For the third straight episode this season, we’ve got an appearance by an illusory version of a character who appeared as a guest in a Trek TV show or movie who is voiced by the selfsame actor who played the real version in the past. We had James Cromwell as an interactive hologram of Zefram Cochrane in “Grounded,” and J.G. Hertzler as an interactive AI of Martok in “The Least Dangerous Game.” This week, it’s a hallucination of Dr. Leah Brahms, and yes, Susan Gibney is this week’s special guest star. I just wish they didn’t use her this way.
(I’m wondering if this is going to be a theme, and very much look forward to the holodeck re-creation of Dr. Miranda Jones voiced by Diana Muldaur next week. This is pure speculation on my part. I have no idea if they’re doing that, but they totally should ‘cause it’ll be cool!)
SPOILERS ARE THE COOLEST!
This week’s Lower Decks opens with what appears to be a tribute to the original series’ “The Man Trap,” with a bit of “That Which Survives” and TNG’s “Sub Rosa” mixed in, as a scientist is exposed to green mist that emits from a green globe. It coalesces into an image of his seventh-grade geology teacher in a revealing toga—and then turns him to stone. What’s especially fun about this bit is that the scientist in question is dressed in an outfit that looks like a costume from the original series…
This is LD, so we don’t see what happens next, but are told it in a quickie captain’s log voiceover from Freeman: the U.S.S. Hood responds to the distress call sent by the scientists when they find one of their own is a statue, it turns out the not-really-uninhabited planet is inhabited by silicon-based life forms, and all is well.
The Cerritos and the Carlsbad are assigned to relocate the science base and safely dispose of the green fantasy globes. Stevens is able to remove his head from Ransom’s ass and lead this away mission, which includes three of our four regulars. But while Boimler, Mariner, and Rutherford get to collect green globes (the Carlsbad away team is responsible for dismantling the outpost), Tendi is back on board the Cerritos to do training to be a bridge science officer.
The Tendi plot would’ve been fine except for everything around it. Tendi herself is magnificent, as always, but first they establish that her senior-staff mentor is Counselor Migleemo, who is terrible at it. Then she tries and fails to be aggressive with the captains, and needs a pep talk from T’Ana.
The problem there is the captains. The very young Carlsbad captain and Freeman bicker rather tiresomely over a gift being given to them by the silicon-based natives as they negotiate with them and the scientists. It devolves quickly into sitcom-level bickering, and it’s just idiotic.
The stuff down on the planet is way more fun. The Carlsbad away team is all business, and seem to be standoffish toward the Cerritos crew and determined to outdo them. Not to be outdone, Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford work their asses off to get the green globes collected.
Things go horribly wrong when Stevens accidentally breaks one (and gets turned to stone). Soon, the crew doesn’t just see their heart’s desire, they also see their greatest fears. Here’s where we get the episode’s best and worst moments. The best is finding out that Mariner is dating Jennifer the Andorian and both her heart’s desire and her greatest fear revolve around Jennifer (prompting Boimler to very passionately urge Mariner to go back into therapy).
The worst is the use of Brahms. I went into great detail in my TNG Rewatch about how problematic the use of the hallucinatory version of the character was in TNG’s “Booby Trap” and especially how awful the treatment of the real version was in TNG’s “Galaxy’s Child,” which turned La Forge into a creepy stalker and took his side rather than hers when she justifiably called him on it. To bring the character back as yet another fantasy of a nerdy Black character with prosthetic enhancements is reductive, and not nearly as funny as the script wants it to be.
The two away teams hide in a cave system, where we get two major revelations. The first is that the Carlsbad crew were just as intimidated by the Cerritos as vice versa. The events of the first two seasons have given the Cerritos a rep as a bad-ass ship, at least by the standards of the support vessels. They’re considered the Enterprise of the California-class. The Carlsbad team was working their asses off trying to impress Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford.
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The other revelation is that the green globes aren’t natural objects. They’re machines created to read people’s minds and learn important secrets that can be sold on the black market. Turns out that the natives and the scientists were teaming up. The two away teams beam back to Cerritos to expose this plan, with Tendi delivering the coup de grace, as she shatters the gift for the captain to reveal that it’s a spying device.
I still enjoyed this episode, despite a lot of problems. There’s the tiresome behavior of the two captains. There’s the stereotypically doofy behavior of Migleemo, which fulfill a lot of tired stereotypes about therapists. There’s the icky use of Brahms. And there’s the whole notion of the Cerritos crew being the “Enterprise of the California-class ships.”
One of my least favorite tropes of Trek, particularly some of its older tie-in fiction, is the tiresome notion that the Enterprise did all the cool stuff. No other ship had as many talented people on board, nobody else in Starfleet did the weird-ass missions, no other ship had as great a captain as Kirk, as fantastic a science officer as Spock, as talented an engineer as Scotty, as magnificent a pilot as Sulu, etc., etc. TNG didn’t really do anything to change that, just extended it to the twenty-fourth century. The debut of Deep Space Nine and further spinoffs finally succeeded in steering the franchise away from that nonsense, with Station Deep Space 9 as well as the starships Defiant, Voyager, Discovery, Cerritos, Protostar, and La Sirena all encountering their share of weird-ass shit, too. So I resist the notion that the Cerritos crew is special. Indeed, the very notion contravenes what makes LD such a fun show in the first place—that this craziness is actually pretty mundane in Starfleet generally.
