When I reviewed “Envoys,” I mentioned my fear going into Lower Decks was that its humor would depend on being mean-spirited, based on the tone taken by Rick and Morty, in which much of the humor derives from Rick’s misanthropic snottiness. Star Trek is pretty much the antithesis of misanthropy.
Lower Decks had been thankfully free of such meanness—until this week.
[SPOILERS AHOY!]
The entire A-plot depends on Mariner being incredibly awful, even by her already-low standards. We learn that Boimler has a girlfriend, Lieutenant Barbara Brinson, a science officer on the U.S.S. Vancouver, whom he met a few months earlier. Initially, Mariner assumes that Boimler made her up, and suspects that their “date” will be on the holodeck, but Boimler insists that she’s real.
When they meet in the Vancouver shuttlebay, the first thing Mariner says is, “Computer, end program,” and after that, she devotes a ridiculous amount of energy to proving that Brinson is some kind of shapechanger or alien creature in disguise or something, anything other than a woman who is interested in Boimler as a boyfriend. Because she doesn’t believe that Boimler could have a girlfriend.
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That is, frankly, disgusting. There’s a sop to making it derive in part from a bad past experience Mariner had on a previous posting, where a shipmate’s seemingly perfect boyfriend turned out to be an alien in disguise who then ate the friend alive. But ultimately, it boils down to Mariner thinking that Boimler is a sad loser who could never possibly attract a smart, intelligent woman, so the woman must be something evil.
And, of course, she winds up being right, because the show is constructed in a way that Mariner is always right and Boimler is always wrong, though her specifics are off: It isn’t Brinson who’s been altered, it’s Boimler. He’s got a parasite on him that makes him incredibly attractive to the first person he sees after it infests him. (This was, somehow, missed by all the sensors and biofilters and such on the Cerritos and the Vancouver.)
It’s cute that Brinson is equally convinced that Mariner is some kind of spy/shapechanger/alien/whatever because of how crazy she’s being, and amusing that the two of them bond after Brinson breaks up with Boimler, but it’s not enough to mitigate the awfulness of the premise.
The B-plot with Rutherford and Tendi is less compelling also. The Vancouver‘s chief engineer, Ron Docent, assigns the two of them to run some diagnostics, using the fresh-off-the-line new diagnostic tool, the T-88. I love how the two of them nerd out over getting to use the spiffy new tech. But Docent tells them that whoever completes their task fastest will get a T-88, leading the two of them to compete nastily against each other.

This makes no sense in a replicator-based system like Starfleet. No mention is made of the T-88 being impossible to replicate, and it makes no sense for them to use such a tool if it can’t be. It’s possible that the Vancouver is testing the new tech, which is why it hasn’t been issued throughout Starfleet yet, but that’s only a matter of time—and anyhow, it’s not stated that it’s being tested, just that it’s new, and the Vancouver got it first. But again, that doesn’t track when you have replicators on your ship.
On top of that, Docent actually meant that the winner would be transferred to the Vancouver, which is eventually revealed to be a deception to get himself transferred to the Cerritos because the pressure on the Vancouver is too much.
The Docent subplot could’ve been fun. It’s a nifty idea, truthfully, someone who is stressed out by the types of missions that Starfleet ships tend to go on. (“It’s all, tow this space station, recalibrate the Dyson Sphere, go back in time and kill the guy that was worse than Hitler!”) But to get there, we have to go through the stupid competition, and then a childish monkey-in-the-middle game followed by a chase through the Vancouver corridors as Rutherford and Tendi steal Docent’s padd before he can put through the transfer order.
And then in the end, Tendi and Rutherford both stole some T-88s from the Vancouver and brought them back to the Cerritos. Which is revolting.
