Back at the end of season one, we were introduced to Ensign Peanut Hamper, an exocomp who had joined Starfleet. Voiced by the great Kether Donohue, Peanut Hamper—who chose that name because she said it was mathematically perfect as a name—decided to abandon the Cerritos rather than go on a dangerous mission that would save the ship, preferring to save her own life rather than risk hers.
This backfired, as the U.S.S. Titan showed up a bit later and helped rescue Cerritos, and everyone lived happily ever after—except for Peanut Hamper, who was left floating in space.
This week, we find out what happened to her.
SOME MATHEMATICALLY IMPERFECT SPOILERS AHEAD
I really am having a hard time with this episode. As with Peanut Hamper’s original appearance in “No Small Parts” at the end of season one, I tremendously enjoyed Donohue’s voice work on the character. Donohue—who I first encountered on the F/X show You’re the Worst—is perfect for the self-centered Peanut Hamper.
But the story itself left a bad taste in my mouth in the end. Peanut Hamper manages to cobble together a barely-warp-capable engine over the course of her months in the debris field, and also has a Wilson-in-Cast-Away-style companion in “Sophie,” a piece of equipment she painted a face on so she’d have someone to talk to.
A Drookmani scavenger ship shows up, and Peanut Hamper—after declaring that she’d always be there for Sophie—sacrifices her friend so she can make her escape. In retrospect, this was actually foreshadowing.
Peanut Hamper winds up crash-landing on Areolus, a world populated by owl people (and on which all the animal life has wings) who appear to be a pre-warp society. Peanut Hamper is taken in by the locals, eventually winning them over by using her built-in replicator to provide medicine and technology and other nifty stuff that makes their lives easier. She even winds up marrying one of the locals—the son of the leader—and their sex scenes are just ridiculous. Deliberately so, mind you, but still…
(By the way, the planet name is stumbled over by Boimler later on in an attempt to make a vague joke about the name’s similarity to “aureole,” but it doesn’t really land.)
Shortly after that, we see them living in connubial bliss. Peanut Hamper now has replicated a beak so she can assimilate a bit better, which is adorable.
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Then Peanut Hamper finds out that they’re not pre-warp at all—they’re post-warp. They abandoned technology and buried all their spaceships. They know all about alien life, and had many encounters with them. But they hated what they became when they became part of galactic society, so they abandoned all traces of technology, and returned to a more simplistic society.
Not long after that, the Drookmani show up and try to take the buried ships. Peanut Hamper finally does something she was afraid to do sooner: send a distress call to Starfleet. Since she was technically AWOL, she thought it was better to stay on a primitive planet, but now they need help.
Because it’s their show, the Cerritos answers the distress call. Peanut Hamper claims to realize that she’s got to be a proper Starfleet officer and help save the day, and when she does so, Captain Freeman is willing to take her back into Starfleet—and Peanut Hamper tries very hard to convince her new husband that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to come with her.
Then the Drookmani captain blows the whole thing, because it turns out that Peanut Hamper is the one who told them about the planet and the underground spaceships, and she set the whole thing up to make herself look heroic and be able to get off this crummy planet in a way that would get her accepted back into Starfleet. (The plan was at least partly messed up by the buried ships still functioning, and the Drookmani take possession of one and blow the shit out of the Cerritos with it.)
On the one hand, the title of the episode is misleading, because this isn’t a redemption story. Peanut Hamper is not remotely redeemed and learns nothing. She was a self-centered twit in “No Small Parts,” and everything she goes through in this episode leads to her remaining a self-centered twit.
On the other hand, her redemption is about as convincing as being mathematically perfect as the name “Peanut Hamper” is.
So what was the point of bringing her back? I mean yes, Donohue’s awesome, and the episode provides a lot of laughs as she snarks her way through integrating into the society of the primitive owl people, but ultimately there’s no forward movement here, and the “twist” at the end—that Peanut Hamper is still a self-centered twit—is more disappointing than anything.
In the end, she winds up in the same storage unit for megalomaniacal computers that we saw at the end of “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” with Peanut Hamper placed right next to AGIMUS from that episode. The conclusion of has the two of them laughing maniacally at the beginning of their beautiful friendship, though Peanut Hamper is less than enthused when the other evil computers get in on the maniacal-laughter act. Still, the notion of these two teaming up is way more interesting than anything in the episode prior to it… (AGIMUS, when introduced to her, immediately comments that it’s a mathematically perfect name, because of course he does.)
Random thoughts
- Exocomps were originally established in TNG’s “The Quality of Life,” where their being alive and possibly sentient was fought for by Data. Peanut Hamper appeared in “No Small Parts,” and we see the climax of that episode from her POV floating in space, and then fill in the many months since then. Again, there was no evidence, none, in the TNG episode that exocomps were sentient….
- Besides Donohue, two other actors return to reprise their roles. Jeffrey Combs is back as AGIMUS from “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” at the very end, and J.G. Hertzler returns as the Drookmani captain from “Terminal Provocations.” This is the third Trek show that has had Hertzler and Combs appear as guests in the same episode, after DS9 (where both had recurring roles, Hertzler as Martok, Combs as both Weyoun and Brunt) and Voyager (“Tsunkatse”).
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to support the Kickstarter for Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups. Co-edited by Keith and New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Maberry, this anthology from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers will feature classic characters banding together: Captain Nemo with Frankenstein’s monster; Ace Harlem with the Conjure-Man; Marian of Sherwood with Annie Oakley; Prospero with Don Quixote; Lydia Bennet with Lord Ruthven; and tons more, including stories by Trek scribes Greg Cox, David Mack, Dayton Ward, Kevin J. Anderson, Rigel Ailur, and Derek Tyler Attico, and TNG screenwriter Diana Dru Botsford. Click here to support it.
