In 1986, Jeffrey Combs auditioned for the role of First Officer William T. Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation, a role that instead went to a man half a foot taller than him, Jonathan Frakes. Combs would finally appear on Trek in the third-season Deep Space Nine episode “Meridian” in 1994, an episode directed by Frakes, ironically.
That opened the floodgates. Combs would return later that season as the Ferengi Brunt in “Family Business,” then as the Vorta Weyoun in “To the Death” in season four, both roles that would recur all the way to the end of the series. (He even appeared as both in the penultimate DS9 episode, “The Dogs of War.”) He then appeared on Voyager as a fight promoter in “Tsunkatse,” on Enterprise in another recurring role, that of the Andorian Shran, throughout all four of that show’s seasons, and also played another Ferengi in “Acquisition.”
And now he’s added Lower Decks to his resumé.
SPOILERS AHOY!
The best part is that Combs plays the voice of that old Trek standby, the world-controlling computer. And it’s one of several Trek standbys we see in this, arguably the best episode of Lower Decks so far.
Honestly, this is the ideal LD episode to my mind: one that uses the existing tropes and setup of Trek and mines the comedy gold out of them. Blissfully absent from this entire episode is anything that feels like a workplace comedy sledgehammered into a Star Trek setting. Instead, the A and B plots are entirely based on things that can, and often do, happen in a more serious Trek episode.
“Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” is a veritable treasure trove of Trek clichés and it’s delightful.
We’ve got the aforementioned world-running computer (“Return of the Archons,” “The Apple”), named Agimus and voiced by Combs, who keeps trying to inveigle the organics into plugging him into some system or other. Combs, a veteran voiceover actor, is absolutely brilliant here.
Buy the Book
In the Watchful City
We’ve got the shuttle crash on a deserted planet with our heroes trying to find a way to technobabble themselves off. (“The Galileo Seven,” “Power Play,” “Final Mission,” “Paradise,” “Gravity,” “Innocence,” and about fifty other Voyager episodes…)
We’ve got the visit to a character’s homeworld and get introduced to its weird customs (“Amok Time,” “Sins of the Father,” “Family Business”), complete with an overbearing mother who visits the ship regularly (all of TNG’s Lwaxana Troi episodes). In this case, it’s Billups, the chief engineer, who comes from the human colony of Hysperia, a world filled with dragons, and which is populated by Renaissance Faire types. This, by the way, is my favorite part of the episode—I adore the Ren Faire planet where all the citizens dress up in “period” clothes and refer to all science in magic-y terms and shout “Huzzah!” a lot.
Related to that, we’ve got in Billups the guy who joined Starfleet against the mores of his people and/or the wishes of his family (Spock, Worf, Saru).
We’ve got one or more members of the crew believed to be dead (“The Tholian Web,” “The Most Toys,” “The Next Phase,” “Armageddon Game,” “Shuttlepod One”), in this case Rutherford, who is believed to be in an explosion.
And, finally, we’ve got the title itself, which is a Shakespeare quote (“The Conscience of the King,” “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth,” “Thine Own Self,” “The Die is Cast,” “Mortal Coil,” “Such Sweet Sorrow”), in this case a line from Venus and Adonis which refers to oral sex, which is appropriate for the Billups plotline. You see, Billups abdicated his position as prince of Hysperia to join Starfleet. His mother the queen has been trying for ages to convince him to claim his birthright. But he can’t be prince as long as he’s a virgin, and Billups has steadfastly avoided having sexual relations of any kind, while the queen has tried every trick in the book to get him into a sexual relation.
It almost works this time, thanks to the faked-death part—the queen is said to be in the part of the Hysperian ship that exploded alongside Rutherford, and Billups finally does give in to his birthright because he thinks his mother is dead. However, Tendi saves the day, as she discovers that Rutherford is still alive by tracking his cybernetic implants, and the young engineer saves his CO from a hot three-way (yes, the royal sexual encounter is an MMF threesome) by telling him his mother’s alive.
On top of that, we get some actual character development, and it’s one reason why I think this season is much stronger overall, after some initial concerns in the first couple of episodes. The Mariner-Boimler plotline starts out seeming like every first-season storyline involving those two. Boimler is all set for a violent mission involving phaser rifles and giant centipedes, while Mariner is assigned to take a shuttle to drop off Agimus at the Daystrom Institute.