The best part of this episode—by far—is the C-plot, which is the most traditionally Star Trek plot, and one that actually manages the balance between comedy and telling a Trek tale. The Cerritos and Vancouver are teaming up to implode a moon that is endangering the planet. Unfortunately, there are diplomatic issues, as some people worship the moon, some people live on it, plus they rely on it to manage tides and things. Captain Freeman is at her most captainly here, as she works to find a solution that will please everyone, and she almost manages it—except there’s one civilization on one of the other moons, which will be destroyed by Freeman’s solution. So they keep working to find another way—up until the representative from that moon reveals that his “civilization” is two people, him and his wife. They own the moon, as they’re incredibly rich, and live there by themselves.
Upon realizing that, Freeman goes back to Plan A, and everyone’s happy. Except for the rich asshole, but that’s okay…
The formula of Mariner is always right and Boimler always gets screwed is growing tiresome, mostly because Mariner is such an awful person. I also don’t like the episode leaning into the notion that Boimler is so gormless that he could only have a good relationship with a nifty person if he was possessed by a parasite. Overall, this gives us an episode of exactly what I was most concerned about when I found out that a Rick and Morty executive producer would be in charge: It’s Star Trek if they were all jerks.

Random thoughts:
- There is no teaser this week: We dive right into the opening credits, and then the episode. Normally, I would assume that the episode ran long, so they cut it, but this is streaming, not commercial television where you’re locked into a specific running time that you can’t go over or under. Maybe they just didn’t do one this week. Whatever.
- In the flashback to Mariner’s time on the U.S.S. Quito, where her best friend was eaten by her boyfriend-who-was-really-an-alien-in-disguise, the uniforms they wear are the First Contact ones that debuted in 2373 (seven years prior to this episode), but the characters are discussing the events of the “Descent” two-parter as if they were current, which was 2370 (a full decade prior to this episode). This is at odds with Boimler’s comment in “Envoys” that he and Mariner are the same age, but Boimler simply could have been mistaken about that.
- Among the possible things Mariner thinks Brinson can be, besides an alien in disguise who will eat him: a Romulan spy, a salt succubus, an android, a changeling, “one of those sexy people in rompers who murder you for going on the grass,” a Dauphin, a surgically altered Cardassian spy, a transporter duplicate, a Suliban, a reptoid, or possessed by a parasite. Her bulletin board also includes pictures of two Klingons, a humpback whale, a bald humanoid (maybe a Talosian?), and two Bynars.
- Lots of other references: Docent’s padd’s password is “Riker,” Boimler insists that Brinson is “as real as a hopped-up Q on Captain Picard Day,” Boimler brings Brinson a teddy bear that looks a lot like Geordi La Forge, and Boimler refers to Brinson’s good-looking ex as a “Kirk sundae with Trip Tucker sprinkles.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be doing programming for the virtual version of Dragon Con this weekend, including panels, readings, and more. Click here for his schedule.
I was wondering about the flashback. Is this inconsistency is going to turn into a big twists in the season or just nothing because “eh, its a comedy.”?
I guess her best friend was keto? So the alien was on a keto diet? Or am I reaching here?
Hard to see. I’ve watched so many of my friends fall into the conviction that they are supposedly undateable (which is true of none of them). Especially the ones with intense geeky interests, and/or the ones whose bodies don’t fit into the very narrow range that is ‘conventionally attractive by white-Western standards’. This kind of thing doesn’t make me laugh; it breaks my heart, and then I watch as one of my friends resigns himself to the (false, but persuasive) idea that the reason he doesn’t have a partner must be that he’s “just a fat [expletive]”. As with racism, homophobia, etc., no one can be blamed for absorbing and internalizing self-hatred if the scorn is out there and everywhere. Hoping pop culture will move on from the sort of pointing and laughing that affects lots of real people badly for no reason. Star Trek sometimes drops the ball in practice, but yeah…basically just echoing this article now, but one of the big ideas of the whole franchise has been ‘let’s work together in unprecedented ways across divides and envision a better universe’, and this is not that.
wiredog: I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure it’s spelled Keto, I was just guessing based on the dialogue. *laughs*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I”m assuming ‘Guy who was worse than Hitler!’ Was Colonel Green, or Kodos the Executioner.
