Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3

That TV-MA rating scared the poo outta me, but like all ratings, it turns out to have been utterly bogus. The show is still bleeping delightful. As it should be.

There were a HELL of a lot of Star Trek references here, even for this show. The most obvious ones were the eerily accurate callbacks to First Contact, but we also got a ton of little stuff like Sisko's Restaurant, a Sonny Clemonds concert, and my favorite was the kid who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, which has not only been solved more than once in the franchise, but it was actually solved centuries earlier in real life, WHILE DS9 was still on the air. One of Trek's more embarrassing real-life goofs and that joke is rubbing the franchise's nose in it.

I'll tell you something odd about the show, and really it might be considered a failing. But all of the tourist traps and recognizable spots on Earth are all from previous Star Trek episodes and movies. I would not begrudge the series for coming up for its own unique stamps of future Earth. Although the show pointing out there is no reason for the San Francisco Bridge to still exist in a world without cars is getting there.

I'll tell you why this is a good Star Trek show. And why it's a good modern Star Trek show. The unpredictable ending is that you should believe in the system. And while that has always been true of the first five Star Trek series, every Kurtzman era show is very committed to showing why certain aspects of Starfleet are and always have been flawed. And frankly, I like that about them, and think it's long overdue. It's also very much in the vein of how modern television chooses to tell stories, and the kinds of controversies it seeks out. A lot of modern drama has to do with characters looking inwards on themselves and their missions and finding both lacking. Star Trek purists will scoff, but I find it necessary for a modern show.

And this episode shocks us all by exclusively appealing to the purists. The ones who don't really have a leg to stand on when defending Gene Roddenberry's militarism and authoritarianism in his shows. You guys? Nailed it here. And it's the fact the franchise is raising questions elsewhere which is why this specific "not safe for TV" moral is refreshing instead of alarming and obnoxious. But yeah, it's a great twist that things are gonna work out because they are good guys and good guys always win. It's Star Trek. That's actually been its deal the entire time, whether Kurtzman admits it or not.

James Cromwell. Nice. The thing I love about this show is that is bring back classic actors to voice their characters. Most cartoons of different franchises wouldn't bother. Star Trek: Lower Decks does because it cares, and because the producers are actual fans.

Great first episode back. The anticlimax is the exact point of Star Trek. Predictability in that regard was always one of Star Trek's selling points, so props to the show for touting it in the modern era for once. ****1/2.

This was an average episode, but this is a good show, and an average episode of a good show is always eminently watchable. I don't feel the need to do a full deconstruction, but I do need to address one thing. The show did NOT need to get back J.G. Hertzler for Martok. No other animated show would have bothered. But this show cares. And that makes all the difference.

Also nice hear that Martok is still Chancellor. The shady Klingons from last year's finale had me a bit worried about the Empire, but if Martok is still in charge, things'll be all right. ***1/2.

Yes, the show got back Susan Gibney for Leah Brahms. They didn't actually NEED to for a cameo that small and unimportant. But they care, so they did.

The Cerritos getting a positive reputation among other ships' Lower Deck crews is not a surprise. And yeah, the ship does seem a LOT more fun to work in than any other ship in the entire fleet.

The victim is the teaser is similar to a LOT of Star Trek victims (including the Red Shirts on The Original Series) in that he died because he was stupid. Star Trek is kind and wonderful to the intelligent, peaceful, and curious. It is a brutal Universe to live in if you are actually dumb.

Billups surviving sort of beggared belief. Why didn't they bring ALL the statue people back then?

Susan Gibney is all you need to know about what Star Trek nerds the writers are. I love them for it. ****.

Honestly? A couple of the jokes hit me wrong. Maybe that shouldn't be a deal-breaker in a normal comedy, but in a Star Trek show, they grated.

I am well aware Geordi La Forge is considered one of the very worst and lamest Star Trek characters of the Berman era. But I feel using his name as a pejorative to engineers is incredibly disrespectful to LeVar Burton. I had similar objections to a Miles O'Brien slam in the previous season. Really the only living character from that era you can actually make fun of and not disrespect the actor is Wesley Crusher, and he's pretty low-hanging fruit. Still Burton doesn't deserve that from the franchise. It' one thing for The Boondocks to talk smack about Geordi. It's another thing for a Star Trek show to do it. Not cool.

The other joke that hit me wrong was the reminder of what a terrible episode Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Masks" was. Season 7 of Next Generation is not something I'd call overrated. Not a ton of Trekkies love it. What I will say is it was and remains the biggest let-down of that series. People will remember the season for "Parallels" and "The Pegasus" (both great episodes) as well as the single greatest series finale in Star Trek of all time (still) in "All Good Things...". But Season 7 was the last season, a farewell tour for the fans, and they wasted most of those precious hours on nonsense that didn't matter. There is nothing more Season 7 about Next Gen Season 7 than hyping Picard finding his long-lost son, only to reveal in the episode they aren't actually related, wasting another precious hour before the series was gone. And there was really no bigger waste of time during that season than "Masks". What kills me is that it contains one of Brent Spiner's best performances for Data ever, and as far as failures go, at least it swung for the fences and missed, unlike TNG's "Lower Decks" (not to be confused for this show) or "Sub Rosa" which were simply horrible the entire way through. But as well received as that series finale was, the biggest thing I remember about watching that season over the air was being constantly disappointed week in and week out. If somebody ever tries to tell you The Next Generation is a better show than Deep Space Nine, remind them DS9 used their final season to go for absolute broke, while Next Gen utterly wasted theirs. And that's not a fun thing to be reminded of.