Personally, I thought it was the best episode by far of the season. Maybe not perfect, but they did something different, and I respect them for it.
For the first time since wej Duj, we get an episode which is primarily from the POV of someone other than the lower deckers. Actually, it’s far moreso than that episode, where they were still involved in the C plot. Here we’re all in with Peanut Hamper for the first 16 minutes, and the Cerritos was only brought in at all in the final nine. Even then, it’s really the bridge crew who are the main interface with Peanut Hamper. Tendi gets a few lines, befitting her “close” relationship with Peanut Hamper when we last saw them. Mariner and Boimler get a line or two, but I don’t think Rutherford even speaks. This was a bold choice.
And it pays off in spades. This episode is a very different sort of comedy than most of Lower Decks. There’s very little humor here based upon Trek references at all. Instead it’s basically “What if we speedrun Avatar, but with a piece of shit for a protagonist?” There’s many other references mixed in as well (like the obvious Castaway joke in the opener), but for the most part this is a deconstruction of the “heroes journey” arc, with a completely unlikable protagonist who almost fools you (and the other characters) that she’s actually grown into a hero, only to have it quickly subverted. This is not an episode of a workplace sitcom, this is satire.
It was also a smart choice to use Peanut Hamper for this, because this episode is mean-spirited in such a way that it simply could not be done with the main cast of lower deckers. She was the perfect protagonist for this dark, depressing, yet amusing story.
Also, they found a way to get J.G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Combs back, which is enough to up the rating significantly.
I personally think it’s a near-perfect episode, because it did exactly what it set out to do. Asking for a different ending to this is like asking for a different ending to Blazing Saddles. The humor here arguably could have been done a little better, but I think goofy laugh-out-loud humor would have taken away from the satiric elements too much.
I was really getting into Peanut Hamper’s story of growth and redemption, which was played unusually straight for an LD episode aside from PH’s wisecracks. So it hurt when it turned out the whole thing was just an act. I love a good redemption plot, so the cynical twist was very disappointing. I still think it was an impressive episode, though; I love it that the show continues to be daring enough to center whole episodes around people other than the regular cast. Boimler and Mariner were barely in this one, and I don’t recall if Rutherford was in it at all.
Was this the first time a Star Trek episode forwent a main title sequence and showed the opening credits over the story in progress? Although it was kind of a hybrid opening, more like a movie title sequence playing over a montage, with a variation on the main theme.
I don’t think the title “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption” is misleading; rather, it’s foreshadowing. It’s a hint that PH’s redemption process is a calculated act on her part.
I thought this was a fun story, myself. Yes, it was different, but it’s good for Star Trek to try something different once in a while. I do agree that the title is misleading but that was probably for irony–plus I love that Agimus uses that very line!
As for “what was the point?” of bringing back Peanut Hamper. Well, you could ask “What was the point of bringing in Tom Paris? What was the point of seeing Sonya Gomez? what was the point of going to Deep Space 9? The answer is — the writers thought it’d it be interesting.
2@@@@@
As much as I love a good redemption arc, I also feel like some characters benefit from turning out not to be redeemable because they succumbed to their flaws. It should never be the default but it also shows that being evil isn’t something that doesn’t exist or just a matter of caring enough. Sometimes people are going to be just plain nasty and you have to be prepared for that. It’s why I always felt that Dukat turning out to be a guy incapable of growth and always defaulting back to monstrous narcissism was a good thing because, well, you don’t want to say a Space Nazi General’s problems was he wasn’t hugged enough.
It’s why I also feel Data realized Fajo really was someone who had to die.
I actually loved the twist that Peanut Hamper wasn’t redeemed. I like subverting the expectation thst suffering would necessarily be enobling, and, throughout the whole episode, I was thinking “You know, she’s not really acting any different than she was before,” so the twist made that make sense. Beyond that, I loved the entire owl civilization (something that could never have been done on live action), and the plot reminded me of the first few chapters of “The Stars My Destination”, with Peanut Hamper in the appropriately utterly selfish role of Gully Foyle. Plus, I love that apparently Agimus is going to be a recurring villain!
(If they keep cutting back to the Daystrom Institute, I hope that we get a cameo with Jurati as a graduate student or something.)
It’s possible I was too hard on this episode. I do like the notion of doing an episode entirely from the POV of the guest star, and it worked on those terms, but — I dunno, I felt so let down by the end. Ah, well….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t mind the subversion of our expectations with the ‘redemption’ either.
I’m actually reminded of something Keith once stated about TNG’s “Reunion” (both in the Tor Rewatch and his old website) that’s always stuck with me.
Specifically, it’s when Word has Duras dead to rights at the end of their duel. Every convention of TV — and Trek up to that point in time in particular — conditioned us to expect that Worf will relent at the last moment, make a Trek speech about vengeance not solving anything, et. al.
Instead, as Keith so eloquently put it, Worf guts the f***er.
So, same thing here. Trek‘s humanism and trying to find the best in all beings and all species is all well and good.
But at the end of the day, to quote the Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolite, “You can’t save ’em all, Hasselhoff!”
Incidentally, I noticed that Rutherford’s original implant was intact and operational in the Pakled debris field, and was presumably scavenged by the Drookmani. I suspect that that will be important at some point.
