What we have this week is a normal episode of Lower Decks, albeit one that continues two themes from the two-episode season premiere week: Boimler trying to be more like his alternate-universe counterpart, whom he met and admired in “Dos Cerritos,” and the proclivity for quantum fissures that prompted their mission in that same episode.
Unfortunately, the A-plot this time focuses on dating adventures, which puts LD back in the mode at which it is least interesting: a twenty-first-century sitcom crowbarred into a Trek setting. Jennifer-the-Andorian goes on an away mission with Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford to get rid of a nanite infestation on a resort station, and Jennifer immediately starts acting like she and Mariner are still dating. Mariner is appalled, because they broke up ages ago (right around when Mariner was exiled to Starbase 80 in “Trusted Sources”). Except, when she goes over what happened, she realizes that she didn’t actually break up, she just gave Jennifer the silent treatment and assumed she’d understand. And their respective duties have kept them away from each other in any case, so they haven’t talked until now. So now Mariner has to actually break up with her.
This plot is tiresome for a number of reasons, not the least being that it’s a little too early-twenty-first century. And I still wince every time we see this Andorian named “Jennifer.” LD has dipped a little too much into the “they’re aliens, but they have boring white-person names! Ha! Ha! That’s funny!” well. Plus Jennifer just isn’t that interesting.
Another reason is that this is yet another “oh God, Mariner is the worst” plot, which grew tiresome around the one-third mark of season one. I’ve said all along that Mariner would be better off being modeled after Chris Knight in Real Genius, the veteran officer who has seen it all and has stopped giving a fuck, and recent seasons have given us more of that (e.g., booing missions that seem boring, like in “Caves”). But this is back to Mariner just being rotten and no fun to be around. Before she has a chance to properly break up with Jennifer, the Andorian reveals that she’s transferring to another ship, so this is their last mission together before they will be physically far apart. Mariner is relieved, as circumstance has prevented her from having to do something unpleasant, she can just let Jennifer transfer off, and it’ll be just like they actually broke up!
What we learn this week is that Jennifer is just as horrible a person as Mariner. (Well, okay, we kinda knew that from the way Jennifer used Mariner to tweak her salon in “Hear All, Trust Nothing.”) Eventually she reveals that she knew damn well that Mariner’s silent treatment was breaking up with her, but Jennifer wanted to make Mariner actually do it before Jennifer transferred off. They have it out, and wind up breaking up less acrimoniously, and remain friends—or, as Jennifer puts it, she finally has an ex who doesn’t want to kill her. Lovely.
This being a Star Trek show, the big conversation where they have it out happens while both are clutching to a palm tree while a giant nanite infestation is consuming everything in its path.
The nanites—Rutherford names the collective nanites “Glump,” which is adorable—resist all attempts to capture them, though eventually Rutherford figures out a solution, because of course he does. And it involves T’Lyn, in another bit that I wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about: the oh-so-logical-and-stoic Vulcan goes all fangirl on a popular singer named Korg. She even gets to use his instruments—vibes—to create a resonance frequency that will shatter the nanite bond and block the intelligence controlling them.
It’s cute that T’Lyn has this weakness, but it’s a little too constructed. Tendi later gets Korg’s autograph on a padd for T’Lyn, and her initial response is that it’s a pointless gift, but she keeps it anyhow, because she might need it for handwriting analysis later. Ha! Ha! That’s funny!
The more interesting plot is Boimler’s. He’s assigned with Ransom and Billups to go undercover to retrieve an admiral who’s gone AWOL. Boimler, however, is all nervous because just before he goes off with the first officer and chief engineer, he sees Jet on his way to sickbay. Jet warns Boimler that Ransom is a crazy man who gets his junior officers hurt: on their just-completed mission together, Jet lost both his hands.
This, at least, feels like a Trek comedy plot. After all, a cliché of the franchise since practically the very beginning has been the junior officers on the off-ship mission (whether landing party or away team) being the ones who get hurt or killed, thus showing that there’s danger without actually endangering a regular. And Boimler is now scared to death that he’s the designated victim on this mission. As a result, he screws up any number of things he normally wouldn’t, like eating and drinking in front of Kreetassans and giving away that he’s Starfleet while on an undercover mission.
