One of the first alien species Gene Roddenberry created for Star Trek were the Orions, mentioned as trading in “green animal women” and slaves in “The Cage,” and then seen in one of the illusions for Pike created by the Talosians, with Susan Oliver’s Vina reimagined as one of those “green animal women.”
We saw Orion pirates on the original series in “Journey to Babel” and the animated series in the aptly titled “The Pirates of Orion,” and another sexy Orion woman, played by Yvonne Craig, in “Whom Gods Destroy.” Later uses of the Orions on Enterprise, Discovery, and Lower Decks—with an Orion woman in the main cast—have made the society a bit less cringe-y
Tendi has always been a bit of a mystery, as she’s a classic Starfleet science dork, but every once in a while bits of her Orion past show up. The most notable were in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” when other Orions referred to her respectfully as the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, and in both “Veritas” and “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” where she kicked some serious ass.
All is finally revealed this week, as Tendi is invited to her sister D’Erika’s wedding. Tendi doesn’t wish to attend, but Freeman makes it clear that Starfleet wants her to go. They still don’t know that much about Orion society. Mariner is dying to learn more about Tendi, and T’Lyn is curious for scientific reasons, and feels that a report to Vulcan High Command about Orion would be beneficial, so we get a road trip with the three women among the lower-decksers.
For one thing, all three want to get away from Boimler and Rutherford, who have become roommate bros to an annoying degree, going so far as to finish each others’ sentences. However, as we soon see, there is trouble in paradise, as Boimler and Rutherford argue over who should mist their bonsai tree. Rutherford’s argument is that he knows the precise amount the tree needs thanks to his cybernetic implants, while Boimler’s counterargument is that he grew up on a vineyard and knows how to take care of plants.
Their argument is interrupted by it being their holodeck time, where they’ve re-created a nineteenth-century riverboat on which Mark Twain is a passenger—and then they argue over who is playing Mr. Samuel Clemens, as they both show up in white suits and big-ass mustaches.
What follows made my teeth hurt a little bit, as they weren’t so much doing Mark Twain as they were doing Foghorn Leghorn. But talking in gruff Southern accents and doing bits of wordplay as they argue has a salubrious effect on them and they wind up being friends again.
Which is okay, I guess, but then we get the dopey sitcom plot. The Cerritos wants to examine a nebula, but there’s a Chalnoth ship that refuses to let them. Boimler and Rutherford, for some stupid-ass reason, suggest that Freeman and the Chalnoth captain go to the riverboat holodeck program and talk like Mark Twain to settle their differences. I don’t know what’s more idiotic, that the two lieutenants even suggested such a dopey notion or that Freeman actually tried it.
In the end, the solution comes, not from badly impersonating Mark Twain on the holodeck, but instead by the Chalnoth eating the bonsai tree and therefore being more conciliatory. This also nicely solves the dilemma of who mists the plant…
But that’s not the fun part of the episode, the fun part of the episode is Tendi getting sucked into family drama and Mariner (goofily) and T’Lyn (in her usual deadpan) commenting on it. D’Erika has been kidnapped—something that happens pretty regularly to children of important Orion families, of which the Tendis very much are one—and Tendi is appalled to realize that her parents specifically invited her to the wedding so that the Mistress of the Winter Constellations will rescue her sister.
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I love the Orion society that we see here, especially the casual near-boredom with kidnappings, as they’re so matter-of-course that nobody makes any kind of big deal about them. In addition, we get to see a pheremone bar. The Enterprise episode “Bound” established that Orion women emit pheremones that make heterosexual males devoted to them; LD has backed that off some, establishing that only certain Orion women emit those ’mones (and Tendi is not one of them). However, it also makes perfect sense that there’d be the equivalent of an opium den, or an oxygen bar, where guys come to sniff the ’mones. (Points to scripter Grace Parra Janney for the abbreviation of pheremones and its perfect double meaning.) We see such an establishment as a place where D’Erika’s ex hangs out, as Tendi sees him as a prime suspect. (D’Erika’s future husband is not him, as the marriage is a political union of families rather than a love match.) But he’s too busy sniffing ’mones to be kidnapping anyone.
Throughout the search for D’Erika, Tendi is treated with fear and reverence, and she keeps trying to downplay it to T’Lyn and Mariner, who, of course, don’t buy it. By the end of the episode, we finally know the full story. Tendi was the Prime among the Tendi offspring, trained to be an assassin. But she never wanted that life, preferring to do science (as we’ve seen in, like, every LD episode, as well as SNW’s “Those Old Scientists”), and so she left, leaving D’Erika to take over as Prime.
And that, it turns out, is the issue. Tendi left for Starfleet Academy without discussing it with anyone, leaving D’Erika stuck with her job and in her shadow. They finally find D’Erika in a junkyard full of damaged ships, where the Tendi sisters used to hang out as children. Turns out that D’Erika kidnapped herself to lure her older sibling to Orion so they could have it out.
Tendi is confused, as she thought D’Erika wanted to be Prime—and she’s right. It’s the shadow that’s the problem. D’Erika doesn’t think she can live up to the Mistress of the Winter Constellations.
But she reveals this right after The Obligatory Fight Scene, and all three of the other people in the scene—Tendi, T’Lyn, and Mariner—reassure D’Erika that she was kicking her sister’s ass and makes a great Prime.
The sisters make up and everyone’s happy—but then they need to get to the wedding. Luckily, Tendi is there to hotwire the ship and they crash the wedding (literally) and everyone lives happily ever after. Even T’Lyn, who realizes that reporting about a society without their consent might be ethically dodgy, and so tosses her padd away.
Some of Trek’s best episodes are the ones that give us a look at the homeworld of one of the main characters, from the original series’ “Amok Time” to TNG’s “Sins of the Father” to DS9’s “Family Business” to Voyager’s “Lineage” to Enterprise’s “Home” to Discovery’s “The Sound of Thunder” to LD’s “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie.” This definitely fits nicely with all those episodes, fleshing out Tendi’s character and giving us a fun adventure.
Albeit one with a dopey B-plot. Alas.
Random thoughts
- The Chalnoth were first seen in TNG’s “Allegiance,” established as anarchists. This is only their second on-screen appearance, though they showed up in some TNG comics written by Michael Jan Friedman.
- The real Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, showed up in TNG’s “Time’s Arrow” two-parter, played by Jerry Hardin.
- Tendi’s parents, Shona and Br’t, have the exact same dynamic as T’Pring’s parents, T’Pril and Sevet, in SNW’s “Charades,” which is more than a little tiresome. It works better here, at least in part because the henpecked male under the thumb of a domineering wife fits the Orion mode more than it does a Vulcan couple, especially after what was established about Orion women in Enterprise’s “Bound.”
- Orions also play a big role in the thirty-second century Alpha Quadrant, as seen in Discovery, as following the Burn the Orions and Andorians teamed up to form the criminal enterprise the Emerald Chain.
- I must confess to finding the running gag that Mariner constantly got stabbed in the exact same spot on her right shoulder to be hilarious. Part of it was how the usually action-oriented Mariner was actively trying not to get stabbed again by the time we got to the sister fight, going so far as to hide behind a console—and she still got stabbed in the same spot…
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a story in the newly released eighth issue of Star Trek Explorer magazine, “The Kellidian Kidnapping,” a Voyager tale that dramatizes an adventure alluded to in the series finale “Endgame.” There’s also a DS9 story by David Mack, “Lost and Founder.” You can find it at bookstores and comic shops, or order directly from Titan.
I’m still chuckling over the “Orion plagiarist.”
