US: Star Trek: Lower Decks (the new animated series)

Paramount+ is airing it weekly, if any Star Trek show was on another platform like Amazon for this you either need to get a trial through Amazon or get Paramount+

For those who might not know, if you have certain Sky TV packages you get Paramount+ for free.
 
Watched the penultimate S4 episode at lunch.

I have to say, that's a call-back to TNG that I didn't expect. Nice for Robbie Duncan McNeill though, having played Paris once in LD he gets to play proto-Paris again now :)
 
Right. Haven't done one of these for Trek in ages - a JRS commentary/snark watchalong :cool:

1) You know, I'm not gonna rag on them recapping the story here. A fair amount has gone on this season and making sure the audience is all caught up is probably for the best.
2) Still hate it when SNW does it though.
3) Meanwhile, a flashback.
4) Hooray for continuity, and the look at the backstory to TNG's "The First Duty" and "Lower Decks", which gave its name to this series. Nice that they got Shannon Fill and Wil Wheaton in to voice their characters as well as Robert Duncan McNeill.
5) Aw, it's baby Mariner before she had the cynicism beaten into her.
6) Back in the present.
7) Exposition from Locarno.
8) No longer Nova Squadron, but Nova Fleet. All the captured ships. Mariner aghast.
9) Rather fond of this intro :)
10) The Freemans in conference with a senior admiral. And here we have Starfleet bureaucracy at its finest.
11) Locarno showing off his ship to Mariner, and in the grand tradition of screen villains is sure that she'll join his cause. Whatever it is.
12) Vaguely witty dialogue.
13) "Independent Captain Nick Locarno" hailing the quadrant.
14) "He looks like Tom Paris." "I don't see it." :D:D:D:D
15) Locarno expositing. And trying to foment insurrection.
16) Series title drop.
17) Rutherford and Boimler still stuck on whether or not he looks like Paris.
18) Some more exposition.
19) Inviting Mariner to talk...who is presumably going to do something very Mariner-ish instead.
20) Yep. Including stealing Locarno's stolen Genesis device.
21) Carol Freeman proud of her daughter. And about to disobey orders to go after her.
22) The crew more than fine with that.
23) Now, how to get into the Detrion system. Tendi has an idea.
24) Locarno chasing Mariner.
25) Who has made it onto a ship. And is strapping the Genesis device into a seat :cry:
26) Oh, that's fun. Memorised her mother's Starfleet override code just in case she ever needed it.
27) The ship she's on is a Steamrunner class. We first saw one of these in "First Contact" in the fleet battling the Borg. Hooray for continuity!
28) Locarno needs the Genesis device back.
29) Tendi has led the Cerritos to Orion. And her sister previously seen in this season's "Something Borrowed, Something Green".
30) Putting her Orion wiles to use, hoping to borrow a warship.
31) And when that fails - "BARTER BY COMBAT!!!"
32) Mariner engaging in some fancy flying.
33) And almost flies right into the barrier.
34) Back-and-forth exposition with Locarno.
35) We return to Orion, and the rules of barter by combat.
36) Tendi putting Dr Migleemo (!) up as the champion.
37) Mariner still evading Locarno's fleet. Heading to hide in the convenient debris ring around a planet.
38) Now attempting to sway some of his followers.
39) Migleemo getting thrown around by the Orion champion.
40) Ah, there we go. Tendi knew the Orion champion's weakness - ornithoid down :D
41) Oops. That didn't seem to go entirely to Tendi's plan though.
42) Going to offer herself in place of the Cerritos.
43) Got the ship. But at what cost?
44) Mariner going to use up the Genesis device on a nearby uninhabitable planet. Provided she can get there, as the Romulan renegades are in pursuit.
45) Turns out the Orion ship is junk ("curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal", etc).
46) Rutherford and Livik arguing about the best way forward. T'Lyn has a plan to find harmony. Which has to be the holodeck, right?
47) Of course it is :D Hooray for continuity!
48) The Romulans take advantage of an ion storm to catch up to Mariner.
49) Who is still attempting to convince them not to follow Locarno.
50) Surrounded.
51) Attempted breaking speech from Locarno. Only the one way out, so into the ion storm she goes.
52) Locarno going to follow her in. The boy ain't rightly smart.
53) Fun TWoK Mutara nebula vibes.
54) Some back-and-forth.
55) The Cerritos team has arrived with the Orion ship.
56) Boimler in the centre seat on the Cerritos :cool:
57) As the soundtrack swells, we see the plan. Using the Cerritos for what it was designed to do - tow much larger ships.
58) Throwing the Orion hulk at the barrier. Looks like they took some splash damage in all this. Quick pause - I'm sure the Cerritos hasn't finished a season completely intact yet. S1 - was damaged in the fight against the Pakleds. S2 - they had to remove the hull plating to get through and rescue the Archimedes. S3 - got roughed up by the Texas class ships.
59) Freeman taking the Captain's yacht through the shield breach.
60) Locarno abandoned by his allies.
61) But has got the drop on Mariner.
62) Who is activating the Genesis device :eek:
63) Dynamic entrance from Locarno.
64) Back-and-forth.
65) Last second beam-out.
66) Locarno tying to disarm the device. But Ferengi gonna Ferengi.
67) 'Paywall on a bomb'. Love it.
68) Still more TWoK nods.
69) Sex position joke.
70) There's that Starfleet bureaucracy again. This time working in Freeman's favour.
71) The Lower Deckers reunited.
72) Amusing interplay between the gang.
73) T'Lyn announcing her intention to stay with the Cerritos rather than seek a return to the Vulcan ship. Cuteness between her and Tendi.
74) But unfortunately the gang's moment is stomped on. The Orions are here to collect on Tendi's promise to return to her family.
75) Life continues on for the Cerritos. Mariner and Boimler urging Rutherford to make the best of it.
76) Meanwhile on the Orion ship, a determined Tendi.
77) The adventure continues.

