TREK REVIEW - Lower Decks 4-9 & 4-10

4-9 - "The Inner Fight" 

Getting back to these reviews to finish off the season after being sidelined by various sf anniversaries, and we have what might be the most satisfying finale for Lower Decks in terms of character work. The penultimate episode gives Mariner the focus she's needed all season, dumping her on a brutal planet and forcing her to confront the reasons behind her self-sabotage. It's indicative of the way the writing on this show has grwon, in that the character's motivation was initially presented as being nothing more complex than trying to avoid hard work while sticking it to her mum. Building on the gradual revelations about her background, Mariner's motivations make perfect sense, while incorporating some surprisingly deep Trek lore.

Lower Decks has been particularly heavily indebted to The Next Generation from the beginning, taking its name and basic concept from a seventh season episode. It feels right that Mariner's trauma calls back to this, with the unexpected, but perfectly plausible, revelation that she was friends with Sito Jaxa at the Academy. Sito's death during the episode "Lower Decks," was one of TNG's most powerful character deaths, even though it was entirely off screen. Hearing that her friend's commitment to the mission and her own advancement led to her, presumably brutal, death at the hands of her people's conquerors has weighted heavily on Mariner's mind for years (it's not entirely clear what year this season is set in, but it's no less than ten years since the event, possibly as much as fourteen). 

Piled on top of this is the added trauma of the Dominion War, which we already knew Mariner fought in. It's satisfying to see the ongoing Trek universe finally explore the fallout from the war, here and in Picard's last season. It makes sense that Starfleet has been recruiting hard and pushing promotion in order to build up ranks again following the losses of the war, and just as plausible that someone like Mariner would do everything she could to avoid being put in the position where she'd be giving orders that could result in her friends' and colleagues' deaths. It also ties in nicely to the series' occasional looks at Starfleet's clear status as a military organisation, even while it's desperate to paint itself as something else entirely.

While that's the main point of the episode, around it we get to have a lot of fun. We follow up on what happened to the crews of the alien ships that were attacked and stolen, finding them living as a rag-bag bunch of survivors on a dangerous planet. It's also about time Ma'ah (aka Mach, Magh, depending on your subtitles) arrived into the main narrative, and it's great that he and Mariner bond. As the most truly honourable of Klingons, he was the right person to force her to face up to her demons.

Meanwhile, the Cerritos crew are on the trail of Nick Locarno, as a potential target of the alien ship which is now seemingly targeting ex-Starfleet officers. New Axton is, of course, just Tatooine under a different name, but it's fun to have a bit of Star Wars in our Star Trek now and again, and the sheer number of familiar Trek aliens milling around the place made it feel like home. Of course, the reveal that Locarno was behind the whole thing ties it all together, setting up the finale beautifully.

Observations:

• It's not clear how old Mariner is. If she was at the Academy alongside Sito and Locarno, she's got to be at least thirty (again, it depends on exactly when this is set). In any case, she's presumably a fair bit older than her fellow Lower Deckers.
• The best reference on New Axton is the alien Freeman mistakes for a puppet, who is of course based on the puppet version of Balok from TOS: "The Corbmite Maneouvre." Perhaps he's a member of the species the puppet was based on? Maybe he's even from the First Federation. (Or see the novel The Face of the Unknown.)
• Other than Locarno, the ex-Starfleet officers on the watchlist include Seven of Nine, Beverly Crusher and Thomas Riker. We already knew the first two dropped out of Starfleet some time after Nemesis, but this is the first we've heard of Riker's duplicate since he was imprisoned by the Cardassians in DS9: "The Defiant." For all we knew before, he died in the war.

4-10 - "Old Friends, New Planets"

The whole season is brought together in the finale, tying up the storyline of the mysterious starship - the Nova One - and its crew of merry mutineers. It's far beyond time that Nick Locarno's story was followed up on; after all, he was meant to be on Voyager, but the showrunners bottled it and created Tom Paris, who's basically the same character but watered down.

I love the idea of someone expelled from Starfleet who then goes off the deep end, seeing themselves as the hard done by party. His fleet of ships, crewed by an autonomous collective of disenfranchised extraterrestrials is a great idea, even if their actual plan - to hole themselves up behind a forcefield for god knows how long - doesn't really make sense. But then, should it make sense? The fact that none of them have really thought this through is surely part of the point, and doesn't reduce the damage they can do in the mean time.

There are some lovely voice cameos in this epiosde. Of course, we knew Robert Duncan McNeill would be in it after last episode - with the characters naturally commenting on the likeness shared between his two characters - but it was a fun surprise to hear not only Wil Wheaton, but also Shannon Fill, returning to acting after some time to play Sito once again. The flashback to the Academy helped tie everything up, as well as showing us a version of Mariner who was more enthusiastic and greener aorund the gills than the one we know now.

The resolution to the problem took on all sorts of twists and turns, from the Mark Twain Manoeuvre to the trip to Orion. While I doubt we'll be missing Tendi for long, I hope there's at least some time in season five for the main characters to deal with her absence, and perhaps to see how she does sharing power with D'Erika on the homeworld. Bringing in T'Lyn as the fifth member of the team over the course of the season makes particular sense now, as she's poised to take Tendi's place as the science enthusiast, so it'll be interesting to see how things go when Tendi eventually comes back.

The inclusion of the Genesis Device was a bit of a surprise, although it was kind of telegraphed by the very Wrath of Khan-esque music and effects throughout the episode (the one departure from the TNG-fest this has been). If there are any complaints, it's that Maah and the other alien captains were left out of the loop, when it really felt like it should be part of the solution. Still, these are only half-hour episodes, and there's only so much they can do in the time. It's not like they're not ludicrously packed as it is.

So, altogether, a brilliant end to the season, once more shaking things up for the next round.

Observations:

• It's a bit mad that all Mariner needs to commandeer a ship is her mother's codes. Couldn't they have dropped a line in about her voice pattern or DNA being similar enough to fool the security system?
• The USS Passaro is named for Fabio Passaro, a CGI artist on the franchise, who passed away last year.

New Ferengi Rules of Acquisition: 

•     91: Your boss is only worth what he pays you.
•     289: Shoot first, count profits later. 

There were only 285 rules in the TNG-DS9-VOY era of the 2370s, so there's clearly been some expansion in the last few years.