of lens flares! Just like in the 2009 Star Trek!
Just like last week, we have really only one plot instead of trying to stuff a B- and C-plot in, and the episode is stronger (and funnier) for it.
Random thoughts:
- The teaser has Mariner liberating the Selay from the Anticans, two warring species we first met in TNG‘s “Lonely Among Us.” Freeman has to walk back Mariner’s violation of the Prime Directive, which leads to another argument. Mariner thinks the Selay shouldn’t be the Anticans’ food (and she’s right), but Freeman also can’t abide by interfering in a sovereign world’s politics. While in the abstract, I’m on Mariner’s side here, Freeman then comes up with a very Trek solution: “Will you stop eating them if we give you food replicators?” Problem solved, no violence.
- Tendi and Rutherford are skeet-shooting with Leonardo da Vinci on the holodeck. I was disappointed that they didn’t get John Rhys-Davies back to voice Leonardo, instead giving him a comedy Italian accent, but it was still a nice call-back to one of Janeway’s favorite holodeck scenarios.
- Counselor Miglivo’s constant use of food metaphors would’ve been way funnier if Mariner hadn’t said he always uses food metaphors before we even met him. Assuming your audience isn’t bright enough to figure out what’s funny and so telling them what’s funny makes your jokes about 75% less funny.
- On the one hand, Boimler torpedoing his interview because he accidentally learned Mariner’s parentage is an annoying construction to keep him from getting what he wants. On the other hand, he only found out because he’s trying too damn hard to suck up instead of just telling the captain his strengths, so his own overeagerness is what does him in. Again. While Mariner not learning from her idiocy is the most tiresome aspect of the show, Boimler’s inability to get out of his own way is a close second, and I hope that, too, takes some steps toward resolution next week.
- To test Boimler’s theory that the holographic versions of the crew will respond the same way they would in real life, Rutherford greets Shaxs, who snaps, “Don’t talk to me, I’m pissed off!” Rutherford then assures Boimler that he and Shaxs had that exact same conversation an hour ago.
- My actual favorite joke of the episode was Mariner insisting that “it’s the eighties, dude, we don’t have psychiatric problems!” This mention that it’s the 2380s is a nice riff on the fact that TNG debuted in the 1980s, and one of the hallmarks of that decade was the start of the mainstreaming of therapy as something not just for “crazy people,” but a useful diagnostic tool for anyone, which is why there was a therapist, not only on the ship, but sitting on the bridge next to the captain.
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest book is on sale soon from eSpec Books: To Hell and Regroup, written with David Sherman, the final book in Sherman’s “18th Race” trilogy of military science fiction novels. Ordering information here.
Hey mods, somebody want to fix the clickthrough text?
Fixed! (That was weird.)
I wonder why KRAD’s last two bullet points didn’t make it, when the rest of the article (including his bio) were reproduced there. Weird indeed.
Not sure how keen I am on the idea that violence in the holodeck is ‘consequence-free’ (if nothing else we’ve seen holo-folk acquire sentience far too often to assume that treating a holo-prog the way especially nasty players work over a video game is either ethical or sensible – just ask the Hirogen, after VOYAGER enters their Hunting Runs).
Also, I remain truly depressed that there’s a running joke about the holodeck being turned into a holo-brothel; using this particular gizmo as a blow-up doll suggests a horrible lack of imagination (doesn’t anyone want to create Works of Art anymore?!?).
Having said that, using the holodeck to get some things off your chest is an absolutely excellent idea – almost as good as having a ship’s counsellor in the first place (and that was a D*** Good idea, even if the execution of that Excellent Idea hasn’t always been the strongest).
@@.-@
Porn can be art. Sure, 99% of it is boring art, comma, but.
Hey! The Enterprise flyby tour is my favorite part of TMP! It sure beats staring at V’gur’s glowing innards for what seems like hours!