@5/Loungeshep: I assume the joke is that it’s someone we’ve never heard of because they already went back in time and killed him before he did whatever made him worse than Hitler.
(Besides, Kodos killed 4,000 people on one colony. That’s a blip next to Hitler.)
@4/Krad: I’m guessing they meant Quito, but I vote to canonize your version…
Memory Alpha calls it the USS Quito:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Quito
I find this hard to watch because of the terrible generic animation. Half the characters look like they are out of the Archie comics.
I will edit the post to fix the spelling of Quito. It’s in keeping with LD‘s penchant for naming ships after locations….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@9/Steve: I don’t see any significant resemblance between this art style and the Dan DeCarlo-based style that Archie is traditionally known for, aside from the way the female characters’ eyelashes are drawn. But the DeCarlo style has just the eyelash line and pupil/iris, no underside to the eye (except in coloring). And the heads and bodies are more naturally proportioned than this (albeit highly idealized where the female characters are concerned).
The style here with its perfect-circle eyes is more reminiscent of modern TV-animation styles like the work of Matt Groening, Seth McFarlane, or Butch Hartman. I didn’t care for it myself at first, but it’s growing on me. (I actually think Mariner looks a bit sexy in that top photo.)
The problem I have had with the Mariner/Boimler dynamic is one I have had on numerous shows already: hypercompetent woman with bumbling gormless man. Even two episodes ago, when Boimler was right, he was punished for it (with the naming of the Boimler Effect), and in the previous one, Mariner was rewarded for being wrong (with her promotion). It’s as though the show is terrified of showing a female character be anything less than a shining star that is either always right or receives no consequences for being wrong, aside from one day in the brig which she LOOOOOVES anyway.
And honestly, two Starfleet officers and citizens of the Federation competing over a resource? That’s just tacky. I wanted a Star Trek with humor and contemporary humanity, and I got that until this episode. Now it’s just Rick & Morty (and a bunch of other subpar shows) at a Star Trek convention.
Anyone gonna mention ds9? Or the Pasteur? Seriously though, I love a good easter egg now and then but there’s far too much name check shoehorning
I am forced to agree with Kieth on this one. My least favourite episode so far. But I do feel that Mariner had a little justification for her behaviour. She started off making fun of him in a meanspirited way. And as we saw the last episode, she is a jerk. Competent and loyal to her friends, but a jerk.
In this episode, she went off the rails. To the point where I was thinking she was the one possessed. But the finale now makes sense. The parasite makes there host irresistible, and to Mariner that came across as obsessive jealousy as opposed to romantic feelings. I can not say that this is what the writers intended and it could just be bad characterization. But that was the impression I got from watching. For her, irresistible is more looking for threats and rescuing people than romance.
But I have been thinking she might not be entirely..human.
Or at least far older than she appears.
Wait and see.
One small positive from this – did anyone happen to notice that the Vancouver has the split neck from the Odyssey class Enterprise-F? I think that’s the first time that’s been seen in canon :) Never discounting the possibility that I could be completely wrong, of course :)
Yeah, I feel like this episode plays into the worst part of Mariner’s personality as established. Star Trek is a setting that celebrates people who love science and technology so the concept of the “nerd” doesn’t really exist. Boimler is a bit obnoxious but I don’t see any reason to believe that he would have that much difficulty acquiring a girlfriend in the 24th century.
Mariner’s actions show her to have not only no respect for her fellow ensign and supposed friend but also active contempt.