Still, I’m happy to see that it was a team effort that saved the day, which is the way Trek always should be. And it ends with everyone making good-natured fun of Boimler, which is the way LD should always be…
Random thoughts
- Deep Cut #1: the scary thing that Stevens sees is Kukulkan from the animated series’ “How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth.”
- Deep Cut #2, and way way cooler: one of the Carlsbad away team members is a Zaldan. Introduced (and only seen onscreen) in TNG’s “Coming of Age,” this humanoid species with webbed hands values honesty above all else. Your humble reviewer did a lot with the Zaldans in the novels Articles of the Federation and A Singular Destiny.
- The S.S. Hood was established in TNG’s very first episode “Encounter at Farpoint” as, among other things, Riker’s previous post. We saw the ship again in “Tin Man,” and met her captain, Robert DeSoto. Fourteen years later, the Hood has a new CO, Captain Murakami, but we only see him for a minute. DeSoto played roles in various novels, including your humble reviewer’s The Brave and the Bold Book 2 and Articles of the Federation, William Leisner’s Losing the Peace, and Dayton Ward’s Paths of Disharmony.
- This is the third example of silicon-based life we’ve seen in onscreen Trek, the others being the Horta in the original series’ “The Devil in the Dark” and the “micro-brain” in TNG’s “Home Soil.”
- Tendi: “I’m afraid my brain’s gonna explode from science!” Rutherford, with a wistful sigh: “That’s how I wanna go…”
- Mariner was first seen to be in therapy in the first season’s “Crisis Point,” and Boimler urging her to go back to therapy leads one to the rather depressing conclusion that she stopped going. Then again, if Migleemo is the best option on the ship, I can see why she stopped…
Keith R.A. DeCandido is involved with two Kickstarters launching this month: Phoenix Precinct, the sixth novel in his fantasy/police procedure series, which is being crowdfunded alongside two other novels from eSpec Books, Yeti Left Home by Aaron Rosenberg and Esprit de Corpse by Ef Deal; and Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups, co-edited by Keith and Jonathan Maberry, which will feature team-ups of classic characters, to be published by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. More information at this link.
Oh, I LOVED the part about the Cerritos being “the Enterprise of the California class” I was so proud of our crew being known as bad asses (at least among the Cali class)
I agree about the captains’ behavior. It was beyond childish and tiresome, However, I guess it was needed for the plot.
Being one of the few, apparently, who had no problem with the Leah Brahms episodes in TNG, I didn’t have a problem with her showing up here as Rutherford’s illusion. In fact, I thought it was neat.
I love Migleemo but he’s useless as a mentor.
I thought for sure Stevens was a goner when he turned to stone but he’s alive!
I guess it’s supposed to be funny, but I felt bad tor Boimler at the end. He wants to be respected as a Starfleet officer so, yeah, people should know he’s not a machine!
I actually kind of enjoy the fact that Leah Brahms is apparently the fantasy crush of a huge chunk of warp engine nerds. You know, as long as you don’t sexually harass her at work LIKE SOMEONE then there’s no problem keeping a healthy fantasy life. Besides, I believe Rutherford really does just want to design Galaxy class engines with her.
Sadly, I’m kind of annoyed that Boimler is getting no attractions whatsoever.
I also feel that it’s a bit sexist that Tendi wasn’t down there and we couldn’t see her fantasy ideal like! Like her secret crush on Miles O’brian.
:)
I kinda knew the thing with Leah Brahms was gonna annoy you. I’m mixed on her previous appearances. I thought the first was enjoyable and the second was reprehensible. This one feels pretty harmless, at least insomuch as objectifying a woman becoming a running gag can be considered harmless.
I liked that – Leah Brahms and the TAS feathered dragon aside – the “humor” this week didn’t really rely upon memberberries. Indeed, the show was pretty much organically built up based upon what the show had already established regarding the characters and their prior adventures.
FWIW, I’m 90% certain Rutherford isn’t supposed to be black – though of course it’s hard to know with the animation style. His full first name (Samanthan) seems to indicate he’s meant to be South Asian.
I’m starting to wonder if they’ve retconned Boimler to not have a sex drive any longer, despite what we saw in the first season? In Episode 1, he’s oblivious to hot women hitting on him. In episode 2, he was oblivious to Tendi being in a towel around him (understandable, given they all shower together TBH). Here, Mariner and Rutherford fantasize about hot women, and he just wants to be recognized as important by commanding officers. Seems like not being interested in women (or men) is now a running gag with him?
I really didn’t like this episode leaning into the “incompetent” side of the senior officers (much as last week did with Ransom). The core ethos of Lower Decks seems to be leaning hard into the idea that everyone in Starfleet really is jazzed up to do the best job possible, which is why when we get these more cynical beats it just hits wrong.
Keith, the Hood‘s captain is Murakami, not Murakama.
The only thing that annoyed me about the Leah Brahms appearance was how Susan Gibney’s voice was apparently recorded over Zoom or something, since it had a distinctly lower quality than the other voices. I don’t see how Rutherford’s ethnicity or cyberneticity has anything to do with it. The whole reason Geordi based his expert program in “Booby Trap” on Leah Brahms was because she was a key designer of the Galaxy class’s engines, so she’s a big deal in starship design. Naturally she’d be a celebrity to engineers. It wasn’t a cheap sexual fantasy, it was more like wanting to meet his professional idol and geek out about her work — the same way Scotty geeked out when he met Larry Marvick in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” I mean, this is Rutherford we’re talking about.