@@.-@ – Imagine cleaning up the holodeck after it’s been used as a brothel…
I’m surprised KRAD didn’t deal with the fact Mariner was REALLY racist toward Tendi and the Orions. Also, that Tendi clearly has some severe issues with Orion piracy. I mean, their race hasn’t been pirates for FIVE years now.
@7 we don’t have to imagine, that was done earlier this season. IIRC, the holodeck is somewhat self-cleaning.
C.T. Phipps: Um, I did mention that…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought Counselor Miglivo was from the same race as Hyper Chicken the lawyer from Futurama.
Nice to see someone pick up on the Selay-Antican thread. I like how this show is doing what we do in tie-ins and using all these dangling ideas to strengthen the sense of a cohesive universe. But the flipside of that is the overuse of references to specific Enterprise missions and so forth, as I’ve complained about before. The world these characters live in should not be defined exclusively by the contents of Star Trek episodes. They should be aware of parts of their world that we’ve never seen, and not singularly obsessed with the parts we have seen.
So I guess that’s the question I’ll have in mind when I finally get around to seeing these episodes (which will probably be quite soon) — where does the show’s balance fall between using continuity in a way that builds the credibility of the universe (by giving object permanence to previously referenced species and events) and using it in a way that undermines credibility (by being too meta and relying too much on wink-nudge references to things the audience will recognize)?
Even without seeing the episode, I can guess that the Anticans and Selay will be among the only Trek aliens that have more facial expressiveness in animation than live action. :D Well, at least until they start using TMP aliens like Betelgeusians, Zaranites, or Megarites.
Oh, by the way, Memory Alpha calls the counselor Migleemo. And from the picture, he looks less like a Skorr (no wings) and more like a green Ludwig von Drake.
Besides Kahn, the Shakespeare quoting is also remininicent of General Chang in Star Trek VI
Mariner’s ‘idiocy’ wasn’t really idiotic in the slightest.
Girl has been through a hell of a lot of stuff in her years in Starfleet just thus far and she was long overdue for a psychological evaluation and some therapy.
Hell… I don’t understand why when she saw her best friend eaten by a shapeshifter that she was not given intensive therapy for that incident. That alone would have had me curled up in the fetal position and it speaks to a failure of Starfleet, not of Mariner.
@15. Christopher Kidwell: Given Ensign Mariner was wearing the post-FIRST CONTACT uniform in that particularly sad flashback, it’s not impossible she fell through the cracks during the Dominion War – the utterly horrible casualties suffered during that conflict demanding that ‘walking wounded’ like the Ensign be kept in service, rather than rotated out for Serious Therapy (the fact her mother, the captain, appears to have been covering for her probably doesn’t help either).
@7. Austin: Well I didn’t want to, but then you posed the question and it suddenly became very, very clear to me why Rom & Nog got the heck out of the Family Business just as soon as they were able!
I LOVED this episode. Had me laughing throughout with all the gags little and grand. Especially the torturous self-indulgence of endlessly circling the ship. The longer it felt, the funnier it became.
And that crash where the saucer just rolled across the countryside…might be my favourite ship crash yet.
I think KRAD has hit this shows strengths on the head. It is at it’s best when telling one story. Maybe one with a b-plot. But any more and it drags the show down.
I think another point why I liked this one so much was that we see what I was starting to suspect, in that Mariner is damaged. We were getting hints of this previously, but now it was very in your face. While I really like the character of Mariner, she needs to change and improve. I’m with ya here. Let’s have some real character growth for both Mariner and Boimler.
True, I guess I’m now speculating what happened those past 5 years ago. Did the Orions get attacked by the Dominon? Did they get a reformer like the Grand Nagus? Are most Orion still pirates but Tendi is just from one of the pirate clans that didn’t? It’s interesting she described them as “hyper-Libertarian” since that basically describes the classic TNG Ferengi better than it does the Orion.
Well…I’m kind of a ship ho, so “The Enterprise” sequence to me was pure Grade S tech porn and I loved every minute of it…and the score. I was thinking they probably should’ve done that in the first episode with the Cerritos.
