After four straight episodes (going back to the second-season finale, “First First Contact”), Lower Decks has been giving us previous Trek guest stars voiced by their actors. Alas, that streak is broken this week, as we have no special guest stars after getting Lycia Naff as Sonya Gomez, James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane, J.G. Hertzler as Chancellor Martok, and Susan Gibney as Leah Brahms. Instead, we get an episode that is a bit of a throwback to LD’s first season, which is not a good thing…
DELTA SHIFT HATES SPOILERS!
So my biggest issue with season one of LD was that it kept going back and forth between being a Star Trek comedy and being a twenty-first-century workplace comedy transplanted to the Trek universe, and the former was often delightful and successful and fun and the latter is almost always not as funny, and also throws me out of the story. One of the things I liked about season two was that they were doing more of the former and less of the latter.
This week, we’ve got two plots, an A-plot with Boimler, Mariner, and Tendi racing against some ensigns from Delta Shift through various starship shortcuts to get to an air-gapped terminal where they can rig a crew quarters lottery. Apparently, on Cerritos, there are limited crew quarters available to ensigns instead of the hallway bunks, and who gets them is determined by a lottery. While chasing after her pet, Goopy, who keeps escaping his beaker, through the Jefferies Tubes, Tendi overhears some ensigns from Delta Shift planning to rig the lottery, and our Beta Shift heroes decide to beat them to the punch.
All right, I’m going to sound like one of those annoying, humorless fangoobers here, but dammit, there is not a single aspect of that plotline that works in the Star Trek universe.
Look, the whole point of Star Trek from the beginning has been that humanity has improved and that we’ve moved past silly prejudices. In the second season of LD, they’d finally stopped doing annoying plots about “executive replicators,” and other such hierarchical notions that Trek has never had. Also the kind of underhanded scheming the Delta Shift ensigns indulge in here is very much not in character for twenty-fourth-century humans, particularly not ones who are also Starfleet officers.
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The thing is, that plot does have its moments, but it’s entirely in the character work done with Mariner, Tendi, and Boimler as they wander through the bowels of the ship. It’s also fun to watch the bonding between Beta and Delta Shifts—which they then flush down the toiler by having Delta Shift still be assholes who screw over Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner to get at the terminal. It’s a cynical, misanthropic storyline that doesn’t feel even a little bit Trekkish. And yes, I get that this is a comedy, but you don’t need to violate the tenets of the universe for cheap laughs.
And as proof, we have the B-plot, which is way more fun. A mission gone horribly wrong has required that Billups and his engineering crew (including Rutherford) to work ’round the clock for a week. When the work is done, Freeman takes the entire engineering crew to a spa ship called Dove in order to relieve the stress of all the work they’ve had to do.
But these are engineers! As anybody who’s ever, y’know, met an engineer knows, what they love is to work! To tinker! To mess with stuff! So they resist every attempt to relax as they’d rather be tinkering. And in the end, they wind up building something, and that relaxes them. Which is good, as Freeman is getting more stressed by their unwillingness to relax, to the point where she’s about to burst a blood vessel. Luckily, she has Starfleet engineers on the job! They build a machine that wipes out stress in an instant.
(Let me just state for the record that, of all the medical miracles that Trek has given us over the years, the stress-eliminator is in second place for Thing I Want Right Now, Please. The medical tricorder is, of course, first, as the notion of an accurate diagnostic tool that is programmed with all the medical knowledge extant is something that would make everyone’s life so much better…)
This plot is so much better than the A-plot, because it grows out of the Trek universe—and indeed, out of engineers in particular. Every engineer we’ve seen in the franchise—Scotty, La Forge, O’Brien, Barclay, Torres, Rom, Nog, Tucker, Stamets, Reno, Pog—has been like this, and so is every engineer I’ve ever met. I don’t know if it was a direct influence, but one of the best engineer portrayals in Trek history was how David Gerrold wrote Scotty in “The Trouble with Tribbles” on the original series. First there was Kirk seeing Scotty reading technical journals, and Kirk admonishing him to relax, and Scotty says, “I am relaxin’!” And then when Kirk confines him to quarters (after starting a bar brawl with some Klingons, which he only did because they insulted the Enterprise, not because they insulted Kirk), Scotty is thrilled, because he can catch up on his technical journals!