Disagree about Boimler and Rutherford doing the duelling Mark Twains; I actually thought it’s one of the funniest bits that Lower Decks has ever done. Though I agree that having Freeman and the Chalnoth do the same thing later on was just deeply stupid. (Also, didn’t “Allegiance” establish that the Chalnoth are obligate carnivores? Or perhaps it was just that they couldn’t eat the prison ration). At least the Orion stuff was good enough to make up for it. Plus, I’m loving T’Lyn more with every week.
Incidentally, some Chalnoth mercenaries also showed up in issue #11 of Marvel’s Starfleet Academy series in the 1990s.
Mariner’s potshot at “Bound” — that Orion pheromones were made up by Starfleet, as their excuse to explain how Archer and NX-01 got taken over by Orion showgirls — had me howling with laughter.
Keith, your list of Orion appearances overlooked Devna from TAS: “The Time Trap,” the first Orion female portrayed as something other than an animalistic or deranged sex object. Devna was also a major character in my Rise of the Federation series, along with the Orion sisters from ENT: “Bound.”
This was okay. It’s good that they finally paid off the hints about Tendi’s backstory, and it was nice to take advantage of the new character dynamics offered by T’Lyn’s addition to the cast. A three-person “girls’ night out” story isn’t something we could’ve had before, and T’Lyn contrasts well with both Tendi and Mariner.
But some things bugged me. I don’t like the implication that the Orions are entirely a society of pirates and criminals; I always figured the Syndicate was more like the Russian mob, effectively controlling the government but not representing the rank and file of the population. I guess that could still be the case, since we only saw things from the perspective of Tendi’s Syndicate family and their associates, but I’m still uneasy with the stereotyping — and with the Starfleet characters’ casual acceptance of the subordination of what may or may not be slaves, since it was left unclear whether that practice still exists in this century.
Mariner getting repeatedly stabbed and shrugging it off was too much of a break from reality. This may be animated, but it’s meant to be part of Trek canon, so it shouldn’t have physical or medical impossibilities. Even a single stab wound like that would probably be far more incapacitating, let alone repeated ones. At least they should’ve shown T’Lyn running a dermal regenerator over Mariner’s shoulder between stabbings (although the muscles and tendons underneath would’ve needed regenerating too).
As for the holodeck subplot, just once I’d like to see someone in the 24th century want to simulate a part of history later than the year 2000, or taking place somewhere other than America or Europe. Let’s have a holodeck recreation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West or The Ramayana, or give us a look at colonial Mars or Alpha Centauri.
Also, should there really be exterior establishing shots in a holodeck scene? Presumably the computer wasn’t actually simulating the entire riverboat exterior and the landscape beyond, just the interior that the occupants of the holodeck would see.
jaimebabb: “Allegiance” wasn’t that specific about what Chalnoth can and can’t eat, only that the maroon cubes that the prisoners were provided for food was poisonous to Esoqq.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I take it Jerry Hardin did not voice Mark Twain in this episode?
Quoth bgsu98: “I take it Jerry Hardin did not voice Mark Twain in this episode?”
Since Mark Twain didn’t appear in the episode, no. At various times in the episode, Boimler, Rutherford, Freeman, and the Chalnoth captain all cosplayed as Clemens on the holodeck.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Was D’Erika meant to be a subtle Baywatch Easter Egg (Donna D’Erico played a lifeguard for 2 seasons)?
I’m with KRAD on the stabby stuff. I thought it was one of the best uses of a running gag I’ve seen in a while, and I was laughing out loud by the end. LD as a blend of drama and comedy has all along had to walk the line between having sight gags that don’t lead to the consequences you’d expect and actually telling stories in a universe with other narrations that don’t do that. For my money, this one worked, exactly because it was so over the top. As CLB’s comment shows, YMMV, but it cracked me up.
S
I imagine the Orion are just deeply invested in their pirating subculture, which is something I understand having once lived in Florida. So, they’re not all pirates but pirate families are revered and romanticized in a way that makes other species uncomfortable. Amusingly, I thought this might have been how you could reconcile the Ferengi fo DS9 and the Ferengi of TNG. The Damons are basically where the non-conformist, warrior Ferengi go sort of like how atavisms on Earth seek out Starfleet.
@11/C.T. Phipps: “Amusingly, I thought this might have been how you could reconcile the Ferengi fo DS9 and the Ferengi of TNG. The Damons are basically where the non-conformist, warrior Ferengi go sort of like how atavisms on Earth seek out Starfleet.”
I don’t see that there’s anything to reconcile. The DaiMons, and most of the other Ferengi we see in TNG, are the military, while Quark and most of the others we see in DS9 are civilian businesspeople. So naturally they behave differently.
I would have used an Orion-centered episode to move away from the sexist nonsense established by “Bound” rather than doubling down on it for laughs. Oh well. I guess it’s still marginally better than the green slave women bit.
I found the rest of the episode very entertaining. I also loved the running gag of Mariner getting stabbed repeatedly in the same place. Sure, it’s silly cartoon violence in a show that’s supposed to be “canon” but canon is overrated anyway.
Now, I finally know what “mone” is! Thank you!
I thought the Orion stuff was perfect! Plus, I love how T’Lyn decides to respect Tendi’s wishes by getting rid of her report. The whole threesome girl’s trip was awesome!
I’m still slightly confused by Prime Daughter. First, I thought it mean oldest but it actually refers to assassin. So, I’m wondering, are all first born daughters of powerful families raised to become Primes? Or maybe it was just coincidence that D’Vana is the oldest and that’s what she was raised for?
I agree with you on the B plot. it had promise at first but the fact that the captain would agree with it to ease the conflict with her and the Chalnoth captains really strains credibility. (BTW, the Chalnoth eating the bonsai tree made me gasp and then laugh.
@11 Sure. We saw plenty of non-pirates in this episode: bartenders, bouncers, brothel-owners, probably other things that don’t begin with “b”. They just all spin their activities according to Orion culture, same as Klingon lawyers see the courtroom as a battlefield and Vulcans evaluate their romantic relationships with invocations of logic (when not overcome by pon farr).
And I continue to believe that planets of hats are part of what makes Trek Trek, and that it’s not possible to unfairly stereotype a made-up culture. (At least one that isn’t an obvious stand-in for or lampoon of a real one.) This episode, along with others like “wej Duj”, is a great example of how much fun Pirate World (or Logic World, Warrior World, etc.) can be.
I don’t think that it would have been improved by dragging in representatives of a previously unseen majority who weren’t into crime or lechery. Being impatient and embarrassed and often thoroughly exasperated by Orion pirate culture is what *Tendi’s* there for. A larger population of Orions who Aren’t Like That can wait for a story that calls for them.
@15/mschiffe: ” They just all spin their activities according to Orion culture, same as Klingon lawyers see the courtroom as a battlefield and Vulcans evaluate their romantic relationships with invocations of logic (when not overcome by pon farr).”
Yeah, but that’s my problem with how Trek and too much other science fiction approaches alien cultures: assuming that everyone in the entire society subscribes to the identical value system even if they apply it in different ways. It’s like portraying all humans as libertarian, say — or, more on point, portraying all Italians as mobsters. We have an insane diversity of conflicting cultures and belief systems on Earth, so why must every alien culture be stereotyped as having a single set of values? It is so damn lazy. Why can’t “Orion culture” include a faction that despises piracy and hates the way the pirates have stained their species’s reputation? Tendi can’t be the only one who feels that way. I’d rather see an Orion civilization where the majority of the populace agrees with Tendi and hates the Syndicate’s stranglehold on the government. That would be more believable than a society where it’s normal to glorify crime.
“And I continue to believe that planets of hats are part of what makes Trek Trek, and that it’s not possible to unfairly stereotype a made-up culture.”