Speaking of scores, I laughed and was filled with joy at the James Horner-fication of the Lower Decks theme for the “The Cerritos” sequence.
I saw it in the previews, but SOOO many lens flares. And the overly emphasized JJ style warp sequence. I have to admit Warp me never occurred to me as an engage command.
The crash sequence reminded me much more of Star Trek Beyond’s crash sequence than Star Trek III.
I was with Tendi, watching Mariner go off the deep end was rather disturbing as was the fact that she so obviously cast herself as the villain. So I almost lost track of who the real Mariner was. It’s nice that her own personal log entries actually do show her positive side.
On Tendi, I felt bad for her having to deal with misconceptions about Orions, but the Five years crack was hilarious. But it does make you wonder what she grew up with. Orions weren’t actually in control of the Syndicate during the DS9 timeframe as I recall. I like the Memory-Beta compilation of how Orions have been depicted over the years. So you have a an actual Orion government, the Syndicate, and Orion who are more like Ferengi than pirates, along with Orion who are normal citizens able to easily mesh with other societies simultaneously…which makes sense. If they’re fiercely independent then a massively multifaceted civilization makes perfect sense. Hopefully they’ll address D’Vana’s pheromones at some point too. Lots of comedy to be mined by her pheromone suppressant acting up.
I also love the mother-daughter detail where they both react to the Doctor’s fruit puns the same way, by trashing the table with his bonzai tree.
As usual I’m left feeling crushed for poor Boimler who just wants to be a straight arrow and keeps ending up being a broken arrow. I feel for such a crippling lack of self confidence combined with just the need to do the right thing. Sadly KRAD, I’m not sure Boimler knows his strengths. He has plenty, he’s easily the hardest working person in the crew, he’s true believer in Starfleet and the Federation’s ideals, crack shot with a phaser, knows the regs inside and out, and is kind and helpful. And as last episode showed, he’s actually a decent orator. Couple of decades of seasoning he’ll be able to crank out a Picard speech with the best of em.
@19/Mr. D: “Orions weren’t actually in control of the Syndicate during the DS9 timeframe as I recall.”
We didn’t see any Orions in the Orion Syndicate in DS9, but we never saw their leadership. We saw a couple of Farians in high-ranking positions, but they were apparently just regional bosses on their respective planets. So the Orions could still have been the ones ultimately running the show.
I was delighted at the mention of Xon, who was the full-Vulcan science officer in the never produced Star Trek Phase Two.
I seriously love this show, because it’s so ridiculous, yet not ridiculous enough for me to be able to picture these guys on the Enterprise or Titan or DS9, though I tend to think they’d be, as my family tends to say, half a bubble off level.
I was cracking up at the flyby. All the little touches in the credits. I even just about fell out of my chair at Boimler dotting the eye with a Federation arrowhead. This is probably my favorite episode yet.
Hell, I even want Jack Quaid to dye his hair purple-black and show up as Captain Boimler in, oh, season 3 of Picard. Just to say “hey, he makes it out of this spiral someday”. Maybe cameo Newsome as Lt. (j.g.) Mariner… I kid. Maybe an O-5 though.
I thought it was the best episode to-date.
Mariner and her marauders evoked Khan, Kruge, and Chang, all at once.
The crash had elements from ST3, Generations, and Beyond all at once.
and of course – “If this were really happening, they’d send the Enterprise.”
That was one of my favorite little gags—because it was a callback to the opening scenes of episode 2. Right after Mariner scammed a tricorder out of that energy being, Freeman was trying to come up with something cool to say when they go to warp. Like, “It’s warp time!” I guess that’s what she eventually settled on.
This episode completely cracked me up and it’s the first episode that I want to rewatch to catch the jokes I missed. Favorite part had to be the end credit signatures, wherein we learn that Boimler dots his i’s with a Starfleet insignia (because of course he does).
@24, I like to think that she never actually settled on “Warp me!” as an engage command. Since the program is made from the crew’s personal logs, maybe it’s just the current frontrunner or something she’s saving for a special occasion. I hope we hear her try out more possibilities!