The B-plot of “Room for Growth” is a wonderful extension of that bit with Scotty. It works beautifully, because it grows out of character and out of the setting. It’s still a silly plotline, but it works in the Trek universe, as we’ve seen so many engineers like this over fifty-six years.
On the other hand, outside of LD, we’ve never seen Starfleet officers who were the level of petty we see in the Delta Shift creeps, and who went around finger-gunning like doofuses when hatching their evil plan to screw over their crewmates. (So much of that is going to age so badly…)
I did enjoy the bonding among three of our four heroes, as I said, and I especially loved the gossiping about the senior staff. That much, I am willing to believe would happen even in Trek’s future…
Random thoughts
- The head of Dove is from the same three-armed species as Lieutenant Arex from the animated series and the doctor from Division 14 in “Much Ado About Boimler.” That species is either Edosian, Edoan, or Triexian, depending on which ancillary material you use. It’s also the first female member of that species we’ve seen.
- The engineering staff had to work overtime to get rid of the changes made to the ship by some D’Arsay masks like the ones seen in TNG’s “Masks.” A D’Arsay possesses Freeman, and she alters the ship in much the same way the Enterprise was changed in that episode. Why the producers decided to do a callback to one of the drearier and more forgettable seventh-season TNG episodes is left as an exercise for the viewer.
- Kayshon gets some dialogue for the first time in a while, and he’s actually talking in Tamarian metaphor! It’s about damn time!
- Doctor T’Ana, blunt as ever, diagnoses Chief Engineer Billups thusly: “A fucking pile of stress.” Billups’ response to this is to angrily retort that he doesn’t go to sickbay and tell T’Ana how to hypo her sprays, and then he slaps Shaxs and has a nervous breakdown, thus proving T’Ana’s point.
- Speaking of T’Ana and Shaxs, Boimler, Mariner, and Tendi barge in on their holodeck adventure, in which they do a Bonnie & Clyde riff. We get way more about their sex life than anyone’s comfortable with. Also, in a nice touch, the holodeck is in black-and-whtie, which it was established as being able to do back in Voyager’s “Night” when they introduced the Captain Proton program.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to check out the Kickstarter for Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups, co-edited by Keith and Jonathan Maberry, which will feature team-ups of classic characters, to be published by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. Among the team-ups are Captain Nemo and Frankenstein’s monster by Kevin J. Anderson; Dracula, John Henry, and Jekyll & Hyde by Derek Tyler Attico; Prospero and Don Quixote by David Mack; Marian of Sherwood and Annie Oakley by Rigel Ailur; Ace Harlem and the Conjure Man by Maurice Broaddus; Van Helsing, Athena, and the Medusa by Jennifer Brody; Lord Ruthven and Lydia Bennet by Delilah S. Dawson; The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and Night of the Living Dead by Greg Cox; and bunches more.
This was a nice low-stakes episode. I liked it but no, it wasn’t great.
The D’Arsay mask affecting Carol seemed odd to me. The only reason it affected Data in “Masks” (an episode that I loved, btw) was because he was a machine and it overrode his programming. But, I guess the D’Arsay could’ve designed other probes that affected living beings.
I agree with Mariner–Delta shift is the worst. We end in a spirit of friendship and cooperation and then Delta team takes advantage and ruins it! I agree, it’s horrible and VERY unbecoming of Starfleet officers. Though I agree with Mariner that this group shouldn’t be in Starfleet, her “they should join the Maquis” line seemed out of place. It’s irrelevant–the Maquis were wiped out years ago.
I saw it coming a mile away and it makes sense–of course engineers would relax by doing engineering stuff!
Interesting we’ve seen two Edosians connected to the health-care profession.
Lastly, I’ve been thinking recently that it must be hard for some Starfleet officers to shake off some of the things that happened to them. Ransom and “Churrolivia” proves my point. (Now, I’d really love to see what a doll made out of 35 churros looks like)
And yes, I get that this is a comedy, but you don’t need to violate the tenets of the universe for cheap laughs.
Yeah, again, this is precisely why they never should have said this series is canon and in the same universe as everything else. Just because it has the Star Trek name on it doesn’t mean it always needs to be a ‘shared universe.’ If Lego, for example, can get away with making funny little Star Wars parodies without being canon, Lower Decks should have been able to do the same. It’s unfair to the universe proper, and it’s unfair to the freewheeling comedy/parody they obviously want to make.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess maybe the canon connection was a studio note. They see potential in crossovers with every series, and crossovers mean “ratings,” if that word still even means anything. But you get my point. It gets the attention of fans.