Agreed on some of the criticism, but didn’t think it was that bad…Maybe if only because the way things were handled and turned out in the romantic relationship is another reason I tend to relate with Boimler…I would say I loved the C plot too, good satire of common Trek trope, would have liked to have seen a bit more of that…But as for the major plot line, am I reading too much into it setting up in the long term, a romantic attraction between Mariner and Boimler, we’ve seen the antagonistic feeling covering up for a secret crush in several places before, and maybe explains why Mariner was so obsessed with Boimler having a true girl friend and all…
Also, don’t know if I missed something, but as a Medical Officer, how did Tendi get assigned to an Engineering task (Aside from writers coming up with a contrivance to pair off her and Rutherford for the B plot)
I liked this episode SO much better than the others so far! The crew were actually competent, which is a must for me to enjoy the show, and the humor grew out of the characters and out of things that actually happen in Star Trek, rather than just being ridiculous stuff tacked on or shoehorned in. And Mariner’s over-the-top actions made sense in this episode, given that she thought her friend was about to be eaten/impregnated/taken over. It worked for me.
Whoever wrote this one, get them to write some more!
@1: I was wondering about the flashback. Is this inconsistency is going to turn into a big twists in the season or just nothing because “eh, its a comedy.”
I mentioned this in a previous thread, but the Mariner actress kind of spilled the beans here: https://trekmovie.com/2019/07/22/sdcc19-lower-decks-panel-unveils-an-animated-comedy-by-and-for-star-trek-fans/
She is like what I think I am in my head all the time. She is always very irreverent and a badass and doesn’t follow the rules. I am actually a speed-limit driving total wimp. She is very good at all things Starfleet, she just doesn’t care. She has been demoted a ton of times. She should be way further in the ranks than she is. She is just kind of like a weirdo rock and roll party queen who just wants to ride her skateboard and eat her piece of pizza in peace, man.
For her to have been demoted a “ton of times” and someone who “should be way further in the ranks than she is,” she has to be older than she looks, in that it’s not temporally possible for her to have been demoted a ton of times if she’s actually the same age as Boimler. It’s implicit in this week’s flashback, but a reveal that Mariner is older than she looks is inevitable at this point.
Not one comment yet about Mariner’s flashback hair? I mean, wow, what a mane that was.
I also imagined the joke about the guy worse than Hitler might have been that they clearly succeeded. It seemed more sophisticated than the other jokes and made me wonder if I was mondegreening it. It seemed more likely a reference to any number of big bads/time travel episodes.
I think it would totally have been funnier if it had been:
“Or going back in time to kill the guy who was worse than Hitler.”
“Wait, who was worse than — Oh, wow, good job.”
Anyway, I agree that the premise was a little cringey, but I actually liked this ep pretty well. I was cringing all over the pilot. The moment Mariner dons the space suit and goes flying off to “save” him (actual thrills!), it was great from that point to the end, I thought.
I must disagree with you, krad. Really enjoyed this episode, it was very funny, and still framed within a standard Trek plot. We also get to see Mariner’s traumas in action, and lots and lots of deep cut reference, even unabashed Enterprise ones.
And I’m not necessarily taking Tendi and Rutherford stealing the bagfuls of T-88s at face value. It’s a gag, an exaggeration.
@11 – Chris: You should see Mariner in her 2370s hairdo.
@21 – Robotech: Great hair.
krad, I think your take on the Federation mentality might be a little more optimistic than mine – my impression is that the two engineers aren’t competing for the Bright Shiny New Thing, they’re competing to establish which of them is the better engineer (not to mention the warm, fuzzy glow they’ll feel whenever they look at one of those T-88s and think “I won one!”).
Co-operation doesn’t necessarily kill the spirit of competition, after all. (-:
While I hate the premise of her suspicion, I like the idea that Mariner has seen too much and becomes paranoid at totally normal things. When I watch any ST episode with a brand new romantic interest, I’m also thinking, “Okay, what’s the deal with this guest star? Replaced with alien? Possessed by pah-wraith? Secretly Borg? Or do they just die at the end of the episode?” So I thought Mariner’s genre-savvy paranoia was pretty entertaining and enjoyed Brinson’s reactionary paranoia. The constant jokes about Boimler’s alleged repulsiveness and the reveal that there actually was a parasite completely ruined it for me.