One thing I really liked in this episode was the way they animated the hand-to-hand combat. I think Mariner v Vindicta was probably the best fight scene I’ve ever seen in Star Trek to be honest.
Chris Westlake deserves an Emmy nomination for that soundtrack. The Wrath of Khan horn flourishes during the extended flyby of the ship were absolutely incredible.
@27/James: Shouldn’t the music for that sequence have been a Goldsmith homage, though?
I LOVED this episode, it’s easily, one of the best two or three so far. The jokes, the references, the character exploration, and the overall startrekyness. I was riveted during the episode, and highly satisfied at the end. I loved how Mariner finally has a breakthrough, and I loved how Rutherford is just SO wholesome.
BTW, Tendi says “SOME Orions haven’t been pirates for FIVE years”, I laughed out loud.
Poor Boimler at the end.
@8 – C.T Phipps: Only SOME Orions.
@14 – DAVID SERCHAY: Yeah, and Vindicta reminds me a lot of Chaotica.
@15 – Christopher Kidwell: Agreed.
@22 – wizardofwoz77: Agreed on all points.
@26 – vinsentient: That was a really cool fight sequence, yeah.
@27 – James: Nice music, yup.
@28. ChristopherLBennett: Mr Bennett, if I were a STAR TREK composer trying to decide which of my predecessors to one-up, I too would wimp out and run screaming from the very idea of trying to beat Mr Jerry Goldsmith at his own game … (Not that the late, great James Horner was any slouch, but he was known to copy-paste from time to time).
Erm, did no-one else hear Dr T’Ana calling Rutherford and Billups a homophobic slur? I gotta say I’m pretty fucking NOT HAPPY about that. Yeah it was a ludicrously over-the-top movie spoof, but that was just the holo-plot – the holo-characters were supposed to react exactly as the real characters would. So are we saying that the real Dr T’Ana would use a homophobic slur that shouldn’t even exist by the 24th century? and that the Lower Decks writers think that’s a fucking joke?
She didn’t use a homophobic slur. She said F*ckers
This show would be so benefited by dropping all the “foul language is cool, guys! Star Trek’s not for kids anymore!” stuff and using that time for actual jokes.
Would avoid the problem in @31, too.
(It definitely wasn’t meant to be what you thought you heard, but I can’t blame you for mishearing it)
Yeah, T’Ana said “fuckers.” She uses fuck quite a bit…….
—Keith R.A DeCandido
I loved the line about, because it’s a movie, they can use transporters however they liked.
I do love the Kelvin films, because I’m happy to ignore the stupid things in them. Beaming aboard a ship at warp from light years away, and the ability to beam from Earth to the Klingon homeworld, being amongst the stupidest.
@35/jmwhite: “Beaming aboard a ship at warp from light years away… being amongst the stupidest.”
Interstellar beaming was established in TOS: “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “Assignment: Earth,” and “That Which Survives,” TNG: “Bloodlines,” and VGR: “Displaced.” Beaming to a ship at warp is more complicated, surely, but that’s why they called it transwarp beaming.
I agree they used the concept more sloppily in STID, though.
Cheers, I’ll check out those episodes again, see if it assuages my thoughts on transporter use in those films.
My biggest problem with transwarp beaming is that if prime Scotty had invented it Starfleet would have the ability to destroy any ship anywhere from the comfort of a starbase. Dominion war? Transwarp beam bombs onto every single one of their ships! Hey presto, we’ve won the war so easily we can knock off early and hit the holodecks.
@37/jmwhite: There are many ways transporters could be used as weapons that Trek consistently ignores. They’re basically invincible disintegrator rays if you turn off the reassembly step — rays that can target things through walls without line of sight. (Honestly, it’s incongruous that the Tantalus device in “Mirror, Mirror” was treated as such a terrifyingly unprecedented weapon — it’s just a transporter without reassembly.) In combat, once you knocked out an enemy’s shields, you could easily beam their crew into space (or into your brig), or beam away the shielding on the antimatter pods, or any number of things.