I don’t agree. What defined Gene Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek was his ambition to make it more intelligent and credible than its contemporary SFTV shows. He was one of the only SFTV producers who consulted with scientists, engineers, and think tanks to build a world that was as plausible as he could make it. He made concessions that were necessary for dramatic or budgetary reasons, like humanoid aliens, psi powers, and Earth-parallel cultures, but aside from that he strove for credibility and naturalism. Unrealistic elements aren’t “part of what makes Trek Trek,” they’re flaws in its design.
And yes, the cultures are made-up, but that’s exactly why I can’t excuse being lazy in the process of creating them. I don’t want to have to lower my standards of intelligence to enjoy fiction. I want to see alien cultures that are portrayed thoughtfully and imaginatively, with a believable and interesting amount of complexity and internal diversity. Stereotyped cultures are not as believable or interesting as realistically multifaceted ones.
“Being impatient and embarrassed and often thoroughly exasperated by Orion pirate culture is what *Tendi’s* there for. A larger population of Orions who Aren’t Like That can wait for a story that calls for them.”
Okay, but that could’ve been fixed with a few dialogue tweaks to establish that Tendi’s family were just part of the ruling class instead of being typical of all Orions. In the same way that the Mariner stabbing gag could’ve been made more believable just by showing that she got some quick medical treatment in between stabbings. That might’ve made it even funnier, because then you’ve got the added element of “Aww, I just got that fixed!” And I’m sorry, but there’s just no way she stays conscious with a completely untreated stab wound of that size bleeding out the whole time. A small change would’ve made a great improvement.
I appreciate I may be in the minority on this, but I thought the whole dueling Samuel Clemens thing was hilarious, and seeing Freeman and the Chalnoth doing it and realizing it was stupid (“why are we doing this?!?) was the icing on the cake. Just a great gag.
Was Ransom in it at all?
I disagree that Shona and Br’t are identical to T’Pril and Sevet: Sevet is a 1950s sitcom henpecked husband, and the two of them are indeed a pretty tiresome stereotype, but Br’t doesn’t seem completely under Shona’s thumb the way Sevet is, he just seems like a kind of enthusiastic dork with a much more hard-nosed and decisive wife. Which is both more realistic and way less of a pain to watch.
The Mariner getting stabbed thing was hilarious. Even better that she got stabbed again during the Daddy Daughter Dagger Dance. Mr. Bennett might be right, having Mariner continue to receive first aid for her stab wound may have enhanced the joke. Or have her getting woozy from blood loss later in the episode.
I immensely enjoyed it, the dumbness of the Captains participating in the Mark Twain bit aside….though the Chalnoth complaining that he was doing a southern accent because he’s actually a southerner put a smile on my face.
I like that they added a new element to Orion culture, important families selecting a child to be an elite assassin. Seeing as how Shona is known as “The Warrior Queen” it seems that the eldest spends time as an assassin before switching to leadership. I also liked that they varied the wardrobe, while the Pheromone Den had the traditional belly dancer and stripper inspired attire, the club wear looked like 24th century club wear, but the Tendi estate’s servant core wore clothes more akin to Bridgerton with snappy waist coats. The teaser with the alien ship also confirmed that Orions practice some pretty heavy duty body modification.
I disagree that Shona and B’rt echo T’Pril and Sevet. Shona and B’rt are both on the same page, and Shona doesn’t belittle her husband.And they both got teary eyed seeing their daughters show up for the wedding….as accomplices.
Though it is clear that D’Vana got her father’s personality and her mother’s strength. D’Ericka too after she vented shares D’Vana’s sweetness and her un-sureness about herself in her role. D’Vana is terrified people will only see her as a pirate, while D’Ericka is scared she won’t be seen as enough of a pirate.
More shades of T’Lyn, as she agreed that Prime Daughter sounded cool, and joined in with Mariner being thirsty over the male Orions. She also continued her run as emotional support Vulcan, calling D’Vana a Loyal friend, and even saying she was alarmed by D’Ericka’s combat abilities. Her chucking the PADD was logical though. Vulcans don’t snitch.
I like that Tendi’s encounter with her old high school friend had enough false platitudes to fit into a Real Housewives episode. Orion’s tendency towards drama, opulence, and ego lends well to an almost reality TV atmosphere.
Mariner was rather adorable in this episode, not just because she was a butt monkey with a knife magnet in her shoulder, but she was happy to be picked up and carried around by Orion dudes, was ultra supportive of Tendi the entire episode, and was really just a ball of positivity.
Back to Orion Culture, taking into account the beta canon while I don’t believe the Syndicate is the Orion People, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that Orions treat their relationship with the Syndicate the same way Americans relate to the mob. It seems to be more like a Yakuza relationship or maybe Zaibatsus in Japanese culture. Things like Democracy and rule of law being secondary to the actual power that organizations like the Syndicate represent. There morality has repeatedly been shown to be orange and green instead of black and white. There are plenty of things that align, and other things that are legal to Orions and very criminal for humans. They also seem to be very feudal, with political marriages still being normal.
I am a little sad to see D’Vana’s winning streak come to an end. The invincibility was a nice contrast to her being the sweetest of our bunch. But having everyone either in awe or fear of her (or enraptured) was very nice. I wonder what D’Ericka’s inherited title will be. Mistress of the Summer Constellations, maybe?
The problem with the “Southern accent” joke is that Mark Twain wasn’t from the South. He was born and raised in Missouri, which is in the Midwest, and at the time would’ve been considered part of the West.
@19/mr_d: ” It seems to be more like a Yakuza relationship or maybe Zaibatsus in Japanese culture”
Except there’s been some pretty strong cracking down on the yakuza from Japanese law enforcement, and they’ve more or less gone straight to survive, keeping their criminal activities fairly limited and any violence constrained within their community. It’s not like the entire nation revolves around them. It’s more of a traditional subculture that’s tolerated within limits. Zaibatsus are an interesting analogy, though.
@16: I must respectfully 100% disagree. That’s bananas. “Flaws in its design”? The Planet of Hats is absolutely what makes Trek be Trek! I’ll concede it can be overdone, sure, and week after week of it on TNG with no followup could get old. But consider: Quark talking to a Vulcan about peace, Ferengi style:
QUARK: You want to acquire peace. Fine. Peace is good. But how much are you willing to pay for it?
SAKONNA: Whatever it costs.
QUARK: That’s the kind of irresponsible spending that causes so many business ventures to fail. You’re forgetting the third rule. Right now peace could be bought at a bargain price and you don’t even realize it.
Then Sakonna in general, a logical, main culture Vulcan who has decided the best course of action is to be a gun runner and terrorist. Later, a Vulcan serial killer, “because logic demanded it”. Garak, explaining to Bashir how the overriding duty to the state can have him at odds with all of the government of the state. You mentioned Klingon lawyers. I loved the Orion scientists on SNW (there are still plenty of people walking around today who don’t recognize how intrinsically linked stealing and some sciences used to be), and lets not forget the best exchanges when Trek puts the hat on the Federation:
EDDINGTON: “You know, in some ways you’re worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious.”
vs
QUARK: What do you think?
GARAK: It’s vile!
QUARK: I know. It’s so bubbly, cloying…and happy.
GARAK: Just like the Federation.
QUARK: And you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.
GARAK: It’s insidious.
QUARK: Just like the Federation.
There’s lots of science fiction out there. The reason Trek is such staying power is exactly because it uses its aliens to say something interesting about us, here on Earth. Now that we have entered its 8th decade, it is also a record that shows how we have changed over time. I’d love to end with a clever list of hats through the ages as representative of the various eras of Trek, but I’m not a hat guy. So I’ll end with how much I love Lower Decks for being the funny series that’s occasionally serious, excellent on its own and makes the rest of Trek better with its contrast of serious and occasionally funny.