And I suppose that means the universe isn’t woven together by cosmic mushrooms, it’s woven together by a larger, higher power: marketing.
I am entirely on board with Lower Decks being canon. Even close to the year 2400, humans will still be flawed, petty, and even mean to each other. Bureaucracy will be inefficient, ships will be overcrowded, and in spite of Roddenberry’s vision, there will be conflicts between characters, sometimes over something dumb. It is not violating a core tenet of the universe, it is violating the incredibly flimsy idea of a “utopia” that has had more holes poked in it than a Klingon stress relief dummy.
One of the reasons Deep Space 9 is my favorite Trek series is because it shows the characters actually being human. Moral gray areas, marital strife, overwork. They aren’t superheroes, paragons of virtue, or Mary Sue’s, they’re human people. It’s also why The Orville works; it shows people in the future that are still getting drunk, having fun, and not stiflingly erudite. Which is not to say that they should never show anyone like that, far from it. But why insist on humanity as a whole being “Shakespeare and Mozart” and not “Michael Bay and Klingon acid punk”? I understand the reason for only using properties that are public domain (DS9 got in a lot of trouble with Our Man Bashir) but what about speculating the next major musical movement between now and 2063? The Kelvin films were able to do this right by acknowledging that music made in the last century persists, and Lower Decks continued that tradition without having to pay rights fees.
The point I’m trying to make is, I don’t believe it violates the universe to make it just a bit less perfect. Lower deckers having a reduced replicator menu can be chalked up to power consumption, maybe more complicated recipes take more juice to cook up? Voyager’s “replicator rations” explain this nicely. The stacked bunks are supposed to be like hammocks on a sailing ship, and space on the ship is not infinite. We are seeing an imperfect part of an imperfect universe, which makes it a perfect fit.
I agree with Keith in his criticism of the A plot. But for me, why, in a future where people don’t pursue careers out of necessity, but out of a sense of adventure or to follow a passion, etc., would they want to be treated like 20th/21st century military? Are you telling me they can’t design a ship that has quarters for every crew member?
“…[O]utside of LD, we’ve never seen Starfleet officers who were the level of petty we see in the Delta Shift creeps….”
I can accept this as generally true, but let’s not forget the existence of one Captain Solok, who convinced his entire senior staff to learn an ancient Earth sport just to get under the skin of a rival Starfleet captain. Nothing Delta shift does can ever approach that level of pettiness.
I also loved the use of the classic engineer trope here. One of my favorite small moments in The Wrath of Khan is the discussion about Scotty’s “wee bout” of the dreaded shore leave. The way that scene is played makes me laugh every time. What a great movie.
@@.-@ Rutherford does say that the Cerritos is carrying a larger crew than she was designed for, which could still be fallout from the Dominion War.
“Look, the whole point of Star Trek from the beginning has been that humanity has improved and that we’ve moved past silly prejudices. In the second season of LD, they’d finally stopped doing annoying plots about “executive replicators,” and other such hierarchical notions that Trek has never had. Also the kind of underhanded scheming the Delta Shift ensigns indulge in here is very much not in character for twenty-fourth-century humans, particularly not ones who are also Starfleet officers.”
That’s not even true. Like the entire point of In The Pale Moonlight is that Sisko chooses the underhanded path to win the Dominion War. DS9 is full of scheming. There’s an even entire episode where Starfleet goes full Big Brother out of terror of shapeshifter infiltration, and basically every single Starfleet officer is ready and willing to goosestep along with it. And even if you get into hierarchical notions, Starfleet is still a military organization with ranks and fairly strict discipline.
Mary beat me to pointing out why the D’Arsay mask thing doesn’t make any sense. Unless Carol Freeman is secretly an android, she shouldn’t have been affected. Also, why didn’t the ship revert back to normal all at once like the Enterprise did?
I agree the Delta Shift thing was a bit too petty for Starfleet, but I’m more inclined to accept that for lower deckers, since they’re mostly new to the service. It stands to reason that some of them just don’t have what it takes for Starfleet and would get weeded out for their bad behavior. I seem to recall a character like that in the first season, the guy whom everyone liked until he turned out to be a glory hound who almost wrecked the ship to make himself look good.
