One of my biggest concerns about Lower Decks going in was that it was going to be mean-spirited. This was mostly borne out of Rick and Morty depending a great deal on humor centered around sarcastic abuse and nastiness. Not that that’s a bad thing in and of itself, but it’s not really a good fit for Star Trek.
“Envoys” shows that perhaps I needn’t have worried.
[Some spoilers]
I got to the end of this episode feeling pleased and happy, which I’m pretty sure is what the script was going for. It reminded me favorably of the DS9 episode “In the Cards,” in which Jake and Nog do a series of cascading favors for various crew members in order to obtain a Willie Mays baseball card that Jake wants to give to his father. The end result was that everyone on the station was happier than they were when the episode started.
Now, “Envoys” isn’t anywhere near that, well, high-stakes. “In the Cards,” after all, was the final episode before the Dominion War kicked in, but it worked as a palate-cleanser prior to that, and also a reminder that the future of Star Trek is, at its heart, a place where things are better than they are now.
There are two plots in “Envoys,” and each of them have as their theme support and helping people out.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Boimler has received what he views as a plum assignment: piloting a Klingon general to a meeting on a planet via shuttlecraft. Mariner thinks it’s a crappy assignment, but she gets herself added to the team, claiming it’s because she wants to see what Boimler is making such a fuss about, but truly because she and the Klingon, named K’Rin, are old buddies.
The trip down consists of Mariner and K’Rin getting drunk and singing and reminiscing, leaving Boimler to do all the work. K’Rin insists on landing in the Klingon district of the planet, and then has passed out by the time they land—and then he wakes up and steals the shuttle. Since communications and transporters don’t work through this planet’s atmosphere (that’s why they were using a shuttle in the first place), Boimler and Mariner have to track him down on foot.
The resultant search is a comedy of errors as Boimler almost gets eggs laid in his head by an alien disguised as a beautiful woman, doesn’t realize a person getting beat up in a bar is a shapeshifter, and fails to speak an alien language properly. Meanwhile, Mariner navigates all these problems effortlessly, saving Boimler’s ass repeatedly. Boimler is frustrated that all his studying has been for naught, and—after inadvertently starting a bar fight—pretty much gives up on everything. He tosses away his combadge and says he’s quitting Starfleet.
Shortly after that, they encounter a Ferengi who offers them a ride in his shuttle. Boimler is suspicious, but Mariner insists that that’s not a Ferengi, it’s a Bolian (it’s totally a Ferengi), and Boimler reveals that the Ferengi’s lying by asking for his landing code, which all shuttles need in order to land on the planet. The Ferengi runs away, and Mariner admits that Boimler was right and she was wrong, and she almost got them killed.
Then they find their own shuttle, with K’Rin passed out again inside it. They dump him at the meeting and then head back to the Cerritos, where Boimler proceeds to tell everyone about how Mariner didn’t know a Ferengi when she saw one. Boimler is the hit of the bar, and Mariner slinks off, seemingly annoyed—but it turns out the Ferengi they met was also an old buddy of hers, who set up a situation that would allow Boimler to get his groove back.
Meanwhile, back on the Cerritos, Rutherford is faced with a difficult decision: stay in engineering, where he works long hours crawling around Jefferies Tubes (which he loves), or switch to another division with a less full schedule so he can join Tendi to watch a pulsar the ship is scheduled to study.
The problem here is that Rutherford isn’t really suited to the other divisions. He does well in security, thanks to his bionic implants, but it’s not what he really loves (and the notion of dying doesn’t appeal, which, as we all know, is the fate of most people in security). And he crashes and burns pretty spectacularly at command (he freezes in every situation, causing lots of death and destruction) and medical (his bedside manner is dreadful).
What’s fun about this subplot is that Rutherford is worried constantly about disappointing people, and they never actually are. When he tells the chief engineer—who has just fulsomely sung his praises—that he wants to transfer out, the entire engineering staff cheers him on for following his bliss, as it were. When he tells the chief of security—a grizzled Bajoran, Lieutenant Shaxs—that he wants to go back to engineering (after staring longingly at a Jefferies Tube and being told by Shaxs that he’ll never “have” to crawl in one again), the security staff has the exact same reaction as the engineering staff did.
And it turns out that Tendi is perfectly okay with sitting in the Jefferies Tube while Rutherford works and watching the pulsar with him on a padd. She just wants the company because she’s new and doesn’t have many friends yet.
The episode isn’t perfect. We still have too many instances of trying too hard to be funny, most notably Mariner playing with the shuttle’s blast shield like a five-year-old. And Ransome’s eagerness to see how many people Rutherford can kill on the holodeck is more than a little disturbing. Having said that, I laughed hardest in the whole half-hour when the big, nasty Taksor that Boimler bumps into and tries and fails to apologize to turns out to just be a kid. (“My Dad’s gonna kill me!”)
Still, this episode manages the balance that “Second Contact” didn’t, mixing Trek-ian compassion and optimism with humor.