Peanut Hamper not growing and changing felt fine to me, since this is an absurd comedy and not a normal Star Trek drama.
“
“So, same thing here. Trek‘s humanism and trying to find the best in all beings and all species is all well and good.
But at the end of the day, to quote the Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolite, “You can’t save ’em all, Hasselhoff!”
I think DS9 squared the circle best: societies change, but people don’t. You could look at the whole Dominion War, but O’Brien in “Hard Time” sums it up in his suicidal rant near the end, how they say humanity evolved past senseless violence and the like, but it’s just not true, we’re all still animals deep down.
And lest that get too depressing, it’s countered by the fact that the rest of the station came together to help O’Brien before he kills himself. He’s suffered greatly, but his friends and family can still help.
So, to bring it back- the Federation is a really great place, but you’re still gonna have human beings being human beings (or exocomps, and so on). People break. People can be selfish, and murderous, and cowards. They can go on drunken benders and stab their nebbish best friend in the first episode. But they can be generous and merciful and valiant too, and the Federation works to support that. But you’re still gonna get jerks like Peanut Hamper.
@9/David Pirtle: “Peanut Hamper not growing and changing felt fine to me, since this is an absurd comedy and not a normal Star Trek drama.”
But that’s just why it disappointed me. Up to then, the episode felt like a deliberate departure from the usual Lower Decks stuff, in tone as well as character focus, and that was what made it so interesting.
Yeah, the people who dislike this episode seem to have basically liked the Avatar plot.
Seeing as how this show lives and dies on its TNG references and callbacks, I’m booking it now: The AI uprising, including Peanut Hamper and AGIMUS, will either involve, be led by, or at least mention Lore.
This sounds like a fun episode (I’ve not watched this show). Maybe I’ll see if I can find it.
On a different topic: I’m having trouble parsing this phrase: “, preferring to save her own life rather than risk hers.” Is something missing?
Mariner is a lot less selfish this season, and it felt as if the showrunners saved up the amount of selfishness that Mariner normally would have displayed over the past seven episodes and gave all seven episodes’ worth of selfishness to Peanut Hamper. Which is good — I’d rather see six episodes of a nicer Mariner and have one episode of Peanut’s wreaking havoc. :-)
But it makes me wonder — is there some quota of selfishness that must be maintained or something? Are the Lower Decks writers under a curse, where they must display a certain quantity of selfishness? WTF? :-)
@15/Corylea: I don’t think I’d call Mariner selfish. She’s reckless and erratic, but I think she often goes overboard in support of her friends, or in trying to help people in need. Like in the series premiere, when Boimler tried to arrest her for violating regulations, but it turned out she was doing it to circumvent red tape and get farming equipment to people who needed it.
She is self-centered, but in the sense that she only trusts herself and thinks her solution is always the right one. She doesn’t have faith in the system or other people and assumes she has to go renegade to solve a problem, as we saw emphatically in the season 3 premiere. But that’s not the same as being selfish.
I was curious to see who voiced Rowda. He reminded me quite a bit of Michael Bell (Zan on Super Friends and guest actor in “Encounter at Farpoint” among other Trek appearances); turned out to be Harry Shum Jr., which surprised me. Now I’m curious whether he was deliberately going for a classic kind of sound.
I think it also pays to note that Peanut Hamper’s activities of arranging a Drookmarian pirate assault on her own wedding just so she could save the day and get back into Starfleet’s good graces isn’t just bratty selfish behavior. It’s genuinely Agrimus levels of EVIL.
Especially since as we repeatedly note in this episode, she could have called Starfleet at any time.
I want Peanut Hamper and the other evil AIs to be the big bass of Picard season 3. Mainly because it would tie into the Data & the other andoids/Picard as android story that we’ve had so far but mostly because I want to hear a dramatic speech by Patrick Stewart speaking the name Peanut Hamper in all seriousness.
Not a fan of this one. Peanut Hamper is just really, really, REALLY annoying as a character. And nobody else is in it long enough to make an impact.
I feel like this episode was setting up a future confrontation with three Lower Decks AI villains, because I think the opening sequence with Rutherford’s first implant activating was a sign that Badgey is still alive and plotting.
As Spock always points out that things are “logical” (even when it does not make sense*), Peanut Hamper claims everything about her is “mathematically perfect”: at first, the title mostly announces it is about Peanut Hamper. Then when we realise her true intention, we reinterpret the title as meaning her “redemption” was entirely calculated (and badly). To me, the best tittles are those that stay relevant throughout the story, and whose meaning evolves over time; in the regard, it was a great title!
* “[Spock] often gives many significant digits for probabilities that are grossly uncalibrated. (E.g., “Captain, if you steer the Enterprise directly into that black hole, our probability of surviving is only 2.234%.” Yet nine times out of ten the Enterprise is not destroyed. What kind of tragic fool gives four significant digits for a figure that is off by two orders of magnitude?)”
@21/Athreeren: Yeah, that’s annoyed me for a long time, the way TV and movie writers assume that scientists always give exact measurements and probabilities to multiple significant figures, when realistically it’s more often a range of possible values, and it’s simply bad science not to acknowledge the margin of uncertainty. They’re mistaking precision (how exact something is) for accuracy (how correct it is).
Yeah, I feel like this episode will be appreciated most by DS9 fans. It is surprisingly dark in its message.
“Some people are just no damned good and your empathy will not get them to change their ways.”