However, when it seems like the AWOL admiral has converted Boimler to his side of the fence—he’s fed up with the crummy assignments he’s gotten since being promoted to flag rank, like being in charge of milking space whales—Ransom and Billups make it clear that they wanted Boimler along because he’s a good officer. (Also, he’s wiry. As Billups says, you always need a wiry guy.)
Unlike Mariner, who remains stuck in neutral five years in, we’ve gotten to watch Boimler evolve from the callow ensign into the type of highly competent officer that we come to expect from our Trek characters. And, true to how evolution works, it’s happening very very slowly. But it is happening!
The nanites have been directed by a Starfleet ship—an extremely tiny Starfleet ship. It turns out to be another vessel from an alternate timeline, but in their universe, everything is way smaller. The admiral returns from duty and is assigned to help the micro-ship out. (Her captain is surprised, saying that the admiral’s counterpart in their universe is off milking space whales…) This is the second time we’ve had a universe crossover, and one suspects this will all build toward something…
Random thoughts
- T’Lyn also meets Korg, and he turns out to be a devotee of logic, which just makes T’Lyn an even bigger fan. That’s the sort of thing we don’t see enough of in Trek: people from one species embracing the culture of a different species. It has shown up here and there—Ensign D’Seve in TNG’s “Face of the Enemy,” for example—but we should be seeing more of it.
- Boimler now has a lot of stubble. He’s obviously very very slowly working his way toward growing the beard that his alternate-universe counterpart had in “Dos Cerritos.”
- Kreetassans and their taboo against eating and drinking in front of other people were introduced in Enterprise’s “Vox Sola.”
- Finally, this episode has a historic moment, as we see Gallamites for the first time! Established in DS9’s “The Maquis, Part I” has having toothy smiles and transparent skulls so you can see their brains. It was a running gag on DS9, with Dax having a friendship with a Gallamite captain named Boday. In this LD episode, we see Gallamites, and they have big teeth, the tops of their heads are transparent, showing their brains, and they also look surprisingly Saurian, which is a nice touch.
See, I had the opposite reaction–I liked the A plot a lot better than the B plot. Boimler freaking out over Ransom seemed contrived to me. Boimler should know what kind of officer Ransom is by now. It also seemed out of character for Jet to freak out as well.
I don’t see Admiral Millius doing anything until he gets some counseling.
That is so not how I expected Gallamites to look. I always envisioned Boday with a human-like build and more human-like face. Very intriguing.
T’Lyn being a fan of vibe tubes surprised me, in a good way.
I must say, the Gallamites in this episode were a lot more fearsome looking than I envisioned. In retrospect, I’m surprised that the visible brain was the main thing that Kira seized on when Jadzia said she was dating one.
I wasn’t a huge fan of this one; the main plot seems to exist just to address a fan criticism that I never found valid, namely that Mariner and Jennifer never had proper “closure”. Jennifer betrayed Mariner’s trust in a very fundamental way; I don’t think that there was anything *to* say after how she behaved. I did actually love seeing T’Lyn fangirl (for a very Vulcan value of “fangirl”) over a musician, though I wish we’d gotten to hear some of Krog’s music.
Also, as someone from Winnipeg, I appreciate that there’s a ship called the Manitoba. Presumably Parliament-class, as they seem to have Canadian toponyms as their naming convention.
Decent episode. T’Lyn continues to be great both from a voice acting and animation perspective. The simple sight gag of Jennifer, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi all screaming as they fall out of the shattering nanite clump, while T’Lyn emotionlessly falls made me smile. Even her having her fangirl moments were entertaining, mainly because it feels like a better treatment of Vulcans overall. Also feels like a tie back to Spock playing the Vulcan lute.
The B plot stood for both Boimler and Billups, as I think Billups got some of the best lines in the episode. Also pleasantly surprised to have the great Toby Huss as our latest crazy admiral.
Seems like the alternate universe stuff is going to be the theme of the season. I appreciate that it’s less clunky and better integrated into the episode by episode narrative than last season’s Nova One appearances.
I really liked this episode for multiple reasons.
1. Jennifer and Mariner broke up obviously but as a multi-arc relationship and Star Trek’s second on-screen queer relationship (barring Jax’s one off), it deserved a conversation. At least IMHO. Jennifer also was a character many of us liked
for being as awful as she was. Plus more Andorians are awesome.