But then Boimler is reassigned to go with Mariner. We find out soon enough that Mariner herself made that request of Ransom. Ostensibly, it’s because Mariner doesn’t think that Boimler can handle it, though I suspect that it’s mostly so she can keep an eye on him, and/or keep him close so she can control him. When Boimler finds out—he’s told by Agimus, who is trying to sow dissent after the shuttle crash in the hopes that one of the two of them will plug him in to something—he is livid, and even goes so far as to shoot Mariner.
First of all, let me say that I cheered when he did that. Mariner is, truly, a horrible person, one who regularly endangers her crewmates with her doesn’t-give-a-shit attitude. I’ve been wanting someone to shoot her, and I punched the air a bit when it finally happened.
And that wasn’t even the best part. For most of the half-hour running time, we think that Boimler is being an idiot yet again. He seems to be listening to Agimus as they head out to another crashed ship that they might be able to salvage. It seems like Boimler has plugged Agimus into the ship, thus giving it control.
But Boimler has actually grown and learned, both on the Cerritos and on the Titan (which Boimler reminds Mariner of quite a bit, to Mariner’s annoyance). He was only pretending to go along with Agimus, needing the computer’s battery to power the ship they’re salvaging. Despite what he said, he only hooked Agimus’s CPU up to the dimmer switch, so all the megalomaniacal computer can do is change the lighting.
Not only that, but once again Mariner doesn’t save the day—except indirectly by not figuring out what Boimler was doing, thus helping sell the bit to Agimus. After an entire season of Mariner using Boimler, he returns the favor, and also saves their asses. It’s a beautiful thing.
Plus, Boimler shoots Mariner. Which is fabulous.
More episodes like this please, Mike McMahan and cohorts. This is a perfect Star Trek comedy.
Random thoughts
- The Daystrom Institute has an entire wall filled with world-running computers, who all rant and rave maniacally and futilely. Agimus joins them at the end, which is a hilariously Trekkish version of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- To remind us that Boimler is still sometimes naïve, he thinks the phrase “wet work” refers to actually getting wet from water. Mariner kindly declines to correct him.
- At one point, Mariner suggests burying Agimus like was done with Data’s head, referring to the events of TNG’s“Time’s Arrow.” Once again, the characters talk like people who watch Star Trek instead of living in the Trek universe, and once again, it threw me out of the story. The reference wasn’t even a good one or an appropriate one, and that threw me further out. It felt entirely like it was there just because they hadn’t referenced a specific TNG episode in five minutes and were suffering withdrawal symptoms from not doing so.
- After Ransom packs Agimus away in a special box, he looks at the aliens who’d been under the computer’s thumb and asks if anyone wants lunch. “I could eat,” one of the aliens says. Cut to the Cerritos bridge, with Freeman lamenting the risks one takes by eating alien street food….
- Of all the voice work Jeffrey Combs has done, my favorite is his loony take on The Question in the Justice League Unlimited animated series from the turn of the millennium. Just some great stuff, even though that version of Vic Sage owes more to Steve Ditko’s version for Charlton Comics (and Alan Moore’s riff on him, Rorschach from Watchmen) than the one Denny O’Neil wrote for DC.
- I absolutely adore the ship design of the Hysperian vessel. It’s gloriously ostentatious. I also rather eagerly want to see more of Hysperia, not just on Lower Decks, but also in one of the live-action shows. Seriously, we need the Enterprise to visit the place on Strange New Worlds. You just know that Pike would totally get into it, while Spock would be completely nonplussed, and Number One would be sardonically amused.
- Did I mention that Boimler shot Mariner? That was truly awesome…
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the guests at the inaugural Suncoast Fan Fest at the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto, Florida. Among the other guests are Voyager’s Manu Intiraymi (Icheb), as well as actors Alaina Huffman, Corin Nemec, Casper Van Dien, Travis Wester, AJ Buckley, and Eddie McClintock, as well as several voice actors. More information can be found here.
The computer’s name is Agimus (Latin ‘we do’), not Amicus (‘friend’).
Luthien: ARGH! Thank you. It should be fixed…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As always, you don’t have to agree with anyone’s reading or interpretation of a given character or episode, but if you want to respond and take part in this discussion, we ask that you keep your comments civil and constructive in tone–feel free to share your own opinion, but there’s no reason to be dismissive or rude in replying. This is the second time it’s been an issue, so consider it a final warning.
