One of the common tropes of a long-running serial narrative like Star Trek is that you can do retcons. Short for retroactive continuity, a retcon puts a new spin on an existing bit of lore. Sometimes it’s to reconcile an inconsistency, sometimes it’s to put a new spin on an old story, and sometimes it’s to fix a mistake. (As an example, Strange New Worlds has done a lovely job of retconning the Spock-Chapel relationship in the original series by establishing that they dated in the past.)
Lower Decks has already done a certain amount of retconning of the Orion people. Indeed, they’ve given us a retcon of a retcon. When they were introduced way back in “The Cage” in 1964, they were described by Dr. Boyce as “green animal women,” who were there for sex appeal, and who were traded as slaves. Enterprise then retconned Orion women in 2005’s “Bound” as being the real brains of the Orion people, using pheromones to make men stupid in their presence. LD, thankfully, fixed that, making it a bit more nuanced.
But there was one appearance of the Orions that had not been taken into account one way or the other: the species’ appearance in the animated episode “The Pirates of Orion.” That animated episode was mostly ignored up until this new fifth season of LD, but this show is never happier than when it’s embracing the entirety of the Trek universe—even the goofy parts.
Especially the goofy parts.
The animated series was produced by Hal Sutherland, who had issues with colors, which resulted in some entertaining palate choices on the show (e.g., pink tribbles). So the Orions, established in “The Cage” as well as “Whom Gods Destroy” as having green skin, instead had blue skin. In addition, the uniforms they wore were, to say the least, goofy, and also every voice actor was given bad information as to the pronunciation of “Orion.” (Everyone in the episode pronounced it “ORE-ee-un,” rather than “oh-RYE-un.”)
The two-episode debut of LD’s fifth and, sadly, final season makes this seeming discontinuity into a plot point. The blue-skinned Orions are one of the many races among the Orion people—which only makes sense, given the variations in pigments among other humanoid species on Trek. They all pronounce their species name “ORE-ee-un,” and they’re proud of their silly outfits.
The B-plots of each of the two new episodes focus on Tendi, last seen taking a leave of absence from Starfleet in order to fulfill her duties as the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, pirating for her sister D’Erika. And because Tendi is still Starfleet through and through, she tries very hard to be a kinder pirate. In particular, she doesn’t want to kill anyone while plundering.
Unfortunately, this gets her in trouble. First the blue Orions are pissed that she’s not following the spirit of pirating in “Dos Cerritos.” That leads to a war between the blue Orions and House Tendi. This pisses off the Orion queen in “Shades of Green,” who says this war is taking time away from proper plundering. So they must do a solar-sail race through a nebula and retrieve a treasure. The winner gets all the loser’s wealth.
Tendi once again acts more like a Starfleet officer than a pirate in two critical ways during the race. One is that she accidentally discovers that D’Erika is pregnant. This results in tiresome sitcom nonsense where Tendi tries to keep her sister from doing anything strenuous. The other is more useful: when the Tendi solar ship crashes (because the blue Orions fired on them with rifles), Tendi is able to technobabble a solution.
But once again her attempt at compassion—to wit, having both ships come in together in a tie—fails, as the Orion queen doesn’t let them all keep their wealth. Instead, the queen claims both sides’ wealth, leaving them both destitute.
Luckily, there’s an out that Tendi is able to provide once she reports back to the Cerritos, D’Erika having decided that she’s paid off her debt. The ship has been assigned to Targalus, which has just joined the Federation and is having a currency-destroying party now that they are enjoying the fruits of the post-scarcity replicator-based economy of the Federation.
Once again, we get LD looking at the loopier side of Trek, taking things to their absurdist extreme. If a planet is moving to the moneyless economy of the Federation, of course they would celebrate by getting rid of all their money. We see paper money being burned and jewels and such being abandoned.