@21/BrianDolan: I don’t accept your stereotype of how Trek treats aliens any more than I accept any other stereotype. Some of the best Trek treatments of aliens have been the ones that don’t reduce them all to a single culture, that develop them with enough depth to give them more realistic diversity. Not all Bajorans follow the Prophets; there are agnostics like Ro Laren and there are Pah-wraith cultists. And those who do follow the Prophets run the gamut from more liberal types like Bareil to intolerant extremists like Winn. ENT enriched the Klingons when it established that they aren’t all warriors, that that’s just one caste of their society that’s been politically and socially dominant in the era we’ve seen onscreen. It also enriched the Vulcans by establishing that there’s a group that doesn’t adhere to Surak’s teachings, the V’tosh ka’tur, and also by showing it as a living culture that changed over time rather than being exactly the same in the 22nd century as it was 100-200 years later. And the Romulans haven’t been entirely uniform either; we saw as early as “Balance of Terror” that there were generational and philosophical differences within their society, and we saw more hints of that in “Unification,” as well as PIC adding the Qowat Milat as a faction that resists the dominant culture’s deviousness in favor of Absolute Candor.
It’s an insult to Trek to say that settling for lazy stereotypes is what defines it. At its best, it transcends that. Yes, it often settles for greater mediocrity, but one should never just complacently settle for mediocrity as the best one can expect. I know Trek is capable of better, which is why it’s disappointing when it settles for mediocrity.
Speaking of Easter Eggs, don’t try to tell me that then proprietress of the pheromone bar night club place was not a direct allusion to Ursula the Sea Witch, who is herself an allusion to Divine
T’Lyn’s dirty mouth continues to impress, though.
“He is aesthetically pleasing.”
My God, what filth from that Vulcan!
She really is the Vulcan Mariner.
#20
Considering the amount of time Twain spent on the Mississippi and his association with Huckleberry Finn, not to mention his brief stint in a Confederate militia unit, giving him a Southern or hick accent really isn’t that big a stretch.
The character design with those bulging eyes is bad enough on its own, but the switch from “2D” to ugly “3D” modeled animation for external shots of ships is a complete visual disconnect.
I’d love to write more about the episode itself but I haven’t been able to get past the shuttle’s arrival at Tendi’s palace because every few seconds the video stops and I’m told it’s currently unavailable.
@20 @25 The maddening thing is that Twain actually lived to make multiple recordings of his voice… all of which have been lost.
https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2014/10/mark-twain-sort-of-speaks-to-us/#:~:text=Mark%20Twain%20was%20known%20to,by%20Thomas%20Edison%20in%201888.
We know people called it a “drawl”, and we know he was remarked on as speaking slowly.
We do have a recording of a celebrated actor who was also a good friend of his doing an impression in the 1930s. But acting at that time was pretty stylized (his intro is in the old style mid-Atlantic accent actors often affected), so it’s hard to know how faithful he was trying to be.
I’d say that Planet of the Hats works for episode of the week and for initial encounters with a culture; you’re just not going to get more than the surface with the limited time you have, so big, broad strokes work there. But if you’re spending multiple episodes with a culture, you have the time and room to be more nuanced–and it’s part of the fun to peel away the surface and explore the nuances of an entire culture.
@25/Bingo: “Considering the amount of time Twain spent on the Mississippi and his association with Huckleberry Finn, not to mention his brief stint in a Confederate militia unit, giving him a Southern or hick accent really isn’t that big a stretch.”
Okay, first off, the Mississippi River almost entirely bisects the US from north to south, and the majority of it is in the North.
Second, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were from Missouri, just like Twain. The author based the setting on his childhood home of Hannibal, MO. He based Finn on a childhood friend from Hannibal and Sawyer on a friend from San Francisco. Huck’s friend Jim ran away from slavery because he overheard his master threatening to sell him to a Southern owner, and he knew that would be worse than his life as a slave in Missouri. Another character in the book expresses puzzlement that an escaped slave would flee to the South.
Third, that “brief stint” with a Confederate volunteer unit was all of two weeks, which is hardly enough to affect someone’s accent. Twain traveled all over America and Europe in the course of his life (in fact, history shows he was touring Europe on the date that TNG: “Time’s Arrow” purported him to be in San Francisco). He spent a fair amount of time in Paris, but nobody’s ever portrayed him with a French accent.
Fourth, equating Southerners with “hicks” is a slur. And the accent Boimler and Rutherford were using was not a “hick” accent — it was more of an upper-class Southern accent, of the sort of person wealthy enough to dress in a fine suit and go on riverboat rides. Keith likened it to Foghorn Leghorn, who was Mel Blanc’s impersonation of Kenny Delmar’s pompous Senator Claghorn character from The Fred Allen Show on 1940s radio.
I also found the running knife gag to be funny. I think the treatment of violence is one of the places where the “cartoon” takes priority over the “Trek.” Mariner’s reaction to the first injury was somewhat realistic, but the subsequent ones were more “Oh, come on, again???” That’s a cartoon signal that we’re meant to take it as a joke. Contrast to that scene in season 1 where Mariner slices Boimler with a bat’leth, and they both panic. You can read that as “Mariner got medical attention off-screen,” or “it wasn’t nearly as bad as it appeared,” whatever works for you.
Personally, I thought there was a bit of meta-commentary that characters in the opening credits can only be injured non-fatally, unless the plot calls for it.
You can definitely make an argument that violence and personal injury should never be treated as funny, even in cartoons. As a person raised on Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry, all I can do is shrug and say “You’re probably right.”
@30/Brian: It’s just that it hasn’t been long since we saw Boimler and Mariner in live action, which underlines that, while this is presented as a cartoon, these are supposed to be real, flesh-and-blood people in the Trek universe. There are limits on how far you can take “cartoon logic” in a context like that — for instance, it would be going too far to have Boimler fall off a cliff, be completely flattened on impact, then get inflated by an air pump and pop back to normal. For me, having nobody care about Mariner’s deep, bleeding stab wounds or do anything to treat them in any way is crossing that line.
Like I said, just showing Mariner getting quick regenerator treatments between stabbings would’ve preserved and even enhanced the humor of the gag without undermining believability. If anything, it’s a better joke that way, because you’re taking the established Trek phenomenon of quick and easy medical treatment and showing how it can lead to people thinking of injury as a minor inconvenience.
All this background on Orion matriarchies, family structure and the local bar scenes is very entertaining, but it does make wonder: what exactly is the political strucrure of Orion society? Is it a monarchy, with the Warrior Queen of the #1 family as ruler? Is it a representative democracy, with all the piracy stuff as a (large) subculture? Or is it ruled by a cooperative of the five largest pirate familes, kind of a 24th century version of Sigma Iotia (“A Piece of the Action”)?
(I could see Captain Freeman talking to the Orion ruling council–and in the background, Tendi is waving “hi!” to her Mom.)
Anyway, nice to see this peek into Orion society, and I look forward to deeper dives in the future…
@32/Jacoblasky: In TOS and TAS, it was established that the Orion government was officially neutral. Both “Journey to Babel” and “The Pirates of Orion” showed Orion agents willing to commit suicide to preserve that appearance of neutrality, implying that they were secretly working on behalf of the government’s interests but maintained the pretense of being rogue agents to give the government deniability. So I take that to mean that the Syndicate can’t be openly in control of the government, at least not in the 23rd century. That’s what led me to the “Russian mob” analogy, that there’s nominally a legitimate government uninvolved in the Syndicate’s activities, but in practice the Syndicate has the government in its pocket and they’re effectively indistinguishable.
Apparently contemporary descriptions of Twain’s speech don’t do much to dispel the mystery of what he sounded like.
‘”To read the several descriptions of Twain’s voice is perplexing,” Rawlings continued. “They report different, even opposing vocal characteristics. They don’t fit any recognizable model.
