In the fifth-season TNG episode “The First Duty,” we met Nick Locarno, played by Robert Duncan McNeill, who was the ringleader of a group of cadets (among them Wes Crusher) who tried to perform an illegal flight maneuver and got one of the cadets killed—and then covered it up. Locarno was expelled and the other three surviving cadets were held back a year. Wes wound up leaving Starfleet and becoming a Traveler. Another of the cadets, Sito Jaxa, graduated and was posted to the Enterprise, later dying on a covert mission in the episode “Lower Decks,” the very episode that inspired this series.
McNeill would, a couple of years later, be cast as Tom Paris in Voyager, a character with a nearly identical backstory, while Locarno was never heard from again.
Until now.
Before we go any further, I need to do a formal mea culpa, as I completely and totally misread what was going on in “A Few Badgeys More.” I genuinely thought that Badgey was behind the mysterious ship that’s been attacking various vessels all season. I should’ve known better—if nothing else, the trend in television these days is for all important events to come to a head in the season finale.
Which is nicely set up this week. In what turns out to be the first of a two-parter, we learn that the little ship that’s going around zapping bigger ships is kidnapping former Starfleet officers. These now-civilians need to be tracked down and brought into protective custody. The Cerritos is tasked with finding Locarno.
Not on that particular mission is Mariner. Freeman is worried that Mariner’s getting out of control with putting herself in danger, so she and Ransom ask her fellow lower-deckers to go with her on a mission that will keep her safe.
I really adore the scene where Freeman asks the various lieutenants for help with her daughter. The Freeman-Mariner relationship has been a complicated one, to say the least, and mostly has been used for comedy, but this scene is a very touching example of a perfect combination of a captain worried about a member of her crew and a mother worried about her daughter, and going to her friends and colleagues for help.
Because this is a television show, the simple mission Tendi suggests of adjusting a weather satellite goes horribly horribly wrong. Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and T’Lyn take a shuttle to the satellite, having convinced Mariner that it will be incredibly dangerous and hugely risky. Mariner is, of course, massively disappointed when it turns out to be routine maintenance—right up until the Klingon Bird-of-Prey decloaks…
The Klingon ship makes short work of the shuttle, but the away team beams down to the surface of the planet, which is full of nasty storms and showers of glass and other fun stuff. But of real interest is the collection of beings stranded on the world and trying to survive: Romulans, Ferengi, Klingons, Orions, Cardassians, and Bynars. Familiar-looking ones, as these are the crews of the ships that were attacked by the mystery vessel (well, except for the Cardassians). Some of them are collaborating, but mostly they’re fighting amongst themselves.
The single funniest part of the episode to me was the Romulan and the Ferengi. We see the Romulan attack the Ferengi, but a native creature is stalking them. As it gets closer, we see the Romulan muttering, “Just a little closer,” and then the creature is snared by a bear-trap. The Ferengi then jumps triumphantly to his feet and says, “I told you it would work!” The Romulan’s reply: “Yes, yes, you’re so smart. Now shut up and help me kill this thing before it gets free.” I mostly loved it because whoever voiced the Romulan sounded just like Peter Falk in The Princess Bride when he said, “Yes, you’re very smart, now shut up.”
Anyhow, Mariner insists on fighting her way through, well, everything. When the rest of the away team tries to get her to slow her roll, she grumbles and says they should get some sleep and continue in the morning. They all fall asleep, and then Mariner gets up and goes off on her own, looking for a fight.
She gets one with Ma’ah. He not only survived the attack, like the others on the planet, but the Klingon vessel in orbit is his ship. Ma’ah says that his crew betrayed him and stranded him here along with the others. (Recall in “Twovix” that we didn’t see the results of Ma’ah’s ship being fired upon the way we did with the others.) Since the Bird-of-Prey is apparently standing guard on the planet, it would seem to be involved in some way.
Ma’ah and Mariner start to fight, but they’re interrupted by a glass shower. They take refuge in a cave (with surprisingly little complaining from Mariner, given the animus she expressed toward caves last week), and wait it out.
While there, we get some backstory on Mariner. In the abstract, this backstory makes sense, but I found myself disappointed by it on several levels.
Okay, first off, the fact that this never came up before is more than a little unconvincing, especially given that we’re in season three and we’ve already gotten plenty of Mariner’s backstory already.
Secondly, the actual backstory is this: one of Mariner’s classmates at the Academy was Sito Jaxa. So yes, the lead character in Lower Decks has backstory with one of the prominent guest stars in the TNG episode “Lower Decks.” In a show that gets way too meta on a good day, this is the meta-iest meta in the history of meta-ness.