So far the Boimler/Mariner interactions have been excruciating. It wasn’t a very funny relationship to begin with and almost every episode has beaten it to death. They were more tolerable in “Moist Vessel” since they were separated for most of the episode. Usually Tendi and Rutherford can salvage an episode for me, but their plot this time was pretty forgettable. I’ll admit that I laughed pretty hard at some of the moon-related scenes and the “Kirk sundae with Trip Tucker sprinkles” line.
Honestly, the problems sound like the first three episodes I watched, which is when I gave up on this show.
(But because it’s Star Trek I still check the reviews to hope it turns around…)
On a more serious note, should we start referring to the cutest little Trek-cuddly as ‘Jordi LaBear’ or ‘Jordi LaFur’ I wonder?
@27/ED: Someone on The TrekBBS called it “LeVar Bearton.”
The problem is that Mariner might be reacting to Boimler the way she does for a different reason than what most people assume. I doubt she started out as the jaded late thirty-something we see jerking him around. She might at one point have been a lot like Bradward and is reacting to what she hates about the woman she used to be.
Gotta agree, Mariner thinking he’s undateable is mean spirited even by modern standards and would be blase at best by 24th century standards. Even graduating the academy is a big achievement. Mariner seems to be a much more hostile version of Chris Knight who is the gold standard of the Broken Ace archtype. Mariner doesn’t come off as someone trying to save Boimler from mediocrity or trying to mentor him to a more holistic excellence than just being a by the book officer who can’t think outside the box, she comes off as bullying older sibling.
It’s a bit sad since I loved the last two episodes.
The highlight is definitely Captain Carol Freeman actually solo’ing the diplomatic crisis and not having any of her gloryhound tendencies at all. All of the senior staff obnoxiousness was instead diverted to the Vancouver’s Captain.
@23/Paul Jones
That does make sense, but I would hope she would have a bit more compassion in that situation rather than responding with torture and derision. Their best moment by far was when she went out of her way to pull him out of quitting Starfleet. That was a good thing for her to fix something that was ostensibly her fault. But even that was conning him. It would’ve been better to actually open up about how she got the way she is.
Two possible explanations for the flashback scene:
1. It takes place in 2370 just after “Descent” Part 2, and the Quito crew were among the first to get those grey-top uniforms. The idea of multiple sets of uniforms being in service at once has a precedent in Star Trek: Discovery.
2. It takes place in perhaps 2377-78, while the grey-tops were in heavy use but before Data died in Star Trek: Nemesis (2379). The revelation of Data having an evil twin who worked with the Borg is more akin to people finding out an interesting fact about a celebrity’s past. (For instance, with Chadwick Boseman’s recent passing, a lot more attention has been given to the fact that when he was in college, his overseas workshop trip was then-secretly paid for by Denzel Washington. It wasn’t exactly a secret before Boseman died, but my guess is a lot more people found out about it as a result of his death.)
I kinda hate having to come up with solutions to this problem, but we’re Trekkies. We’ve come up with a lot weirder solutions for much smaller nitpicky problems.
To be fair Mariner isn’t wrong about romances to good to be true in the Trek ‘verse. But it would have been better if Barb had turned out to be a normal female who liked Boimler.
I just wanna point out that if you take the Vancouver as a stand-in for the Enterprise, the B plot is about someone from that kind of high-adventure flagship not enjoying all the stress that comes from being part of the kind of doings chronicled on a weekly TV show, and trying to do anything they can to get off it. And that’s awesome.
People who enjoy watching that kind of show might often think about how great it would be to be a part of adventures like that, but if they were actually (and constantly) thrown into the middle of them they might feel differently.
i gotta admit i got a thrill that a ship was named Vancouver. It was a nice change from seein’ the town i live in standing in for everywhere else on TV. And the shuttle-craft being named after Vancouver neighbourhoods?* It got my civic spirit going.
* i saw Marpole, Fairview, and Kitsilano.
@35/Veronica The series is produced in BC (or so it appears from what I’ve seen in the credits) so there you go…
@32/PrincessRoxanna The Too Good To Be True Romance Trope is common outside the Trek Universe as well (Including the one I exist in…LOL)
Yeah, I’m getting kinda tired of Mariner always being right and Boimler always being hapless. Even Barclay was a smart and competent officer, he just didn’t fit in easily. At this point I’m not sure how Boimler graduated the Academy.