Also, there’s the handwave I came up with back in season 1, that this is just a few years after the Dominion War, so it stands to reason that a lot of people in Starfleet are more screwed up and damaged than they would’ve been in the utopian TNG years.
As for the spa plot, how is it a surprise to anyone in Starfleet that engineers find it most relaxing to solve problems? That’s like doing a whole story where the surprising twist at the end is that Spock is logical. How does everyone not already know that?
@2/Dog’s Dinner: “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess maybe the canon connection was a studio note.”
I think it’s just continuing the standard practice of having every Trek production be part of the same shared reality. I mean, even the makers of the Kelvin reboot went to great lengths to establish it as an alternate timeline of the main continuity rather than just letting it be a complete reinvention. I think it’s just taken for granted that all Trek series have to share a reality. Roddenberry intended TNG to be a soft reboot, but that was abandoned by his successors, who tied it in directly to TOS. And everything since then has been treated as a unified whole, so it’s just the accepted norm.
1. I point out the fact that increasingly, Lower Decks is a sequel to the ANIMATED Star Trek, which gives it a bit more leeyway. I also note that they are at its best when it is Star Trek with a sillier lens but mostly keep to the oddity of the setting rather than actively violate or make fun of it. There’s a balance to these sorts of things and LD doesn’t always hit it but that’s true for all Star Trek.
2. Delta Shift rigging the quarters lottery is conduct unbecoming but as we see with Lorcano and those Red Team kids who got themselves all slaughtered, cadets and Enigns are meant to be people who make mistakes. They have their bad qualities hammered out.
3. I’m surprised the overcrowding wasn’t given a reason in the episode like the fact that they’ve taken on temporarily some other crew.
4. I don’t honestly think every single crew member SHOULD have their own quarters. That’s a needless luxury for people who are supposed to be willing to sacrifice for Starfleet to prove their devotion to a higher ideal. Besides, why would you add crew quarters when you can add more SWAMP?
:joke intended:
5. I’m just going to assume that the D’Arsay mask thing is another type of probe.
6. That was one weird thing about Freeman. In Star Trek, you’re supposed to LOVE your work.
@9/C.T. Phipps: “3. I’m surprised the overcrowding wasn’t given a reason in the episode like the fact that they’ve taken on temporarily some other crew.”
I took it as a belated handwave for why the ship has had its junior officers crammed together in corridor bunks since the start of the show. Not a temporary increase in crew complement, but the way it’s been all along, carrying more people than it was designed for.
Which might be another thing you could attribute to the post-Dominion War setting — maybe there are fewer ships available and they need to put more people on each ship.
I have always liked the fact that Lower Decks shows us Starfleet officers who are less then perfect. It’s good to see that everyone isn’t nice–some people are jerks. And like others have said, these are ensigns, so one would think they’d be weeded out of Starfleet eventually for being unethical *(or they an’d learn their lesson)
As for this group of four–my guess is there was one instigator and the others are like-minded enough to follow. In order words you don’t have members of the group saying “No, we shouldn’t do that. It’s cheating.”
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I believe there will always be a few finger-banging jerks around, even in the distant future.
“I always wanted to explore an ethical gray area!” — Tendi (we love her)
How quickly were there animated GIFs of Mariner breathing heavily in her underwear?
I’m right there with you re the episode’s humor coming pretty much exclusively from the character moments. Yes also to understanding how engineers relax. Lastly a big hearty co-sign to KRAD’s Things I Want Right Now, Please.
@12. David Pirtle — um… “finger-guns” ≠ “finger-banging”
Of all of Star Trek‘s medical wonders, I always imagined the fetal transport (from Voyager‘s “Deadlock”) would be the most welcome, allowing countless women to avoid the pain of childbirth.
The three Delta Shift ensigns were almost exact copies of Mariner, Boimler, and Tendi in appearance, which I found humorous.
I appreciate that, in Shaxs and T’Ana, Lower Decks has given us a couple of grizzled, middle-aged-or-older characters who actually just like shagging each other’s brains out. Surprisingly, this isn’t something that one sees a lot of in media.
Between the Borg, Wolf 359, and the Dominion War I assume that half of Starfleet is dealing with lightly treated PTSD amid a severe shortage of competent counselors
#8
True, but there had never been a Trek series quite like LD before. Of course, there has been no shortage of parodies across the culture since 1966. This, however, was the first official one, so to speak, and it’s an awkward fit trying to make this work with everything else.