Random thoughts:
- It looks like each episode will open with a silly bit that has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. In this case, we have that old Trek standby, a being of pure energy who wants to destroy the ship. Mariner wastes no time in trying to stuff it into a container, and the creature tries to bargain with them to avoid that fate. It’s funnier than last week’s opener, but it still left me pretty cold, though I liked the idea of a being of pure energy who is also really really stupid…
- We get several references to Risa as well as to jamaharon, which is what people on Risa call a sexual liaison. In addition, we see a whole bunch of Andorians and Klingons, and Rutherford’s initial training in security is to face off against a bunch of Borg. (Shaxs calls the combat simulation “Smorgas-Borg.”)
- My favorite, though, is that the shapechanger that Boimler accidentally lets escape is a Vendorian! Seen only in the animated episode “The Survivor,” it’s a lovely little touch that made my nerdy heart squee with glee.
- Speaking of Shaxs, he’s your prototypical drill-sergeant type, complete with a scar over one eye that he inexplicably hasn’t had replaced (do you really want your security chief to have no depth perception?), and I have to admit to getting a giggle out of hearing his gruff voice saying, “By the Prophets!”
- Ransome mentions “the Janeway Protocol” in the holodeck when Rutherford is trying and failing to be in command of the bridge. We never do find out what that is…..
- We get more hints of Mariner’s complicated past, which includes deep friendships with a Klingon general and a Ferengi, and I have to admit to having the same question Boimler does after she says she did some off-the-books gray ops with K’Rin back in the day: “We’re, like, the same age, back in what day?”
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges all and sundry to support the Kickstarter for Horns and Halos, an anthology of stories about demons and angels that Keith has an urban fantasy tale in, along with three novels, The Devil’s Day by Megan Mackie, An Unceasing Hunger by Michelle D. Sonnier, and Dragon by Ty Drago. There are tons of bonuses and rewards and other cool stuff, and you should totally check it out and consider pledging! Really! You’ll be glad you did!
I just realized Krad doesn’t give a rating to the Lower Decks episodes. Interesting.
Anyway, after watching this second episode in the series and giving it a second shot so to speak, I’ve accepted it’s just not for me. If the series is clearly billed as a comedy and yet I can’t muster a laugh, nor find anything clever or unique in the stories themselves, then I feel like I’m just wasting time I could have used to watch something more enjoyable. Oh well.
I may be wrong, but I thought they gave scores on rewatches. Even if that’s not the case, scores would be relative to other episodes, and this is a new thing, not an established pattern (Trek, animated, comedy, half-hour, etc.) Full disclosure, I haven’t watched the show yet.
@2/reagan3: If you don’t have CBS All Access, the first episode of Lower Decks is posted for free on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/_HzRGqvRK8U
I haven’t been giving ratings on any of the real-time reviews — Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, or Lower Decks — and indeed I only do it on the rewatches because I kind of inherited it, including the warp factor rating. (I didn’t rate the movies in the great superhero movie rewatch, either.) I always say the rating is the least important part of a rewatch entry, and I don’t feel comfortable giving ratings for a show in progress, as it’s too volatile….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So, does the episode include lyrics to “What do you do with a drunken Klingon”?
wiredog: It does not. I merely chose that as the title of my article.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ah well, I heard various versions of that at cons in the 80’s. None of them suitable for a Family Friendly Blog.
What do you do with a drunken Klingon? Pour Klingon coffee down his throat, I suppose.
@8: Very close, Mariner suggests raktajino to fix the Klingon.
That’s it! Raktajino! I couldn’t remember what they call Klingon coffee. Apparently everybody on Deepspace Nine drinks it.
i was on the fence about this show until the Ferengi with a monocle.
If only he had on a teeny tiny top hat too…
I just really hope we see some evolution in Boimler and he doesn’t remain completely gormless throughout the show. Let him have a spotlight that wasn’t artificially created.
@8: “What do you do with a drunken Klingon?”
Feed ’em to a hungry targ for dinner
Feed ’em to a hungry targ for dinner
Feed ’em to a hungry targ for dinner
Early in the morning
Slice his throat with a rusty bat’leth
Slice his throat with a rusty bat’leth
Slice his throat with a rusty bat’leth
Early in the morning
Yes, I’ve been playing the original Dishonored, why do you ask? :)
*Holds up lighter for @13*
Bravo!
Throw ’em in the brig with the captain’s daughter
Throw ’em in the brig with the captain’s daughter
Throw ’em in the brig with the captain’s daughter
Early in the morning
Qa’pla and up she rises
Qa’pla and up she rises
Qa’pla and up she rises
Early in the morning
I enjoyed this episode, it was really fun, but I liked the first one more. It delivered more on the promise of “this is a comedy, but also a Star Trek show”, by having a “normal plot”, even if in the background. And Mariner’s friendship with the General felt too much of a riff on Jadzia.
That said, it was really good that this episode showed “life in the street” of a modern Star Trek city. We need more of that.
Was it me, or did the Starfleet lieutenant who finds K’Rin passed look a lot like Tasha Yar?
@11 – veronica: I really loved the Ferengi having a monocle.