I suggested in one of my recent books that the reason they don’t do this is because it would lead to bans against such a useful technology, so interstellar powers agree not to cross that line and turn transporters into weapons.
Interesting thought. I would imagine the problem with a transporter based weapon the problem is like you say shielding. You’re going to need conventional weapons to disable theirs, and once you have you’ll need to disable yours to use it, thus leaving you exposed.
Given that your conventional shield-eliminating weapons are comfortably powerful enough to do all the damage you’d want to an exposed ship, I’d think the reason they’re not used as a weapon is just tactical.
Plus as we know disrupting a transport is perfectly possible, so it would become an unreliable weapon. You know if a torpedo hits it’s going to do what a torpedo does.
Transwarp beaming though would force enemy ships to maintain shields at all times, including at warp. It would mean they’re taking a risk every time they drop shields to use transporters. It would be a huge tactical advantage that would change behaviour from what we’ve seen on-screen.
Introducing it for a minor plot point (them needing to get aboard the Enterprise) was not I believe well thought through. Though I love the film, so I can’t get too miffed.
Btw, Mike McMahan has just confirmed on Twitter that the line was “crazy f*cks” after someone else thought they heard the same as you DS9Continuing. I’m glad it’s been put to rest.
@36: In the TOS era, though, interstellar beaming was a technology that the crew of the Enterprise didn’t have (and were amazed at). The Gamesters, Lorelei, and Gary Seven’s patrons used interstellar beaming, not anyone in the Federation (if I recall correctly).
@28/Christopher
@27/James: Shouldn’t the music for that sequence have been a Goldsmith homage, though?
I’d say no, since the movie for all of the Trek movies it dragged, it also was a direct parody of Wrath of Khan which also featured a much shorter The Enterprise sequence and is better liked.
As for the Orions my brain is rather vested in the lore they built in STO, with the Orions surging back to power in the Syndicate after the Dominion War. They’re not mutually exclusive though. The Orions could’ve been avoiding prosecution by having no visible ties to the Syndicate and then having to reassert authority either because their hands tried to seize actual control, because they screwed up and the Orions needed to assume direct control to save the outfit, or there was a power shakeup at the very top more interested in Orions being the face of the organization. As Melani Di’an immediately allied the Syndicate with the Klingon Empire once she attained absolute control they are all ripe for exploration. Can’t be sure with a ruthless criminal outfit after all.
@24
I had forgotten about that. I wonder if Freeman actually came up with it or if Mariner actually inserted it showing off being smarter than her mother, by coming up with a phrase.
@41/AndyLove: Yes, of course, we all know our TOS. But the TNG era’s a century later, so it’s bizarre to me that everyone reacts to the “transwarp beaming” line in ST ’09 as if it were some totally unprecedented invention that must’ve come along sometime between Nemesis and 2387. Come on, they encountered it at least three times 120 years earlier — plenty of time to figure out the basics. And “Bloodlines” confirmed that the technology was known and understood by 2370, but was simply too dangerous and impractical to put into regular use.
@43: Fair point. Thanks. Agree that once you know something is possible, achieving it is much easier.
@@@@@ 40 / jmwhite: Okay good, thank you. Maybe the fact that he’s had people question this will help him to stop with the “swearing is funny” crap, if it can be so easily and horribly misinterpreted.
@45/DS9Continuing: If people gave up telling jokes the moment someone didn’t understand them, there’d be far fewer jokes in the world. No artist can expect to have one’s work understood by 100% of one’s audience.
Also, I disagree with “easily.” We’re nine episodes into the season, apparently the bleeped curses have been a running gag all along, and this is the first time one has been misunderstood. It strikes me more as a fluke than a systemic problem. If a thing mostly works well aside from an occasional glitch, you don’t throw the whole thing out, you just refine it as you go.
I loved Freeman’s blank, who is this crazy person? reaction to Vindicta. And holo Mariner telling ‘Vindicta’ she is loyal to Starfleet, would die for her shipmates and loves her mother. Also the ensigns ducking the introduction graphics as they argue.