And thirdly, the exposition is surprisingly light on details. Again, this is a show that references and sub-references constantly, but this time, they went light on that, and it’s too far in the other direction. The whole scene is written as if everyone watching it will know and/or remember who “Sito” is, and that’s not an assumption they should be making. It’s not even a question of knowing the audience, because (a) at least some of the audience wasn’t even born yet when “Lower Decks” aired, and (b) there’s so much Star Trek that it’s impossible for a single human to perfectly recall every detail of every episode and movie.
Of course, Sito is also connected to Locarno, which ties things together even more bizarrely. While Mariner and the gang are stranded, the Cerritos has proceeded to an independent world full of mercenaries and bounty hunters and freebooters and such. This half of the plot works beautifully because it plays into one of LD’s strengths. The show is often at its best when it tells Trek comedy stories as opposed to comedy stories that happen to be in the Trek setting.
In this case, we see Freeman seeming to be making a complete fool of herself. She confidently talks about how she aced her “Hoodlums and Racketeers” seminar at the Academy, and then makes a total pig’s ear out of trying to be a hoodlum and racketeer in order to get information about Locarno. When she does finally get in, she antagonizes the information broker to the point where he gives the information to a bounty hunter just to spite Freeman.
Once they leave the bar, Freeman reveals to a crestfallen Shaxs and Rutherford that it was all a setup. Freeman leaned into the distrust of Starfleet that they would have in this particular wretched hive of scum and villainy (sorry, wrong franchise…), to the point that they’d happily give the information to the bounty hunter—who was truly Billups in disguise. It’s a beautifully done bait-and-switch, and a relief to see. Freeman’s level of competence has varied wildly depending on the needs of the plot, and I prefer it when she’s actually good at her job. She’s very good at it here, and it’s done in a manner that’s genuinely funny, as befits a comedy show.
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However, when they get to Locarno’s location, they see all kinds of plans and such for the very ship that they’re looking for.
Back on the planet, Mariner is able to convince the various aliens to work together to try to get off the planet instead of against each other fighting for resources. She is aided in this by Ma’ah, who argues convincingly alongside her, and Tendi, who is able to get the Orions to back off and not kill them just by showing up. (The Orions immediately genuflect before the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, and as absurd as it all is, I still love the fact that the sweet, science-loving Tendi is also this Orion badass.)
Tendi is also the one who comes up with the plan to adjust the relay station for the orbital weather satellite to make it a distress call. Ma’ah makes an amendment to the plan, knowing that his ship is up there and will probably try to destroy the distress call. Once they come into the atmosphere to blow up the relay station, the various aliens leap on board and break in and take over the ship, Ma’ah killing the captain himself, thus putting himself back in charge.
In the midst of all that, Mariner was beamed away. They assumed it was to the Klingon ship, but she’s not there. Instead, as we find out in the closing shot before the “TO BE CONTINUED…” caption, she’s been taken by Nick Locarno.
Amusingly, Locarno looks like what McNeill looks like now. When Paris appeared in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” he looked like he did on Voyager (keep in mind that LD takes place only a few years after “Endgame”), but Locarno’s had a harder life, I guess…
It will be interesting to see where this goes. But we have to wait a week.
Random thoughts
- The episode’s title is a riff on the famous TNG episode “The Inner Light,” though it has no connection to that episode beyond the pun.
- The other former Starfleet officers being tracked down are Beverly Crusher, who was established as having left Starfleet some time shortly after Nemesis in Picard’s “The Next Generation”; Seven of Nine, who was established in Picard’s “Hide and Seek” as not being allowed into Starfleet following Voyager’s return to the Alpha Quadrant; and Thomas Riker, William Riker’s transporter twin, introduced in TNG‘s “Second Chances,” and who was established as quitting Starfleet and joining the Maquis in DS9’s “Defiant.” Riker is the most interesting of those, as he was last known to be in a Cardassian prison…
- Boimler is massively disappointed that the Cerritos doesn’t get to track down Beverly, as apparently Boims has a crush on Crusher. (Sorry…) At one point, he’s dreaming about Crusher teaching him to tap dance (which we saw Crusher teaching Data how to do in TNG’s “Data’s Day”).
- The bar where Freeman gets the information about Locarno is called “Mudd’s,” presumably a tribute to Harcourt Fenton Mudd, the rogue played by Roger C. Carmel and Rainn Wilson, seen in the original series’ “Mudd’s Women,” “I, Mudd,” and the animated “Mudd’s Passion,” as well as Discovery’s “Choose Your Pain” and “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” and the Short Trek “The Escape Artist.”