At first I thought is was cool Shaxs and T'Ana have a secret romance we've never heard about. But this show being this show turns it gross instead so I'm scowling instead of happy.

I think my favorite moment of the episode was Mariner making fun of money for being worthless pieces of paper with no intrinsic value. That's one of the fun things about the future suggest humanity has evolved past using money (with each other at least). Mariner can state a truth that is true for her, that is actually true for REAL if you think about it. We take after Beast Boy on Teen Titans Go and start paying for pizza slices with bees, the autocrats would be screwed BECAUSE paper money has no actual value. It only does because everyone agrees that. If everyone decided differently, things could get messy. And the reason Bitcoin and cryptocurrency isn't an actual threat to the oligarchy is because deep down, nobody believes it's real money. And it's the belief in the value that makes money valuable to begin with it. Without it, it's going to go sideways as often as cryptocurrency stocks do.

I like that Shaxs and T'Ana use one of those boring Hologram programs from the 1940's that Captain Picard always made me say "You've gotta be kidding me that he finds this exciting." Because they take on the roles of the murderous gangsters instead of a private eye, it IS actually fun for the first time ever. What the HELL is wrong with the cast of The Next Generation and Voyager? They literally had the greatest videogame system ever devised and they used it to solve dime-store roleplaying mysteries. I blame Gene Roddenberry actually. It was his idea, and it was one of the hackiest ideas he ever had. Only the crew playing and listening to symphonies is worse. Or is it? Maybe they are simply equally bad. I don't recognize a future as boring as Gene posited as being remotely positive. If Dixon Hill is the greatest videogame available, I'll prefer to live in the era of Donald Trump. For real. That's how strongly about that I feel. So, yeah, Holodecks suck. Lower Decks is the first Star Trek show to show the characters using them right.

All in all, I disliked the episode because it strongly reminded me of the franchise's worst faults. I think that is to be expected in a meta-comedy, but for some reason I don't usually find the series too distasteful in that respect. So it hitting me that way this week was unusual. *1/2.

I really can't hazard too educated a guess as to what happened in the cover-up with Rutherford and his implants, but whoever the guilty Starfleet party is, I hope it's somebody we've already heard of.

This episode pointed out that Starfleet keeps changing the uniforms, and despite claims of being peaceful and anti-military, it actually has a pseudo-Navy motif, and that Conspiracy Butt Bugs were actually a thing. Frankly, I believe the Conspiracy Butt Bugs from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation are probably Star Trek's second loosest end of the Rick Berman era (the first being the still unrevealed identity of Futureguy on Enterprise). Unlike Futureguy, I can totally picture this show returning to something that gross and ludicrous someday.

Conspiracy theorists have a field day over what happened to Sisko. What's great is that there was actually some controversy there between the producers and Avery Brooks, so it's a smart thing to put up for debate. I also greatly enjoyed Rutherford's meta speculation about an alternate timeline where Kirk and Spock shared some weird cinematic chemistry. See, he doesn't actually know the Kelvin Timeline exists. But we do, which is why it's funny.

A Starfleet sign-up booth totally makes sense being a thing, and it also totally makes sense this is the first show we'd see it in. This is a common-sense that I like seeing because I don't think Gene Roddenberry was wise enough to understand it would be necessary. I think Gene mistakenly believed EVERYONE wanted to be in Starfleet and that the organization sold itself due solely to its righteousness. I've mentioned Roddenberry was a problematic producer, right? It's the fact that he could never envision a Starfleet membership sign-up booth that is a big sign of that.

This mentioned the EMH Doctor spending 70 years in the Delta Quadrant. I know some of Voyager was a bit hinky about his timeline, but that seems a really weird thing to solidify into canon.

I liked it, but I was more intrigued with what the episode promised for the future, than satisfied by how the episode itself played out. ***1/2.

A visit to Deep Space Nine is cool, but part of me would have rather seen that series return as envisioned by the "Lost" Season 8 premiere conjured up by the DS9 writers in the documentary "What We Left Behind: Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". Now considering the timeline to this show is more recent to the idea of the Berman era (it seems to be set a little bit after Star Trek: Nemesis), instead instead of a couple of decades later like Star Trek: Picard, I guess that scenario is still possible. But I have mixed feelings for that reason.

Also should point out that the show got a continuity point wrong (which is rare). Shaxs and Kira could NOT have been in the Bajoran Resistance together. Kira was in the Shakaar cell, and with the exception of Shakaar himself, every single other Resistance cell member that survived the Cardassian Occupation was killed in the DS9 episode "The Darkness And The Light". Another thing that bothers me about that is that the franchise does a lot of "All Bajorans seem to know each other," jive and it always has. I know Bajorans aren't real people, but the notion feels like a stereotype of sorts anyways.