2. Jet becoming worse and more Boimler like while Boimler becoming more Riker-like is a cool arc even if it kind of throws Jet under the bus. Then again, Jet is the kind of guy who probably would do fine in astrometrics or retiring to a science base. I love the Redshirts homage at least. It inspired one of my book series (Space Academy)
3. What do you have to do to be demoted as an Admiral in Starfleet? Visit the Genesis planet? The guy needed to be cashiered.
Nearly six decades of Trek watching has taught us that Starfleet is a military organization…except when it’s not. Obviously that generally boils down to whatever the writers find to be convenient at the time in deciding how strict to make Starfleet policy and practice.
But as a mental thought exercise, I’ll give this question a whirl:
Admiral Millius may have temporarily abandoned his duties in milking space whales, but this was likely a very low priority Starfleet duty. This wasn’t in the middle of wartime, and likely nobody was really hurt by the whole ordeal, except maybe some unmilked space whales. (Hopefully gormaganders and Galaxy’s Children had other natural ways to relieve themselves of excess milk.) So Starfleet Command, in their infinite selective kindness, decides to retroactively turn Millius’ AWOL time into an extended leave. They simultaneously relieve him of milking duties and give him a new mission with trying to return the Endeavor to their own universe. The mission is humanitarian in nature, so that makes it seem important to Millius. But in the grand scheme of things, the stakes are, frankly, small (with all due respect to the tiny ship). Better to rehabilitate Millius by putting his years of Starfleet training to work rather than just kicking him out of the service and maybe sending him to the stockade.
Also, plenty of Badmirals seem to end up getting imprisoned or unalived for their actions, usually rightfully so. But at least Millius seemed capable of some level of redemption.
It does uphold a classical truth about Federation society. They’d rather rehabilitate than punish. Millius wasn’t satisfied with his duties and so he received new duties. I’m sure they can easily write off his AWOL time as Leave since he didn’t do anything substantially criminal. The truly odd thing is why didn’t he resign or retire?
A pretty run-of-the-mill episode. I didn’t care for the Boimler plot, which was too contrived. How does it make sense that Ransom is going on a mission immediately after the mission where Jet lost his hands? Did he just now get back on a shuttle and immediately change clothes for his next mission before Jet had even been taken to sickbay? That made no sense. And it contradicts the payoff that Ransom is a more compassionate commander than Jet claimed, since if he were, he wouldn’t have just ignored an injured crewperson like that. Also, how is there a place where Starfleet officers are encouraged to go AWOL, and there are no consequences for that? AWOL in the military is serious business. It leads to courts-martial. So nothing about this plot made any sense.
The idea of a parallel universe that’s the same as ours but tiny makes no sense. Parallel timelines are just divergent histories of our universe, branching off the same origin. They have the same physics — they have to, or there’s no way life could exist in them, let alone the same specific planets, species, and individuals. It would’ve made more sense to say that the Endeavour had been compressed by the subspace rift like the runabout in DS9: “One Little Ship.”
I agree with Keith that it’s nice to see a non-Vulcan embracing Vulcan philosophy. I’ve long wondered — if Surakian logic was so successful at bringing peace to Vulcan for 2000 years, how come nobody else in the galaxy has ever tried it? There are fifty zillion Honorable Warrior Races out there, multiple Free Love Hedonistic Societies, but there can’t be two logic-based civilizations?
Well, there’s the Mintakans, though they didn’t base their logic on Vulcan – they evolved it all on their own. At least, I don’t think there was any mention of them being a lost Vulcan colony – they were just “proto-Vulcanoid”. Which suggests that there’s something physiological at work, rather than just a philosophy.
Yeah, that was a conceptual problem with that episode, the assumption that being “Vulcanoid” made them innately inclined to rationality.
I consider the Ferengi another extremely rational culture.
Given that Vulcans have a long and storied tradition of easy to admire and hard to love, it’s perhaps unsurprising that they’ve not done a very good job of selling the virtues of their institutional philosophy (Especially since Vulcans don’t really seem prone to the missionary impulse).
On the other hand it’s also possible that Vulcan Logic is so closely bound up with the species’ physical and psychological idiosyncrasies that it’s genuinely hard for other species to embrace it on more than a superficial level – and Vulcans have a well expressed disdain for the superficial.