- The information broker looks very much like the puppet used by Balok to speak for him in a threatening manner (with Ted Cassidy’s voice) in the original series’ “The Corbomite Maneuver.” The broker also talks like Balok did through most of that episode. Freeman, as part of her con, assumes that it’s a puppet, and she only stops shaking him when Rutherford’s implants make it clear that it’s a living being.
- Locarno has only made one appearance in Trek fiction prior to this, in the Seven Deadly Sins anthology in 2010, specifically in the novella “Revenant” by Marc D. Giller, which focused on the sin of gluttony via the Borg. Locarno in the story is part of a team of privateers that boards a Starfleet vessel that’s been assimilated.
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Sorry, KRAD, I found the connection to the Lower Decks episode as about as a real deep cut as they get. Different preferences I guess. Loved the way they discussed it in the cave too. To me? Best moment in the series, could almost ask them to share a root beer…
I find it amusing that Locarno looks so much rougher than Paris, given that, of the two of them, Paris is the one who did time in prison and spent seven years marooned in the Delta Quadrant. Also, Seven isn’t really ex-Starfleet; I mean, she effectively served as Voyager’s science officer for four years, but these erroneous details bug me.
Disagree that the viewer needed to know who Sito was for the scene to make sense; I think that, in context, the fact that Mariner had a friend and idol who died in the line of duty speaks for itself. Though it’s not the backstory that I would have figured for her; in fact, I suspect that they came up with this backstory before the series was even released and so it doesn’t quite map onto her behaviour as shown. I did like the confirmation of the fan theory that she fought in the Dominion War, though; and I absolutely adore that it was a Klingon of all people who could talk sense into her regarding her death-seeking bbehavior.
Anyways, with Seven of Nine being mentioned, my new theory is that this plot arc is somehow going to show the origins of the Fenris Rangers.
I also agree that I think this is actually one of the rare bits of continuity as opposed to meta-commentary. Lower Decks usually just has the characters AWARE of Star Trek and commenting on events. However, this is actually tying Lower Decks to “Lower Decks” and making a bit of important connective tissue. I originally thought Mariner would have been one of the Enterprise children but it seems her connection is actually with being in the same general class as Wesley Crusher’s group in “First Duty.”
The REAL question for me is whether Lorcano will be ringing the bell from that episode that the DS9 writers considered doing and showing that Sito has been in a Cardassian Prison camp for the past fourteen years.
Whoa… it just hit me that the defining event in the backstory of the lead character of the series Lower Decks was a plot point from the TNG episode “Lower Decks”! The title has been a stealthy clue all along! (Assuming they had this backstory worked out from the start, which they probably did.)
And I’m with jaime — Mariner’s monologue gave enough exposition about who Sita was. She had a friend at the Academy who was sent on a spy mission and died, and the reason she’s resisted promotion for a decade (now we finally know how old she is, roughly) is because she doesn’t want to be the one who orders people to their deaths. That’s really all we need to know. The specifics of the TNG Sito episodes just give extra context — for instance, if Mariner was Sito’s classmate, it explains her recognizing Locarno at the end, because they would’ve been classmates too. But I’m sure that will be spelled out next week for the uninitiated.
So I don’t mind the continuity tie in this case; it’s relevant and it works in the story, plus there’s the title resonance. But one thing does bug me. If Mariner’s been so haunted by Sito’s death for the past decade, why doesn’t she hate Picard, who was the one who offered Sito the mission in the first place?
So let me get this straight: Locarno’s been abducting various command crews and allowing their rebellious junior officers to take over their ships. So the people stranded on the planet were all command crews. I guess that means he’s hoping to recruit Mariner, the ultimate rebellious lower decker, to target the Cerritos command crew.
Hmm… I’ve been complaining about the Cerritos crew getting involved in big Starfleet-wide events when the show was supposed to be focused on smaller stuff. But I guess it’s not too bad that this season’s arc is connected directly to Mariner. After all, it’s not really a major galactic event, it’s just one pirate ship, essentially.
@Keith
“… especially given that we’re in season three and we’ve already gotten plenty of Mariner’s backstory already.”
Highlight mine, do you mean season 4?
I have often mentioned in comments here how disconnected most Trek shows from other Trek shows feel to me. One of the many reasons for that are characters like Tom Paris and Gul Dukat that in my mind should be Nick Locarno and Gul Macet. The fact that Lower Decks is continuing the character of Locarno especially after featuring Tom Paris really helps ease the idea of them being two separate people for me. People that both are meant to exist in Trekdom instead of a workaround to save cash. Excellent.
Regardless, another Lower Deck’s episode and another round of me being pleased by what I watched.
-Kefka
Do we actually know that it is Locarno who’s behind the attacks? The dialogue earlier indicated that he was at risk of being abducted; he might just be another prisoner.
