Lower Decks It’s not really a show that you can say you’ve had a lot of bite to it, in terms of the resulting conflict. There have been moments, but they are usually passed over in a gag, or resolved too quickly. As we prepare to enter the back half of its final season, however, we may have just found the show that’s catching fire so far… just in time for our ever-growing, ever-learning heroes to do their lessons .
For the most part “Starbase 80?!” it’s one of season five’s recurring lessons about communication and judgment, and it’s a good one at that. Faced with a navigation problem that ends Cetacean Ops (not dolphin officers!), both the Mariner and his mother Captain Freeman are horrified when a nearby harbor might offer a fix Cerritos is none other than Starbase 80. Both and the crew at large hate the station, though Beckett and Captain Freeman are divided on why. For Mariner, Starbase 80 represents one of the lowest moments of his career (and Lower Decks similarly), when he was reassigned by his mother to the infamous Starbase as punishment for misbehavior he didn’t commit. For Captain Freeman, it was part of a gag that was playing after the first episode of this season, when we heard from another near truth, close enough that the reason that its USS Cerritos Captain “Becky” was because Alt-Freeman seemed to have been demoted and assigned to Starbase 80, never to be seen again.
So, naturally, everyone arrives at Starbase a little on edge, and like they’d rather be anywhere else. The station’s cast is pretty good by comparison—especially Kassia Nox (a delightful guest star Nicole Byer), who I really read. voluntarily they’ll be assigned a base—making do with the little they have in Starbase 80, a fun contrast where it’s our regular heroes’ turn to be Starfleet’s fighters against the bad guys. That gets extrapolated even further there Cerritos the members of the Starbase begin to suffer from some kind of zombifying virus, leading the Mariner to quickly assume that the “curse” of Starbase 80 is real, and their friendly hosts have something to do with it. Hijinks ensue, with no one but the Mariner’s initial surprise that the “virus”—actually an anaphasic lifeform that Clem is trying to manifest—was a mistake. Cerritos rather than Starbase 80, it’s taken by mistake by its last mission, and everyone learns maybe not to make assumptions about other people.
Hooray for racism studies! As bad as that might sound, it’s a really cool moment to see the Mariner’s attitude reflected in him. The last time he was on Starbase 80, he was so upset that he was pushed aside to the “lower echelons” that he quickly resigned from Starfleet. Forcing her to mate with Nox, which she just doesn’t do search for him to be there but to see the power to do little things that the station crew has gained while Starfleet ignored them, it allows the Mariner to ride the maturity he went through in a season and a half during his visit to Starbase 80. Although it’s nice to see him quickly start shouting curses when things go wrong here , is a very different person this time around than the one assigned to Starbase 80 back in season three, and it reminds him of those lessons all over again. episode back Lower Decks‘ the constant repetition of people constantly having to relearn their lessons as they grow up in this season.
But what makes it more interesting is to see that kind of arc modeled by his mother. Captain Freeman was never seen Lower Decks apart from being a foil and an occasional opposing force to his daughter. In “Starbase 80?!” He is very detached from the main plot about the anaphasic virus, combined with his insecurities about the reputation of Starbase – and his other property there – as allowed by the station’s engineer and wearer of many proverbial hats Gene. Jakobowski (Stephen Root) to help repair the station to get parts for Cerritos needs in its preparation. By having her and Ransom together, we finally get a chance for Carol to open up a bit, even if it’s because of that stubborn mentality she shares with her daughter, who always refuses to let Starbase 80 beat her the way it defeats her. one of his. But it’s not just that defiance of fate that drives him as he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work fixing whatever little problem Gene throws at him and Hlengiwe. Starbase 80 represents Captain Freeman both his failure as a captain, but also his failure as a mother, not trusting the Mariner back in season three takes Beckett’s worst in giving him the Starbase as punishment.
Ultimately, the more he works on these thousand repairs, the more Captain Freeman realizes that he and the citizens of Starbase 80 have more in common than his fears have allowed him to imagine. I Cerritos it may have had a few heroic moments, but it’s still a ship that Starfleet as a whole has dismissed or despised—even after the climax of season four, their main mission this season has been, as Captain Freeman puts it himself, to guard spacetime. pits. You know what it’s like to struggle without recognition, support, or resources, even if the situation is clear inside Cerritos much better than Starbase 80’s for a while. In reaching that understanding, Captain Freeman’s tone begins to change under a humorous insistence: he sees, possibly, a way in which he would not be given Starbase 80 as punishment, but perhaps a way in which he would willingly stay to help. a group he feels a connection to.
Well, that is if he is taken out by a giant pyrithian bat, that is. “Starbase 80?!” it ends with Beckett wondering where his mother was during this whole virus-zombie thing, only for us to get to Ransom and Captain Freeman trying to assemble the last bats shutting down the Starbase systems … and the ever stubborn Captain. Freeman putting his head first in the mother of all pyrithian bats, eager to prove that he can succeed where he has failed. We don’t see what happens next, just hear it, as Ransom yells at him to look at the claws, and we hear a cry—whether it’s Ransom or Freeman, it’s hard to tell—as the song fades to silence. .
One last parting gag, or maybe that fear of failure is teased in the homecoming premiere, we’ll have to wait until next week to find out, but if this is not the case gag, we’re in a situation here where Captain Freeman isn’t find out to decide whether to stick to Starbase 80 as punishment or because he truly sympathizes with its plight… and he may be stuck there for the worst of reasons. After half a season of relearning who our heroes have become as they mature as people and Starfleet officers, what better way to use those lessons than to deal with their captain suddenly leaving the job?
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