Yes, but in a big galaxy, it stands to reason that other species would’ve hit upon the idea of a logic-based philosophy independently, just as all the Warrior Races and Hedonist Races and other Planets of Hats developed independently of one another. My point is that, if it’s been so successful at keeping Vulcans at peace for two millennia, that’s proof of concept, so it follows that it’s a solution that would work for other species if they tried it.
Ransom ignoring injured crew members has been established by multiple episodes. He shrugs it off. Obviously, Boimler was the “tap in” for Jet after he could no longer carry the mission.
I agree about the tiny universe, though. I assumed it would be a reference to the DS9 one and the Intrepid class vessel had been shrunk via space nonsense.
Chris, I agree with most of what you said, but I don’t think the “AWOL club” is literally a place where people are encouraged to go AWOL. It’s either just a cute name or Milius created the whole thing.
As for the tiny universe, I saw it as one we saw in DS9’s “Playing God.” or even another dimension like the anti-time universe.
Even so, Milius should have been court-martialed for going AWOL.
“As for the tiny universe, I saw it as one we saw in DS9’s “Playing God.” or even another dimension like the anti-time universe.”
Then, as I said, it’s impossible that it would’ve had the same individuals and institutions. That’s like expecting to find a Starbuck’s on Jupiter. The universe in “Playing God” was small because it was newborn, not because it was a miniature copy of our universe.
Some people try to handwave the “It’s exactly like our universe except for one random difference” thing by claiming that in an infinite number of realities, every imaginable thing will exist somewhere by the infinite-monkeys-typing-Shakespeare principle. But it’s nonsense, because if there’s an infinite number of universes to search through in order to find such a near-exact parallel, then the probability of finding it is 1/infinity = zero. Even if it existed, you could never reach it and it could never reach you, so it effectively wouldn’t exist.
The only way it makes sense to have an alternate version of Earth, humanity, Starfleet, or specific individual people is if they’re just alternative timelines of the same universe, branching off from a common origin due to events happening differently. Quantum-mechanically speaking, they aren’t really different universes at all, but superposed quantum states of a single universe, which only seem separate because they’re non-interacting.
The tiny Intrepid-class ship may be a reference to the real-life microscopic 3D-printed version of Voyager – link.
Here’s a funny thing: the Kreetasians have been in space for 200 years and humans have gotten used to public sex from every Roddenberry planet but they haven’t gotten used to people eating in public?
It’s quite possible that these Kreetassans were happy enough to ignore public consumption, but angry at having it rubbed in their faces (In the way the prudish will accept that seeing people in speedos is the cost of visiting the beach, but would not-unreasonably get angry if someone mostly-naked walked over while deliberately scratching their *****).
Also, that ‘Public Sec’ thing certainly applies to Riza, but it seems dangerous to assume it applies to EVERY planet in the Galaxy.
Yeah, it was probably the fact that Boimler ate and drank while actively trying to strike up a conversation with them, which would have seemed like an intentional insult.
By the way, is it an established character trait of Ransom’s that he mispronounces alien species names? He got both “Kreetassan” and “Denobulan” wrong here, and I’m wondering if that’s a character quirk or just Jerry O’Connell not getting a pronunciation guide.
I noticed that Boimler mispronounced it too. I wonder if it’s meant to imply that Boimler was previously unfamiliar with them, and was just pronouncing the name the same way Ransom had. i don’t recall if his reaction to their indignation was “OMG, I forgot!” or “OMG, I didn’t realize!”
Either that, or whoever wrote the pronunciation guide got it wrong, and both Jerry O’Connell and Jack Quaid were just following the incorrect instructions they’d been given.
Boimler did say that he’d known about the Kreetassan eating taboo but forgot in his nervousness. So you’re probably right about the pronunciation guide. (Which is probably how we got “Orry-ons” in “The Pirates of Orion.”)
I enjoyed the comic take on the classic “Crazy Starfleet Admiral”, especially after the (well-done) serious take on the trope during the Admiral Buenamigo story arc.
I’m enjoying T’Lyn’s character pieces this season. Don’t forget, by Vulcan standards she’s first-season Mariner, headstrong and a bit out of control. That a person who has discovered she’s a better fit in Starfleet than Vulcan service to experiment with ways to bond with her crewmates through minor pranks (“I have fooled you.”) and attempts at personal outreach (the shuttle repair incident) seems, to me at least, to be extremely logical. And her willingness to volunteer that her interest in a particular performer was affecting her judgement was surprisingly honest — if you’re experiencing an emotional reaction, denying its existence out of reflex would be, dare I say it, illogical.