“They say his voice is strong and clear but also mumbling; that it carries a southern twang, a western lilt and a Yankee clip; that the slowness of it is annoying, yet charming; that it is deep, but rises to sing soprano. How can you assemble all that into one voice?”‘
But hope springs eternal. The piece notes that an 1899 recording of Otto von Bismarck was uncovered in 2011. So it’s not impossible that a dusty cylinder with Twain’s voice might someday be found.
https://www.newswire.com/news/where-in-the-world-is-mark-twains-voice-68743
Current residents of Hannibal sound pretty midwestern. But regional accents have changed perceptibly in my lifetime, so that doesn’t tell me much about the 19th century. (Though I imagine scholars have looked at the question.)
And of course Boimler and Rutherford are LARPers, not researchers. Their Twain doesn’t have to be more accurate than a Ren Faire day tripper’s misplaced thees and thous resembles Chaucer.
1) The whole Mark Twain bit is stupid. It’s real stupid. It’s so stupid that I couldn’t stop giggling watching Freeman and the Chalnoth struggling in their Twain drag. And then the Chalnoth fawning over the bonsai before swallowing it whole was the perfect cap. So yeah, dumb… but fun.
2) I was kinda counting on Mariner getting stabbed one more time. But maybe that would’ve been excessive.
Of all the season-spanning two parters they could have picked from TNG, they pick the worst one. “Time’s Arrow” was easily the weakest cliffhanger* of them all, and Mark Twain was a big part of the reason. That character made for some really slow paced boring scenes that went nowhere on a story that was already saddled by the boring hook of ‘mysterious interdimensional aliens harvesting people from the past’. Only Guinan and her ‘first meeting’ with Picard made that one watchable.
*Say what you will about Descent’s own storytelling flaws, but emotional Data, Lore and reprogrammed Borg make for at least a more compelling reason to keep watching, and it had a better ending for Data.
So yeah, the Boimler/Rutherford side plot wasn’t the best. Though I’ll give it points for the conclusion. I totally expected the Chalnoth to eat their tree as a punch line, but it was still a satisfying funny bit.
Tendi’s side of things was much, much more fulfilling. You usually can’t go wrong with a girl’s night out, and I love it that the writers are willing to include T’Lyn every chance they get. She might as well be the fifth member of the core ensemble by this point.
I’m impressed by how the LD writers were able to take elements from a pretty lousy ENT episode and make it work within their context. And thankfully, that’s mostly window dressing (though I loved seeing them go through what’s essentially a vape party bar). We finally get the dirt on Tendi, and it’s pretty consistent with the previous tidbits. A satisfying family drama. And I also love that D’Erika’s arranged husband is a nobody completely irrelevant to the plot at hand (did the episode even mention his name?) while the ex is given quite the meaningful scene. I hope we see D’Erika again. There’s potential for more conflict there.
I also laughed out loud at the Mariner stabbing gag. Of course the knife would ricochet at an angle and still pierce her precisely at the same point. Such an old gag that’s usually very animation-specific (unless we’re counting silent movies), but it still gets me every time.
UPDATE: I also appreciated the way they incorporated the ongoing arc of the mysterious ship attacking other vessels into Freeman’s reasoning for telling Tendi to go to Orion. Given how they’ve been setting that one up in recent episodes, I’m expecting a big payoff.
@35/mschiffe: “And of course Boimler and Rutherford are LARPers, not researchers. Their Twain doesn’t have to be more accurate than a Ren Faire day tripper’s misplaced thees and thous resembles Chaucer.”
Still, you’d think that if they were big enough fans of Twain to want to cosplay as him on the holodeck, they’d at least know what part of the country he came from.
@33/Christopher Bennett: Sounds logical. (The Vulcan Science Council approves.)
But if there is no political counterweight to the Syndicate, that brings up all sorts of disturbing implications. If the Tendis are indeed Space!Corleones, they must have all the unpleasant attributes of Earth mob families along with the opulent estates and sedan chairs. I can imagine that prime assassins for an Orion family would mostly concentrate on high profile political/economic rivals; but they would also be used to intimidate/crack down on legitimate businesses who won’t pay their percentages. Life is sweet for families like the Tendis; for the Orion middle class and poor, I’m not so sure.
No wonder D’Vana wanted out.
Do you think there has ever been a political movement to root out the Syndicate from Orion’s government (even if it failed)? How would Tendi feel if the revolution came to her parents’ doorstep? (It’s fun to speculate!)
@39/jacob: Back in the late ’80s or early ’90s, there was almost a Trek novel by Bob Greenberger called Orion’s Belt, intended as part of the Lost Years series set between the 5-year mission and ST:TMP, in which Sulu and Chekov put an end to the Orion slave trade. But the original plans for the series fell through after the first couple of novels, I think due to Richard Arnold’s dislike for tie-in continuity while he was responsible for approvals, and due to the original editor moving on.
@39 Regardless of their internal structure, the Orions have a large criminal organization that flies spaceships, and engages in regular piracy and mayhem. The focus and tone of the story determines how that gets treated (do people think a lot about innocents being murdered and terrorized on Talk Like A Pirate Day?), but of course the bad stuff underlies it. As D’Vana keeps *telling* her friends when they think her background is cool.
Likewise, when Worf’s friends are suffering humorously through Klingon wedding preparations, we’re not supposed to think seriously about how everyone in the Empire walks around a hairsbreadth from being murdered over trivial issues or simple malice. (Especially the ones who don’t know nobles or high ranking officers.) Every Vulcan story doesn’t focus on the downright abusive aspects of Vulcan childrearing, or their own not infrequent forays into homicidal callousness.
(If Amok Time had gone differently: “Kirk agreed to participate according to our law and custom. His death, while unfortunate, was a logically foreseeable consequence.” “Funny thing. We also have laws and customs. One of them involves conspiracy to commit premeditated homicide on one of a pair of fleet officers, both of whom happen to have a nexus with Earth law what with Commander Spock’s derived citizenship through his mother. Another involves what rights it’s possible to legally waive, especially in the absence of a written agreement. Now I can’t say whether Vulcan will agree to extradite. But if Dr. T’Pring or Speaker T’Pau happen to travel through any jurisdiction that recognizes our authority, I promise we’ll be speaking about this again, at length, in front of a judge.”)
@40/Frankly, I think it would take a combined law enforcement push from all the alpha quadrant species, along with a blockade of the Orion homeworld, to smash the Orion syndicate. I highly doubt the Federation could do it alone.
@33/Speaking of Sigma Iotia II….
Wouldn’t the original plotline for the DS9 30th anniversary episode–with Sigma Iotia as the Planet of the Star Trek Fanboys–be perfect for Lower Decks? Come on–you *know* Mike McMahan has that story on a whiteboard somewhere. All he has to do is pull the trigger.
@42/jacoblasky: I’ve expounded at length elsewhere on why I think it would be unfortunate to portray the Iotians as so blindly imitative that they’d just copy Starfleet wholesale, rather than depicting them plausibly as a people who adopted gangster trappings for their own purposes and would not just throw them out altogether. I like the version depicted in the novels where the 24th-century Iotians have advanced to become a spacefaring people but still retain the gangster trappings, which they’ve made their own.
Besides, the kind of story you’re proposing has already pretty much been done as the Prodigy episode “All the World’s a Stage.” It’d be kind of redundant to do another.
@42 Prodigy already kind of did it in “All the World’s a Stage”. They weren’t the Iotians, but I’d be very surprised if that treatment wasn’t in the writers’ mind.
Unfortunately, I never did get to see the back half of Prodigy Season 1. From what I can tell from the recap, it sounds like a great episode.
(Sigh. And now I’m sad. . .)
There’s arguably the reverse, @Christopher that the Orion Syndicates may not be in CHARGE of the Orion government (covertly or otherwise) but the Orion Syndicates are the arm of the Orion government. The private entity being a deniable resource that is actually just a tool of statecraft.