What do you do with a Drunken Klingon? Why pour some hair of the tharg down their gizzard, place a blade in their hand and throw them into mortal combat, of course! (What better than the rush of warrior blood to flush out those toxins?).
How does Mariner have all this past when she’s still so young? Her mother is a starship captain, her father is an admiral, and they had children on starships in the TNG era. I imagine her father was a captain before he was an admiral, and she grew up on whatever starship he was captaining. That would have given her at least a decade’s worth of experience before going off to the Academy, and she could have made a lot of friends during that time.
Other articles I’ve read suggest that this is the plan. They plan on character development and progression in rank, with hopes that we might be able to follow their careers all the way up through when they’re bridge crew themselves.
It should be interesting to see how Boimler behaves after a couple of seasons under Mariner’s tutelage.
@18 – Corylea: She’s a burned-out Wesley.
The janeway protocal is a joke referencing the Captain Janeway memes. The general meme has a photo of Janeway doing or saying something with a text block describing how Janeway always did what she deem best regardless of protocol. This one is a popular one: https://cheezburger.com/6020837632
@14: Thanks!
The thing I love about this show is that, as KRAD said, it’s not mean-spirited at all—toward the characters or toward the franchise. It’s all too easy to make a spoof that laughs at (“Look how silly this is, and how silly the people who like it are, too”). It’s a lot harder to make one that laughs with (“This is a little funny if you think about it…and that’s why we love it so much”).
What sells this are the little moments like everyone in both Engineering and Security, despite Rutherford being the best person they’ve ever had, being selfless enough to want him to follow his dream rather than stay somewhere he felt he didn’t fit in. It’s exactly how you would hope that Starfleet personnel, representing Roddenberry’s hope that humanity would become better people, would act, and the humor comes from how it’s so utterly different from how people now would act. Or the idea of the captain wanting to think of something cool to say when she goes into warp, whereas Picard’s “Engage” is just him being himself.
Anyone have an idea why Boimler was sitting on a box with his pants down in the Andorian pub after the bar fight?
@20 — MaGnUs: Actually, I think she’s more like Naomi Wildman. Wesley didn’t join the Enterprise until he was a teenager, but Naomi Wildman was born on Voyager and was trying to help the adult officers by the time she was six years old. If Mariner was born on a ship — or lived on one from the time she was six or seven — she’d have had the time to learn even more than Wesley. How scary is that? :-)
Who says Mariner is actually young? Sure she and her parents look human, but that’s no guarantee of anything. She could be Actually 200. Tuvok was a lieutenant even when he was like 130, so advanced age isn’t a way to skip the ranks. Notably, the actress, said that Mariner “has been demoted a ton of times[, s]he should be way further in the ranks than she is.” Which, by itself, implies that she’s not actually the same age as Boimler, Boimler just thinks they’re the same age.
I liked the little dig at how they send ships like the Galaxy Class into dangerous territory with an an on-board kindergarten and preschool.
Quoth veronica: “Anyone have an idea why Boimler was sitting on a box with his pants down in the Andorian pub after the bar fight?”
His leg was wounded, and he took his pants down in order to treat the wound, though he indulged in self-pity rather than actually treat it….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@26 Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is that they’re the ages they look like, and being a Starfleet brat simply gave Mariner considerably more opportunities to participate in that life. She probably enlisted young. Heck, for all we know, given that her parents are clearly both ambitious go-getters themselves, being a captain and an admiral, perhaps they encouraged her and regularly threw her into the thick of things…without realizing they were creating a monster. That would explain how she got so burned out on Starfleet at such a young age, and allowed herself to be demoted to a rank she was comfortable with so she could slack off.
@16/MAG Yeah, don’t know if that was an intentional homage/Easter Egg, coincidence, or just my plain old imagination, but I definitely picked up a Tasha Yar vibe from that as well…
I agree that Mariner has an uncanny ability to interact with people of different species (although she does have some problems with H. sapiens), unfitting for a person of such a young age (I cannot imagine she’s older than in her thirties). In this episode, she really pulls a Jadzia in socializing with everyone on their own cultural terms, which opens the possibility that somewhere in the past, some slug took the wrong turn and ended up in her belly.
But tamer explanations are possible. Being the child of high-ranking officers, she might have started her practical studies at really young age, so what we see might be a combination of significant talent and extraordinary opportunity. Or she could have uploaded lots of lifetime memories by some crazy accident. Or, even better, something that I cannot even imagine.
Yet I sincerely hope this gets addressed at some point in the show. I already see her called a ‘Mary Sue’ on several websites, and I hate that concept, that term and particularly the misapplication of the term to everyone excelling in competency. Also, I’d like her to screw up royally at some point, to give Boimler a chance to shine.
@25 – Corylea: Wes probably lived on a ship all his life too (just not the Enterprise), and might have even been born on one. And I found Naomi to be a much more believable child than Wes.
@26 – Rick: Boimler probably knows the age stated on her officer record, because he probably studies the records of those he works with. (And Mariner’s records probably don’t mention who her parents are.)
@31 – Lúthien: Only an idiot can call her a Mary Sue.