Overall, I agree about the captains’ childishness, but overall this was okay. It’s interesting how Mariner actually seems to be trying to do her job better. She’s still being overly competitive and such, but she’s trying to win by following orders more efficiently rather than ignoring them. And we got a plausibly Trekkish sci-fi concept with the illusion globes, but it had a surprise twist I didn’t see coming.
@4/Karl Zimmerman: “FWIW, I’m 90% certain Rutherford isn’t supposed to be black – though of course it’s hard to know with the animation style. His full first name (Samanthan) seems to indicate he’s meant to be South Asian.”
I agree, although it should really be Samanathan in that case, I think. For what it’s worth, his voice actor Eugene Cordero is of Filipino descent.
Updated, re: Murakami–thanks!
Christopher: The Brahms character has way too much baggage as a holodeck fantasy for your insistence that it can’t possibly be a sexual fantasy (especially given how many other sexual fantasies the green globes gave us) to hold water. The implication is there, and the awfulness of “Galaxy’s Child” taints almost any use of the character, unfortunately, even if their intent was as you say.
Karl: Huh. It never occurred to me that Rutherford was anything but Black. Go fig’…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The Enterprise is the Cerritos of Galaxy class ships. #sorrynotsorry
I laughed so loud and suddenly at T’Ana with a chainsaw that my cat leapt 3 feet in the air. She is just the best character, and I want a holodeck scene of her getting wasted with Bones and Pulaski. That would satisfy the Diana Muldaur guest spot too!
@7/krad: As I’ve argued before, there’s nothing really sexual about the holographic Leah in “Booby Trap,” at least not intentionally on Geordi’s part. He’s just looking for an engineering expert program to consult with, the holodeck simulates her personality based on records of her writings and behavior, and it’s the hologram, acting according to that character model, that initiates the gestures of warmth, to Geordi’s surprise. And “Booby Trap” is really just using Leah as a metaphor for Geordi’s bond with the Enterprise. The case can be made that the affection the hologram shows Geordi is actually coming from the ship’s computer, or at least that the episode is metaphorically implying that.
I really think you let the way “Galaxy’s Child” screwed it up later retroactively color your perception of the far more innocent “Booby Trap.” And you let it color your perception of what’s going on here. It’s profoundly misunderstanding Sam Rutherford to think he’d be more excited by Leah Brahms as a sexual object than as a brilliant engineer he could learn from.
My reading of “Booby Trap” was always that Geordi had fallen in love with the ship’s computer and that the fact that its interface was based on a real person was more or less incidental. I think that “Galaxy’s Child” made a misstep by acting like Geordi’s interest was in the human Leah Brahms herself (and also, of course, by making him behave skeevily in a way that the script refused to acknowledge).
My main problem with Brahms’s use here, though, is that it seems too much like a fantasy that was written for Geordi himself, rather than for Rutherford (who is admittedly a rather Geordiesque character).
Concerning Rutherford’s ethnicity, Eugene Cordero is of Filipino descent, so I just assumed that the same was true of his character.
“Galaxy’s Child” is a Mass Effect 3 episode. It’s something the ending screws up so badly (or at least in this metaphor) that the previous 90% of the game/episode is forgotten despite being overall quite good. In the case of Galaxy’s Child, the idea that Geordi has mistaken the holographic Leah Brams for the personality of the REAL Leah Brams is actually quite a good sci-fi premise. Because, of course, we know that the public persona of a celebrity is something that is not going to represent their actual status and the same for any person created from what is written about them.
It’s just the apology at the end and the attempt to backpedal Geordi completely screwing up that makes it so bad. How they SHOULD have ended it would be Leah Brams leaving in disgust and Geordi talking with a nice engineering girl in Ten Forward who he never noticed because he was focused on his crush on the Beyonce of warp engines.
It’s a simple lesson but one that would have resonated with fans.
And here, Rutherford’s fantasy is harmless because it’s drawn from his brain.
Brahms voice was so off I actually was surprised it was Gibney doing it. Definitely a bad recording job.
My biggest problem with Brahms was more a problem that Geordi was pretty much made to be a giant dork with women- even Data had more romance than Geordi did. So it’s not that Geordi was crushing on a hologram (I seem to recall Riker and Minuet) but that it was part of a bigger trend of bad Geordi writing. Like others though I don’t necessarily think Rutherford crushing on Brahms is automatically bad- she’s an attractive woman who is apparently a rockstar of an engineer.
As far as this episode goes I didn’t think it as good as others. There was too much bickering with the captains for no reason- it just felt like they were padding the episode rather than progressing Tendis storyline
I’m sorry but how did no one mention the Klingon clowns with bloody bat’leths for arms? That is basically nightmare fuel.
@10/jaimebabb: “My main problem with Brahms’s use here, though, is that it seems too much like a fantasy that was written for Geordi himself, rather than for Rutherford (who is admittedly a rather Geordiesque character).”
As I already said, the whole reason Geordi chose Leah was because she was one of the designers of the Galaxy class’s groundbreaking engines; though she was a junior member of the Daystrom team, it seemed to Geordi as if she “wrote the book on propulsion.” So it stands to reason that her work would have made her well-known and admired among many Starfleet engineers. It makes no sense to assume that Geordi would be the only engineer aware of or impressed by her. (Indeed, Geordi didn’t even know who she was when he first came across her writings in “Booby Trap.”)