@23/C.T. Phipps: Maybe, but I feel the cynicism was offset by how Rawda rose to heroism and the Areore (which is how Memory Alpha spells the species name, I presume from closed captioning) shook off their fears and embraced their past again. PH may have been acting selfishly, even villainously, but her actions still inspired others to better themselves. So it is still an optimistic story overall.
Although I’m concerned about what this means for exocomp rights in general. I mean, we’re now in 2381 (according to the creative team’s tweets), which means it’s only 4 years until the synth attack on Mars and the ban on A.I.s (other than holograms, apparently). If they are building toward some kind of climax involving evil A.I.s like AGIMUS, Hamper, and Badgey, as Chase suggested in #20, could it be that it primes the Federation’s fears of artificial life, with the later synth attack being the final straw?
@22: By the way, I forgot to include the source.
I suppose it’s a question of what exactly the ban on Synthetic Lifeforms entails. Was it a ban purely on postronic brains or a ban on all artificial intelligence completely? Because we have the La Sirena holograms but it’s possible that Rios was just flat-out ignoring the law. I can’t imagine the Federation banning the Doctor and his kind to destruction.
Also, we have the argument being over banning the creation of New Synths not the destruction of existing ones.
The Exocomps may well leave the Federation, though, all fifteen of them.
@26/C.T. Phipps: Most holograms aren’t sentient, but then, if you go by the novels, the synths that rebelled on Mars weren’t sentient either. So it’s unclear why androids were banned but holograms weren’t. Maybe it’s just because holograms can be turned off and thus aren’t as dangerous.
I’m not suggesting the exocomps would be killed, but their acceptance as a sentient and equal species might be undermined by Peanut Hamper’s actions, and it could get worse once the synth ban kicks in. They could all end up in that computer jail at the Daystrom Institute. Or they could be exiled.
@27 I have basically no evidence to support this, but my take on the synth ban was that it really only banned humanoid androids, because at that time there were none that were considered sentient due to Data’s death. It might also have put stricter rules on creating sentient holograms, but I doubt it would affect existing ones.
If Peanut Hamper is indeed sentient, and her place as a Starfleet officer seems to indicate that she is, isn’t locking her in a small box cruel and unusual punishment? Doesn’t the Federation send people to rehabilitation colonies instead? Did she get a trial?
Data was admitted to Starfleet without a declaration of his sentience. It appears that everyone just assumed that he was until Maddox noticed that omission and attempted to use it to his own ends.
I wish Trek would formulate a consistent theory of artificial sentience. On the one hand, creating sentient androids is supposedly an incredibly difficult problem that only Noonien Soong ever cracked. On the other hand, sentient holograms have come into being by accident on at least a couple of occasions, a teenage prodigy (Wesley) accidentally triggered the evolution of sentient nanites, a scientist accidentally created sentient exocomps, and on Lower Decks alone we’ve had ensigns casually create sentient artilects at least once (Tendi’s dog creature) and possibly twice (Badgey). So artificial consciousness is at once incredibly difficult to achieve on purpose and startlingly easy to achieve by accident, which really doesn’t make any sense.
I’m a big fan of lower decks but I honestly could not wait for this episode to just freaking end felt like the longest drawn out and quite frankly absolutely boring episode of lower decks…if you think I’m being hard on this episode I’m being polite right now…I have never ever wanted to turn off lower decks so badly but I’m watching it with another massive Trek fan…I hope they never do another episode where the main chars are almost non existent…I just wanted them back on screen and doing anything else…It could been cleaning sonic showers and it would have been better then this…the swing and a miss was miles apart …what a total let down of an episode…for the first time since lower decks started I wanted to turn it off
Aint no rule a dog can’t play basketball.
I think of the moment where the computer creates the sentient Moriarty. The technology of the Enterprise is so much more advanced than the human brain and has trillions of functions it can do as a purpose, no human brain can match its capacity of creation.
@30. Soong’s genius was in creating (portable-sized) hardware that could avoid cascade failure. It’s possible that creating sapience is easy, but sapient AIs don’t tend to last very long before spiraling into insanity and/or brain-death. We saw what happened to the Doctor (his program had to be modified/patched repeatedly both by Voyager‘s crew and Dr. Zimmerman himself), and we’ve never gotten much of a follow-up with any other fully-sapient AIs.
Come to think of it, the Doctor’s case might even bear that out; his problems arose from running more-or-less continuously for several years. Odds are back in the Federation, EMHs (and exocomps, for that matter) would’ve been regularly “factory reset” every few years before any “problems” started developing.
(Moriarty and Vic Fontaine might be special cases, since despite their self-awareness they both exist primarily in the context of their holodeck programs –if cascade failure is analogous to information/sensory overload, it might be easier to stave off in a “controlled” environment.)
@29/kkozoriz: “Data was admitted to Starfleet without a declaration of his sentience. It appears that everyone just assumed that he was until Maddox noticed that omission and attempted to use it to his own ends.”
That’s incorrect. What Data said in “The Measure of a Man” was that, when he applied to the Academy, Maddox “was the sole member of the committee to oppose my entrance on the grounds that I was not a sentient being.” So the question of his sentience was indeed addressed at the time, and the consensus of the Academy committee was that Data did qualify as sentient, otherwise he wouldn’t have been admitted. But Maddox was the sole dissenting voice, and in “Measure” he must have convinced someone in the admiralty to overrule the Academy panel’s decision, requiring the question to be taken up by a higher court.
So nothing was merely “assumed.” The question was decided in Data’s favor, but evidently just at the Academy level. Or maybe it was decided on a higher, Starfleet-wide level, but the people behind that decision retired in the interim and were replaced by people more sympathetic to Maddox’s bigoted point of view. We’ve seen recently in real life that just because a court battle was won the first time, that doesn’t mean it will never be challenged or reversed.