Sort of like Wagner used to be.
(And yes, showed why this is a bad idea)
Mercenaries that have a layer of separation but are really intelligence agents working to destabilize and control.
@46/C.T. Phipps: Yeah, that’s basically what “Journey to Babel” and “The Pirates of Orion” seemed to imply. Fitting that those were both more or less contemporaneous with Mission: Impossible, a show about a team of unofficial agents that the government would disavow if they were discovered. (At least nominally, though the show never really did anything with the concept outside of the weekly self-destructing recordings.)
But those were both made decades before the “Orion Syndicate” was introduced in DS9. Since we never saw any actual Orions in DS9, that show was agnostic about whether it was actually connected to the Orions or just named for the constellation, but ENT confirmed that the Syndicate was run by the Orions in the 22nd century, and thus presumably in the 23rd as well. And that suggests something more along organized-crime lines. Either way, the Syndicate and the government would be intimately entwined despite being officially separate.
That Mariner got stabbed (at least) one more time off-screen during the Daddy Daughter Dagger Dance was just the icing on the wedding cake.
This episode does make me think about the first season episode Veritas. In that episode Tendi got accidentally dragged into black ops operation as the ‘Cleaner’ but now I’m wondering if she lied back then and she was the “Cleaner” from the get go as Starfleet is presumably aware of her skills.
46 – So basically Section 31. Starfleet and the Federation alternately disavow them and embrace them. In Enterprise, they were secretive but known to exist. In Discovery, they were operating openly. By DS9, Starfleet was “Section 31? Never heard of them.” When Picard rolled around, Worf had no trouble taling of them openly and seemed quite proud of them. The Orions aren’t the only ones with questionable agents that can be disavowed.
@46/John White: A very interesting idea–was Tendi eagerly recruited by Starfleet *because* of her “prime” assassin training?
Let me take this one step further: are our four main characters (well, maybe not Boimler) “special projects” that Srarfleet has stored in the relative anonymity of the Cerritos until they’re ready for… whatever?
@51/jacoblasky: “Let me take this one step further: are our four main characters (well, maybe not Boimler) “special projects” that Srarfleet has stored in the relative anonymity of the Cerritos until they’re ready for… whatever?”
Oh, please, no. That would destroy the whole premise of Lower Decks.
If anything, I think the idea is that everyone in Starfleet is extraordinary in some way — that’s why they got into Starfleet in the first place. Even the lowliest ensign is an exceptionally gifted individual by the standards of the overall population.
I always wanted Star Trek to take a deeper look into crewmen too – who are these people? Chief O’Brien was depicted as a blue-collar worker, but it never made sense to me. IMHO they also should be highly educated people who got their professional training from institutions other than Starfleet Academy and are therefore, while fully competent in their areas of specialization, far less versatile than officers as a result. Also, most of them probably wouldn’t be lifers, but just spend a few adventurous years in Starfleet…
@53/Isilel: Hmm, well, in a post-scarcity society with replicators and automation, conventional forms of labor wouldn’t really exist anymore, so most employment would be more about mental skills than physical — programming, design, education, medicine, science, etc. So even the equivalent of “blue collar” workers would be more like today’s “white collar” workers, I guess.
Part of why Roddenberry downplayed enlisted personnel in TNG was because he figured that anyone qualified to serve on a spaceship or station would need to be highly trained, so the divide between officers and enlisted wouldn’t meaningfully exist anymore. Really, it’s kind of hard to justify why they even have enlisted personnel, when Starfleet has a practice of giving brevet rank to people who haven’t been to the Academy — T’Pol, Wesley Crusher, Kira Nerys late in the series, many of Voyager‘s Maquis, etc.
@52: No, you’re right. It would also be much too cynical and calculated for this series, which has always tried to see the best in Starfleet’s intentions (evil admirals aside).
So at least two officers on the Cerritos have renounced their noble status – Billups and Tendi. We know that this isn’t true of Boimler and Mariner, but is Rutherford a secret heir of a doge, and T’lan a Vulcan princess?
@18: I agree. Sevet deferred to T’Pril in all ways, like a Vulcan Richard Bucket, but Br’t is just a bit quieter than his wife. He says things that his wife doesn’t agree with, with no compunction and without backpedaling.
Man do I love this show. Stabbing gag, great. Twain gag, great. Orion stuff, great. T’Lyn, fantastic!
-Kefka
@14. There’s a tradition in some Roman Catholic families that, when there are multiple sons, one brother gets “encouraged” to go into the clergy (my father [youngest of four brothers] was on this path before he met my mom and decided to get married –I think the “plan” was that I would join the Church in his stead, but obviously that didn’t take). It looks like Orions have some similar tradition, with one daughter being railroaded to serve the Syndicate (possibly reflecting the level and kind of authority the Syndicate extends over the lives of everyday Orions).
Regarding Planets of Hats, remember that a culture is essentially a form of selective pressure: it’s a codified set of behaviours and traits that will either get you rewarded (with social prestige, political power, wealth, and comfort), get you punished (marginalized, imprisoned, “medicated,” or even killed), or make no difference at all. (And yes, this becomes an evolutionary pressure; you can’t raise a family or influence society if you’re living on the streets, in jail, or dead.) Hell, look at Worf, who acts like he does precisely because acting like a Klingon child got another kid killed (which still would have been perfectly routine on Qo’noS –boys will be boys– but could have led to jail time if Worf hadn’t learned to adapt to human customs).
So someone who doesn’t want to (or can’t) follow the dominant culture can either learn to “play the part” (like Worf), get shuffled off to some forgotten corner or dead-end job (like Rom), be treated all their life as “wrong” and needing to be “fixed” (like nearly happened to Saru), –or leave, and find a culture where they fit comfortably (like Nog).
The benefit of a truly multicultural society is that it provides an escape hatch for the people who otherwise wouldn’t fit (like Tendi, or Spock, or Tilly). That’s part of what makes the Federation a utopia, even more so than the post-scarcity economy –it’s a place where weirdos, outcasts, and non-conformists are actually accepted.
(And I would hypothesize that anyone who finds it unrealistic that there would be a single “dominant” culture on a planet happens to belong to the Western English-speaking world. There are absolutely other cultures on Orion, but probably the only place you’ll find them is small neighbourhoods in large cities, or isolated nation-states with closed borders.)
@54. I’ve long assumed that Starfleet maintains some sort of equivalency agreement with other organizations (like local militias, the Vulcan Science Directorate, the DTI, the FSA, possibly even the Klingon Defense Force), allowing for people to transfer over with their ranks intact. This would be what happened to Kira (from Bajoran Militia Colonel to Starfleet Commander) and T’Lyn (from whatever-she-was in the Vulcan fleet to Starfleet Ensign) –in hindsight, Janeway and Chakotay probably hashed out a de-facto agreement offscreen in the first couple of episodes, effectively allowing Chakotay’s whole crew to “transfer” into Starfleet (pending deferred approval from Starfleet Command and the Maquis leadership, but by the time they re-established contact that was a moot point).
@58/Cybersnark: I didn’t get the impression that the Tendis were “everyday Orions” — rather, they seem to be part of the Syndicate elite. They’re the point-oh-one-percenters living in opulent mansions. The everyday Orions here were probably the people carrying the palanquins and dancing in the strip clubs — the lowly peons kept servile by the wealthy elites.
“There are absolutely other cultures on Orion, but probably the only place you’ll find them is small neighbourhoods in large cities, or isolated nation-states with closed borders.”
I think that’s overstating it. I can buy that there can be a single dominant culture in government or the military, so that outsiders only see its representatives; but by analogy with Earth history and society, if you went to the planet and looked around, you’d probably find multiple major cultures coexisting and jockeying for influence. I mean, Western culture may have been politically dominant on Earth for the past couple of centuries, but we’re a minority of the world’s population. Numerically, the dominant culture is probably China.