Haven’t had time lately but do want to get Paramount plus for a bit to watch this and Evil. I catch a lot of clips on YT and it’s always delightful. If you’d only told me Boimler shoots mariner to pull off a plan I’d think Mariner would see it as flirting.
I agree — this was a good one because it felt exactly like a regular Trek episode with the humor arising organically from the characters and situations, rather than the situation itself being intrinsically absurd and unbelievable. It’s what I want this show to be, an integral part of the Trek universe with a humorous slant, rather than a parody or spoof of the Trek universe. And I liked how it showed Boimler’s growth. He’s maturing as an officer, and that’s nice to see.
(And Boimler did not misunderstand what “wetwork” means. He was using it to talk about a mission to battle giant centipedes, so he knew exactly what it meant. Mariner was the one punning on the meaning of “wet” to make fun of him.)
I particularly liked the interplay between Freeman and Billups, the way it created the texture of a whole, long-running history that we’re belatedly dropping in on.
Nice touch that the Daystrom Institute exterior seen at the end looks the same as the one shown in Picard. I think that’s the first time LD has referenced a show set in its future. Meanwhile, check out the Megalomaniacal Sentient Computer three doors to screen left of Agimus. It’s got the CBS eye on its front. (I have to wonder why they left Landru sitting around on Beta III if this facility exists…)
I think that this was a turning point in Brad and Mariner’s relationship because he really is much more her equal. Also, her lack of respect for Boimler is being acknowledged as an in-universe flaw rather than something that was being ignored for the sake of comedy. Boimler has gotten genuine experience and is now able to pull off things that previously he wouldn’t have been able to from Riker’s help.
I am glad we’ve finally got Billups some development as he was the member of the Senior Staff that had the least so far. Giving him the Iwaxana Troi-esque mother and making him a Prince is so ridiculous it works perfectly. Sadly, the issues of consent on this episode weren’t great nor were some of the jokes (“trained from birth not to need foreplay!” is a very unfortunate line).
But I am very tickled by the concept of a planet where people pretend to be lords and ladies as well as refer to technology like magic. I mean, that’s because that’s the premise of my book, Lucifer’s Star, but a pretty classic one in science fiction anyway.
The episode also deserves credit for the one part that fortunately doesn’t feel like the Berman-era Trek universe — the fact that the Queen offers Billups both male and female seducers to choose between (or to try out both of, as the case may be) rather than presuming heteronormativity.
If Billups turns out to be asexual, that would also be a Star Trek first for representation. Not that he has to be but if he was it would be another acknowledgement of the diversity of human sexuality.
I also note that I love these kind of theme planets and think that plenty of Star Trek colonies would have them. Not just Scotland planet but now we have Renassiance Fair planet. I know I certainly wouldn’t mind visiting for the dragons and all the mutton I could eat. The worldbuilding was also pretty awesome as you can even figure out things like command structure from how the “knight” is positioned on the bridge.
Edit:
As a note, I actually don’t mind the idea that Boimler and Mariner have watched TNG. It was canonized by Roddenberry that there was a holo series of Those Old Scientists and we know that Enterprise is also a series that Riker watched with Deanna. So its entirely possible that these historical simulations are popular entertainment in the future.
This one sounds particularly good. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about an episode of Lower Decks.
And Boimler shoots Mariner! It’s almost enough to get me to watch this show again!
Almost.
@9/C.T. Phipps: It was nice that none of Billups’ crewmates made fun of him for being a virgin, and they even defended it as his rightful choice.
“It was canonized by Roddenberry that there was a holo series of Those Old Scientists”
It was never canonized. He used that conceit in his preface for the ST:TMP novelization, but a lot of things from that novelization were ignored later on (like the idea that Starfleet flag officers have comm implants in their brains). And he suggested at conventions that TOS was an imperfect dramatization of the “real” events, but he just meant in terms of what we were seeing in the present.
I think it’s more likely just that Starfleet cadets study previous crews’ missions in the Academy. No need to settle for fictional dramatizations when you can study the ships’ actual audiovisual logs. And the most important or unusual events would get the most coverage in Academy lessons, so students would learn a lot about the missions of Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway (though I wish the shows would acknowledge that other captains and crews would surely be on the list as well).
@@@@@ChristopherLBennett – Also look for Batman two spaces from the left of the CBS AI. Would have been better if the eyes glowed red instead of yellow for a HARDAC reference.