I had a similar issue with the Kelvin movies. It was an alternate timeline, so that made it canon or next door to canon (that’s fine), but they still went out of their way to make the kind of broad pop culture jokes and references you’d find in a show like LD. Every time that happened, I’d think, ‘That’s a pretty good joke, but wouldn’t SNL or some other comedy be a better place for it?’
Now we have that place and… they’re still trying to sell us a bubblegum-flavored steak for some reason. Both good things. Both very tasty. But can’t they be separate?
We saw in the movies that some crew members sleep in barracks style rooms. I think we see this in the Undiscovered Country. So limited rooms on ships has long been established
18) Speaking as a guy who writes space opera parody novels, I’m of course biased to be fine with it.
#20
I’m not arguing against the concept of a space opera parody. I’m saying the problem is trying to make a series with the sheer amount of jokes that break the suspension of disbelief, that all this exists alongside the other series which presumably want to have some verisimilitude as a dramatic fictional connected universe. I dunno, it’s like if someone in charge of a studio tried to splice together James Whale’s Frankenstein with Young Frankenstein, or The Searchers with Blazing Saddles, or Star Wars with Spaceballs. It just doesn’t work as a single universe.
@18/Dog’s Dinner: “True, but there had never been a Trek series quite like LD before… and it’s an awkward fit trying to make this work with everything else.”
No doubt, but I still say the impetus was more likely the creators’ desire to stay consistent with the usual practice, or their belief that fans wouldn’t accept a non-canonical Trek series, than some kind of “network note” having to do with synergy or whatever. I see no reason to posit an external origin for something that fits within the already standard pattern.
Besides, it’s no more awkward than making She-Hulk fit with WandaVision or Moon Knight, or making Legends of Tomorrow fit with Arrow or Batwoman. Shared universes including both comedy and drama are not unheard of. After all, continuity between different series in a franchise — or sometimes even within a single series — is often more a pretense than a reality. It doesn’t matter if things really fit together, since it’s just a story conceit that they do. I mean, the early, more straight-up comedic seasons of M*A*S*H don’t really fit with its later, more dramatic seasons either in tone or in chronology, but the show still pretended they were all continuous.
@19/Michael Winters: “We saw in the movies that some crew members sleep in barracks style rooms. I think we see this in the Undiscovered Country. So limited rooms on ships has long been established”
Except that made no sense, since the Enterprise is the size of an aircraft carrier, yet has on the order of a tenth of a carrier’s typical complement, a few hundred instead of a few thousand. So why would it need to cram the crew in so tightly? What else is all that space being used for? It was just another example of Nicholas Meyer’s desire for less futurism and more militarism.
@21/Dog’s Dinner: “I’m saying the problem is trying to make a series with the sheer amount of jokes that break the suspension of disbelief, that all this exists alongside the other series which presumably want to have some verisimilitude as a dramatic fictional connected universe.”
To be fair, TOS and other shows have comedy episodes that sometimes strain suspension of disbelief. And plenty of dramatic episodes that do.
“I dunno, it’s like if someone in charge of a studio tried to splice together James Whale’s Frankenstein with Young Frankenstein… It just doesn’t work as a single universe.”
On the contrary, I’ve always felt that part of why Young Frankenstein is so good is that it does, in fact, work quite well as a canonical continuation of the first few Universal Frankenstein films — indeed, a better sequel than most of the later ones in the ’40s. It’s not like credibility is really a concern for a movie about a guy reanimating stitched-together corpses with lightning, right?
This discussion brings to mind the point mentioned in other threads. Roddenberry saw the various Trek productions as dramatizations of the Captain’s logs. Thi logic makes Lower Decks work as canon.
I vehemently disagree with the idea that Lower Decks is a parody. It’s not Galaxy Quest or Spaceballs. It isn’t “what if Weird Al made a Star Trek show?” It’s just another way of looking at the unimaginable weirdness that Star Trek characters can and frequently do run into, and it’s more irreverent, which makes it more human when compared to other Star Trek shows.
Also, and this might be too high-concept for this show, but what if Freeman has been either cybernetically altered or replaced by an android in this season, and that will explain all of her erratic behavior? Arguing over a rock, not knowing that engineers enjoy problem solving, being able to be possessed by the mask… It could work.