I need some backup on this, because I could be imagining it, or it could be a rather unusual reference: Ensign Cor’dee the Zaldan seemed to be a reference to Aqualad of Young Justice. The webbed fingers are part of it, but his voice and stilted manner of speaking sounded a lot like the way Khary Payton plays Aqualad. Cor’dee even looks a good bit like Khary Payton, although his voice actor is Carl Tart.
@13/Joshua: I can’t believe I missed a golden opportunity to type “Klowngons” and “Borgaconda”
Or maybe “Serpent of Nine?”
Killer Klowngons From Outer Space!
Christopher: Please stop trying to tell me what’s going on in my own head. I thought “Booby Trap” was creepy when it aired in 1989, mostly because of the shoulder rub and the kiss, which makes it far from “innocent,” and “Galaxy’s Child” just made it worse.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Who voiced the fantasy woman in the teaser scene? Sounded like Jessica from Rick and Morty but so far my googling hasn’t found confirmation or disproof.
@18/AndyLove: IIRC, it sounded to me like Kari Wahlgren, who was in the end credits (and played Ensign Kearns from the other ship’s team). And IMDb tells me that Wahlgren plays that character you mentioned.
I’m a bit iffy on how Leah Brahms was used, myself. Perhaps it’s meant as a parody of her original appearances in a way but still not a great look.
Why is Starfleet in charge of getting rid of the globes? Aren’t they the property and responsibility of the planet’s inhabitants, even before their actual purpose is revealed? Or did I miss something?
I neither enjoyed nor appreciated the “sitcom-level bickering” of the captains. You can only bend Star Trek so far even in a riff like this.
@16. JasonD: My immediate thought when I saw those Klingon clowns was “Klowngons! How is that not already a thing?”
Meanwhile, and speaking of coinages, I forgot to note a typo in the post — “Intorduced” — which hopefully is not this site becoming narcissistically sentient…
@21: Typo corrected, thanks :)
Arben: No, it’s the reviewer trying to write and proofread after two straight convention weekends. :laughs: Sorry about that…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“The best is finding out that Mariner is dating Jennifer the Andorian and both her heart’s desire and her greatest fear revolve around Jennifer (prompting Boimler to very passionately urge Mariner to go back into therapy).”
More than that, it is settling down with Jennifer that is both Mariner’s heart’s desire (“Oh, I’m into labels”) and greatest fear (“I want to be exclusive! I want to grow old and boring and grow orchids together, babe!”). So yes, therapy would do her good. I hope we come back to her relationship with Jennifer soon! (I was disappointed in Mariner’s fantasy version of Jennifer calling herself Mariner’s “hot Andorian girlfriend” though, it’s gross to objectify her that way, even as a fantasy)
@13: After the release of Spelljammer and this episode, I’m wondering since when horror space clowns are a thing?
@24/Athreeren: Clowns will always be horrifying, even in space.
I’m pretty sure Rutherford is supposed to be Asian, not Black. Eugene Cordero said as much in one interview or the other.
Rutherford is a giant geek, which is why we love him! I mean, this is a guy whose preferred mode of death is to have his brain explode from science! (Now that I know it exists, this is my own preferred mode of death. :-D) So Rutherford is all about geeking out with the person who designs starships for a living. She’s female, sure, but if she were a horta or something, would you be so sure this was a sexual thing?
I agree that the captains squabbling over the gift was stupid and tiresome, but I think the intent was for it to be humorous. Glad someone else didn’t find it such!
Like I said, the issue isn’t with Rutherford, it’s with the use of Brahms. There are dozens of engineer characters Rutherford could have a nerdy hard-on for, and it could’ve been any of those without the baggage that Brahms has. Heck, bring it full circle and have it be La Forge!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@27/krad: But Geordi is just an engineer aboard a starship. Leah Brahms is an inventor who designs starship engines and apparently did influential theoretical work on warp propulsion. In the big picture, she’s a much bigger deal. Who do you think a 23rd-century computer scientist would be more excited to meet — Spock or Richard Daystrom?
Besides, Brahms is a refreshing break from Trek’s overly tight focus on Starfleet. Realistically, there’d be more great civilian scientists and inventors in the UFP than military ones.
I always adhere to the writer’s intention, which is why I don’t have a problem with episodes people find distasteful. As far as I could tell, Geordi wasn’t written as some creepy, stalker guy. I take Geordi’s actions in Booby Trap at face value. We know he didn’t create the holodeck program for kicks–he had a problem to solve. Yes, it was heavy=handed with the flirtations but I think it was meant to be innocent so that’s how I took it.
@29/Mary: Yeah, “Booby Trap” went out of its way to make it clear that Geordi had only the most innocent intentions and was taken by surprise when the holodeck created an image of Leah and had it flirt with him. It’s only “Galaxy’s Child” that made it problematic in retrospect.
1. Starfleet is in charge of removing the mines because it’s very good at removing munitions and, oh, the plot was to steal their technology.
2. The joke about Leah Brams is funny because, of course, “Galaxy’s Child” is so infamous.
3. Geordi’s screw up in “Galaxy’s Child” is the fact that he thought he had a connection with Leah Brams because he assumed the holodeck simulation was accurate. So he planned to try to put on the charm and win her over, which became exaggerated when she put him on the defensive with her hostile attitude. There’s a really good episode here about parasocial and fan relationships that just is offput by some bad decisions.