@6–I don’t think we know yet per se but he’s certainly acting like he’s in charge after Mariner’s abduction, and the plans for the “pirate ship” are in his lair. There’s obviously quite a bit we don’t know yet about the Big Evil Plan but we’ve also learned a lot–there is a fresh-painted white logo of some kind on the colluding Bird-of-Prey, and rather than being disabled by some kind of massively superior technology, the Romulan/Ferengi/Bynar/Orion etc. vessels were sabotaged by mutineers…which, itself, was cryptically hinted at in some of the sequences we saw. It’s always fun to see people using extant Trek tech as a smoke-and-mirrors show to appear godlike, given that the existence of godlike aliens is simply a known fact, a la Ardra.
What we don’t know is what is Locarno/unknown’s endgame by abducting all these command crews to play Battle Royale down on the planet, or which ex-Starfleet officers have already been targeted (more cameos next week?). We don’t even know if the baddie(s) deliberately planned for Starfleet to investigate Locarno, or whether this was good fortune brought on by Starfleet’s genuine concern for its former officers/cadets.
I also didn’t miss the reminder that Ma’ah’s former captain had already used this vessel to collude with the Pakleds. There’s an implication there that the Pakleds, a Klingon faction, and Locarno(?)’s pirates are all catspaws of still another force, one which has been somewhat-clumsily lashing out at the Federation since at least the season 1 finale. And Badgey has just been (probably) ruled out, so who this could be is itself very interesting.
Incidentally, I think this is the second time this season we’ve seen a plot where we were supposed to think Freeman was being an idiot but it turned out to be a devious plan all along. That subplot didn’t really work for me. I mean, why was Billups the one who got to go Princess Leia and impersonate a bounty hunter? Shouldn’t it have been a member of Shaxs’s security team? Shouldn’t Shaxs, as chief of security, have been in on any devious plan the captain had? Indeed, shouldn’t he have been the one coming up with it in the first place, given that it falls directly under his purview?
Also, having the information broker seem to be the Scary Balok Puppet yet then turn out to be an alien that somehow coincidentally looks like the Scary Balok Puppet was stupid and nonsensical. I hate it when they throw in a continuity nod just for the sake of a gratuitous reference, especially when it makes no sense in-universe.
@6/jaime: Locarno being listed as a target was a red herring, I think. I mean, the blueprints for the mystery ship were in his office,and his line to Mariner when he opened her door was, “We’re going to cause some trouble together.”
Okay, there’s a chance it could turn out he’s just been investigating the mystery ship, and that the “trouble” he plans is for him and Mariner to expose the real culprits, as a way of redeeming himself. When I started this paragraph, I was writing with a skeptical voice in my head, but by the end of the sentence, I realized that might actually be where they’re going.
Might I point out that you’re rather assuming that the Scary Balok Puppet wasn’t based on a known species with a somewhat formidable reputation in Balok’s neck of the woods? (Whether or not the Federation was aware of that reputation at the time of their encounter with Balok himself).
As I mention two comments further down, I actually established that the Scary Balok Puppet was based on a real species in my TOS novel The Face of the Unknown. So no, I’m not assuming that. I’m not talking about whether it’s possible in-universe, I’m saying it’s an unfunny and gratuitous continuity reference that adds nothing to the story.
@8/Christopher – The gag with Balok’s puppet didn’t really bug me. Maybe Balok found this species’s appearance striking and modelled his puppet after it. They could eve be a First Federation member race.b(Incidentally, I find it hilarious that, in spite of the promised diplomatic contact, they’ve never shown the First Federation again after “The Corbomite Maneuver”; probably because their name would create confusion with the Federation that they later decided our heroes belonged to).
Also, I love how Lower Decks keeps showing random Gorn hanging around in the background of crowded alien planet scenes, even as SNW keeps doubling down on saying that they’re irredeemably evil, Xenomorph-like space monsters who attack on sight.
@9/jaime: I got to fulfill my longtime desire to write the Definitive First Federation Novel back in 2016 with The Face of the Unknown. I established my own version of what the Scary Balok Puppet represented, which this was incompatible with.
Indeed, the idea that Balok modeled his scarecrow on this diminutive alien doesn’t work, since the whole conceit of “The Corbomite Maneuver” was that the diminutive Balok was using the big imposing alien and the gigantic spherical ship as camouflage to appear more intimidating than he was.
They brought it this time around. If they needed to have an escape hatch for this series if P+ Cancels it, then showing why we’re here is the way to go. Sito Jaxa. The gorgeous Shannon Fill’s brilliantly played ill fated heroine of the eponymous episode. I don’t know, TNG’s “Lower Decks” is easily one of the most memorable episodes in that series, with connective tissue to “The First Duty” and part of building up the Cardassians up for DS9.