@@@@@C.T. Phipps/@@@@@ChristopherLBennett Regarding the near-perfect recollection of Lower Decks crew referencing other series’ cannon: I personally think we are *not* watching a cannon show. I have my theories for what we are truly watching, and am expecting a rather divisive final episode in the same vein as ST:ENT.
@@@@@11/ChristopherLBennett: Re: I think it’s more likely just that Starfleet cadets study previous crews’ missions in the Academy.
Ship of the Line had Picard using Kirk’s personal log to cope with the loss of the Enterprise-D. So, this is certainly plausible. And Court Martial does show that “ship’s records” apparently include multi-angle, high definition (infinite zoom) visual recordings. So, these are elements that writers have thought of in the past.
I still don’t think that this is the case for Lower Decks (why would Mariner know Khan’s infamous line: “…buried alive…”?).
@6 – It could be that the Betans didn’t want to hand over Landru for whatever reason. The computer is their property after all and Starfleet usually isn’t in the habit of stealing other planets property.
I consider LOWER DECKS to be completely canon. I might be willing to nudge on things like prank calls across subspace but I think that some people handling things in entire bone headed and crazy ways makes perfect sense for Starfleet. Then again, I prefer my Trekverse to be deeply insane.
@15 – I consider it all canon as well. Sure, there might be production errors such as someone having the wrong rand in a scene or the scene in the animated series where a Klingon appears in from of the view screen but those can be hand waved away.
It’s all canon. Every last scene and word.
All screen Trek constitutes the canon, but it’s a myth that “canon” means a consistent reality in every respect. A canon is just a comprehensive set of stories, and any storyteller is capable of error or embellishment. The Sherlock Holmes canon, for instance, contains many contradictions, e.g. the location of Watson’s war wound and even his first name. But we presume the existence of a consistent reality underlying Watson’s imperfect retellings.
So we can assume that LD represents events that really happened in the Trek universe, but perhaps the way they’re depicted is exaggerated for comedic effect.
I’ve been going along with what Christopher Bennett says in reply 17. I accept Lower Decks to be canon, but I imagine that the way we are getting these stories is how someone is sharing them with someone else in a spaceport bar. :-)
@18/mabfan: Although I’d say that this week’s episode is one of the easiest to accept as the unembellished reality, since it feels so much like a regular Trek episode, and since it doesn’t have much of anything in the way of concepts that strain credibility, like the Dooplers, or Tendi not getting court-martialed for trying to force brain surgery on Rutherford. The only thing that seems like it might be exaggerated is the room full of dozens of Megalomaniacal Sentient Computers. I doubt there’d be quite that many. (After all, isn’t true AI supposed to be exceedingly rare in the Trek universe?)
Of course, the opposite may be true. Perhaps the “true” reality of Trek is closer to LD than the other shows that have been sanitized for dramatic effect.
Or, it all happens pretty much as we’re shown. How can we be sure that during BOBW for example, there wan’t a crewman who had been turned into a giant scorpion rampaging below decks? They just didn’t show us that part. It’s not like we’re aware of what happens on every deck 24/7.
If something happens that contradicts what we’ve seen before, just assume that someone time travelled and put reality together slightly differently. It still happened but nobody remembers that reality any more. Seeing how common time travel is, it’s very likely to happen.
Am I the first to notice (or at least comment on) that rather than using transporters to move between ships, Billups literally boards his mother’s ship via an umbillical. I laughed out loud at the visual pun.
I dunno, Those Old Scientists encountered Landru, The Serpent AI, the Daystrom produced evil AI, the one in the Hollow Planet, V’Ger, and the Nomad probe. That’s not including the robots like Nurse Chapel’s ex and the ones on Mudd’s planet.
So assuming that other ships had half as many evil AI then that’s a lot of them.
@22/C.T. Phipps: I’m not sure most of the AIs in TOS were meant to be truly sentient. TOS’s writers tended to assume that computers and androids were rigidly programmed machines that merely mimicked intelligence. Landru was so simplistic that it couldn’t handle a simple conceptual conflict. Ditto the mainframe controlling all the Mudd androids (which shared only one brain among them). The Exo III androids were somewhat more sophisticated, but still dismissed as mere machines, slaves of programming with no true personhood (“Dr. Korby was never here”). As for Vaal, it never showed any sign of actual consciousness, merely automatic processes. As for the M-5, its intelligence was the result of having a copy of Daystrom’s engrams, and it was still more limited than a human brain (which was the point of the episode). And Nomad’s and V’Ger’s sentience came from advanced alien sources.
