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The latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called ‘We’ll Always Have Tom Paris’, but although it’s an obvious reference to the famed rapscallion Tom Paris from Star Trek: Voyager, the dude only appears in a bit of the episode. In fact, he possibly shows up more as a talking plate than as the character himself — although of course the actor Robert Duncan McNeill easily revisits his now classic role.
This episode splits up the gang with three pretty separate storylines, but there are a lot of fun details in each one. Boimler returns and basically has his own plotline, as he struggles as it appears that the ship does not see him as an authorized member of the crew. Although the solution is given at the start, that he simply needs to tell someone in management about it, Boimler refuses to accept that he isn’t just back as normal.
Thus we get to see classic Boims as he pushes and injures himself, acknowledging that he knows the ship enough to be able to climb his way to the bridge, while at the same point perhaps not being willing to let go of his fanboyish ways. His refusal to lose his collector’s plate of Paris so he can get an autograph remains a funny visual — and man, that plate was great when he see the friendly plate Paris talk up Boimler while the real life Paris accidentally gets into a fight with him.
There are a lot of little funny details, like people calling Voyager ‘Voy’ or Boimler humming the Voyager theme while walking through the hall. But it was a kind of less dark storyline than the more surreal one with Rutherford, who sees Shaxs somehow back from the dead. Rutherford is alarmed and worried about it, and there are a bunch of funny moments as he gets increasingly obsessed with solving the issue.
The ultimate reasoning is actually quite a nice idea, that he still feels guilt about it, which the resurrected Shaxs is happy to dismiss. But then he agrees to explain the truth behind his return from death, leaving Rutherford amusingly traumatized — the whole problem here is that it makes the sacrifice of Shaxs last season less meaningful, and I’m not sure that there’s a good way to recover from that.
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Tendi and Mariner are in the main storyline, teamed up for a ‘girls’ trip’ that is, as they say, a ‘glaring omission’. Their dynamic was great, as Mariner pushed Tendi to break rules and by doing so, screwed up something Tendi cared about. They laughed, they fought, they made up and connected.
Both of them reveal backstories and issues with opening up — Mariner is afraid of people getting promoted and abandoning her, while Tendi is such a people pleaser that she rarely talks about herself. But Tendi also reveals a pretty cool Orion backstory, including that she was called the ‘Mistress of the Winter Constellations’ while Mariner admits (in a way that feels pretty obvious in retrospect) that she’s into bad boys, bad girls, bad gender non-binary babes, and even bad Bynars (quite an obscure reference).
Hopefully this does lead to a better connection between them, because their dynamic really is something that’s been missing on the show, and it’s one of the things that really helps elevate this episode. Overall, I think the only real issue is that Shaxs thing I mentioned, but I am willing to see how well the show handles that considering their pretty decent track record so far.
Some of the standout moments were the shout out to Paris becoming a salamander creature in the notoriously terrible episode ‘Threshold’, all of that Klingon acid punk music, the fact that there’s another reference to a character named ‘Jeremy’, that ridiculous bee in the shuttle, and every single alternate Shaxs that appears to Rutherford. I mean one of them said ‘What was up with the T’Pol’s hair that one year?’ or that ‘In the nexus it’s always Christmas’ — it makes no real sense that Rutherford’s mind would go there, but I laughed.
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