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Episode 1: Second Contact
I can’t say I’ve seen every Star Trek episode ever. I’ve only seen a small number of the original series episodes, and most of The Next Generation, and I gave up on Enterprise in the middle of the second season (although I later went back to watch the ‘Mirror Universe’ episode and the series finale). But every other episode of every other show I’ve seen, and a bunch of old fiction books back in the day, and some more recent graphic novels. So I feel like I know the universe pretty well, even if not to super nerdy level like some.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is a new show, animated in a style reminiscent of Rick and Morty, which makes sense because it’s created by Mike McMahan, a writer and producer on that show. But Rick and Morty is often nihilistic and absurd, extremely self-referential, while Star Trek has gotten more ‘serious business’ over time. Voyager and TNG had plenty of silly, fun episodes, and even DS9 dipped into that here and there (like the Vulcan baseball episode). But Discovery and Picard were really overly serious and heavily serialized, without much room for fun.
And let’s be honest — Star Trek can be ridiculous.
Now, Lower Decks isn’t as immediately subversive or funny as the start of Rick and Morty, but there’s already a feeling of commentary and caring about characters. The jokes are hit and miss, but there’s a sense that the characters have some rapport already. The pilot episode is called ‘Second Contact’, referencing the less sexy secondary missions that come after First Contact with alien species, helping to contextualize the nature of the starship Cerritos (named for a city near Los Angeles) as not the flagship sort of ship stories.
We are introduced to a new set of Ensigns, directly referencing the classic TNG episodes that was also called ‘Lower Decks’. Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid) is a Bridge or command ensign, classic Trek nerd that loves memorizing rules and idolizes the Trek way, wanting one day to be a captain. Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) is also a command ensign, but she’s cynical, if experienced, and a real handful — she’s the ‘ignore regulations to help people’ person, and we find out eventually that she’s the daughter of the captain of the ship (Dawnn Lewis) and an admiral.
The other pair (seeming more secondary), are D’Vanda Tendi (Noël Wells), an Orion medical ensign. The Orion were a heavily sexualized green skinned species introduced in the original series, although later series tried to add more depth to them. So far she’s not really a standout, just a sweet, nerdy young person, mainly involved in the secondary plot. Finally there’s Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), engineering ensign and part cyborg, and immediately connects with Tendi.
The actual plot of the episode feels pretty rote — a ‘zombie’ outbreak that serves as a way to show that Tendi works well under pressure and Rutherford (while on a date with a Trill named Barnes) is competent but more interested in engineering issues than making out. The plotline of Mariner and Boimler dealing with Mariner’s off the books helping people was fun enough, although the giant spider sucking on Boimler was never as funny as the episode seemed to think it was.
There’s some funny lines already, like Rutherford wanting to be nervous, Boimler including Vulcan and Earth as planets he’d been to, or that the food replicator only has issues when there’s food in them. Other lines are hit and miss, and the physical comedy isn’t so funny, seeming more childish.
It’s enough though that it’s a fun start, and a real potential to be something interesting and new. I’m hoping the comedy ramps up more in a less physical and less reference heavy way and focuses more on the characters, which tends to always work better.
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Episode 2: Envoys
So far it seems that Star Trek: Lower Decks really delights in both clichés and subverting them in obvious ways. Every Klingon joke in ‘Envoys’, the second episode, comes straight from the cliché handbook. They’re violent, they’re drunk, they eat worms, they make crude jokes, they’re xenophobic. But despite how rote it is, that stuff still plays pretty well, even if the ‘small humanoid female being tough’ trope is played out.
In the episode, we follow two storylines: the continuation of Mariner (the tough street smarts girl) versus Boimler (the by-the-book book-smart nerd) and their contrasting viewpoints and philosophies. Each situation was played the same — Boimler thinks he knows what he’s doing, makes a mistake, gets hurt or embarrassed in some way, and then Mariner comes in to save the day with a potentially mildly immoral tactic.
So by the time we got to the end of the episode, and Mariner says she doesn’t ‘recognize’ the Ferengi as a Ferengi, it’s obvious it’s another classic sitcom staple: The ‘pretending to be incompetent to build up someone else’ trick. Although it was obvious, it was funny seeing the Ferengi (knowing in retrospect he was playing up expectations of Starfleet racism) do the ‘Nyeah humans’ routine.
There are a lot of throwaway references, including repeated uses of ‘Jamaharon’, which is some old Risa term for sexual activity in general or as a throwaway line to implying something even crazier. The Mariner/Boimler dichotomy is so far not that interesting, but the level of humiliation Mariner allowed herself to receive was a nice touch to showing that she is willing to truly help Boimler.
As per usual, there are throwaway jokes in the opening, with a mysterious being of energy that’s not really so powerful and the Captain wanting her own version of Picard’s ‘Make it so’. It does feel like the sort of thing people would actually think about, so it’s a funny comment. The other specific sci-fi trope called out was when Boimler talks about dying and people only being able to figure out what happened because of his shaky video logs. It’s a cute joke, if not that funny.
The secondary storyline is Rutherford trying out other careers on the ship, because all of his work in Jefferies tubes in Engineering means he doesn’t have very much free time. Specifically this comes up because Tendi wants to watch a stellar event with him, but is it romantic? Hard to say, but it sure would be clichéd, so if they do go down that road, hopefully it’s pulled off in an interesting way.
Each little career segment is another chance for jokes, some that are pulled off better than others. The Command training segment was the best one, while the officer got excited at Rutherford’s bizarre failure to request a scenario with ‘even more children on board’. That’s some fun dark humor where nobody actually dies. There’s also a reference to a ‘Janeway protocol’, which is never explained (intentionally), and could really be any number of crazy ideas Captain Janeway had over the years.
What doesn’t work as well are the obvious subversions — both the head of engineering and security both act disappointed at Rutherford at first before instantly revealing they aren’t displeased at all. Kind of a stupid joke. Of course, with any comedy half hour with a high joke density, it’s hard to be consistent even on the best shows.
I’m hoping that this improves over time, because I do see some real potential here, even if it’s not there yet. A fun episode, even if it feels like it’s also a bit rushed. It’s decent enough that I’m willing to see where it goes, and it’s certainly less of a ‘this pilot was terrible’ feeling that’s typical of Star Trek shows.
Star Trek: Lower Decks streams new episodes every Thursday on CBS All Access.
What did you think of the episodes? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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