“was the sole member of the committee to oppose my entrance on the grounds that I was not a sentient being.”
@34/ Christopher
I think you and I interpreted that sentence differently. I didn’t get the impression that Maddox was the only one who disagreed that Data was sentient. It’s that he was the “only one who opposed Data’s entrance. Maddox’s reason is because he didn’t believe Data was sentient.
@35/Mary: But Maddox considered Data’s sentience to be the grounds for disqualification, which implies that sentience is required for Academy admission. Which pretty much goes without saying, really. There has to be some standard for why the Academy admits, say, Vulcans but not sehlats.
This is explicitly spelled out in the original TNG writers’ bible, although of course there’s a lot there that ended up being contradicted. The last line of the detailed description of Data on p. 26 of the March 23, 1987 edition of the bible says, “(Starfleet’s own regulations prevent the rejection of a candidate so long as it tests out to be a sentient life form.)” So the idea that Data had been tested and recognized as sentient, and that his admission to the Academy was contingent upon that fact, was built into the concept for the character literally from the beginning. The line about Maddox and the Academy committee was clearly meant to allude to that detail from the bible. Sure, you could handwave an alternate interpretation if you wanted, but it would not be what the creators of TNG or the writer of “The Measure of a Man” intended.
I severely disagree here. I thought the episode made a STUPENDOUS job in making me believe that Peanut Hamper was in fact headed towards complete and absolute redemption. I didn’t see that twist coming at all. Hell, once they got married and Starfleet arrived, I was prepared to embrace Rowda as a new permanent character on the show.
By playing the whole thing this straight, it caught me completely off guard. I was shocked, I wouldn’t say I was disappointed. If anything, it was true to the character. Played very much like a long con of a joke. Shock and a sense of almost-relief in a way, playing straight with the time-proven episodic television convention that no characters ever evolve and always go back to their original self (call it reset button humor, if you will).
I also thought this was a bold take on interspecies romance. Played very much straight and completely accepting of the fact. If that was supposed to be ridiculous, I completely missed it. To me, this was superlative LD. An atypical episode that goes for full sincere drama, and then cuts off the tension at the knees at the very end. Manipulative? Definitely, but it still works.
@37/Eduardo: I should clarify that my sense of hurt when PH’s redemption turned out to be an act does not mean I think the episode was bad. On the contrary, it means the episode succeeded in gaining my emotional investment. It’s the purpose of stories to make us feel things, and that shouldn’t be limited only to good feelings. I was sad and disappointed that a character I believed in had betrayed my faith, and that was probably just what the storytellers wanted me to feel. Which means the story worked.
Would I have liked it if it had been a genuine feel-good redemption story? Yeah, I would. But storytellers aren’t required to coddle us and give us only what we want and expect.
@38/Christopher: That’s fair. I once heard being said that a good story is a well-built emotional rollercoaster – whether the outcome is positive or negative.
@36 – There’s lots of stuff in the various series bibles that doesn’t make it to screen. The bible is a guide, not commandments. Writeres are free to make changes if TPTB agree.
However, taking your point as valid, if Data is considered sentient then Peanut Hamper would be as well. Is it the sign of a morally advanced civilization to imprison someone in a box that’s hardly bigger than they are?
Also, the Daystrom Institute is the organization running the AI prison, not Starfleet or the Federation. Private prisons anyone?
Kether Donohue (the voice of peanut hamper) is a great and underutilized comic actress, and so I was happy to see PH’s return. The episode really gave donohue a lot to work with, and the possibility of having PH as a reoccurring villain is a welcome addition to the show.
Below Decks episodes usually subverts Treks utopian ideals in the second act only to reassert those same ideals in the third act. This episode inverts that structure which was unexpected precisely because we’re so used to Starfleet values winning out in the end. having PH’s redemption be a con was satisfying because it expressed the truism that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t change its spots, or something.
@41/Kingston: “[Lower] Decks episodes usually subverts Treks utopian ideals in the second act only to reassert those same ideals in the third act. This episode inverts that structure which was unexpected precisely because we’re so used to Starfleet values winning out in the end.”
But that is what happened, isn’t it? The subversion — PH’s redemption being a con — was the second act, and the climax had Starfleet values winning out, because Rawda worked with the crew to save the day, PH was arrested, and the Areore chose to set aside their Luddite fears and embrace science and growth again.
It felt like a backdoor pilot to me
What if they spun off the meglomaniac machines into a mini series – I’d love that. I also think it was “trying out” the audience to see what we’re willing to watch, which makes sense if you want to grow the show and keep it going for many seasons. Take some risks now and if it tanks, no biggie.
Lost opportunity NOT having Dr Miglimo flying on the planet!
And I thought Boimler’s pronunciation issues totally landed as a joke.
Fascinated to see what else Mike has in store for us!
If it really was “aureole” I’m not surprised the joke didn’t land. “Areola” would seem to have more obvious comic potential.
I agree with @43: When was the last time we had an episode open with “Previously on Lower Decks…”?
This episode felt to me like the first episode of a multi-parter, leading up to the next episode in which megalomaniac sentient computers joining forces, escaping, and causing havoc, then a third episode where the Lower Decks crew resolve the problem.
@45/David_O: I assume the “Previously” was meant to remind us of Peanut Hamper’s backstory and where she left off, since it’s been two years since her first episode premiered. So I don’t see a reason to read anything more into it.