The Mariner/Rick-Boimler/Morty dynamic is wearing thin. Mariner may have seen some shit but she’s an asshole, and assholes shouldn’t be rewarded on Star Trek. I’m not really a Trek purist and have no problem with the franchise being several different things, but even in DS9 and Picard the nasty people aren’t being vindicated every week. That simply doesn’t fit in this version of the future.
And how come Tandi and Rutherford only ever interact with each other? They only have 4 main characters which isn’t exactly an ensemble but in 5 episodes we’ve only seen the two pairings every time. Where’s the story with Boimler and Rutherford competing to see who’s more efficient? Why isn’t Mariner trying to beat some street smarts into Tandi as well? And why do Boimler, Tandi, and Rutherford all feel like such similar people? All three of them are overenthusiastic dorks trying to find the place they belong; they need to differentiate from each other some more, and soon.
Okay, that’s all negative but the truth is I’m still watching, at least for now. The humor is pretty good and it’s interesting enough to see a new corner of the Trek universe. That novelty won’t string me along through these flaws forever though.
@37 I’m hoping for some character development at least by the next season, to let him grow beyond who he is right now. But for now, even leaving the Rick & Morty comparisons aside, Boimler is basically the “Charlie Brown” of the show. Try as he might, he’s not ever gonna get to kick that football.
Mariner has obviously reverse broken the 4th wall and is a Star Trek super fan from our reality. No one in universe could possibly drop so many references from series spanning 400 years in their time.
Obviously, being an avid TV watcher from our world transported in universe, she took Brads girlfriend being posted on the Vancouver to be a clue based on the “My (totally real) girlfriend lives in Canada” trope and couldn’t break out of her attempt at detection downward spiral.
I do think it’s worth considering that, for all that she might have been acting like a horrible person, and kind of dissing Boimler’s romantic desirability, Mariner did have good reasons for doing so, and she was genuinely worried about Boimler to the point of playing spacesuit leapfrog to go “rescue” him. Horrible person maybe, but horrible person who is unswervingly loyal to her friends.
She’s not a horrible person, she’s a horribly damaged person.
At first I was going to question the OP’s harshness at the A-plot. Yeah, it was hackey and done before, but to call it disgusting? But then I saw comment #3 among others and realized that it hit a little too close to home for some folks. This is why I like comment pages and reddit subforums where they have the moderation to keep things civil because it exposes me to other viewpoints and angles I hadn’t considered. After reading all the comments so far (41), I’m a little torn on the Mariner / Boimler plots. As of right now, it’s seeming to me like it consists of fridge moments – mostly funny and fun to go along with the jokes as they go. That would explain the T-88 jokes. Funny during the episode (beause those two have such an innocent friendship) and then didn’t make sense in the context of a replicator world. Or even the fact that the Cerritos is falling apart. Does that make sense in a post-scarcity world? More and more it Mariner seems crazy as she lists off all these Star Trek plots (and even Orville had a shapeshifter girlfriend episode) and Boimler’s girl seems normal. And, putting aside (for the sake of this comment) the feelings others and the OP shared about finding it hurtful, to me it seemed more like when you meet your friend’s significant other and they seem out of their league (wow, as I write this I realize what a horrible thing that is, but it has been baked in by society) and then you realize they bonded over a love of X. And I think maybe that would have rescued the plot for everyone, even if not as funny? Like Biomler and his girlfriend both loved …. efficiency? I don’t know that we really know enough about Boimler.
As for the Teddy Bear – that was awesome because Jordi was my favorite character and why I became an engineer (and Reading Rainbow was a huge part of my childhood) – but do you think there would be Jordi Bears in Star Trek world? I know this is a comedy, but in TNG was there ever like a Capt. Kirk bit of memorabilia? Star Trek: The Sheets or something?