Beware consultants no matter the century.
What They Say:
A consultant arrives on the U.S.S. Cerritos to run drills that require the lower deckers and bridge crew to swap duties.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With two episodes left to go in the season, Star Trek: Lower Decks is one of those shows that is quite simply over too quickly. Both as a season and as individual episodes. The episode length is actually quite right, I think, as it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but I really wish we had twelve to thirteen episodes in a season rather than ten. Especially with cold opens like this one where Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi are in space suits doing repairs to a satellite when the Cerritos receives a distress call from another ship in a time loop. The ship takes off to help, leaving their away crew with no spare oxygen and no place to go – for six hours before they return, remembering what they did. It’s simple but very effective.
With a drill sergeant having come in to test things out with the crew, we see how that raises tensions and some of the things that they’re put through. Of course, a lot of it can be done through portable holodecks and we see how the familiar cast all fail in pretty problematic ways, such as Tendi not helping a Klingon to pass honorably or the way Marine fails at surviving the mirror universe. I really loved the obviousness of it but putting Mariner into the old west and mirroring the OK Corral episode right down to the red background and empty buildings made it so worthwhile. Rutherford also gets the fun of being the Chief Engineer during the meltdown sequence from Wrath of Kahn, but even that isn’t a win for him.
Boiler going up against the borg on their ship is the best, however, especially since we get Alice Krige popping into this episode later as the Borg Queen (played by Alice Krige no less!) as Boimler retakes the test in order to do better than his original 79%. He keeps trying to do better and retakes the test over and over and over. It’s fun watching as the ensigns are all tested as bridge crew types and then to do the reverse as the bridge crew have to test as ensigns, hearing all the dangerous things happening but unable to actually do anything. But the best is when they stick to these roles for a combined “live” test where they’re replicating the escape from Spacedock from Search for Spock. Getting everyone in different roles and coping with everything they’ve been through is filled with smaller gags and delightful moments.
But the twist we here is that once everything is over, Mariner and Freeman realize that the whole thing happened to get everyone to understand each other better in a form of team building. When they confront her about it, the real truth is revealed in that she picked the Cerritos to justify her job, having juiced the tests so she can submit the results and show Starfleet that her work is valuable. Of course, that’ll relegate the ship and its crew will be split. But the fly in the ointment is that Boimler stuck to his Borg simulation and got 100% – which keeps the rest open so mother and daughter can fix this and keep the team together. We’ve seen a lot of bonding episodes for these two in small ways and it really does deliver a fun experience to see them continually figuring this out in new ways.
In Summary:
I’ll admit it, I feel bad for those that don’t “get” this show. I know my father, who watched Star Trek in Greenland back in the 60s when it first aired while in the Air Force, would have hated it. He loved Trek in general but something like this just would not have clicked for him. But what this show does is such essentially to be a beautiful love letter to all that has come before and embrace it in a way only a show like this can do, pulling together all the works in something cohesive and delightful. This episode in particular really nailed just about every single minute of what was going on and managed to get so much done so quickly that it’s just boggling. Very recommended.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Paramount+