The episode

An enjoyable romp of a half-hour. "Hooray for continuity!" moments with the rest of Trek abound - most obviously with the Locarno backstory, but also the TWoK nods, the Steamrunner class appearing. Also LD's own continuity remains strong - lots of threads from this season all get revisited here. Mark Twain-ing on the holodeck, Tendi's conflict with her family, Mariner's self-sabotage...

Some threads for the future. A new Genesis planet created that could be revisited. Obviously the crew have to get Tendi back from her family. Mariner no longer dead-set on wrecking her own career.

Never thought I'd be at the point where I would say that I'm looking forward to more with this show. And yet, here we are. Mostly because...

The season, series, Trek

...Lower Decks, to me, seems to have found a good spot to nestle in. It's not constant wacky hijinks. It's not played dead straight all the time. It's a balance. It took them a while, but they really do appear to have cracked it. Praise be to $DEITY. The show is fun to watch now where all the way back in the first season it felt like a chore. And we're getting genuine growth from these characters. Earned, rather than thrown in because the story this week required it as the STD writers are often fond of abusing.

The showrunners clearly care a lot about the lore of Star Trek, and are very comfortable making a show set firmly within that lore. Not Trek in name only like STD. Not "we'll just ignore the bits that get in our way" like with SNW. I've noted in other Trek threads that things like visual and character continuity matter in a franchise like Star Trek and that this is the price you pay for writing stories in the Trek universe. Being an animated show frees them up to lean hard into the continuity in a way, certainly visually. It also lets them do grander things and not have to worry about a VFX budget that could fund a small war.

So, yeah. More of this please. In fact, take the huge pot of money that is no longer being spaffed on STD after the final upcoming season and spend it on this and on Terry Matalas' ST: Legacy idea.

***edits***

From PandaPundus on the reddits:

I am very glad that the Steamrunner-Class featured was the USS Passaro NCC-52670.

Fabio Passaro was a CGI artist who had worked on a lot of Star Trek-related things, such as the Star Trek Magazine and the Eaglemoss collections. He was quite well known among the fandom who did 3D CGI stuff as well. As Eaglemoss's model archive is now used in the television productions, his work has made its way on screen. In 2022, he sadly passed away.

When I was working on Star Trek: Picard Season 3, I'd asked Dave Blass if he could name a ship after him, and he kindly obliged. I also made the promotional artwork of the Gagarin-Class USS Passaro that appeared in Picard, which was shown to his family :)

I'm very glad someone on the Lower Decks team has thought to do the same, and has honored him with a second ship to his name :)
Click to expand...

Also seen in a reddit comment but something I wholeheartedly agree with - they should have cut to the new Genesis planet and shown a salamander creature ;)
 
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Making that joke two times was the perfect number. Once, meh, well done, it was low hanging fruit but an amusing nod. Three times or more, you're just using it to fill in episode running time now and it's wearing out it's welcome. Make the joke so it's out there, then come back to it once and you've subverted expectations.

I like how Lower Decks, the parody Trek, features better writing than the flagship show of Disco. That's really quite funny.
 
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