I probably overstated how out of character it is for a 24th-century human to be a schmuck, as we’ve seen plenty, but — I dunno, the things the Delta Shift folk were doing were just so petty and pointless. It’s not just that they were schmucks, it’s that they were being schmucks for such an idiotic reason.
I think that’s a big thing, this is also a replicator-based society where people can pretty much do whatever job they feel like. This type of jockeying for quarters just doesn’t seem like something someone in this society would even do.
And, finally, it’s just lazy writing. “It’s just like The Office, but IN SPACE!”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Where does the whole “ensigns sleep in bunks in the hallway of the ship” thing come from? Was that in an episode of the show or a movie or something? In Star Trek VI they had people sleeping in bunk beds in a room but I’ve never seen people literally sleeping in a hallway so I was wondering if that was made up for this show or is a reference to something.
I also thought bizarro Boimler, Mariner and Tendi were hilarious. Were they voiced by the same voice actors as regular Boimler, Mariner and Tendi?
Countless episodes and movies have shown humans being not the examples of perfection that Gene Roddenberry wanted them to be in TMP and early TNG. And this is a silly comedy show so I didn’t find the behavior of anyone out of place. Overall one of the better episodes of the series with lots of great character moments and relatively few references and meta jokes.
Why not? There’s a limited number of quarters on the ship and it’s something to do.
Scarcity free shouldn’t mean lack of competition.
Why?
Because a lot of people LIKE competition.
@27/Tim Kaiser: “Where does the whole “ensigns sleep in bunks in the hallway of the ship” thing come from? Was that in an episode of the show or a movie or something?”
It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s original to this show. They presumably did it because they thought it would be funny to show the lower deckers living in worse conditions than the senior officers. Which, as Keith points out, doesn’t really make sense in an egalitarian post-scarcity society with huge starships.
“I also thought bizarro Boimler, Mariner and Tendi were hilarious. Were they voiced by the same voice actors as regular Boimler, Mariner and Tendi?”
No. According to Memory Alpha, the man is Asif (played by Asif Ali), the dark-haired woman is Karavitus (Artemis Pebdani), and the redhead is Moxy (Charlotte Nicdao). They were introduced in “Terminal Provocations” in season 1, and the former two were glimpsed in “First First Contact” in season 2. This is the first time Moxy has had dialogue.
@28/C.T. Phipps: “Scarcity free shouldn’t mean lack of competition.
Why?
Because a lot of people LIKE competition.”
Good point. I’m reminded of how The Orville explains it — the economy of the post-scarcity future is based on reputation, on striving to do your best in your chosen field. It stands to reason that competing for pride and prestige would still be part of such a system even if competing for resources is not.
@1/Mary : “Though I agree with Mariner that this group shouldn’t be in Starfleet, her ‘they should join the Maquis’ line seemed out of place. It’s irrelevant–the Maquis were wiped out years ago.”
Unless it’s — ‘Oh, yeah, they’re all gone. I see what you did there, Mariner’.
@28, 29 – Of course there would still be competition. You can’t advance as a society without the spirit of competition. But it stretches belief (well, at least my belief), that all these people in a post-scarcity society would put up with 20/21st century-style militarism of cramped quarters. As CLB pointed out at @22, these are huge ships with tons of space. Why would crew quarters be an issue? I’m not saying that everyone would get a suite like the Captain’s quarters or something. But at least everyone should have they own enclosed space. So people might join up with a spirit of competition or adventure, but not necessity (like most enlisted military people). I doubt they would put up with cramped living quarters that are akin to Navy carriers in our current times just so they could serve in Starfleet.
Austin: Yeah, exactly. In my Klingon-focused novels that took place on the I.K.S. Gorkon, I had the enlisted crew sleeping in quarters very much like what Cerritos has, and it was meant as a contrast to Starfleet. The notion that a ship that has near-unlimited power (the constant annihilation of matter and antimatter is a huge-ass power source) can’t provide individual quarters beggars belief, especially given how much open space there is elsewhere on the ship (as we saw in this very episode!).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I feel the opposite way as many commenters about the crew quarters. To me it never made sense that Star Fleet vessels had crew quarters as large as usually portrayed because they are nominally military vessels. That means they may be called on to fight, and devoting space to the crew that could have made the ship just a little faster, or a little more deadly etc could be a fatal mistake. That’s why infantry load outs never get lighter even if technology improvements make individual items lighter. Because if you give the crew more space but your enemy didn’t, they may have the edge to win the battle.