Since the Cerritos was just going to recycle all the jewels and gold anyhow, instead, at Tendi’s suggestion, Freeman donates it to D’Erika, who then can restock House Tendi’s wealth and make them an important family again. Plus it improves relations between the Federation and the Orions…
The premiere episode gives us an old Trek standby: the alternate universe story. An attempt to close a quantum fissure leads the Cerritos into a parallel timeline which is just different enough to be weird. Shaxs has long hair, Billups embraces his status as a member of the Hysperian royal family (he wears a coronet and cape over his uniform), Ransom has a mullet, Boimler is bearded and confident, and T’Lyn says “Remarkable” rather than “Fascinating” (which, of course, is literally the only difference between the two). The biggest changes, though, are to Mariner, Rutherford, and Freeman. Mariner has gone back to using her family name of Freeman, and is now the commanding officer, Captain Becky Freeman. As for her mother, she’s apparently been assigned to Starbase 80 (a fate worse than death, as established back in “Terminal Provocations” and seen in “Trusted Sources”).
And then there’s poor Rutherford. The mainline version has been neglecting things like personal hygiene and friends, instead throwing himself completely into his work to distract himself from the fact that his best friend is gone. But “Otherford,” as Rutherford calls him, has taken that to an extreme: he’s more cyb than org, as it were, and has shut off all his emotions and erased his memories of Tendi. This proves to be a watershed moment for Rutherford, who doesn’t want to become all Borg…
As for Mariner’s counterpart, she proves to be a bigger hardass than her mother ever was, going so far as to whack subordinates with a riding crop if they get out of line. But then we find out that she hates being captain, and pulls a Lore-in-“Datalore” and swaps places with Mariner, hoping to be the carefree junior officer who does what she wants once again.
Boimler is particularly taken with his counterpart, and in “Shades of Green,” we see him working on facial hair and doing things he’s found in his counterpart’s service record, pulled from a padd he liberated from the alternate timeline. One of those is “Bointers,” different pointers on how to behave. At first it seems like the ensigns he’s bossing around are not thrilled with this, but they actually are able to use a “Bointer” to save their lives when they’re kidnapped by formerly rich Targalans who don’t want to give up being wealthy and powerful.
I have to admit to some minor disappointments with “Dos Cerritos.” Usually the fun of these things is to watch the actors play different versions of themselves, but they’re not quite different enough—especially not vocally—for it to matter that much. The exceptions are Gabrielle Ruiz’s T’Lyn, as the fact that she sounds exactly the same is part of the joke, and Tawny Newsome’s Mariner/Freeman, as she’s the most different. Seeing the alternate Cerritos crew flinch around their captain is heartbreaking, and we learn that Mariner is the worst in any timeline, as she goes from being a horrible junior officer to being an incredibly horrible captain. I hope that this results in some changes to Mariner, but her changes to date have been incremental to nonexistent, so I’m not holding my breath.
Boimler, on the other hand, has been genuinely developing, his natural talent swimming upstream against his insecurities. It’s especially frustrating to see him go all-in on doing what his counterpart does when it isn’t necessary—but it’s also completely in character. In addition, the banter between Boimler and Mariner has gotten much more fun since Boimler got more confident. It feels more like best-friend banter than the more abusive relationship they had in the first season, and Newsome and Jack Quaid have superlative friendly chemistry. (“Let’s do this!” “Yes, totally—but you are sitting on it backwards.” “Dammit!”)
I adored the subplot in “Shades of Green” involving T’Lyn and Rutherford. For one thing, Rutherford is the only one of the “big four” who hadn’t had significant one-on-one scenes with T’Lyn up until now. And it’s heartening to see T’Lyn trying to help Rutherford through his post-Tendi funk, first by encouraging him to work on the shuttlecraft that he and Tendi had been repairing. Once she discovers that he’d been avoiding working on it because it was his and Tendi’s project, T’Lyn proceeds to completely demolish the shuttlecraft so the pair of them can continue to work on it. It’s incredibly adorable.
After a really rocky first season, LD has settled into an absolute delight of a Trek show, mostly because it’s embraced its most successful version of itself: a Star Trek comedy, rather than a twenty-first-century office comedy with Trek bits. It’s still very much a Trek show in all the most important ways: the themes of both these episodes are to not be mean to other people and to be the best version of yourself.
I’m gonna be sorry to see it go, and Paramount+ should be ashamed of themselves for cancelling it.