The one TOS AI that was treated as having full, human-level consciousness and personhood was Rayna Kapec, and her consciousness and human-style capacity for love proved fatal to her android nature.
Also, we didn’t encounter that many AIs in any of the 24th-century series, outside of Soong-type androids and occasional self-aware holograms. There were the Edo god in TNG: “Justice” (ambiguously); sentient nanites Wesley Crusher created by accident in “Evolution”; the Exocomps; the Automated Personnel Units; the title entity from VGR: “Alice“; the sentient hologram in VGR: “Revulsion”; the AI member of the “Think Tank”… really not that many, out of 21 seasons’ worth of episodes. So LD is taking a trope that was really only common in TOS/TAS and treating it as common in the 24th century.
@23:
Maybe that’s the point? By the 24th century, Starfleet is so well-practiced at dealing with planet-dominating evil computers that when they encounter another one, they send a second-rate ship like the Cerritos to take care of it, instead of wasting the time and energy of a capital ship like the Enterprise that could be spent dealing with real crises. (That’s why they have a whole wall of world-dominating evil computers at the Daystrom Institute, and think it’s so bog-standard that getting a new one there merits nothing more than two ensigns in a shuttlecraft.)
@24/elcinco: I don’t think the Cerritos took care of anything but the transport after the fact. That’s the premise of this show — the Cerritos is one of the ships that are called in to do the followup business after the hero ships wrap up the main adventure and move on to next week’s episode. So presumably some Galaxy or Sovereign or Intrepid-class ship and crew liberated the planet from AGIMUS (apparently it’s all-caps), and then they went on their way and the Cerritos was called in to schlep it over to Daystrom. And then they got the distress call from Billups’s mother, so Freeman decided to send AGIMUS in a shuttle instead.
As I recall, the opening shot of the episode showed fires burning all over the planet, so it looked like we were seeing the aftermath of a huge, huge conflict to defeat AGIMUS. It was hardly a routine operation, so it wouldn’t have been a Cerritos mission.
Was I the only one who thought that Agimus was reminiscent of SpongeBob’s Plankton?
@25
I think the opening references that Agimus tricked the people there into fighting a war for 100 years, so the level of destruction visible was already there.
@27/Ryan: Maybe, but still, the basic conceit of LD is that the Cerritos is the cleanup crew that comes in after the “regular” Trek episodes, not the one that has the big adventures itself. They’re not the Avengers, they’re Damage Control. So we can take it as read that some “Luna class or above” crew did the flashy work of defeating AGIMUS and liberating the planet, then went on its way after notifying Starfleet there was another megalomaniacal AI in need of pickup, which was when the Cerritos got the call.
@28: Or the planet-dwellers freed themselves, and called for aid from Starfleet to get rid of the dangerous remnant for them – and Starfleet said, “Oh, a number 721-type mission – let’s send the Cerritos”
The episode was nothing to write home about, but I enjoyed it. On one hand, the TOS-like silliness of a planet colonized by renfair enthusiasts, and in the other hand, a classic Trek romp like the one Mariner and Boimler had. I did frown a bit at Mariner being so overprotective of Boimler, to the point of sabotaging his career, but I believe it’s just part of her deep-seated fear of losing friends that has been heavily hinted during the series. And I loved that Boimler was outsmarting both her and the evil computer (delightful hearing Combs).
The Hysperian ship looked a bit like an Intrepid-class, but with a fancy makeover, an aesthetic I’d imagine in a Thallonian Empire ship from New Frontier. And Billups’ first name being Andarithio and his nickname Andy continues the Lower Decks “tradition” of Brad/Bradward and Sam/Samanthan
@6 – Chris: You’re right about Freeman and Billups, it feels really organic and as if we’re looking at a bit from another show, one centered on the senior crew, like other Treks.
@9 – CT: I’m all for representation, but Billups seems more to be voluntarily celibate than ace. At most, he just couldn’t perform sexually under duress and grief (he thought his mother had died and his beloved career was over), like most people.
As for holoshows, you had Those Old Scientists and The New Guys.
@12 – stubble: Don’t hold your breath, this is an entirely canon show.