While I appreciate all the call backs, I did have two problems with this episode’s view of the Anticans and Selay.
1. The reptilian species we saw didn’t look anything like Selay. Selay were serpentine and their heads are supposed to imply Cobras. What we saw in this episode were lizards, more small Gorn than Selay.
2. This episode implies that the Anticans and Selay live on a single planet and the Anticans were breeding them for food. From “Lonely Among Us,” the Anticans and the Selay each ruled their own planets and those worlds were at war; or at least a constant state of antagonism. From what little we saw, the Selay were just as likely to eat an Antican as the reverse.
Other than those points, I did enjoy this episode and hope we start to see a less manic and less iconoclastic Mariner soon.
Did they actually call them Anticans and Selay in the episode? Memory Alpha just calls them lizard aliens and rat aliens.
@48. costumer: With regard to your quibbles, (1) My general assumption when a version of some pre-existing species somewhat different from their established appearance is show has always been that these represent different ethnicities within the same species (‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations’ after all!).
So the Selay we see in THE NEXT GENERATION could have been from their version of Africa, while the ones we see in LOWER DECKS might be from their version of South America.
(2) These two versions of things aren’t necessarily incompatible with each other – for one thing it’s never explicitly stated that there’s only the one inhabited planet in this system, so one can still reasonably infer that this unfortunate situation is mirrored on the Antican Homeworld: it also makes perfect sense that the Selay very much wear the chef’s hat on their own homeworld, so there’s not much chance for any Antican immigrants to serve up their reptilian neighbours, rather be served to them.
…
It’s rather sad to think that (in-universe) it’s been 16 years since the diplomatic conference at Planet Parliament and the two species are still making a mess of each other (I can’t help feeling that Jean-Luc Picard still feels the overpowering impulse to lie down somewhere nice & quiet when the subject of the Anticans and the Selay comes up).
Christopher: They didn’t call them that, no, but they sure looked like them…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
If they are only meant to be similar species, aka humans, vulcans, et al, then there is no issue. But the first thing that came to my mind when they showed up were Anticans and a lizard like Selay.
No, they didn’t say there was only one planet in this system. But we should assume, since the Anticans and Selay were applying for Federation membership (at least if I recall Lonely Among Us correctly) the Federation should have known the Anticans were breeding an intelligent species to use as food.
Of course, the Federation has been obtuse before. They ddn’t know about the Trogs in Cloud Minders and they didn’t know about the terrorist situation in High Ground and probably more.
It didn’t spoil the episode for me by any means.
FWIW, this was definitely my favorite STLD (or whatever the proper abbreviation is) so far. It actually did real character exploration and the lens flare cartoon style was great. And the marveling at the ship for too long sequence, I was truly laughing, it was glorious.
Okay, seen it now. Pretty fun. An effective blend of Trek-movie parody and Mariner character growth. Interesting how she went into this thinking she was seeking fantasy revenge against her mother, but it was herself that ended up being the true target of her rage.
Boimler hacking the crew’s private logs to create their simulations is surely against regulations. He did it to get ahead, but it’d probably get him busted or cashiered out of the service if he were found out.
The “rat alien” does look pretty much like an Antican, but the lizard aliens look nothing like the cobra-hooded Selay. I suppose it’s possible that the Anticans use more than one sentient reptilian species as prey.
On the Goldsmith vs. Horner music issue, I guess the Horner style meshes well with the Lower Decks theme. Interesting that the theme apparently exists as in-universe diegetic music within the “movie” program. Did Mariner write it? Or did the Crisis Point program select some stock composition from its audio library?
It was cute that when Mariner was writing the program, the holodeck interface screen showed script pages. Although that clashes with Mariner saying she just wrote some broad scenarios and set pieces and let the computer interpolate the rest. Anyway, for credibility’s sake, I’d assume this is actually something she’s been working on privately for some time and finally put into effect.