And I have a very hard time believing that an interstellar civilization wouldn’t have colonies founded by those various separate cultures to allow them to thrive independently. The marginalized groups would be among the first ones to migrate to new homeworlds given the chance.
ChistopherLBennett @54:
I thought that enlisted made sense because even in peace time Star Fleet needs to be large to service the whole Federation and a single campus with very rarified admittance requirements couldn’t possibly suffice for all of their crew-training needs. Not to mention the drastic expansions during wars. TOS already had yomen, didn’t it?
And also, there are much larger pools of specialists who are excellent in their fields, but aren’t quite the “Renaissance People” that a Star Fleet officer needs to be that they could tap in. Additionally, being a life-long ensign after managing to get into and graduate from the Academy must be pretty damaging for the psyche, but promotion slots are quite limited. Crewmen, OTOH, would be mostly people who don’t see Star Fleet as a life-long occupation, but as an adventurous phase to see the galaxy and gain experience before settling down.
@60/Isilel: “a single campus with very rarified admittance requirements couldn’t possibly suffice for all of their crew-training needs.”
The Academy has more than one campus, despite how it tends to be portrayed. VGR: “The Cloud” established that there’s an Academy base near Marseille, France. Screen graphics in TNG: “Eye of the Beholder” referred to Academy annexes on Beta Aquilae II, Beta Ursae Minor II [sic], and Psi Epsilon III (or Psi Upsilon in the pre-remastered version). A plaque in PIC: “The Star Gazer” established that the Academy has satellite campuses on more than 80 Federation planets.
“TOS already had yomen, didn’t it?”
Yes, of course, TOS had plenty of enlisted crewmembers — yeomen, crewmen, specialists, technicians, etc. What I’m saying is that by the time of TNG, Roddenberry had decided that didn’t make sense, that any qualified spaceship crew member would need to be extensively trained and would be the equivalent of an officer whether they had the rank or not. So enlisted personnel were downplayed in TNG, with a few exceptions like Chief O’Brien.
But TNG had plenty of Starfleet extras without rank pips, occasional specialists with their own insignia – like the one in the episode with the Traveller and even an episode where a crewman was in the centre of the plot in “The Drumhead”. In addition to chief O’Brien. So they were there from the beginning. It would have made sense for the enlisted to be extensively trained, but more narrowly specialized than the officers, IMHO. Oh, well…
@62: Again, I never said they were absent entirely, just downplayed.
@62 Isilel
On TNG way more often, O’Brien is shown as an officer. He is shown as an ensign in season 1 (in red and gold) and shows the rank of lieutenant for the vast majority of his appearances. Riker even refers to him at one point as lieutenant. Wolf, La Forge and O’Brien all start off as red shirted ensigns that become (or appear to become) lieutenants and also become chiefs of things: Security, Engineering and Transporters with staff beneath them (O’Brien mentions one of his ensigns once).
Of course Worf’s dad throws a wrench into the mix and finally in season 6 (for two episodes) we see O’Brien’s rank insignia change and Barclay giving him orders and in “All Good Things” he is referred to as chief not as ensign though he shows the rank of ensign. Regardless, this is just my head-canon as a person who tends to isolate TNG from the rest of Trek.
Also, while true that TNG had background characters and now and then speaking roles for non officers, I agree with CLB that TNG downplayed that aspect of the ship’s crew.
-Kefka
@@@@@22 ChristopherLBennett:
You can’t stereotype Vulcans, they aren’t real. They are only written, and so only exist as they are written. Besides that, you listed a whole bunch of examples of why the Hats work for Trek: with the Bajorans we get Religion, and anti-Religion; Faith, and Proof; War, and Peace: all through the lens of their Hat, which is Adversity. It doesn’t invalidate the concept to have Vulcans who don’t do logic: the easiest thing to do with a Hat is to take it off.
As an examination of the human condition, Trek has us look at the logic of the Vulcans and say, “Ok, that’s not me.” Then we look at the Klingons and say, “that’s not me either.” I’m not a Bajoran or a Ferengi or an Elf or a Balrog, but I learn about myself by looking through those glasses for a while. Plus phasers, ripped shirts, and implausible uses of the transporter.
This is, honestly, my favorite Lower Decks episode. It’s about Tendi (who is my favorite character) and how she became who she is, and what that meant to the people around her; the fact that it fleshes out Orion culture is just a bonus. It’s about acceptance: Mariner and T’Lyn, in traditional Starfleet fashion, accept the Mistress of the Winter Constellations for who she is, and help her be seen for who she wants to be. And while the B-plot was extremely dopey, it was a fun use of the characters: seeing a Chalnoth in Stereotypical Samuel Clements Clothes is the kind of thing you never knew you wanted.
@65/Brian Dolan: “You can’t stereotype Vulcans, they aren’t real.“
In a way, that’s the point. When creating something that isn’t real, you don’t want to call attention to its unreality. The goal is to create something plausible enough that the audience is willing to suspend disbelief. Fiction is like stage magic: the illusion has to be convincing enough that the audience can’t see the obvious trickery and is satisfied to play along.
The problem with stereotypes is that they’re lazy and thoughtless. They reduce complexity to a dumbed-down simplicity, and that is not something a storyteller or worldbuilder should settle for. It’s a question of standards, of whether you do your best work or settle for lazy shortcuts.
“Besides that, you listed a whole bunch of examples of why the Hats work for Trek: with the Bajorans we get Religion, and anti-Religion; Faith, and Proof; War, and Peace: all through the lens of their Hat, which is Adversity. It doesn’t invalidate the concept to have Vulcans who don’t do logic: the easiest thing to do with a Hat is to take it off.”
I find it an utterly bizarre argument to assert that the instances where the series makes some successful effort at transcending the lazy cliche are in some way a defense of the lazy cliche. I see it as an indictment of it.
“As an examination of the human condition, Trek has us look at the logic of the Vulcans and say, “Ok, that’s not me.” “
Speak for yourself. I’ve always identified strongly with Spock and Data.
Well, I really liked the interaction among Tendi, Mariner, and T’Lyn, but the pheromone (not pheremone) den and stuff back aboard the Cerritos… Ugh.
@krad: Your Enterprise rewatch is showing. T’Lyn’s report is for the Vulcan High Council, not the High Command.
@59 / CLB
The Orion civilization is canonically very old. It’s possible that the Syndicate arose to cultural dominance throughout Orion space only after their major colonies had already been established. Presumably there may be some smaller Orion colonies out on the frontiers of their space that were settled to get away from their influence, but it doesn’t seem all that much less believable than, say, all of Cardassian space being ruled by a fascist oligarchy.
Personally, I tend to interpret the Syndicate as being something like the Dutch East-India Company: pretty much indistinguishable from an extremely large, extremely brutal organized crime ring to everyone that they do business with, but, in its home country, considered a legitimate body chartered by the state, and the source of a great deal of wealth and cultural capital.
@70/jaimebabb: “The Orion civilization is canonically very old.”
Well, no; we know Roger Korby translated medical records from the “Orion ruins,” and that Kirk and Spock visited “Orion at the dawn of its civilization” in “Yesteryear,” but it wasn’t established how long ago those were. And even if the Orions had a civilization that long ago, that doesn’t mean it’s the same civilization that dominates the culture now, any more than the British Empire was the same civilization as Sumeria. This is what I keep saying: it makes no sense to assume an entire planet has only one major civilization when Earth alone has had hundreds.
“but it doesn’t seem all that much less believable than, say, all of Cardassian space being ruled by a fascist oligarchy.”