4. I really would have been interested in who Boimler would be interested in, fantasy wise. I’m going to go with Janeway. “Please tell me you don’t have a holodeck program where you’re Chakotay.” “No…Harry Kim.” “OH MY GOD.”
@31/C.T.Phipps/#4: I mean, there’s a reason why he has all those commemorative plates….
At the risk of belaboring the point, Rutherford’s ethnicity is vague, possibly Filipino.
@19: Thanks!
The thing about “Galaxy’s Child” is that it would be an okay episode if not for the scene where Geordi weirdly turns Leah’s outrage around and makes her look like the bad guy. Yes, she’d been rude up to that point, but her finding out about the holodeck program was completely unrelated. All he had to do was play her a recording of the events of “Booby Trap” and she could’ve understood everything in context. A strange episode that one.
I should clarify that “Galaxy’s Child” is the strange one, not “Booby Trap,” which I like quite a bit.
I don’t mean to be a rabblerouser (not that any of you fine folks are rabble), but I’m noticing a tendency for people to take Lower Decks just a leetle more seriously than it needs to be taken.
Okay, disclaimer: Star Trek canon must be preserved, yes; Starfleet does this kind of thing and not that kind of thing, yes; as good Trekkies, we should all strive to militantly oppose attitudes that impose, shall we say, outmoded attitudes upon our heroes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I got it.
But here’s the thing:
Lower Decks is a comedy. More than that, it’s affectionate satire aimed dead center at each and every trope that fans hold dear. Not to put to fine a point on it, they’re jokes, and jokes about elements of Star Trek that can easily survive a ribbing.
So. Mariner acts in a manner unbecoming a Starfleet officer? That’s the joke. The Enterprise seems to do everything and be known by everyone? That’s the joke. Rutherford has an ill-advised, and ever-so-slightly creepy, yearning toward Leah Brahms identical to Geordi’s? That’s the joke. Two captains break into a wholly inappropriate squabble in the middle of a treaty negotiation? That’s the joke. Boimler is surrounded by dozens of nubile young vineyard ladies who want to ponn his farr, and he never notices? Th— All right, you get the idea.
For me, Lower Decks gets an absolute pass on all of this. It’s not to be judged because it takes hilarious reversals on every Trek trope; that’s what it’s for. That is the joke, folks.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
@37/dmtd: Saying something is a joke is essentially meaningless, because that merely indicates its category, not its quality or appropriateness. It’s a neutral statement and therefore useless as a defense. If you ask someone how they liked their sandwich and their only answer is “It’s a sandwich,” that tells you nothing about whether it’s a good sandwich or not. “It’s a joke” is just as devoid of substance. We know they’re jokes. We’re not idiots. The question is whether they’re good jokes.
Context matters to humor. Some jokes are more appropriate for some contexts than others. A joke that would work in the absurd world of a Tex Avery cartoon would be inappropriate for the naturalistic world of, say, Barney Miller or All in the Family. You want to tell jokes that work within the context of your world rather than working against it. Lower Decks is meant to be in the same reality as the rest of Trek, and that means its humor should ideally work within that reality rather than breaking it. Most of all, the character humor should be naturalistic and believable, because that was Roddenberry’s highest goal in making Trek, to have the characters written as believably as in the most down-to-earth drama, even when the universe around them was implausible.
And humor can absolutely be judged. It’s nonsense to say it’s somehow exempt from criticism. Comedy is harder to do well than drama. It requires more precision and balance and can easily go wrong if not approached with care. It’s a fine art, and it insults comedy to say it somehow doesn’t deserve to be held to high standards in the same way as drama.
@38/CLB:
First of all, thanks for the lecture on comedy. I hope the Gods of Comedy will forgive my “insult.” Insert eyeroll here.
I actually don’t believe that LD “takes place in the same reality” as dramatic filmed Trek, as it is a respectful satire of that reality. But mostly, I don’t care whether it is or not. Canon addicts gimme a pain in the back of my lap, and it seems to me that you’re too attached to canon to enjoy any gag which is an “offense” to it.
Now, I am not an idiot either: I’m well aware that you have made a not-inconsiderable living writing Star Trek fiction, and in that capacity, of course, one must adhere rigorously to that which has been established. But outside of that capacity, you really could stand to lighten up a little.
#38
Lower Decks is meant to be in the same reality as the rest of Trek,
This is the root of the problem. The creators can say it’s in the same reality (creators say a lot of things), but obviously it’s not. At least not completely. It is both trying to be within the universe and operate outside of it like a MAD Magazine parody.
Personally, I think they should go with the latter, serving as a whimsical, bonkers celebration of all the nerdy details of the canon and so forth, and ditch all this corporate cross-pollinating canonical togetherness that Disney/Marvel inflicted on the culture. I mean, few things in recent Trek news have made me cringe more than the crossover announcement between LDS and SNW. Good grief…
Pick a lane, everyone. Please pick a lane.
@39: Hmph. With that attitude, I think the comedy gods might sentence you to an eternity of being a punchline of a joke. (They’re MEAN muthas….I oughta know, I ran a comedy group for a decade. Straight drama’s a LOT easier).
Whether you’re in the reality or not, you need to stick to the established rules (not canon, mind you) as much as possible, or the comedy doesn’t land.
