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The season finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called ‘First First Contact’, which is a longstanding callback as the Cerritos was initially introduced having primary duties as ‘second contact’ so it’s a kind of a way to show how everyone has changed. Here we see the Cerritos involved in a ‘First’ First Contact to support the USS Archimedes, captained by Sonya Gomez (a popular minor character from TNG played by Lycia Gaff, who awesomely returns to voice her here).
A few ‘this will be handled later’ ideas are brought up; first Mariner bumps an Andorian crew member, Jennifer, and they have a harsh little conversation, topped off by Mariner muttering about her ‘butt’. Rutherford’s vision is being overwhelmed by error messages, although we don’t find out why until later, and Tendi overhears Dr. T’Ana saying she ‘doesn’t belong’ in the medical bay — it’s immediately obvious that it’s a classic sitcom misunderstanding. And Beckett overhears that her mother will be getting a promotion to a new ship and can’t bring anyone with her, leading her to spitefully tell the command staff about it. Thus a bunch of conflicts to trick us into thinking we know what the episode might be about (communication).
This is all well and good, but then the big beat of the episode happens with an extended action storyline, just like the first season finale. Due to a random solar flare, the Archimedes falls toward the alien Laap planet and it’s up to the Cerritos to save the day somehow. And everything brought up gets resolved, and everyone helps save the day.
Everyone shouts at Mariner to reconcile with her mother and eventually the two share a lovely moment. Rutherford has the idea to remove the outer hull and deletes his triplicate redundant copies of his memories of Tendi, while Boimler needs to swim in the finally shown Cetacean Ops (with the hilarious dolphin duo of Matt and Kimulo) to get the last panel. Everyone on the ship is asked to help remove panels and Tendi (naturally) earns a spot in a coveted science officer program.
And even Mariner admits that perhaps she likes Jennifer and that’s why she’s always been rude to her — I mean when Mariner was stuck in the ‘Naked Time’ simulation and saw Jennifer and Barnes making out, she was certainly into that. So … I wouldn’t be surprised if something is being set up there.
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So as we head into the last few minutes, everyone has saved the day and celebrated together. Freeman decides that she won’t accept the promotion, meaning we know something is about to go wrong — there’s obviously something else about to happen. It turns out that the Varuvian bomb went off at the Pakled homeworld and Freeman is being implicated — but why? Especially now that we know that the Klingon captain is dead.
Thus we head into a cliffhanger for Season Two, and it’s been really a pretty great season overall. Maybe one or two weak episodes, but the last few have been an epic run — this episode was a bit light on the jokes but had beautifully animated action sequences and a great TNG cameo I sincerely doubt anyone expected with Captain Gomez. Is this the best of the new Trek shows by a huge margin? Yes.
Only a few standout humor moments, but they include the ballroom dancing competition, Billups shouting ‘Dragon’s blood’, T’Ana not knowing who Jadzia Dax is, and of course, absolutely everything with the cetaceans.
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