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The latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called ‘Cupid’s Errant Arrow’ and I was really hoping it would subvert the ‘lover is secretly something else’ more than it did. The initial jokes about Mariner accusing Boimler of making up his girlfriend were often funny, but they were weirdly mean — Mariner hasn’t really been this explicitly cruel to him even when deriding his motivations.
When Boimler’s girlfriend, Lieutenant Barbara (Gillian Jacobs), shows up Mariner is even more suspicious that a talented, beautiful woman has interest in him. Now, the meanness isn’t great, but then we see that the backstory is that Mariner lost a close friend to some sort of evil shapeshifter, so she’s actually dealing with the trauma associated with it that has clearly never been fully addressed.
That would’ve been nice to be addressed a bit more — the rest of the Boimler storyline was pretty iffy. His jealousy over Barbara’s ex, the big friendly black guy, feels regressive and potentially accidentally racist. His awkward attempts to ‘act cool’ were mostly simply cringeworthy instead of funny, although it was funny that Barbara called his outfit (combining the cool outfits from the last few centuries together in a weird way) ‘sexy as hell’.
The final moments, where Barbara suspects that Mariner is the actual one with a parasite, that was actually an interesting little twist. And I didn’t hate that the two of them bonded together, even if it was, again, just over making fun of Boimler. But then when they revealed that Boimler had a parasite that let off pheromones, that felt like doubling down on the mean joke about Boimler not being able to have a girlfriend. Not a great ending to that particular storyline.
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The second storyline, a bit more with Rutherford and Tendi than usual, was also weirdly mean, but in a more fun way. As they helped aboard the other ship, the USS Vancouver (seems like another insider Hollywood reference since so much is filmed in Vancouver), they nerded out over advanced tricorders and got competitive in their diagnostics. Fine enough, until their temporary supervisor Ron Docent (Matt Walsh), revealed that he wanted to transfer them against their will to the Vancouver.
Simply because his adventures were ‘too epic’, which led to some funny mentions of their high stakes adventures, and a realization by Rutherford and Tendi that they really did appreciate the falling apart charm of the Cerritos. But the whole ‘running with the pack’ business felt a bit over the top, with Docent being clearly corrupt — it felt a bit out of place. The ending, though, where the two nerds revealed they had both stolen a bunch of advanced tricorders to share, that was pretty funny.
The last storyline, the background one, probably worked the best. Here Captain Freeman met the Captain of the Vancouver (a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Lauren Tom), who regaled her with her own epic tales. But the ridiculous complaints about the aliens that didn’t want the moon blown up, despite the imminent doom — well, that feels quite relevant, doesn’t it?
And the final moments were also pretty funny — the only alien still arguing about murder was just one rich dude living on the planet by himself with his wife. So it’s a nice change to see Freeman simply competent from last episode, although the Captain of the Vancouver was awfully braggy — perhaps it’s no wonder that her crewman Docent is so corrupt in such an environment (Tendi’s theory that having epic adventures ruins someone feels too easy).
Overall, the episode was funny, but a step down in theme and meaning from the last one, with some unnecessary meanness and potentially problematic elements that didn’t really feel right.
The standout jokes were the reference to ‘Captain Picard Day’, Barbara talking about reversing to the polarity reboot timestream from the 1940s, the ‘Request Denied’ to Mariner’s emergency transport request, and Freeman angrily shouting that the Prime Directive doesn’t apply here (which it obviously doesn’t).
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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