@39/dtmd: I’m not “attached to canon” at all. I just think it’s facile to say “it’s a joke” as if that automatically excuses anything. Jokes, like anything else, have to be good in order to be worthwhile. The reason it’s called a sense of humor is that it’s not indiscriminate, that there’s an ability to discern quality from its absence. If a joke isn’t funny, saying “It’s a joke, so you have no right to judge it” is an invalid defense.
Having two accomplished starship captains act like childish idiots in front of people they’re supposed to be negotiating a peace treaty for is too unbelievable even for Lower Decks. It’s complete, dangerous incompetence, it demeans Carol Freeman as a character, and it’s simply not funny. It’s a weak, contrived way to delay the acceptance of the gift long enough for Tendi to discover the spy device. It’s forced and doesn’t work as humor. Yes, it’s a joke, but that’s exactly why it fails — because jokes are supposed to be funny, not just arbitrarily stupid.
@40/FredNotDead: “This is the root of the problem. The creators can say it’s in the same reality (creators say a lot of things), but obviously it’s not. At least not completely. It is both trying to be within the universe and operate outside of it like a MAD Magazine parody.”
Yes, which is basically my point. If they want to sell it as part of the same continuity as the rest, they shouldn’t make it quite so parodic. You don’t need an unbelievable reality to be funny. There’s nothing intrinsically fanciful about an army hospital in the Korean War or a New York City taxi company or a Minneapolis TV news department. You can make a terrific comedy in a totally grounded, believable world, by deriving the humor from character and realistically absurd situations.
“Personally, I think they should go with the latter, serving as a whimsical, bonkers celebration of all the nerdy details of the canon and so forth, and ditch all this corporate cross-pollinating canonical togetherness that Disney/Marvel inflicted on the culture.”
Huh? Star Trek was crossing over its various shows and movies in the 1990s, long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed. It has been Trek’s policy pretty much all along to treat every production as part of the same continuity. That’s not new to the current shows.
I figured the rock given to the two captains was actually causing them to argue for reasons that would be explained at the end. I was wrong, but that would have been better than the pointless argument that ensued.
I love Star Trek but don’t attempt to take it too seriously. “A Piece of the Action”, “The Trouble with Tribbles”, “The Magnificent Ferengi”, and so much more are great comedy episodes. So, I’m happy with the idea Lower Decks is actually canon even if I feel it’s a “heightened reality” version of Star Trek. I’m sure someone writing Star Trek novels in the future will state something like, “The adventures of the USS Cerritos were used to make a popular comic series based on their adventures. The satirical tone was a direct strike against Starfleet despite its upbeat optimistic tone.”
Roddenberry felt the same about TOS and certainly did TAS but I think sometimes pushing back against GR was a good thing.
In regards to Rutherford’s ethnicity, I think he’s what most people of the future will be like, given current trends- a little bit of everything.
Oh, they had to wade into the Leah Brahms minefield.
I wish it had been another attractive engineer we’d never heard of. It just wasn’t worth calling back to those particular episodes of TNG to have Dr. Brahms appear in this context. That said, in Rutherford’s case, I firmly believe his interest in Brahms is non-sexual; as has been said, this is Rutherford we’re talking about.
If not for the illusory Brahms, I was going to give the episode credit for not having someone say “Kirk did this” or “Picard did that.” I really feel those kinds of references should be of people and ships we’ve never heard of. I mean, heck, it’s animation. You could do Family Guy-style cutaways and actually show what happened; no need for sets and costumes.
Thinking about it, I’m glad they didn’t make Rutherford awkward with women and sexless like Geordi was most of the time. From jump, we see Rutherford dating. I would have hated seeing another engineer of color so similar to Geordi LaForge be sexless. I mean, Data was better with women than Geordi was.
I was sold on Captain Carol Freeman after watching season 2, so it’s too bad they want to regress her to acting childish and stupid for the sake of plot.
And poor Tendi; she has to deal with this clueless buffoon as her trainer. But Tendi will only take so much before she tells you where to shove it and how far (we saw as much in this episode, in fact).
Other than that, another solid episode. I really like seeing Mariner’s continued growth, and aside from the Brahms stuff, the plot on the planet is pretty good. (Klowngons. *shudder* Even the word is nightmare fuel). I liked seeing the two crews interact, and working together, without it devolving to pointless arguing (which we unfortunately get back on the Cerritos).
The ending was great, with the junior officers of both Cerritos and Carlsbad showing more maturity than their commanding officers, and actually sharing good-natured fun (at Boimler’s expense, of course, as it should be).
They used Leah Brahms because she’s a character the audience knows. Most of the jokes in this show are based on nostalgia and references. Same reason they used Martok last week instead of inventing a new Klingon character.
Yes, I know that. My point is, they have the opportunity to really expand the Trek universe beyond what we the audience already know, especially because it’s animation. They can even do it with doofy, Lower Decks-style humor, and still be effective, and expand Trek lore.
And while Dr. Brahms is a character we know, as krad points out, the character has a lot of mixed baggage.
I agree that it would be nice to expand the universe but the MO of this show is fan service, nostalgic references and meta humor so unless they decide to pull an Orville and completely change the tone of the show, we are out of luck.
@49/Tim Kaiser: “I agree that it would be nice to expand the universe but the MO of this show is fan service, nostalgic references and meta humor so unless they decide to pull an Orville and completely change the tone of the show, we are out of luck.”