Random thoughts
- I was really worried about “Shades of Green” from the title, which feels like a riff on “Shades of Grey,” the nadir of The Next Generation as a TV show. Luckily, this wasn’t a clip show like that 1989 TNG disaster, but rather a descriptive title, since so much of the episode is about the green-skinned Orions versus the blue-skinned ones.
- “Dos Cerritos” opens with a delightful heist sequence, as Tendi goes undercover on a ship run by someone of the same species as Palor Toff, the character played by Nehemiah Persoff in TNG’s “The Most Toys.” At one point, one of the Orions wants to tear out the twisty metal band that runs from ear to nose, with the poor alien crying in protest that “it’s prescription!” which is hilarious.
- The quantum fissure seen in “Dos Cerritos” is very much like the one that started the plot going in TNG’s “Parallels,” one of Trek’s better alternate-timeline episodes.
- Other examples of alternate-timeline versions of familiar characters include the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror,” TNG’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” DS9’s “Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror,” “Resurrection,” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” Voyager’s “Living Witness” (sort of), Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly” two-parter, Discovery’s “Into the Forest I Go,” “Despite Yourself,” “The Wolf Inside,” “Vaulting Ambition,” “What’s Past is Prologue,” and the “Terra Firma” two parter, Picard’s “Penance,” and Prodigy’s “Cracked Mirror.”
- For those who might think it silly that some Orions pronounce it “ORE-ee-un” rather than “oh-RYE-un,” I present as evidence my mother’s side of the family. The branch of the Andreassi family that is in the New York Metropolitan Area pronounce it “an-dree-AH-see,” while the branch of the same family that is in western Pennsylvania pronounce it “an-DRESS-ee.” Mind you, this drove my paternal grandfather crazy whenever he visited family in Pennsylvania, though it was on one of those trips that he met my grandmother, so he probably got over it…
Random thoughts:
Dos Cerritos
Love the slightly parallel universe angle. It was fun.
I feel sorry for Becky Freeman–because of her insecurities she’s gong to be court martialed and corralled out of Starfleet. Granted, she deserves it but it’s still sad.
I also feel sorry for Boimler not being included in Fleet magazine
Shades of Green
This episode was so great~ Everyone just dismissed the Orion inconsistency in TAS and Lower Decks just went and made sense of it.
I was also pleasantly surprised by D’Erika. I thought for sure she’d be a villain who blocked D’Vana’s return to Starfleet. It’s great that she merely wanted her sister to pay her debt and then happily let her go on her way.
I was hoping for a little more from the post-capitalism story. Just little talk about how it’d work besides everyone just happily tearing up money. The Orion soty was much more satisfying.
I think that’s exactly the right way to handle it. Their trying to explain Federation economics would be like their trying to explain warp drive.
With LD, I’d grant the exception “unless the explanation is funny”. But so far the funniest application was Jake’s complete inability to explain it in DS9’s “In the Cards”:
I’m not saying I want a commemorative issue of Fleet magazine, but if such a thing existed I would definitely be the first person in line to buy it.
I love how they implied that other Freeman was dead throughout “Dos Cerritos”, only to reveal that she was reassigned to Starbase 80, which is seemingly even more despiriting to her prime universe self). I think that they even had other Ransom say the exact same thing in the exact same tone that Riker did upon seeing prime universe Picard in “Parallels”. I do wish that they’d given more emotional weight to the resolution of the plot with “Otherford” (though I do love that Ruthie’s first reaction upon hearing that his counterpart had voluntarily had all of his organs removed and replaced with robot parts was to comment on how cool that was).
Oh, also, I liked the gag where Billups was walking down the hallway covered in soot and Rutherford was commenting on how cool it was that his mother sent him a dragon. I hope that Billups’s ferret is okay, though
“The animated series was produced by Hal Sutherland, who had issues with colors, which resulted in some entertaining palate choices on the show”
Okay, first off, Hal Sutherland was the director; Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott produced. Second, the old “the director was colorblind” thing was a myth, debunked years ago in Aaron Harvey & Rick Schepis’s Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series. Yes, Sutherland was colorblind, but he wasn’t responsible for the color choices; those were determined by Director of Color Irv Kaplan, and he favored bright colors like pink and purple because he thought kids would like them. The colors were specified in writing on the character model sheets (how else would the ink-and-paint department know which colors to use?), so even a colorblind director would’ve at least known which colors were being used, even if he didn’t have firsthand knowledge of what they looked like. (Also, you mean “palette,” not “palate.”