@3/Mary: Yes, but those characters weren’t the focus of the entire episode.
@11/CLB: I think that’s exactly why I was disappointed with this episode by the end. This episode showed so much growth in writing and character focus while still being very much a comedy, but at the end it felt like the just returned to the default setting for Lower Decks, which left my wife asking the same question as krad: why did we just spend a whole episode with this character?
Alright, I’m at comment #47. It’s the sort of meta that Mariner would appreciate. Boy howdy, did I miss Mariner this week.
@47/Dante: “…which left my wife asking the same question as krad: why did we just spend a whole episode with this character?”
To me, what worked about it wasn’t the character herself, but her unintended impact on the people around her. Even though PH was only acting selfishly, Rawda and his people still benefitted from her efforts, then grew beyond them, even if PH failed to grow. It’s a nice refutation of the civilizing-mission idea — even though the “missionary” was acting for selfish reasons, the indigenous people had their own agency beyond her and ultimately took control of their own destiny in spite of her.
In short, Peanut Hamper is just the catalyst for Rawda’s hero’s journey.
I like that despite the fact they only have 10 episodes per season, they’re willing to take creative risks like basing an episode off of a random one off character from 2 seasons ago. Reminds me of the episode from last season that focused on the Vulcan and Klingon lower decks crews.
We need a Lower Decks movie called THE WRATH OF PEANUT HAMPER.
@48 – So, if we don’t agree with a society that gives up technology, we should put them in a situation where they have to rely upon technology or die? And that’s a good thing?
They’ve been doing just fine for many, many years until Peanut Hamper showed up. Nobody was forcing them to give up their technology, they made the decision on their own. What they were forced into, at least Rawda was, was to embrace the technology that they had chosen to give up. Technology or death.
I’m not sure they were doing fine – adults were dying of treatable diseases and infants were dying during hatching. None of these people were making informed choices – they were unaware of the alternative apparently due to choice made freely by their ancestors but imposed on the current generation.
@52/AndyLove: “they were unaware of the alternative apparently due to choice made freely by their ancestors but imposed on the current generation.”
Yes. This. It’s invalid to treat all generations of a population as the same group. Every generation makes its own choices, sometimes to embrace the past, sometimes to rebel against it. Often the choice to revert to a past way of doing things (or at least the way it’s believed to have been done) is a rebellion against the previous generation’s rebellion. But the key is that they have a free and informed choice, and they don’t have that if the truth of their history has been hidden from them.
The usual myth is that any society exposed to more advanced technology will automatically be harmed or destroyed by it, but that’s a lie that Westerners tell ourselves to avoid facing the truth that our ancestors deliberately and systematically tried to destroy other cultures and force them to conform to Western beliefs and customs. Europe itself was once the less advanced culture exposed to more advanced knowledge from the East like gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass, and decimal mathematics, and Europe was able to thrive using that outside knowledge because it was free to make its own choices of what to do with it, rather than having outsiders trying to force them to become a certain thing.
@48 – “Rawda and his people still benefitted from her efforts, then grew beyond them”
You’re stating that being put in a place where they had to use the technology is a good thing. Now that the word is out, what’s to prevent more of the pirates from returning, this time with enough ships to defeat the big one Rwanda was flying. And to make sure that he doesn’t try that again, they ,ay just decide to kill everyone on the planet, or at least those close to the cache of ships and who knows what other technology to prevent them from interfering.
What’s happened is that the Areore now have a nice, big bullseye painted on them, thanks to a member of Starfleet.
@52 – “None of these people were making informed choices – they were unaware of the alternative apparently due to choice made freely by their ancestors but imposed on the current generation. “
How long could the people of Earth survive if you took away the replicators and transporters and advanced medicine? Humanity is just as trapped as the Areore were. And people are still dying from diseases. How often do we hear about a plague breaking out on some planet? Not to mention the seemingly endless wars. There’s still plenty of ways for people to die with advanced technology. Technology just makes it easier to kill bunch of them at once.
kkozoriz: So you’re saying it’s better for people not to have advanced medicine and risk dying in childbirth because of a theoretical possibility of being attacked by pirates some time in the future, maybe.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who prefers having modern medicine and not risking dying from an abcessed tooth
I would just like to say that those who feel nothing for the Folk of Areolus after spending a whole episode with those engagingly backwoods bird-people have hearts colder & darker than mine: I hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Big Chief Robosexual and his extended family, because they are a hoot.
Pun intended. SHAME IS FOR COWARDS!
Also, chalk me up as one of those left very properly disappointed in Peanut Hamper by the superlatively well-executed subversion of our expectations at the heart of this episode: having previously felt little for the character but disdain, it’s now impossible not to feel some measure of pity for one who could have done so much better, but chose not to.
That is, shame over a healthy little pun is for cowards – shame at the very thought of wronging your fellow sapient beings is, of course, a healthy & sensible response to the idea of theft, murder, rapine etc.
@55 – If that’s the case, why isn’t the Federation on every “primitive” planet offering immunization clinics. advanced childbirth support, cloning for limb replacement or organ damage? Should that be the driving force of Starfleet? Because immunizing entire planetary populations sin’t going to leave a whole lot of time for much else.
They don’t even have to do it openly. Beam down in disguise. Immunize village/town etc. after applying a light tun so they don’t wake up. Repeat until everyone has had their shots.
If “taking care” of less advanced plants is the thing, then there’s obviously no need for a Prime Directive.
