Even if they didn’t add more episodes, I will complain that it was an incredible waste of time that Endgame spent so much focus on Future Janeway’s shenanigans. They could’ve done a cold open establishing her motivations and then taken the time used by the future scenes to unpack the weight of the crew we actually care about getting home.
I’ma be honest, I want him to either be relatively high-ranking (Commander and Janeway’s XO maybe?) or puzzlingly still an ensign. No middle ground.
I mean never say never? If I’m remembering the Cage correctly the Talosians at least thought there would be potential there. Though this is the much younger and possibly a little sexist Pike.
If I had a nickel for every time Uhura solved a problem by singing at it, I’d have two nickels. That’s not a lot, but it’s the same number as how many times Chakotay’s been lost in the Delta Quadrant.
This was a fun episode. Some bangers, though I agree with some of the people who think some songs could have been shortened. The unexpected Klingon boy band was an amazing gag that didn’t overstay its welcome. Overall, I think it’s great to have Trek embrace the old-school campiness from time to time.
Anyone else convinced Captain Batel is kinda doomed? Pike got off the relationship trauma fairly easily in this episode.
I liked that this episode and Quality of Mercy fleshed out (prime) Pike’s weakness-- he’s very much a diplomat, not a warrior. He avoids conflict to a fault, and this distinguishes him from other “diplomat” captains like Picard, who’s more willing to show his teeth when necessary.
It really contextualizes why Starfleet Command told Pike to stay on his Five Year Mission during Discovery s1–ya just know he would have gotten the Enterprise banged up while trying to make nice withsome T’kuvma fanatics.
I would have liked M’benga’s ending monologue to be less final. Instead of “things break, we fix them, but they’ll break again,” even just leaving it as a question-- “can we ever truly fix these things?” would feel like it leaves more room for hope and redemption in the future.
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I think the episode is generally a good representation of how Lower Decks characters are, yeah.
I thought it was weird and a touch sleazier than we normally see from Ransom, but out of universe that is very sweet!
Are Orions now the designated species for calling out how essentialized Star Trek aliens tend to be? Because we have D’vana Tendi, the somewhat obscure Ensign Harral from Discovery, and now the crew of the D’var. You can argue the last one’s just an extension of Tendi’s character arc, but still, that’s three series that have touched on this.
I mean, I think it’s just reality-adjacent technobabble and you’ve got to accept it as plausible in universe. Tritium is a real thing used in nuclear fission but it’s not so rare that you should don robotic arms and go on a crime spree to get some. On a more Star Trek adjacent topic, protostars are a real thing but (at least as far as we know) you can’t shove them in a box to travel ludicrous speed.
I was gearing up for a Gorn episode and they faked us all out!
I liked it thy gave most of the cast (sorry Ortegas) screentime and moved a lot of side plots a small amount.
Moderately bummed they retroactively made Thor (George Kirk) seem like a less good father, though.
To be fair, Sybok was the original spontaneous Spock sibling, even though Star Trek V was chronologically later.
Kinda sad we didn’t get James Frain back as Sarek for this episode. I could kinda see him bumping into Chapel and reminiscing about how the Vulcan Science Academy was absolutely awful to his 1.5 human kids.
Well said.
One thing I noticed in my first watch through Lower Decks was just how much they use variants of the phrase “I’m Starfleet.” Just constantly touching on the optimism of the show, how despite all the nonsense these unimportant ensigns on unimportant ships have to put up with, they are still Starfleet. They are as much Starfleet as Pike, Picard, and Sarek’s lauded mutineer children. And Starfleet is awesome!
There’s an excellent OrangeRiver video that showed up on my youtube feed a bit back about why D’vana Tendi is awesome and I think it really gets at the heart of why Lower Decks works as a Star Trek show and not just a Star Trek adjacent parody. Prodigy has a slightly different perspective on Starfleet but it works kinda the same in having characters (the Janeways, I will not elaborate) that represent just how awesome Starfleet can be.
People complaining about how the replicator’s blandly perfect food and sometimes reliability goes back at least to TNG. It is not new.
I will argue that the Disco bit is more intended to add some subtext that outlines Admiral Vance’s thoughts than just “haha we eat poop.”
I read it as tiredness on Vance’s part-- a sort of signal that yes, in some ways the quality of life under the Emerald Chain is better than the sterile closed environment of the UFP’s remnant. Contrast this with Osyraa’s statement about how she has real apples. He chooses the Federation’s integrity when it comes down to it, but he was genuinely considering throwing the Federation’s legitimacy behind the Chain.
To be fair to other series, plenty of them tapped into the Vulcans’ potential as comedy straight men. This is arguably why we had the recurring conflict of goofy alien Neelix vs. Tuvok on Voyager. Lower Decks doesn’t see a lot of them, but gets a lot of mileage making fun of their uptight nature in Wej Duj. TOS even had some fun poking holes in Spock’s facade-- just look at the end of Amok Time.
But yeah, it’s kinda crazy seeing the shenanigans come from the Vulcans themselves in this show.
Best attempt:
The story is mainly about Kelvin Kirk learning to be less of the cocky dipshit he still is at the end of '09. He’s still riding high from his victory over the future Romulans, so he really doesn’t respect the seriousness the Chair should command. You see this in the completely unforced error at the start of the film–Spock is (for some reason) dead to rights, and Kirk decides that the power of friendship is more important than the Prime Directive. Pike rightly reams him out for this, but the character thread really comes to a head when the USS Vengeance catches up to Enterprise and prepares to utterly destroy her. Much as I complain about the movie, I do like this little moment of helplessness from Chris Pine’s Kirk. Staring down the larger ship’s guns, Kirk can only watch helplessly and apologize for leading his crew to their deaths. It has the same vibes as Kirk from Generations–he didn’t believe he was dying until he actually did. Obviously, the general thread of Kirk actually taking responsibility for his crew culminates in him doing percussive maintenance inside of the Warp Core and dying for Enterprise’s sins. He gets better, but honestly I can accept this as the transition between cadet Kirk of the 09 and the actually quite competent Captain Kirk in Beyond.
Spock is the other big character in this movie. Sad as it is, this is the only real time we get to see Kelvin Kirk and Kelvin Spock’s friendship explored in depth. They were at each other’s throats for most of '09 and Beyond focused more on McCoy + Spock’s relationship. Spock’s friendship with Kirk is the main avenue through which they explore Spock’s classic dilemma of his Human vs. Vulcan sides. As cynical as I am about them recreating the end of WoK in reverse here, I will at least concede that Pine and Quinto did well with what they were given.
Main complaint, besides Cumberbatch being Khan: they totally wasted Bruce Greenwood’s Admiral Pike here. I’m of the opinion that Kelvin Pike was the best version we’d seen prior to Discovery, and probably did more than a little bit in reviving interest in the character. Here he gets stuffed in the fridge like half an hour in to make Kirk mad/sad. What a shame.