I think it’s far more likely that “Pirates” made the Orions blue because the only male Orion we saw in TOS was Thelev in “Journey to Babel,” who was disguised as an Andorian and therefore had blue skin. The makers of TAS may have therefore assumed that blue skin was normal for Orion males and only the females were green. (Remember, they did depict a green Orion woman, Devna, in “The Time Trap,” although she was a lighter green than most. It wasn’t until Enterprise that we saw an Orion male onscreen and got confirmation that both sexes were green. I recall that earlier tie-ins and fan reference books had different opinions on whether the males were green.)
“Dos” was okay but unexceptional. It’s basically a riff on the old joke that a person who met themselves would inevitably end up hating themselves. It’s mainly notable for explaining why Mariner isn’t called Freeman. (Her parents gave her “Mariner” as a middle name. No wonder she rebels against them.) A couple things bugged me. One was Rutherford reprogramming Otherford without his consent — very not cool. The other was that when Tendi’s pirate crew revealed their secret non-killing ambitions, they were all so stereotypically feminine — cook, dancer, teacher (okay, professor, which is a little better).
“Shades of Green” was fun. I love how blatant the episode was in saying capitalism is bad and civilization is better off without it. I bet certain segments of the audience are already recording their YouTube rants about how Trek has finally gone woke (as usual failing to notice that it’s been woke since 1966). I also enjoy the canonization of blue Orions as a distinct racial group, something I established earlier in my Rise of the Federation novels. Explaining the pronunciation thing as a cultural difference is cute, though it doesn’t quite explain why the Enterprise crew in “Pirates” pronounced “Orion” that way.
Less fun parts: I could do without the revival of “Explorers”‘ absurdly tiny solar sails, and the ships performing in ways solar sails couldn’t realistically do (accelerating fast, changing direction regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, surviving a crash landing without the super-flimsy sails ripping apart). Also, Tendi assuming pregnant women have to be pampered and helpless is a relic from the 1950s. I get her wanting to be protective, but they overdid it.
Incidentally, it occurs to me that “Shades of Green” could be a reference to the money subplot too.
Well presumably the Enterprise crew is identifying them as Oreehons not Orions. I mean, these are the blue ones.
What I meant was that they were using that pronunciation before they saw what the pirates looked like. Although checking the transcript, I see that was only briefly the case — Arex said “I recognize the ship’s markings, Captain. It’s an Orion,” with Kirk echoing the pronunciation, and the Orions apppeared on the viewscreen just after.
So maybe Arex recognized the markings specific to the blue Orions’ ships and used their pronunciation to be courteous?
Maybe Netflix will save LD the way they took over Prodigy.
The difference is that Prodigy‘s second season had already been made, so when Paramount+ decided not to air it, Paramount (the studio, as distinct from the streamer of nearly the same name) shopped around for someone else to distribute it. Here, nothing more has been produced beyond season 5, and Netflix might not be as interested in paying to make a whole new season, as opposed to just airing one already made. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s a different situation.
That said, I could easily imagine Lower Decks being subject to a Futurama-style revival at some point down the line.
Ditto! As TOS tends to prove, a STAR TREK show might be cancelled, but the stories keep being told.
I love that they added Tholians, the Apollo hand, and V’Ger to the battle sequence in the titles. Guess the producers threw in everything they were planning for later seasons since this is the last one.
I hope that we get some Tholians in the season too
I felt like the two episodes are emphasizing Character Development even when the protagonists are unaware of it.
1. Boimler becoming a far more capable leader is something he’s gradually sinking into and we’re discovering he’s basically becoming Riker. He was able to handle the events of the second episode (mostly) without panicking and on his own.
2. Captain Freeman is pretty much a sign of how divergent the two of them have become with the former believing that being a ruthless asshole is how all leaders are (which is due to her trauma never being resolved) while Captain Mariner is someone who has come to cherish both the leaders as well as people under them as family.