I'm not happy with the loss handed to Quark at the end either. Frankly, I liked the idea that he has developed a sense of morality regarding the horrors of the Dominion War. I don't dig the series suggesting instead he was trying to protect his stolen patent. And when he says he has principles, and either Kira or Freeman says "No, you don't," they're WRONG. Quark was the most principled character on Deep Space Nine. Yes, they were Ferengi principles, but he was a LOT more orthodox about them than the rest of the other characters were their own professed values, including the members of the Federation. The thing I love about this show is how much it loves the history of Star Trek. I'm starting to get why this is the first time we've seen Deep Space Nine characters. I think it's the one part of this franchise the writers don't either like or understand.

This episode WAS good enough to fix a MAJOR DS9 oversight. For the era of The Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager, Rick Berman LOATHED showing minor aliens from the original series. Andorians, Tellarites, and Orions have all been mentioned on those series. But they were never really seen again until Enterprise. It always struck me as weird that DS9 was the thing in the franchise that introduced the Orion Syndicate, but it never ONCE showed a single Orion member of it. The Orion stuff in this episode was appreciated by me for that reason.

I like the idea that the reason Jennifer wanted Mariner to meet her friends is so she could take them down a few pegs. That's great. Her stunning them all and making them afraid of her is great too.

This episode explicitly states that Tendi does NOT possess the Orion female pheromones as seen on Star Trek: Enterprise, and tells us not all Orion females have them. I'm glad that was addressed at least once.

The resolution to Boimler at the Dabo table was terrific too. The Ferengi Pit Boss is getting more and more desperate with how much he's winning, and sneakily thinks he'll trick him with a gift certificate in Quark bucks... which Boimler happily takes not because he's stupid, but because the Federation doesn't use money. The Ferengi's disgust at that is palpable. What's interesting is that you wouldn't know the Federation doesn't use money on most of DS9 (although Jake Sisko has claimed that before). That specific series had the Federation do actual commerce with other species that DO use money, so they had something called "the Federation credit". It was easier to show a money-free society on The Next Generation because their missions didn't really involve Federation trade.

If the episode were better, I'd forgive it for stepping on the toes of a possible DS9 sequel series. But I don't think it really gets the morality of DS9 all too well, judging by characters believing Quark has no principles, or even remembers the canon when it suggests Shaxs and Kira were in the same Resistance cell. Cool they got back Nana Visitor and Armin Shimerman though. **1/2.

What the HELL was THAT?!

I can't even. As far as wastes of Star Trek episodes go, it will never top Star Trek: Voyager's "Course: Oblivion!". But that is literally the only other episode in this franchise's near 60 history that I felt was more pointless than that. Star Trek has done worse plenty of times. But Star Trek actually not mattering is a rare and unforgivable failing. 0.

For one thing it was nice to FINALLY see George Takei return to Star Trek. Yay!

Pointed slam at Kelvin Timeline is pointed.

I loved Rutherford saying he loved the graphics. Because we crazily did back in the 1980's. What we were thinking? I also love that when the pants don't fit, he suggests knocking out bigger punks.

I thought the idea of William's death was an interesting thing to explore with Boimler, although the Section 31 ending sort of wrecks it. Why DOES a clandestine organization trying to stay hidden within Starfleet have their own Uniforms and comm badges? Makes no damn sense.

Pretty good. ***1/2.

I am curiously unfulfilled.

I actually liked the unresolved ending with Mariner. Freeman was SO out of line with her daughter, not even bothering to get her side of the story, you just knew she was wrong. And worse, she was punishing the one member of the crew who believed in her. So no, Mariner becoming Indiana Jones at the end didn't bug me. I'm sure they'll take it interesting places next week.

It was the mission of the week that bugged me.

"Symbiosis" is one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The notion that the cruel thing Picard did was in Ornara's best interest back then is a stretch at best. But what's worse for me is that we have no context about the Breen invasion of Brekka. How long they've occupied it, or even if Brekka's downfall has anything to do with how badly they treated the Ornarans. Let me be blunt: Those were like the PERFECT planets for the show to choose for a Second Contact, and both due for an actual update, and they both felt like major unfinished business from Next Gen. And yet, this episode raised even more questions that I didn't need or want raised. It pissed me off a bit.

Crewless starship? That will not end well. I also think that perhaps the Admiral was setting up Freeman to fail so he could show it off when it saved the day. It makes me think the news piece was a planned political hit job and the reporter was in on it. Some things about humanity simply never change.

We'll see how the season ends, but I have mixed feelings about this episode. ***.

And while it wasn't EXACTLY a cliffhanger, I DID love the Badgey tag.

I knew the Admiral was no good. I suspected he hired the Breen (although it turns out he didn't) and that he was in cahoots with the reporter from last week (although he wasn't). I AM surprised he was both behind what happened on Deep Space Nine and what happened to Rutherford's memory. The guy was better and worse than I thought in many ways.

The ending of all of the California Class ships coming to the rescue was beyond rewarding.

This show had an amazing finale. I hope there is a Season Four. *****.