This also firmly establishes Mariner’s (and Ramsay’s) age range. So Beckett had an idol, and she’s one of the greatest low key heroes in the franchise. I think it’s beautiful that Jaxa managed to inspire someone like that even as a cadet. It’s easy to forget that she was meant to be one of the best of the best. I always saw Nova Squadron as basically the precursor to Red Squad, Wesley being in their number only added to that feeling. That also means that after the Nova Squadron incident Mariner didn’t think any less of Sito. She must’ve been really close with them too, as when the door opened she didn’t say Locarno, she said “Nick??“
I loved Freeman’s part, the first season made her look like an incompetent ego-maniac and that first impression lingers, so when we see her doing stuff that seems stuffy and bumbling, we’re not expecting her to be working an angle. But she is Beckett’s mom, and I’m tickled pink when she’s working an angle. I fell for the swerve and I enjoyed it.
I’d like Locarno to be working for redemption too, it’d be a nice “rebuttal” to the statement that Locarno was “too irredeemable” to be Tom Paris. But….I don’t really see it. He seems to be looking to start a war or something. To stay with the theme, he seems to be looking to create a Lower Decks rebellion.
Another thing I loved was the opening conference lounge meeting. Freeman comes in looking ready to spit fire and nobody, not even Boimler bats an eyelash, instead they say, we’re worried too, and she calms down and they immediately start collaborating…because they all love Beckett. It also means Captain Freeman really trusts her daughter’s friends.
Planetside I thought we were going into a Predators situation where the kidnapees were brought to a big game world, they even started the episode with Xenomorph analogs. Instead, well we haven’t been let in on why the command staffs were stranded there. But Beckett charging into everything and her friends trying to keep the dangerous thing away from her was hilarious, exemplified by T’Lyn just saying no and Vulcan Neck Pinching the Cardassian (and she put some disdain on it too). Tendi at the end forcing Cosmia to stand down was *Big Smile*, I love the Mistress of the Winter Constellations. One day Captain Tendi and a Starfleet task force are going to be in big trouble and an Orion Fleet is going to show up to aid The Mistress of the Winter Constellations and it will be beautiful. It’s also nice that even though she stepped aside as the Prime she still keeps her title and swag.
I was thinking all episode that Beckett needs some Klingon Warrior Therapy….oh crap, just like Jaxa did. As usual Ma’ah proves himself to be a top shelf Klingon. Wise and honorable. And I appreciate that everyone looked concerned when he was done tearing his traitorous subordinate apart. Wasn’t expecting pink Klingon blood though.
Quoth mr_d on TNG‘s “Lower Decks”: “…part of building up the Cardassians up for DS9.”
Er, no. DS9 was already most of the way through its second season when “Lower Decks” aired.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One interesting thing this episode does is re-contextualize “Much Ado About Boimler” and Mariner’s relationship with Amina Ramsey. There was a lot of speculation that Amina was a kind of wunderkind and excessively young as a Captain. In fact, if Amina is the same age at 32-35 then she’s a perfectly appropriate age for being a captain and her concern about Mariner still being an ensign becomes a lot more justifiable. It also affects Mariner’s relationship/sexual tension with Ransom as they’re probably the same age but just very different ranks.
As for the alien resembling the scary one from TOS, well, maybe the alien just looked like them. After all, a lot of aliens look human-like.
As a data point, while I was sure Sito was a reference to something, I didn’t remember her till I looked at Memory Alpha afterwards. I thought it worked fine on its own, but was impressed after reading to see the connections to Locarno and the “Lower Decks” episode deepening it retrospectively.
I love that the first thing Mariner does once she’s recommitted is to give a rousing Kirk Speech. And it’s great to see Ma’ah again. Best Klingon since Martok.
@13/C.T. Phipps: “In fact, if Amina is the same age at 32-35 then she’s a perfectly appropriate age for being a captain”
Is she? Kirk was supposed to be exceptionally young for a captain in his 30s. Normally it would be a job for someone in their 40s or 50s, someone with a lot of experience under their belt. Riker was offered his first command at 29, but he was also supposed to be exceptional. (And it was command of a light cruiser, like Kirk’s first command according to The Making of Star Trek. It’s possible that a smaller ship might be commanded by an officer below the rank of captain, though we’ve never really seen that in Trek outside of the Defiant in DS9.)
Well perfectly appropriate versus a twenty-something as we’d assumed Mariner was. Enough that her being an up and coming figure at least.