That’s a false dichotomy. There are plenty of ways they could generate humor without going the lazy route of relying on nostalgia. Saying “Hey, look, here’s a thing you recognize!” is a cheap way to get a laugh. It’s not even real humor, it’s a reflexive laugh of recognition or surprise. And it loses the power of surprise when it happens constantly. Finding another approach wouldn’t require abandoning the comedy; on the contrary, it would require putting more thought and effort into the comedy rather than taking the path of least resistance.
I mean, look at one of the funniest Trek episodes ever, DS9’s “In the Cards.” The funny part isn’t that Jake is trying to get a Willy Mays rookie-year baseball card; the fact that the card is a recognizable reference is the least important part of it, not even played for humor. The comedy comes from all the things Jake does to get the card, and the way it affects the other characters. The problem with too much comedy today is that it thinks merely presenting something familiar is a punch line in and of itself, which it really isn’t. (Well, except in some contexts, like Leonard Nimoy’s surprise appearance as Spock on The Carol Burnett Show. But not when it’s done all the damn time.)
Having just finished watching The Orville and mostly loving it (after a rough start), I’d say that “pulling an Orville” wouldn’t be a bad thing at all for LD. It wouldn’t have to get totally serious, just make the humor less farcical, more organic, less self-conscious and forced. (For instance, I found Ed and Gordon’s slapstick baggage-carrying routine and the saga of Gordon’s sandwich in season 3 of The Orville far funnier than any of the petulant ex-marital bickering in season 1.) And having a good balance of comedy and drama wouldn’t be amiss either. My favorite parts of Lower Decks have always been the parts that were played the most straight, that worked the best as classic Trek-style adventures. LD is actually quite good at that.
I don’t know. “We’ve been investigating the man whose picture is in your hand right now. Until yesterday, that man, one Willie Mays, did not exist in any historical documents. Then, in the blink of an eye, that card appeared on the station, and at that same moment a bust of Willie Mays appeared at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. There’s only one explanation. We suspect that this man is from the future.”
None of that depends on anything specific about Mays. It could be any baseball player the audience has heard of. But I don’t think it would have been nearly as funny if it subbed in, e.g., Buck Bokai of the London Kings.
Not least because, Star Trek being the way it is, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Buck Bokai did turn out to be a time traveler or an alien or some such.
(Not that Willie Maya strictly couldn’t, to be fair. Ask Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Brahms.)
@51/mschiffe: Sure, maybe the familiarity enhances it, but the point is that “Hey, it’s Willy Mays” is not the entire joke. As I said, too many shows today think the reference is the punch line all by itself, so they never bother to do anything genuinely funny with it.
@51: The idea that a famous baseball player has been inserted into the timeline gets a lot of vividness if its a player that the audience is familiar with – the audience gets a moment of shock where they have to entertain the idea that they are in an altered timeline just like the characters are. It works less well with a fictional ballplayer (even a fictional player who has been referred to before)
EXCELSIOR!
…
Ahem, as you may have noted I was quite happy to see a team-up between the Excelsior– and California-classes: the Great Experiment is a particular favourite in any case, but it also makes perfect sense that any ageing heavyweight like an Excelsior would be the capital ship class most likely to run into the get-those-chores-done California (I just hope we get a glimpse of USS Gorkon at some point – there being something inherently fascinating about a Federation ship with a Klingon name).
In other news, I like Ensign Rutherford far too much to believe he saw Doctor Brahms out of anything but a little innocent hero worship (as opposed to a crush) – Rutherford, as depicted so far, is most definitely someone who would spend a night with a gorgeous scientist thinking & talking nothing but Science.
Also, I dearly hope that Jennifer the Andorian’s triumphant return (by proxy) is a sign that we’re going to get some proper Romantic Drama (because I do very dearly love the idea that Andorians have a strong tendency to produce Byronic Hero-types and Beckett Mariner is exactly the sort of person who could play into that All Drama, All the Time approach to things).
As for Captain Freeman, I’m perfectly happy to accept this sort of thing because I am deeply convinced that LOWER DECKS should be regarded as “The Adventures & Misadventures of USS Cerritos as told by one Beckett Mariner” rather than a straightforward depiction of events – so it makes perfect sense that the version of the two captain’s disagreement we get is the blatantly comic one, rather than than one reflecting a sense of consummate professionalism.
@53/AndyLove: Please read my reply in comment 52.
Oh, and @31. C.T. Phipps: Point 4 absolutely made me howl – Boimler absolutely would put himself in the role of Ensign Kim (and let’s face it, having a crush on Captain Janeway would also be quite plausible (Especially if her WWII tuxedo a la Dietrich is involved).
I wonder how he’d get on with the actual … let me see, he’d likely be Lieutenant Commander or Commander Harry Kim at this point … with the one true Harry Kim? (Amusing mental image of everyone else going “Hey, Harry Kim!” while Boimler absolutely goes Total Fanboy).
The minute Leah Brahms showed up, I expected an annoyed grunt from @krad. I certainly understand the criticism of the way she was handled on TNG. But overall, I don’t see Rutherford’s infatuation with her as sexual at all. Like the others, I see it as that kindred engineering spirit we’ve seen plenty of times before on Trek.
I agree with the assessment of the captains’ bickering scene. It didn’t add anything new to Freeman, and it only made the other guy look like a jealous snob to the point where I questioned how this guy ever made captain to begin with.