@krad, for quite a bit of this episode I was horrified by the suspicion that this might well be the worst episode of LOWER DECKS in a very long while – Mariner/Jennifer should be buried at a crossroads with a stake through it’s heart, they really bring out the worst in each other – but little delights like Boimler making war in true Hellenistic style (Greasy!), poor Jet’s repeated terrors, Boimler’s hilariously
long plummet, mention of USS ‘Toba having a strong ‘Blue Fleet’ presence. and T’Lynn being too professional to be a groupie, but too enthusiastic to be indifferent (Also, Rock Man Rocks Vulcan Logic!) helped reassure me that it wasn’t quite so bad as the worst of Season 1.
Oh, it was delightful to see ENTERPRISE get a little love: seeing the Kreetassans show up to be their husky fussy selves was a genuine pleasure (On reflection it’s astonishing that they haven’t showed up before – if any species can be relied upon cause persistent minor issues of the sort Cerritos excels in, it would be those picky, picky Kreetassans and their infinite fussiness).
Oh, I love Mariner and Jennifer.
I support all Andorian relationships.
I’m with the commenters who enjoyed the Mariner plot (and the T’Lyn plot) more than the Boimler one, which didn’t really work for me. I didn’t really see Mariner as being awful here, or at least not as awful as she used to be, and I certainly don’t blame her for assuming that relationship was over, given how she was treated and how much time had passed since they stopped talking to one another. But overall, I thought this was decent, if a step down from the previous two.
“You’re anathema!”
Boimler’s Kreetassans faux pas didn’t really work for me because they were, you know, hanging out right. next. to a bar.
Ransom has a lot of stubble — at least, I assume that’s meant to be a carefully groomed Miami Vice / George Michael couple-days’-growth thing. Boimler has a few more haphazardly placed wisps than last episode.
T’Lyn’s reserved fangirling was a predictable sort of gag, yeah, but it doesn’t seem overwrought to me as the show presents heightened takes on all its characters’ personal and societal attributes.
While I’m not advocating for Jennifer to be a post-transfer casualty, awful though she may be, I look forward to finding out that the Manitoba has been destroyed and replaced by the Manitoba-A.
Incidentally, according to the director of the episode, the musician Krog is a Brikar, the species that Peter David created for the young-adult Starfleet Academy book series and reused in New Frontier, and that was canonized in Prodigy as Rok-Tahk’s species.
https://x.com/VaultAusir/status/1852437318214295888
Actually, Mike McMahon clarified in a tweet that he wasn’t. He’s just another rock-like species.
Hunh. Odd for the director not to know what the showrunner had in mind.
Well, if Rok’s species are the Brikar, maybe Krog’s is the… Adobeloids? Stuccorians? Concretans?
Aggregar.
Loved the reference to “Apolocypse Now”. John Millius wrote the screenplay for that film — about an officer gone AWOL/rogue! Hence, Admiral Millius.
Also, the underwater dry park as a option for aquatic species was a throwaway line that had me laughing out loud.
Not as good as the opening two episodes, but for what it’s worth, I liked the resolution of the Mariner story. There’s so much tension and baggage that comes with the character that I’m glad for her to at least get some emotionally healthy conclusion to any story, especially when it’s a strained relationship. Uplifting, which goes hand in hand with Trek’s usual philosophy.
But the Boimler story was the winner here. It plays right into Boimler’s insecurities and fears. Naturally, he’d be terrified of being redshirted by someone like Ransom. And like the A plot, it’s a nice instance of a protagonist’s insecurity keeping him from realizing that fear can play pranks with your head.
By the way, Admiral Milius? Who happens to be a frustrated third-rate Admiral stuck milking space whales? I could be wrong, but it seems McMahan and the staff based him on John Milius, writer/director/filmmaker well known for his alpha male military oriented tastes. Apocalypse Now, Red Dawn and Conan the Barbarian being the big spotlights of his work, and it’s well known that he couldn’t get into the military due to health issues. He’s an avid gun collector and who’s very vocal about his wishes to have become a marine. I wonder if the Admiral’s frustrations stem from that background.
Adding to that, the whole story of Milius going AWOL from Starfleet? I can’t help but think of Col. Kurtz.