From the beginning—even when others A journey fans initially complained that a show that dared to poke fun at Starfleet would never say anything meaningful about it. Star Trek at all-Lower Decks impressed by the connection. The nature of the balance of power between senior and junior officers, the human need and the frustration that comes when people can only express themselves to people close to them, the very idea about the need for good Starfleet officers and good people in general to be open and honest with friends and peers has long been the core of Lower Decks‘the heart of the theme. Now, the show is back for one final outing, once again indeed you need to remember this lesson, just like its young heroes do.
The opening two episodes of Lower Decks’ The fifth and final season, “Dos Cerritos” and “Shades of Green,” largely tells two disconnected stories tied together by this goal and one of the show’s most dramatic weaknesses: the need to resolve the season’s game-changing finale. cliffhanger as soon as possible to bring us back to that aforementioned situation. In this case, Tendi is shipped off to serve with her sister in her family’s Orion crime syndicate to pay for the demands she made on D’Erika in the fourth season finale. And on at least this time, we actually don’t just spend a good amount of time with Tendi across the two episodes in the first B episode (and arguably the second A episode) before she’s ready to go back to her friends. , although different in subject matter, it all comes back to this broad message about the basic lesson. Lower Decks it’s about communication. And again, this feels like it’s finally a reflection of how far Lower Decks which itself grew in these five seasons: yi he tried this kind of narrative tinkering before and rarely feels like it works, but with time and confidence the series has finally managed to nail one of these versions of the quo without it. immediately feeling like a cop.
This sense of maturity is one of the lines in the first two episodes. “Dos Cerritos” is another Lower Decks fave in the form of a riff on a classic A journey the concept, where the ship, tries to repair the “space pothole” creates a crack in other realities that are similar, to be able to be replaced and face another way. Cerritos. It turns out that our reality Cerritos employees receive only a fraction of a different percentage A journeyA main universe (the name is a big running gag), with enough differences to be unnoticeable, but close enough that it becomes less about the alternate reality, and the possible future of our heroes.
The Rutherford of this reality, like our Rutherford, is haunted by the absence of his best friend from Tendi, to the point where he has allowed a large part of his body to be replaced by cybernetics that numbs his emotions and memories for the better. workplace performance. The Boimler of this reality is the bearded, honest second, the pinnacle of what our Boimler aspires to accomplish after his brush with the captain’s chair at the climax of season four. The Mariner of this reality is everything our Mariner has hoped for and feared throughout the show: self-styling Captain Becky Freeman, carrying on her mother’s legacy as a Starfleet leader who rules with power and confidence… and as we learn, maybe slowly too much of the former and not enough of the latter.
The Mariners’ two arcs are what we’re sinking our teeth into with “Dos Cerritos.” It quickly becomes clear that even if Becky has reached the position our Beckett knows she can achieve, she has done so at great personal cost: she is cold and distant from her friends and colleagues, commanding with fear and violent energy a ship that was sailing smoothly but caught in tension. No alt-Cerritos they do their jobs because they have a passion for Starfleet’s most cherished doctrines, but because they have been destroyed by being dressed down, beaten, and sent to the brig by a captain they serve out of fear instead of duty or compassion. It’s everything our Mariner hates about the power systems at play in Starfleet, but it’s also everything he fears from years of growing trauma as Starfleet hopes in the years of the Dominion War, that he’ll have to lose parts. he values himself, in order to stop the blow of losing people in the struggle for life.
Thankfully, though, our marine has taken the aforementioned lesson in being able to communicate and express himself to his friends and colleagues, and he’s quick to not only confront Becky about being the villain on her team, but when her alt-reality doppelganger points it out. he wants to try to take Mariner’s place Cerritos First to live a carefree life of interesting non-compliance, he is quick to stand up and actually talk to alt-Cerritos employees in time to make sure he gets home as intended, and Becky is locked up for abusing her employees. That’s true Mariner growth!
If “Dos Cerritos” is about this common lesson shown throughout Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford, then “Shades of Green” devotes its bulk to Tendi’s re-reading. The Starfleet team has fun things in the second episode to reaffirm this message—Mariner and Boimler (who, after hiding the Padd from the alt-reality Boimler, uses it so far to learn that he needs to pull. a Riker Maneuver and start growing his facial hair) visit a planet in the process of abandoning capitalism to join the Federation as a member of a post-scarcity society, and Rutherford finds a good but small plot with T’Lyn as he tries. to comfort him with Tendi’s continued absence. But all this is an easy way to focus on Tendi’s story. Longing to return to his friends in CerritosTendi takes on D’Erika’s mission in “Dos Cerritos” to recover a lost Orion warship, and runs into a group of Blue Orions (a nice throwback to their dirty looks Animated series). When Tendi manages to win the ship by obeying his fellow sailors after they almost betray him by saving the life of the Blue Orion, things change when the patriarchal society declares war on House Tendi because of his “criminal-like” way of negotiating, leading to a space race mandated by the ruling power of Orion to settle it all.
It’s a fun start to hang “Shadows of Green” close—the most we’ve ever really gotten to explore is how the Orion community works, and beyond the usual portrayal of their core culture that not only provides some kind of texture, but allows Tendi to embrace her Orion heritage in ways he had been oblivious to them throughout the program so far. Plus, who doesn’t love a space race for riches that sounds a lot like Disney The Gem Planet meets Voyager‘s “Drive”? But again, real power Lower Decks finds here is not in A journey the tension of it all, but by pushing its characters. Tendi and D’Erika do a very small arc in this second episode that flips on the adversarial relationship we saw them have last season, which brings us back to this core message about the importance of openness and communication.
Just before the big race begins, Tendi learns that her sister is pregnant with a child that could be her ticket back to Starfleet: a new assistant to inherit her title, but also a new life that could be at risk if D’Erika takes over. command in this dangerous job. At first, neither sister is willing to discuss this, which leads to Tendi’s comical attempts to make sure that D’Erika faces as little stress as possible during the race, even if it means that the crew starts to fall. behind. But in the end they both realize that they need to be honest with each other about their feelings, and they come out of the other side of the race determined to be apart but closer than ever, as sisters and as people they have grown to respect. Siblings’ different paths in life.
There have been versions of this type of thematic storytelling throughout Lower Decks‘ life so far, but in returning to these messages and as they prepare to begin their final season of adventure, it is a reminder that until all heroes come, as people, as friends, as Starfleet officers, that there are important lessons that we must revisit in our lives as we change and grow like people. Star Trek it’s always been about sitting down and talking, about understanding different points of view and making sure you have the faith to stand up and make your own case. Lower Decksno matter how much love is played with this franchise that we all love, it has always understood that: and it wants to let you know that as it prepares to say goodbye, it will continue to understand that.
The fifth season premiere of the Star Trek: The Lower Decks now streaming on Paramount+.
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