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The latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called ‘Hear All, Trust Nothing’, which is a reference to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition — naturally a common plot point in many Deep Space Nine episodes due to the many Ferengi characters on the show. We have sadly lost some of the actors who’ve played characters on DS9, but I was delighted to get the two big cameos we got this episode.
The episode has the crew travel to DS9 to negotiate with the Karemma, a deep cut from an old DS9 episode that indeed had those aliens involved with Quark. The show splits the gang into a few major pieces, Freeman negotiating, Tendi and Rutherford touring, Boimler playing Dabo, and Mariner hanging out with Jennifer’s friends.
All but one of these has a conflict — the ‘Bold Boimler’ plot we’ve been seeing which continues here. Boimler decides to play the difficult to win game of Dabo and simply just keeps winning, despite accusations of cheating from the Ferengi. It was a particularly funny ending to this plotline when he accepts a gift card and tells the employee that Starfleet doesn’t use money anyway — the acrid ‘What?’ in response was a laugh out loud moment.
As for Mariner, she’s anxious about meeting her girlfriend’s friends, concerned about being too bossy and offending them. The girls are pretty new age-y in their vibes, so it makes sense that Mariner struggles with their ‘salon talk’ and doesn’t appreciate hearing the girls ask if Boimler is single (that purple hair is sexy, apparently). Perhaps the funniest moment was when one of the girls dances the ‘Kobayashi Maroon’ which has no right way to dance it — another chuckleworthy moment.
And perhaps it was also one of the more sweet moments, as Jennifer delights that Mariner literally stuns her friends to help them survive the lack of oxygen and then the two fall into a happy unconscious embrace after self-stunning themselves. It’s actually a pretty interesting development for the show because Mariner has struggled with her isolationist instincts for a while.
The third storyline had Tendi and Rutherford (delighting over the station as they walk through it) run into another Andorian named Mesk (Adam Pally), who keeps talking about the most cliched and problematic aspects of Andorian culture while Tendi gets increasingly frustrated because it’s what she’s most embarrassed about.
We’ve seen that come up before in other episodes with Tendi, and here it’s revealed that while Mesk is simply a faker, adopted by humans on Earth and learns about Andorians similar to Worf’s backstory. But Tendi is the opposite of a faker, and it’s also a nice moment when Rutherford (who otherwise gets short shrift in this packed episode) completely accepts Tendi for who she is, complicated past and all — it’s no real surprise that Rutherford is like that, but the only real important bit is that Tendi needed to hear it too.
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As for our DS9 storyline, the cameos of Kira (Nana Visitor) and Quark (Armin Shimerman) reprising their old school ways were great. Kira and Shaxs had an absolutely great runner where each one keeps trying to one up the other about saving their life during the occupation, which makes perfect sense. And of course, Quark was always great — his shout of ‘I have principles’ to a disbelieving Kira was very funny because he does a little bit, but the real reason he said it was that he had stolen their technology.
The final moment, where Freeman asks if he isn’t happier being poor than in prison and he shouts ‘No!’ in anger — no notes, the perfect response. It was an episode full of references to my old favorite Star Trek show, including a long cutesy reference to the opening credits where they actually play the classic theme. A few nice moments and a lot of very funny ones — sometimes it’s nice just to have an episode that slightly advances the characters while being funny. Adding in some great voice cameos is just icing on the cake.
New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks stream Thursdays on Paramount Plus. Use Hotchka’s affiliate link to subscribe.
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