Ten years between graduation and command is a pretty fast rise up the ranks, but they’ve also made it clear that the requirements on the captain of a California-class ship are lower than those for captain of a ship that gets assigned to more critical missions. Also, Picard made captain of the Stargazer in six years (albeit under some very uncommon circumstances).
Yes! Pink blood! Also, fantastic episode in general.
@16/C.T. Phipps: “Well perfectly appropriate versus a twenty-something as we’d assumed Mariner was.”
Did we? It’s been implied throughout the series that she’s older than one would expect for an ensign, and that she has years of history behind her. She’d served on four different ships before the Cerritos, and did a stint on DS9 during the Dominion War, anywhere from 5 to 8 years before LD began.
@17/jaimebabb: “Also, Picard made captain of the Stargazer in six years”
Only due to a sloppy retcon. The original idea was simply that he’d served on the Stargazer for 22 years, which I interpreted to mean that he’d risen through the ranks and eventually achieved the captaincy. Which makes more sense than how it was later interpreted, that he’d been the captain for the entire 22 years.
But yeah, at least they established that it was an emergency field promotion when the captain and first officer were killed, and somehow stuck afterward. (Which is annoyingly close to how Kelvin Kirk became captain.)
@19 / ChristopherLBennett – I wasn’t aware that this was a retcon, but it makes sense; early TNG seems to treat Picard like he’s several decades older than later TNG.
Oh, finally. I loved this episode. Mainly for finally giving voice to Becket’s deal. A friend of mine, years ago, felt that Beckit was suffering from PTSD after seeing her friend eaten by a shapeshifter. And, in essence, that is what is going on here. She does not want to be put in a situation where she has to order someone to their death. A fact that numerous episodes (including the very first where Pike laments having to decide life and death) drive home. She just wants to do good but is terrified of being in command. Better to stay in the lower decks than risk being in charge. This does explain all the self-destructive behavior. Actually, the whole cast has been getting some great development this season.
And Freeman has always been shown to be truly competent. She is a great diplomat. Her issue has always been her massive anxiety. Both with her daughter (you should use a sharper rock) and with Star Fleet in general (they don’t take the Califonia class seriously). But when in her element, she is damn good at her job.
Add me to the list of people who think it was brilliant. I think the connection to Sito works fine even if you haven’t seen the TNG Lower Decks; but even more brilliant for acknowledging (as Picard never did) that the Dominion War was probably the most devastating thing Starfleet and the Federation had to go through in the 24th century and is going to have a lot of effects on people. And how being reminded of what people fought for didn’t make Mariner go all killing-machine but inspired her to do a Starfleet-ideals-style speech. Combined with lots of good jokes, Ma’ah being such a great Klingon (even if he doesn’t hug), good mutual-friends support, and adorable tremble lizards.
@20/jaimebabb: It doesn’t really make sense, since the timing is the same throughout — Picard was on the Stargazer for 22 years, from 2233-2255. The only thing that was changed — or rather, interpreted differently than what I think the original intention was — was to say he was captain the whole time. If anything, it’s the opposite of what you say; the original concept implies (or at least its vagueness allows for the possibility) that he started as a young officer and rose through the ranks, while the later assertion requires him to have become captain at only 28, even younger than Kirk.
As for Picard’s intended age, the original TNG bible specifies that Picard is in his “early fifties,” which is actually slightly younger than what was eventually established (a 2305 birthdate means he was 59 when TNG began).
Given the decimation (or more) of the officer ranks in the Dominion War it wouldn’t be that surprising to have Captains in their 30’s. Competence and not getting killed can get you promoted in a hurry. Heck, Jim Gavin was commanding an airborne division at 37 in WW2.
A small thing, but appreciated: In the briefing, when the group concludes that Mariner is having mental health issues, Boimler’s first response is to suggest she talk with a mental health professional. Granted, that’s Migleemo, so it’s a dubious suggestion, but I liked that his reaction was to go to someone qualified, rather than try to solve the problem with wacky hijinks.
@23 – “the later assertion requires him to have become captain at only 28, even younger than Kirk.”
Tryla Scott made captain faster than anyone before her, including Kirk. So younger captains are already established.
I must admit I’m not really following the discussion of what retconned what, but it was hinted at least as early as “Conspiracy” in Season 1 that Picard made captain at a young age. (“It’s said you made captain faster than anyone in Starfleet history, present company included.”)
@25
Is Migleemo actually meant to be incompetent? The crew don’t like him or respect him but every time he’s on screen, he seems to be giving valid as well as helpful advice. Indeed, Mariner and Tendi both undergo breakthroughs under his direction even if it’s also their doing (Which is the way its supposed to be).
“Hey, therapy works!”