3. I actually assume the Point of Divergence in the Alt-Verse is that Captain Freeman (Senior) was a far worse captain than the one in “our” universe and that’s why she’s at Starbase 80. Everyone under her made decisions they hated except Boimler, who was able to thrive early. My guess being that Boimler only recently transferred back and was on the Titan for years here.
Re: Tendi’s overprotectiveness
I don’t think her behavior is appropriate for the 24th century about pregnant women being China dolls but I suppose the difference can be explained in that Tendi is worried about her sister being VIOLENT in her profession.
5 seasons is a reasonable time for the show. After 5 years all the characters are going to be promoted out of the Lower Decks. Well, unless they’re hopelessly incompetent… So a show called Lower Decks would have to focus on a new set of characters and, well, that would be fraught. Best to go out on a high note.
Lower Decks was certainly the one I was expecting to hit the TNG Seven. We’re not supposed to do five year missions anymore.
Yes, but it’s only been about 2 years in universe, going by the stardates
Getting rid of capitalism is one thing – assuming one can find something better to replace it – but why would you get rid of your gems & precious metals, rather than keep them around to be purely decorative?!? (Also, I’m not the only one who got a little nervous when Starfleet casually handed off a massive amount of filthy lucre to House Tendi, yes? Handing off wealth to pirates doesn’t necessarily make them ex-pirates, sometimes it just makes them RICH pirates).
Anyway, I enjoyed these two episodes (Particularly getting another close look at Orion culture – under any pronunciation – not least because it allowed me to resurrect the classic “Pirate” running joke from a certain salty franchise whenever Tendi was just a touch more optimistic than the situation warranted*) and look forward to the rest of this season.
I wonder if those ‘Space Potholes’ will be an excuse for that ‘Lower Decks through the ages’ episode I’ve been hoping to see for several seasons now?
*OF COURSE the Pirate Queen is going to seize a golden excuse to remove two potential rivals from contention and seize their funds in one fell swoop.
Well cash is going to be useless and you can always replicate more jewels.
“Getting rid of capitalism is one thing – assuming one can find something better to replace it – but why would you get rid of your gems & precious metals, rather than keep them around to be purely decorative?!?”
A society rejecting the former regime can’t be expected to apply rational judgment. They’ll throw out everything that reminds them of it, the good with the bad. It’s more about symbolism than pragmatism.
Besides, they can always replicate replacements if they want something decorative. (Kirk from “Catspaw”: “We could manufacture a ton of these on our ship. They mean nothing to us.”)
Does the alt-u Becky Freeman taking Beckett’s place make her a sub Mariner?
Ouch.
Although since her impersonation wasn’t quite perfect, she landed in the Uncanny Mariners’ Valley.
In sad Trek-related news, Jeri Taylor has passed away.
https://blog.trekcore.com/2024/10/star-trek-voyager-cocreator-jeri-taylor-dead-at-86/
For what it’s worth, krad, I’m about the same age as you and also grew up in NYC and even though I’d never seen it before I immediately read “Andreassi” as “an-dree-AH-si”.
Just as the older shows would come to emphasize a few of their standout ensemble members – Picard, Worf & Data in TNG, Seven and the Doctor in Voyager, etc – I’m hoping LD gives us a lot of Tendi, T’Lyn and Rutherford.
I think that Tendi at least has already entered the pantheon of characters who are almost universally beloved by the fandom, alongside Spock, Data, Garak and Seven of Nine.
What a shame Boimler wasn’t with Tendi for some handwavy reason to point out that James Kirk would’ve called what the Orryuns committed during the race sabbatazh.
Personally, after all the trips Trek has made to the Mirror Universe, giving us more than enough variations on the regular characters as opposite psychopaths, I’m glad Lower Decks followed the concept set by TNG’s “Parallels” for once. We didn’t need radically different versions of the regulars yet again. I really liked seeing only slightly different versions of the Cerritos crew. And that’s even more so in the case of ‘Becky Freeman’. When she’s exposed to the bridge as having traded places with Beckett, we see her breaking down in front of everyone. By the time it’s over, there’s no difference whatsoever between her and our Mariner. Becky Freeman is an insecure girl who puts up a dictator captain attitude that won’t fool anyone ever again. That insecurity is part of both Mariners.