It’s the nature of a fascist state to try to conquer everything and suppress cultural diversity. So there’s nothing unbelievable about a successful fascist state ruling over a uniform society, since that’s its explicit goal achieved through force. But it’s the nature of a crime syndicate to work from the shadows, to keep its influence surreptitious. It may have corrupt leaders in its pocket, but it will still be extralegal by definition. It’s not the same thing at all.
“but, in its home country, considered a legitimate body chartered by the state”
As I mentioned, that runs up against “Journey to Babel” and “The Pirates of Orion” establishing that the Orion government strove for the appearance of neutrality to such a degree that its agents were trained to commit suicide to avoid capture. So any link between Orion pirates and the government was kept clandestine, which argues against the pirates or Syndicate being openly affiliated with the government. It seems more likely that they were nominal outlaws whose actions were secretly sanctioned by the government.
Although it’s always possible that things have changed by the 24th century, since the events of those two episodes did call the Orions’ neutrality into question, so maybe they had to give up the pretense.
As for the East India Companies, I don’t know about the Dutch one, but my impression of the British one was that it was more like a de facto colonial government than a crime ring.
I love this episode! As far as I am concerned, it has redeemed Orions completely from the brutal and unfair chains of older Trek canon! So entertaining, so exuberant, so triumphantly lascivious when it wants to be…a true masterpiece, and a big fan pleaser.
And I am not bothered by oddities, like Mariner getting stabbed repeatedly, and not undergoing treatment for a wound sooo serious that the first attenders simply add the deadly weapon to a jar already full of same. Anyone that is has simply not been paying attention to the cartoon-ish nature of this Trek representation, and the simple fact that animated characters CAN and WILL do more than their meat-based counterparts. It’s a natural law in and of itself!
@73/Tom McKay: But we just saw Boimler and Mariner in live action on Strange New Worlds. They are meant to be real flesh-and-blood people in the Trek universe. They’re just being represented in cartoon form here, the same way the Enterprise crew in TAS and the former Voyager crew members in Prodigy are represented in animation after being seen in live action originally. So they shouldn’t follow cartoon physics or biology. That’s fine in something like Futurama or Rick and Morty, something that’s purely a cartoon, but this is different, because it’s part of the same canon as live-action Trek and thus should be bound by the same rules. A certain amount of poetic license for humorous effect is acceptable, but there are limits.
#29
What I was saying is that none of that really matters (to most people). Twain is closely associated with Southern culture, and comedies are allowed to exaggerate, believe it or not. You know, those things you may have heard about a man from Nantucket are also scientifically inaccurate. It’s true! I heard it from a gym teacher.
Also, I equate the Southern accent with hicks because I am one of those Southern hicks, not that you could have known that. But people are allowed some degree of self-deprecation concerning their own culture. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a mess of polk salad that requires my attention.
This episode is one of my favorites so far of LD. The expansion on Orion culture and Tendi felt organic and well thought, which is part of why though certainly funny the B plot seemed a bit tepid. The A,B and sometimes C plot model is Star Trek standard (exceptions exist especially in multi parters) that has produced some great material. Issues with it usually like with balance between the two. Common practice is to have a lighter/funnier B plot when A is heavier or has higher stakes to bring relief time, which is in theory is a solid idea. The issue becomes like here though when the plots feel so disjointed and different stakes then the other one is going to fall a bit flat. I think it probably would have worked better with another episode. Since we seem to be bringing T’Lyn into the fold I think this episode was a missed opportunity to learn a little more about her through the report her motivations around it. If we have to stay with the ship though I think they should have focused to the B plot on resolving the Nebula/Chalnoth issue. We can even still have Boilmer and Rutherford in a roommate spat. Maybe, they get assigned to handled it and realize both problems have the solution. This way we keep the interpersonal conflict elements for both but put them on a more level stakes field. I’ll transparent though that unless it is really well done I am a bit biased any time they bring in holo elements to storylines. I know this show is Star Trek for people who like Star Trek already to a degree, so their a lot of call backs, but we have to have some standards.
@76/Bingo: “Twain is closely associated with Southern culture”
By whom? His father was from Virginia, but so was my mother, and I don't consider myself Southern. He grew up in Missouri, a Midwestern state, and spent his early adulthood working in northern cities like New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and my hometown of Cincinnati. Then he became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and then he moved out west, with his writing career beginning in San Francisco. He got married while living in New York state, then the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut for 17 years, after which they moved to Europe and traveled widely around the world. He lived the last decade of his life in Manhattan. How does any of that add up to a close association with the South?
If Twain is not associated with the South, then we do we hear him with a Southern accent in “Time’s Arrow”?
The accents Boimler and Rutherford used, to me, harkened back to that episode.
@79/Mary L. Mosholder: “If Twain is not associated with the South, then we do we hear him with a Southern accent in “Time’s Arrow”?”
Apparently a lot of people in rural areas of southern Missouri have Southern-sounding accents, due to cultural ties with adjacent states to the south. That was probably even more the case in Twain’s day.
Also, he was played by Jerry Hardin, a native of Texas. As mentioned above, we don’t actually know what Twain’s voice sounded like, so Hardin may just have defaulted to what he knew.
I have to admit that I associate Twain with the American south, but I’m also not super familiar with the specific breakdown of the USA’s cultural subregions.
@81/jaime: Odd. Maybe that’s because Twain is associated with Huckleberry Finn and Jim fleeing slavery, and people associate slavery with the South. Or maybe they just associate his time on the Mississippi River with the southern state of the same name, even though that state is merely the southern end of one of the world’s longest rivers.
If anything, I’d think Twain would be more associated with the West — note how “Time’s Arrow” placed him (ahistorically) in San Francisco. But I guess Missouri could be considered borderline-Southern, and indeed it was one of the contested border states during the American Civil War.
Anyway, I must concede that if rural Missouri accents do indeed sound Southern, then it was arguably not erroneous after all for Boimler to say Twain had a Southern accent.
Part of it is Huck Finn; most of it is just that, if I see a white guy in a white suit, talking as Twain allegedly did in a deep, slow “drawl”, my brain says “southern.” It’s probably Colonel Sanders’s fault as much as anyone’s.
Actually, come to think of it, is Kentucky considered southern?
@83/jaimebabb: “is Kentucky considered southern?”
It’s one of the “border states” like Missouri — it’s sort of a transitional zone between North and South. But I’d say that culturally it’s largely considered Southern, at least by Northerners.
@83/jaimebabb
I wouldn’t consider Kentucky southern, mainly because it’s right on the border of my state Ohio (granted I’m on the other side of the state bordering WV but still)
Speaking as a lifelong New Yorker, a.k.a., a damn Yankee, Kentucky is very much the South, yes.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@85/Mary: I live just two miles north of the Kentucky border, and I even have library cards in both Ohio and Kentucky. But as I said, I think it’s fair to consider Kentucky at least marginally Southern. Of course, it’s complicated by the fact that the cultural divide in the US isn’t really North-South anymore but urban-rural. If I left Cincinnati and traveled to more rural parts of Ohio, I’d probably find the culture there more similar to the Deep South than it is to the culture in the city. Whereas Covington and Newport, KY, the cities just across the river from Cincinnati (and considered part of Greater Cincinnati), are no doubt more “Northern” in culture than the more rural areas of Kentucky.
I live in Kentucky. As a Midwesterner by upbringing, it feels Southern, but it’s not Deep South, and folks from the Deep South tell me it feels Northern to them.
@32
Wouldn’t the original plotline for the DS9 30th anniversary episode–with Sigma Iotia as the Planet of the Star Trek Fanboys–be perfect for Lower Decks? Come on–you *know* Mike McMahan has that story on a whiteboard somewhere. All he has to do is pull the trigger.
Wasn’t that done in an issue of the old DC TOS comic books? Or was the callback they did “The Apple”? It all blurs at this remove…