@19 – Chris: Not getting court martialed (or otherwise legally punished) for stuff would also apply to a lot of stuff characters do in other Trek shows.
@30/MaGnUs: “And Billups’ first name being Andarithio and his nickname Andy continues the Lower Decks “tradition” of Brad/Bradward and Sam/Samanthan”
I wonder if “Samanthan” is a misspelling of the Indian name Samanathan, or if they were going for a variant on “Samantha” because they thought it was funny and just accidentally came within a letter of a real Indian name.
Also, I keep getting his name mixed up in my head with Samaritan “Sam” Bowers from the DS9 post-finale novels, so I keep wanting to call him “Samanathan Bowers” instead of “Samanthan Rutherford.”
@31 Chris–first I thought the same thing—that there was a connection between Samanthan & Samantha. However, now I think it’s a combination of Sam & Jonathan. Just like Bradward is a combo of Brad & either Edward or Woodward.
Note–first I found these names annoying but it’s starting to make sense that 400 years from now, we’d have some unique names.
Pssst … krad, I’m fairly sure that with your command of the English language, extensive experience of fictional universes, command of the martial arts (not to mention the Klingon Art of War) and my … ummmm … ANYWAY, I’m pretty sure that between us we can smuggle our way onto that Fabulously Gorgeous Hysperian Queen-Ship all the better to ogle it good & proper.
Care to give it a try? I’m pretty sure we can get away with it just long enough for our inevitable, painful spell in the stocks to be WORTH IT.
On a slightly less serious note, I’d dearly love to see a SHORT TREKS episode which showed how the Daystrom Institute keeps that Wall of Digital Megalomania amused/distracted/frustrated by giving it a much, much simpler AI minder for a spot of PINKY AND THE BRAIN-type humour (One definitely heard that old “They’re Pinky, they’re Pinky and the Brain Brain Brain Brain da-da-da DAH!” sign off).
@19 The apparent fact that the Daystrom Institute has at least a room full of dozens of Megalomaniacal Sentient Computers, would seem to be perfectly consistent with Starfleet assigning the job of defeating the latest one to the Cerritos, and that the job of ferrying it to the institute was given a pair of ensigns. Such things are obviously pretty routine for Starfleet, given that such problems have been cropping up for the previous century or so.
The Cerritos didn’t defeat it, they were assigned to pick it up.
I didn’t realize that was Combs voicing the computer until the end credits. That’s how good his performance was. There are voice actors whose voices can be instantly recognizable, but it takes talent to disappear into a role like that. He was hilarious, and one of LD’s better opponents.
Speaking of which, Agimus sounds a bit like Armus. Given how recent that name came up….
The episode manages a surprising balance of both comedy and real tension. Tendi’s reaction to Rutherford’s “death” feels real. Speaking of which, it was a hoot to learn more about Billups and the Hysperians. A perfect fit for the show’s comic sensibilities.
The episode cleverly recontextualizes the Boimler/Mariner relationship, putting the viewer on uneven ground by implying they’re reverting to their season 1 selves, before pulling out the rug from underneath with that very clever act 3 twist. Boimler’s been learning.
@36/Eduardo: “I didn’t realize that was Combs voicing the computer until the end credits. That’s how good his performance was. There are voice actors whose voices can be instantly recognizable, but it takes talent to disappear into a role like that.”
Really? I was going “Wait, is that Jeffrey Combs?” on his second or third line, and “Yeah, it is Jeffrey Combs!” on the line after that. But maybe I’m just more accustomed to hearing his voice in animated productions (e.g. the Question in Justice League Unlimited, H.P. Hatecraft in Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, and the Leader in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes).
@37/Christopher: I haven’t watched that much animation recently, other than the usual adult primetime comedy shows (Lower Decks, Rick & Morty and the Matt Groening shows). Other than recently rewatching the 1992 Saban X-Men, I haven’t kept touch with animated superhero fare at all – aside from Marvel’s current What If.
The last incarnation of Scooby-Doo I ever saw (not counting the 2002 movie) was the late ’80s Pup Named Scooby version.
So, I’m not familiar with the other animated characters to judge. No doubt Combs has a distinctive voice when it comes to his live-action roles, like Weyoun and Shran.
Just getting to this late…
Does anybody else think that the background music they played on the planet where Mariner and Boimler crashlanded sounded eerily like the music from the Taarna segments of Heavy Metal?
Did anyone point out that Billups’ mom is played by his wife?