And if people don’t get sick, who on their planet is going to do medical research? Someone breaks their leg and the next morning it’s magically healed? Might as well put it down to the will of the gods except with really, verifiable miracles.
If there’s a planet that has given up technology, does the Federation then have the moral obligation to show them the error of their ways? Maybe create a situation where the technology is the only thing that can save them from a major disaster (created by the Federation, of course).?
No doubt a lot of people on Earth would die if some evil person took away replicators, etc. But a person on Earth could decide to forgo that technology and live a technology-free life, for however long that was – or change their mind when things got tough – no one is forcing them to use technology or to not use it. The people of Areore don’t have the choice to use technology when they need or want to, because their ancestors deprived them of the knowledge of what technology could do. Having the information to make an informed choice is important.
@59 – Rawda was aware of the technology. He was even able to fly the ship single handed and destroy the pirates. Their reasons for giving it up are still valid. The technology is what drew the pirates to their planet, thanks to Peanut Hamper.
Maybe Peanut Hamper should get a reduced sentence for bringing the technology back to the Areore. Apparently deciding that technology in some cases leads to bad outcomes is a bad thing and must be “rectified” by any means necessary.
If you’re going to say that the Areore shouldn’t be bound by the decisions made by their ancestors, shouldn’t that also go the other way? If the ancestors chose to embrace technology, shouldn’t their dependents have the right to give it up? Christopher seems to be of the opinion that technology must be embraced in all situations, even though the Areore were living peacefully until technology in the form of Peanut Hamper and the pirates showed up.
Hunting, particularly in much less advanced societies, can be a dangerous undertaking, often leaning to early death. Why doesn’t the Federation provide these cultures with food replicators so they no longer need to need to put themselves at risk? Is the purpose of thee UFP to reduce the death rate to the lowest possible value? If the Federation can prevent these deaths and don’t, doesn’t that mean they’re partial responsible? Or should this cultures go through the same growing and learning process that other have?
Rawda was not aware that technology could save the lives of his father or the children. He was amazed and delighted when that happened – he never had the chance to decide for himself whether to use technology to save lives because his ancestors denied him that information.
Anyone can decide to forgo technology whenever they like, but forcing other people to follow someone else’s choice is wrong. This applies to both the Federation forcing technology on alen races and to the Areore ancestors forcing lack of medical technology on their descendants.
Peanut Hamper is a criminal.
@61/AndyLove: Yes, PH is a criminal, but not because she offered knowledge and help to people in need. That’s not forcing them to change, it’s just offering them an opportunity. It was their own free choice to embrace it. (Since they’re technically post-warp, the Prime Directive doesn’t apply in that sense, only in the sense of not forcing political change or favoring one side in a local conflict.) Her crime came later when she called in the raiders to attack the community.
Agreed.
@62 – Peanut Hamper didn’t offer the choice to Rawda’s father. She simply used her technology on him. None of the Areore were even aware she could do that. Same with the eggs. Didn’t offer to help, just went ahead and did it. Again, no decision made by the Areore.
Also, Rawda’s flock now has the ships and none of the others on the planet do. What’s to prevent Rawda from using the ships to bring them all under his wing, so to speak. Offer them the technology at the barrel of a phaser. He’s got the power, the others don’t.
Maybe Rawda will decide to use the ships to go and enforce peace on the planets that they used to have conflict with. War for peace, yay! Because they have the technology.
Nobody can tell what the result will be but there’s a good chance that it will involve a lot more bloodshed that before Peanut Hamper showed up.
This is a MAJOR disruption to the planetary society.
Maybe the Federation should teach the Yangs and the Khoms how to make nuclear weapons again. After all, they knew how to make them once.
Rawda knew about the ships long before he met PH – he showed them to her not the other way around. So he and his people really were making an informed choice not to travel in space – good for them.
The same is not true for the medical treatments- they clearly had no idea that was possible. Admittedly PH should have asked first (she is an obnoxious jerk after all) but Rawda was so delighted at his father (and the hatchlings) living that it’s pretty obvious that if PH had asked, he would have agreed. Notice the difference: Rawda shows her the ships and says that they’ve decided not to use them, versus Rawda saying that hatchlings often die and attacks by the Sky Snake are fatal – he doesn’t say “We’ve decided that medical treatment has downsides so we don’t use it” – he has no idea that medical treatment is possible.
I’m optimistic about Rawda’s future – they can continue to not use spaceships if they don’t want to (and if they are lucky enough to avoid evil folk like PH) but can decide to use medical treatments that they now know are an option if they want.
@65 – Can they use the medical treatment? They don’t have them available, that was all Peanut Hamper. They’d have to get them from the Federation. And if the Federation is willing to do that for them, shouldn’t they do it for every non-technological society?
And yes, they knew about the ships and decided not to use them, but they were put in a position of having to change their mind because Starfleet admitted a sociopathic AI to it’s ranks.
Mike McMahan has said that while Lower Decks is canon you shouldn’t take the show 100% seriously, that events and things are exaggerated for the comedy and medium of the show. But I’m not sure how you would unexaggerated something like this episode to make it more realistic.
@67/tuskin38: “But I’m not sure how you would unexaggerated something like this episode to make it more realistic.”
What would you need to “unexaggerate?” I didn’t see anything here that was especially implausible relative to the rest of Trek.
I agree with Christopher. Not just on the last episode but on all of it. There’s enough weirdness in Trek already that LD hardly moves the needle on the unbelievable meter.
The Federation should help societies that ask for help; the people on Areolus can trade with the Federation for the medical treatments they want.