Even for ships that aren’t expected to fight, you could explore just that little bit longer, or maybe save that many more lives etc. if you crammed in more equipment or supplies or whatever. It makes complete sense to me that the crew would be given the minimum amount of space needed to keep them sane and healthy; and in fact maybe that’s what the holodecks are for.
@@@@@ 33.
I feel the same way. I never had a problem with them being in barracks. I figured it was space-saving measure. Not all ships are going to be large. However, I do find it weird that they’re literally in the hallway. It doesn’t seem realistic to me.
@33/vinsentient: Interesting observation, and it sparks a thought. A support ship like the Cerritos might often be called upon to transport large quantities of things, like when it’s cleaning up after a “hero” starship’s adventure and needs to transport something hazardous to be disposed of/stored, or maybe needs to ship supplies to a colony or new member world, or what-have-you. So it might need to keep a lot of its space freed up for miscellaneous functions as required, leaving less room for the crew to have individual quarters.
Keith: “Why the producers decided to do a callback to one of the drearier and more forgettable seventh-season TNGepisodes is left as an exercise for the viewer.”
Personally, I think those tend to be the better episodes to do callbacks to on “Lower Decks”, the really BAD ones! I think there is just something funnier about that than to the good episodes.
I suppose it’s more a question of:
1. Do you think that Starfleet should provide quarters because it’s so luxury focused
or
2. Do you think Starfleet humans should be above such petty concerns?
I don’t have a big issue with bunk beds because Starfleet ships need more lab space over crew amenities.
@37/C.T. Phipps: I don’t think it’s about luxury — just the opposite. A luxury, by definition, is something extra beyond the usual standard of living, usually something that some people get and others don’t. Starfleet is supposed to ensure that everyone in the crew has their psychological well-being considered equally, that nobody has to live in unpleasant or stressful conditions. They’re living full-time on the ship for maybe years on end, and they need to be at their peak, so it’s a matter of practicality as well as decency to maximize their psychological well-being and standard of living. It’s supposed to be a basic tenet in Starfleet that the crew are more essential components than any technology or weapons or cargo.
I remain deeply, deeply disappointed that at no point does Ensign Boimler even suggest that they should just tell on the Delta Shift cheats to the Command Crew: clearly Ensign Mariner has been a Bad Influence!
Also, is it just me or is this the horniest episode of LOWER DECKS so far? (Not just the Doc and her own personal Clyde, but Tendi & Mariner in their underwear, amongst other things).
Anyway, I tend to agree that this episode was a dip back into slightly worrying humour – the Great Cheat Race, the Dove’s therapists being worryingly un-chill (though the ship as a whole was delightful to look at, inside & out: it’s a pity no ‘Tinker Bay’ for vacationing engineers was shown, but I suspect it’s in there all the same), the rather horrible notion that Security Chief Shax & Doctor T’Ana spend their downtime turning bank robberies into a blood-bath …
Oh well, at least we got Commander Ransom’s little fetish to compensate (Hopefully the show uses the anthropological sense of ‘fetish’, as I do, but with there’s no guarantee).
Was Delta Shift acting way out of line? Possibly, but I don’t see it as a flaw. For one, these are very young people, still learning matters of duty, discipline, and proper Starfleet behavior. And after two seasons of Beckett Mariner acting pretty much out of line every other scene, it’s not a stretch to assume there are others like her. If anything, these Delta Shift characters don’t even come close when it comes to Mariner’s usual unprofessional behavior.
And then I remember DS9, and how Sisko acted during a certain episode named Take me out to the Holosuite. And not just him. The Vulcan crew on that episode acted grotesquely undiplomatic and arrogant.
So overall, I found this episode to be an improvement over the previous one. Just getting to witness T’Ana and Shaxs holodeck fantasy was worth the whole thing. Seriously, I pretty much lost it when T’Ana said she planned on doing the deed in front of the hostages. That’s my “what if” imagination of Pulp Fiction would end up like, with Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer just doing it right there in front of everyone just for the heck of it.
And more power to the B plot. It only serves to remind us just how similar Freeman is to her daughter, and it gives us a nice glimpse of how engineers find ways to relax.