But I didn’t have much of a problem with the Tendi story. It could have used a little more screentime, but overall I liked the way Migleemo forced her to find a solution (even though he’s a pretty lousy mentor).
But my favorite part was when Mariner pushed Stevens’ buttons, making him ‘overcompensate’, leading to that hilarious series of disasters. Overall, another solid entry, though definitely the weakest of the ones that aired this season so far.
@57/Eduardo: “I agree with the assessment of the captains’ bickering scene. It didn’t add anything new to Freeman, and it only made the other guy look like a jealous snob to the point where I questioned how this guy ever made captain to begin with.”
I didn’t see the motive as jealousy or snobbery, but more of a generation gap. He was a fresh young captain remarking about Freeman’s greater age, and she resented being characterized as old. Which is an attitude on both sides that they ought to be beyond in the Federation.
“But my favorite part was when Mariner pushed Stevens’ buttons, making him ‘overcompensate’, leading to that hilarious series of disasters.”
Stevens is way too broad a character for me. It’s hard to take him seriously as a qualified senior officer. This whole episode seemed to make the senior officers look incompetent in order to let the junior officers shine, and that’s a bad way of approaching it.
I didn’t see the motive as jealousy or snobbery, but more of a generation gap. He was a fresh young captain remarking about Freeman’s greater age, and she resented being characterized as old.
@58/Christopher: That could also be it, though I never bought the notion that Freeman looks remotely old. Animation-wise, she doesn’t look it, other than looking like Mariner’s mother.
Stevens is way too broad a character for me.
Broad for Trek? Yes. Though I’d argue not that broad when it comes to primetime adult animation. Lower Decks is still a comedy show, and very much the brainchild of someone who was a writer/producer on Rick & Morty. I expect some broad characterization for secondary characters on a show like this. If they did this to someone like Boimler, I might agree though.
@59/Eduardo: “I never bought the notion that Freeman looks remotely old.”
She doesn’t have to, objectively. The point is that the wet-behind-the-ears young captain unfairly sees her as old, or is exaggerating her age out of a sense of competitiveness toward a more veteran captain.
“Broad for Trek? Yes. Though I’d argue not that broad when it comes to primetime adult animation.”
Which is the root of my problem, that belief that LD has to be in the same mode as The Simpsons and all its successors. I’d rather it be a more naturalistic sitcom that draws its humor from believable character foibles and conflicts, miscommunications between cultures with differing values and worldviews, and the general weirdness of the Trek universe. Plenty of comedies have succeeded at being hilarious without needing to be unbelievable. Yet science fiction comedies usually treat the universe itself as farcical, and just once I’d like to see one that didn’t. Gene Roddenberry’s goal in creating Star Trek was to make an SFTV show that was approached with the same realism and character credibility as any contemporary cop show or lawyer show or Western, because he objected to the prejudice that science fiction couldn’t be as legitimate as any other genre. I’d like to see an SF sitcom approached the same way. (This was the basis for my Hub series of comedy stories in Analog, which originated as a hypothetical sitcom pitch. I got tired of SF sitcoms always making fun of their own universes, so I tried to create a setting as plausible as any hard-SF universe, but focusing on characters and situations that lent themselves to humor.)
@55: I don’t think I disagree with you; familiarity alone doesn’t make something funny. The scene in “In the Cards” requires a familiar ballplayer, but it’s not funny only because we recognize Willy Mays name; it’s funny because it suggests that the timeline I’m familiar with might have been altered.
It might have been funnier if Rutherford had dreamed of meeting Reg Barclay – someone who was awkward (in a somewhat different way than Rutherford) giving them something in common. In a way, we’re not familiar enough with Leah Brahms to know what Rutherford admires about her – she’s just “in-universe famous scientist” – With Reg or O’Brien, or Robin Leffler, we’d have something to work with (now I’m seeing Rutherford gush over Leffler: “I memorized all your Laws!”)
@61/AndyLove: “In a way, we’re not familiar enough with Leah Brahms to know what Rutherford admires about her – she’s just “in-universe famous scientist””
Sure we are. That was spelled out clearly enough in “Booby Trap,” to explain why Geordi chose her as the expert he consulted with. She’s a theoretical propulsion engineer who was one of the designers of the Galaxy-class engines. She did important enough work that Geordi felt she “wrote the book on propulsion.” By the time of “Galaxy’s Child,” she was the senior design engineer of the Theoretical Propulsion Group.
And I repeat my objection to the idea of having Rutherford’s fantasy be another Starfleet officer, because Starfleet is not the entire Federation. Let there be important civilians in the universe, for pity’s sake.
@60/Christopher: I don’t doubt there’s room for such a show in the future. I know I’d like to watch something like that. But at this point, I just don’t see McMahan, Kula, Kurtzman, and company changing course mid-run to meet that approach on Lower Decks. But maybe the success of LD could enable a future Trek comedy project that might lean towards that sensibility.
@63/Eduardo: They wouldn’t have to change things radically. The show already has its fair share of moments of sincerity and believable characterization, and I already said it does conventional Trek-style action and peril scenarios quite well. It could just stand to dial back on the ridiculously caricatured behaviors somewhat.
But I’m not saying I expect them to change. I’m just saying there are aspects of the show that I’ve always wished were different, that it makes it hard to truly enjoy it when they ride too heavily on those aspects.