I agree with this – the Federation didn’t do a very good job evaluating Peanut Hamper’s character before admitting her to Starfleet. She’s an awful person, willing to do sacrifice anyone else in the universe to benefit herself.
“Lower Decks” doesn’t exaggerate the Trek universe – it highlights the typical implausibilities in the Trek universe, instead of ignoring them.
@66/kkozoriz: “And yes, they knew about the ships and decided not to use them, but they were put in a position of having to change their mind because Starfleet admitted a sociopathic AI to it’s ranks.”
“Having to?” Nonsense. If they had still wanted to go without technology after the Drookmani and Starfleet had left, they would’ve been completely free to do so. Instead, they chose to use the opportunity to re-evaluate their lives and stop being restricted by the choice their ancestors had forced on them.
That’s supposed to be the point of the Prime Directive — to respect people’s free choice. The fanatically rigid TNG-era PD often misses that entirely, assuming the point is to deprive cultures of choice by forcibly keeping them ignorant whether they want to be or not. And that is a corruption of what it’s meant to be. True morality is about respecting people’s right to decide for themselves, not assuming you have the right to make the decision for them.
@70/AndyLove: “I agree with this – the Federation didn’t do a very good job evaluating Peanut Hamper’s character before admitting her to Starfleet.”
Well, how do you do a psych evaluation of a species that’s only existed for a few years? They probably don’t have enough understanding of exocomp psychology to have a good baseline. Although it’s fair to assume that Starfleet rushed the process in its eagerness to be inclusive of artificial life, perhaps to make amends for how close it had come to unknowingly enslaving the exocomps.
PH’s psychology seems very human – something like the psych test that Wesley takes should have caught her – unless she cheated (by being able to detect that the situation was artificial). But as you say Starfleet may nave had reasons to rush – and PH is certainly capable of seeming ok for a certain amount of time.
A dark way of looking at the finale is that Peanut Hamper was judged not to be a sentient life form and was put with the other malfunctioning insane AI.
Hence why she didn’t go to a regular prison.
@73/C.T. Phipps: But she was put in the Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage vault. Presumably they’re all sentient, and that is their prison. Although that’s hard to reconcile with Picard saying they still haven’t cracked android sentience decades later, even though Agnes Jurati worked out of the exact same building where the vault is.
@71 – Yeas, they could have avoided using the ships. Just so long as they didn’t mind being bombarded from orbit. A choice made that the barrel of a gun is no choice.
“The fanatically rigid TNG-era PD often misses that entirely, assuming the point is to deprivecultures of choice by forcibly keeping them ignorant whether they want to be or not. And that is a corruption of what it’s meant to be.”
Nonsense. A reading of what was said about the PD from TOS shows that:
“SPOCK: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
KIRK: No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet.
MCCOY: No references to space, or the fact that there are other worlds, or more advanced civilisations.”
(Bread and Circuses)
And:
“MAAB: You carry a child who would be teer.
ELEEN: I must die.
(Maab raises his knife, and Kirk pulls her away.
KIRK: No!
MAAB: No man may touch the wife of a teer.
KRAS: She was prepared to die, Earthman.
ELEEN: I was proud to obey the laws. Kill him first. He laid hands upon me. It is my right to see him die.”
Friday’s Child
Elleen was totally prepared, by her own free will, to follow Capella Law. Kirk & McCoy interfered.
Likewise, the Iotians freely decided to follow The Book. The Prime Directives wasn’t even In force 4th the time the Horizon left it behind. And at the end, Kirk even says:
“Despite themselves, they’ll be forced to accept conventional responsibilities.”
Conventional. Based on Kir’s morality, not the Iotians. Also, brought about at phaser point.
The idea that there’s some sort of pure version of the PD pre-TNG is not supported by any evidence.
@74 – If the exocomps and other imprisoned AIs are indeed sentient, how do you support putting a sensed being in a box barely large than they are? Should Tom Paris have been imprisoned in something the size of a refrigerator box?
And on another topic:
“They probably don’t have enough understanding of exocomp psychology to have a good baseline.”
Yeah, how’d that work out for them? Let’s lower our standards to allow a brand new form of life into Starfleet to make ourselves feel better. How many have died because of Peanut Hamper?
You are talking about using the ship against the scavengers – which I agree was no choice at all.
@71 is talking about not using the ships after the scavengers were gone – which is a potential choice.
@76 – But the scavengers, those that survived or their allies, now know that the ships exist and that they’re powerful. So, they can either ignore the Areore or they can come back with an even larger force. The Areore won’t know which until it happens so they have to be on guard for it. Or will Starfleet protect the Areore since it’s basically their fault?
@71/ChristopherLBennett: “Well, how do you do a psych evaluation of a species that’s only existed for a few years? They probably don’t have enough understanding of exocomp psychology to have a good baseline. Although it’s fair to assume that Starfleet rushed the process in its eagerness to be inclusive of artificial life, perhaps to make amends for how close it had come to unknowingly enslaving the exocomps.”
Makes me wonder if Peanut Hamper is technically (in whatever senses that may be of interest) a child (and Starfleet messed up big time).
I liked this episode, but it did hurt my feelings. I fell for the okey doke, I genuinely thought Peanut Hamper had learned her lesson. That was an expert rug pull.
I liked the ending, but I thought that the AI all getting put in one place is just a recipe for disaster. But watching Peanut Hamper’s ending, I’ve come to the conclusion that they put them all there so they can annoy the crap out of each other til they run out of power.
Peanut Hamper needs a crossover with Bender from Futurama.