Loved the developments on the Tendi side across these two episodes. It’s a storyline I imagine could have lasted a bit longer had the show been guaranteed further seasons past this one. But I get why McMahan and company would want to revert to the status quo without much delay. But I’m glad she got to kick some ass and come to terms with her mixed Starfleet/Orion values.
I could have spent even more time on the new world that just jettisoned capitalism. The minute I saw the opening parade, I just knew there were going to be outliers out to sabotage society’s progress. I figure these “families” are stand-ins for any oligarchy in real-life, whether they’re Murdochs, Trumps and whatnot. Money is just an excuse. What they really don’t want is to lose their power and influence. There’s a potentially interesting Trek story there waiting to be told about what happens on Earth after Cochrane makes first contact with the Vulcans. I imagine that even after WW3, there would be elites not willing to allow society to become a scarcity-free economy where no one is dependant on anything or anyone.
Also (that for whatever reason got deleted) a reminder of Jeri Taylor’s passing. Every writer and other talent I’ve read on social media these past couple of days have had nothing but praise and kind words to say about her. A decade’s worth of Star Trek was made under her watch, and a lot of talent flourished because of her nurturing. RIP.
The Federation wasn’t portrayed as post-scarcity in TOS/TAS. There were capitalists like Harry Mudd, Cyrano Jones, and Carter Winston, there were references to officers getting salaries and having money invested in their training, etc. Kirk said in TVH that they didn’t use money, but he could’ve just meant hard currency as opposed to electronic credit. I tend to assume — and this episode supports it — that the UFP didn’t become fully post-scarcity until replicators came into use sometime between TOS and TNG.
And even then, I’m not totally convinced that there was absolutely no form of money in the Federation primarily because of DS9. The Starfleet crew had to have some way to pay their bar tabs and to play Dabo at Quark’s; Ferengi aren’t exactly known for their honesty. It could be that Starfleet negotiated a deal to give each officer a kind of stipend or something for use only on the station, but there had to have been something.
Trek in general, and Picard in particular also showed that “post-scarcity” is not a complete term. There are always going to be things that are unique or rare, and that gives them value. I choose to take the idea of “post-scarcity” as being a reference to the necessities, which are easily replicated. It’s almost more of a UBI than anything else, I think.
Basically, yeah. A post-scarcity or post-capitalist society doesn’t mean that money doesn’t exist at all, just that it isn’t necessary for survival. Capitalism could still be practiced as a hobby or a way to obtain extra things beyond basic needs.
And of course, Starfleet would need to maintain some kind of currency reserve for interactions with other cultures that still use money. People often forget that what we see of the Federation is filtered almost exclusively through a Starfleet lens and mostly set on the frontier, so it isn’t necessarily representative of what life is like for your average citizen on the core worlds.
And we know that giving up money isn’t a requirement to join the Federation, as the Bolians still maintain at least one bank and I find it hard to believe that the Ferengi would abandon it when they joined. I think the beauty of the Federation is that if gives individuals the opportunity and freedom to pursue their dreams because they don’t have to worry about starving to death.
Yes, I got the impression here that it was the Targalans’ own preference to abandon capitalism, given how joyous they were about doing so. I would imagine they lived under a rather oppressive, unjust capitalist system that served only the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else, and were delighted to throw off that yoke. After all, a society wouldn’t embrace change that eagerly if the desire to do so hadn’t already existed strongly within it.
I’m excited to see the progression of Boimler’s facial hair for however long he tries to grow it. The funniest thing is that we know from earlier episodes that Boimler dyes his hair purple, which means that he must also be doing the same to his face whispies.
Pardon my ignorance but does the Cerritos giving a massive fortune to Tendi’s family violate the Prime Directive’s non-interference policy? I only ask bc her family was very prominent and their financial situation (good or bad) should affect a lot on Orion and Captain Freeman gave them a planet’s worth of money like it was nothing.
The Prime Directive doesn’t prohibit trade or commerce with a warp-capable culture, which is basically what this was. It prohibits taking sides in a political or military dispute, but since the Tendis had already been stripped of their status and property by the Orion Queen, I don’t think this counted. It was basically an act of charity to keep them out of poverty.
Ok I buy that.