@27/cap-mjb: Granted, maybe it’s not so much a retcon as a different clarification than I expected. The original TNG bible merely says that Picard “served on an incredible 22 year voyage as mission commander and ship captain on the legendary deep space charting vessel U.S.S. Stargazer.” The phrasing is ambiguous and odd; it could be taken to mean he was both the captain of the ship and the commander of the ship’s mission at the same time, but that seems like it’s usually the default expectation, so I always had the impression it meant he started out as the “mission commander,” whatever that is, and then later became ship captain. Or at least that it could mean that, which made more sense to me than the alternative.
The minute McMahan’s name popped up in the writing credits, I expected a big event, probably connected to next week’s finale. But I sure as heck wasn’t remotely prepared for being on the receiving end of a franchise-defining onslaught of character backstory like we got this week. We FINALLY crack the mystery of Beckett Mariner, and it all makes perfect sense.
Mariner’s actual age has been played as a bit of a mystery over the past few seasons. Even Boimler burned some neurons trying to figure that one out. But having her be roughly in the same graduating class as the likes of Sito Jaxa (she might have even met Wesley in person) fits the overall timeline. The show takes place just over a decade since the events of TNG season 7. Just the right time frame for Mariner to act out like a rebellious Starfleet officer refusing promotions, but still looking young(ish) up to this point.
And it all hits the central point of the Mariner dilemma. She doesn’t want the responsibility because she doesn’t want another Sito Jaxa on her consciousness. Who would, especially at that college age, when life is still supposed to be a wondrous unexplored mystery? No wonder she took a rebellious anti-promotion stance in the years since. It’s a brilliant explanation that also fits nicely with the show’s title and legacy, tying it all back to the one TNG episode that begat it all.
And with that mystery out of the way, we also begin to see the workings of the other big mystery. Having one of the original Lower Deckers be the surprise villain behind this plot also makes perfect sense. I assume this is where it’s going – Locarno sure seemed to be running things at the very end. And between being expelled from the Academy, causing Joshua Albert’s death, seeing Wes quit the whole thing, plus Sito’s death, I wouldn’t be surprised if Locarno took a turn for the worse over the past decade. We’ll see how it all plays out next week (I wonder if Moore and Shankar got a residual check – they deserve it).
Initially, I wasn’t enjoying the Cerritos side mission at all. I just couldn’t see any purpose on those boring scenes of Freeman, Rutherford and the team blundering their way through a planet full of self-serving libertarians until Freeman finally showed her hand. This is brilliant writing as well. The way the story put me in the perfect place for being caught off-guard with one of the best plot twists in recent memory. Using Billups as a fake stealth bounty hunter has got to be one of the best.
@4/Christopher: Who’s to say she doesn’t hate him? Mariner may have shown plenty of TNG worship in the past, but I don’t recall any scene of her ever saying anything nice about Picard (though Boimler might have), or anything at all. It’s always the other characters.
@30/Eduardo: Well, there was the thing with Petra where she was hoping to find someone devious behind their funding but then it turned out to be Picard, disappointing her that there was nothing bad or shady about it. It’s tenuous, but the bit relies on Mariner taking it for granted that there’s nothing bad about Picard’s involvement in something. At least, there was no indication that seeing his name upset her in any way other than dashing her hopes of finding something bad going on.
@32/Christopher: I don’t see why Mariner would take Picard’s involvement in the archeology guild as proof that she was right to hate him for Sito’s demise. She’s still Starfleet, and was full aware of the risks that came with being an officer and being sent to a potential deadly situation, as I’m sure she knew that Sito also knew (assuming they still kept in touch during her final days). She can hate him, but she would never assume he’s a fundamentally bad person because of his command decisions. In short, Picard’s character integrity is never in question.
Same with Sisko. He held a rightful grudge against him over Wolf 359, but I doubt he’d let that get in the way of his duty (other than his brief desire to quit Starfleet), and he has no problem shaking hands with him after the unloads his pain with the Prophets.
@32/Eduardo: “I don’t see why Mariner would take Picard’s involvement in the archeology guild as proof that she was right to hate him for Sito’s demise.”
That’s just my point — that she reacted to Picard’s name as if it were an unambiguously good thing, without any sign that she had any negative or ambivalent feelings toward him. As I said, it’s tenuous, but it’s all I can think of.
One other thing I missed. Thomas Riker seemingly alive and well. We know he was in a Cardassian prison throughout DS9’s run (it could have been a labor camp – I don’t recall). This implies he somehow survived the Dominion bombings of Cardassia Prime that claimed hundreds of millions of Cardassian civilians (unless he was held in another prison offworld). I really wish we could see what he’s been up to. How he dealt with the evident trauma of being a prisoner and a survivor.
thank you for this rewatch – I was totally confused after this episode – It was good, but wow I can’t believe they expected us to remember a TNG episode from 30 years ago. And Mariner apparently has seem some sh!%… I agree with KRAD, how has this never come up before?
@35/Neuralnet: “It was good, but wow I can’t believe they expected us to remember a TNG episode from 30 years ago.”
They didn’t. All we needed to know was explained in Mariner’s monologue; knowing the episode just adds further context.
“I agree with KRAD, how has this never come up before?”
It’s “come up” throughout the entire series. It’s the reason for the way Mariner has been behaving since the moment we met her, a perennial troublemaker and rebel without a cause, doing whatever she could to avoid promotion and responsibility. And the reason she hasn’t talked about it seems pretty obvious — she didn’t want to, because it hurts too much. She’s spent the whole series dodging questions about her past and her reasons for acting out. She only told Ma’ah because she didn’t expect them both to survive.
@34/Eduardo – I tend to think that Tom Riker must have escaped before the Dominion War started (probably while the Cardassian Union was in free fall with the fall of the Obsidian Order and the Klingon invasion). Otherwise, I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t have just been immediately executed along with all of the other Maquis when Dukat took over,
@37/jaimebabb: Dukat wasn’t impractical. If you’ve got a prison full of free slave labour and you execute them all, that means no-one’s doing the work they were doing. My working theory has always been that he was exchanged back to the Federation at the end of the war, when the Cardassians no longer had the resources to hold all the prisoners.
@38/cap: I dunno… I don’t buy that a starfaring society would actually need slave labor, when they’ve got replicators and widespread automation. (Discovery has retroactively established that the Federation had maintenance/repair drones all along even though they were never on camera before, so it stands to reason that Cardassians have them too.) And any mineral resource can be mined far more easily and in vastly greater quantity from a star system’s asteroids than from any underground mine on the planet itself. The only reason for a society at that level to enslave people is pure cruelty and subjugation as ends in themselves. Cardassia didn’t enslave the Bajorans because it needed their labor, but because it needed to keep them under control and demoralized, and because it was run by psychopathic bullies who got off on subjugating others.
Of course, that just means that Dukat might have let the prisoners live so that he could go on dominating and humiliating them and pretending he was doing it for their own good, like he did with the Bajorans.
It might be risky to assume that the Cardassians are at exactly the same across-the-board level of technology as the Federation: given the nature of tbe Cardassian state, it’s hardly impossible that while military armaments are up to date, the civilian (and possibly even the military) support structure is conducted with a far lower level of technology.
I believe that there have been a number of parallels for this sort of situation in Human history, so it’s hardly impossible that the Cardassian Union might find slave labour a useful workaround for shortfalls in automation (Especially since this sort of exploitation conforms perfectly to their ideas of hierarchical dominance).
It is ridiculous to suggest that a society with interstellar travel would be unable to build machines for mining or farming comparable to what we have today. There is no practical need for slave labor in any industrial society, if there ever was. Even in pre-industrial societies, slave economies were intrinsically flawed, inefficient systems. The only reason for slavery is hierarchical dominance.
I seem to recall that there was a novel or a comic where Thomas Riker was freed by Klingons. I might be misremembering.
@39 Christopher
In the TNG episode “Up the Long Ladder” Riker points out that the ship cleans itself. Also negating the need for manual labor.
Add me to the list that loves this episode’s reveal/connection to the original TNG episode “Lower Decks”.
-Kefka
@40/jaime: There have been several incompatible fates posited for Tom Riker in various novels, short stories, and comics over the years, as is typical of any dangling thread in Trek. He’s escaped in some versions and been executed in at least one other, IIRC.
@41/kefka: In light of what Discovery revealed, I take “the ship cleans itself” to mean “the ship has cleaning drones that come out when nobody’s around to see them.” Although you could also do a lot of self-cleaning with transporter-based systems. Just beam the grime away!
So the decoy mission to the glitching — as it turns out, tampered-with — buoy on which Mariner is taken just happens to involve the very plot Freeman is steering her away from, the missing crew from various ships in general and Nick Locarno specifically, Locarno also sharing a history with the character who formed Mariner’s aversion to responsibility as revealed in this episode.
Times like this it’s important to repeat as a mantra the counsel of a friend who argues that instead of rolling one’s eyes over massive coincidences one simply needs to accept/understand that out of all the possible permutations of the saga at hand we’re watching the timeline in which many such dramatic coincidences occur because of course that’s what producers would choose to “adapt”.
I do really appreciate the scene where Freeman calls in Mariner’s friends to help — and the reveal of her long game at the cantina.
RE: Boimler’s crush on Beverly Crusher….
I’m right there with you, Bradward.