After a first season that was horribly hit-and-miss, Lower Decks came back with a second season that fixed several of the first season’s problems, the primary one being that it mostly just sat back and allowed itself to be a Star Trek show, albeit one that was filled with humor and ridiculousness.
Even the reversals of the status quo changes shoehorned into the first-season finale were funny and actually worked in the context of the show. While it’s still not perfect, and suffers from some of the same inconsistent tone as season one, this sophomore outing is a far stronger show than the one that debuted in 2020. And so, we have, in contrast to the first-season roundup, the Good, the Bad, and the Awesome of season two…
The Good
One of my biggest problems with season one was that each script contrived to make sure that Mariner saved the day every time, even when that distinction wasn’t earned. Indeed, some episodes twisted themselves into a pretzel to let that happen. So I was very relieved to see that, in season two, she doesn’t save the day every episode, or even in a plurality of episodes.
They manage to eat their cake and have it too by having Shaxs return in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” but his method of coming back from the dead is shrouded in secrecy. This is exactly the sort of gag that Lower Decks does particularly well, taking a cliché from Trek and shining a funny light on it. Boimler and Mariner are both very blasé about Shaxs’ resurrection, because it’s just something that always happens to the bridge crew. (Witness McCoy in “Shore Leave,” Scotty in “The Changeling,” Spock in The Search for Spock, Picard in “Tapestry,” O’Brien in “Visionary,” Kim in “Deadlock,” Lorca in “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” etc., etc., etc.) And it means we get to keep Shaxs, whom I adore.
Buy the Book
Until the Last of Me
We see more of Captain Riker and the U.S.S. Titan in “Strange Energies” and “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” and it’s delightful. I especially love Riker’s goofy music references and his gleefully declaring that he loves his job. I hope that season three gives us more of Jonathan Frakes on his spiffy ship…
One of the things we see on Titan is Boimler being duplicated the same way Riker was in TNG’s “Second Chances,” which means that one of them can go back to Cerritos. (Though he’s also demoted which makes absolutely no sense.) It’s a nice way to keep his transfer and keep him on the show’s main ship.
It makes it feel, I dunno, more real to have the season end with a cliffhanger. Like it makes it more of a real Trek spinoff, since every one of the ones that have had more than one season have had at least one cliffhanger.
We get more animated series references, most notably seeing the pillbug people (who have been called Nasats in the tie-in fiction) from “Jihad” (M3 Green was one) and a Pandronian from “Bem” in, respectively, “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” and “I, Excretus.”
There’s a Tom Paris commemorative plate. Which is delightful.
The Bad
The show still way overdoes the references to other Trek shows, though some are at least funny, like T’Ana not know who Dax is and the holographic Boimler being captured by Cardassians and saying, “They keep showing me lights.” It’s the unsubtle jokes that are the biggest issue, truly.
After going to the trouble of having a new tactical officer who’s Tamarian, thus opening up to lots of jokes based on his metaphor-based speech patterns, they proceed to do precisely nothing with it. In his introductory episode Kayshon only has one or two lines in Tamarian before reverting to English speaking patterns, and then is taken out of the action early in the episode. He mostly talks regularly, when he even shows up and has dialogue (he has several dialogue-free cameos), with his Tamarian speech patterns only really used once as a conversational stumble by Boimler in “wej Duj.” The character looked to be one of the more entertaining additions to the cast, and is instead the weakest.
We get two new rivals for Mariner to bitch about, Jennifer the Andorian and Lieutenant Jet. The former is just not that interesting, though I do like the rapprochement the two reach in “First First Contact,” and Jet was set up to become part of the lower-decks dynamic in “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” only to barely ever be seen again.
The show still relies way too much on dumb office-sitcom plots, whether it’s Freeman’s evaluation that says she micromanages too much or Boimler not being able to walk through doors because they won’t open for him due to new security measures or the replicators having better choices for bridge crew than lower-decks crew.
A couple of times, the show went for brutal violence being funny in a way that brutal violence really shouldn’t be, whether it’s Mariner beating the crap out of Rutherford and Boimler in “Mugato, Gumato,” which was just awful on every level (especially with the two of them covered in bandages in their next scene) or Tendi trying to perform invasive surgery and vivisection on Rutherford to “help” him in “Strange Energies.”
Badass Pakleds was funny in “No Small Parts,” but the joke wore thin this season, especially with the Pakleds being played as even stupider than they were in TNG’s “Samaritan Snare,” particularly in “The Spy Humongous” and “wej Duj.”
The Awesome
I am loving Badass Boimler! He rescues the Titan away team, which also results in his duplication! He saves the day in “The Spy Humongous,” “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” and “First First Contact,” and is the only Cerritos crew member to do well in the holodeck scenarios in “I, Excretus.” Instead of being the guy who is eager to be a great officer but who keeps getting in his own way, he’s actually starting to become the great officer he wants to be. It’s a process, mind you, and he still has his moments of incompetent doofiness and bad luck, particularly in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” and “First First Contact,” but that just makes it more interesting and fun.
Some superlative guest stars: Jeffrey Combs is magnificent as the voice of Agimus, the world-controlling computer that Boimler and Mariner must bring to the Daystrom Institute in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie.” Richard Kind is whiny perfection as Doopler in “An Embarrassment of Dooplers.” And Robert Duncan McNeill (Paris), Alice Krige (the Borg Queen), and Lycia Naff (Gomez) all reprise their live-action roles.
Tendi gets a backstory in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” where we find out that she’s actually the Mistress of the Winter Constellations. We only get hints of her life as an Orion before joining Starfleet, but the fact that this sweet young woman has a dark past is just hilarious. (“FALSE GREEN!”)
Billups also gets a backstory in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” and it’s glorious. I love the planet of the Ren Faire people, I love the ostentatious design of the royal ship that belongs to Billups’ Mom, and I love that Billups’ Mom is a regular “guest” on the Cerritos and constantly tries to get her son to go back to being a prince instead of an engineer.
Seeing three (or five) other ships and their lower decks was a masterstroke in “wej Duj,” and I hope we see more especially of Ma’ah and T’Lyn in season three.
We finally see Cetacean Ops! And we meet Kimolu and Matt! And they’re wonderful! More Kimolu and Matt, please! (And yes, I already ordered my Kimolu and Matt sweatshirt. It should arrive soon…)
Overall, the show is moving in very much the right direction, coming into its own as a proper Trek show and actually moving the characters forward. Let’s hope for more of that in season three, and also fewer dumb office-sitcom plots…
And more Kimolu and Matt!
Keith R.A. DeCandido is looking forward to the debut of Star Trek: Prodigy next week, which he’ll be reviewing.
Fully agree KRAD. It’s funny to think that a comedy show became that much better when they dialled down the comedy from 11. Let the funny flow from the characters. And I couldn’t agree more with your observations of Mariner and Boimler. Boiler is still a bit of a doofus abut he’s becoming a competent doofus. In regards to Mariner not always being the hero I say YES! Id there was one thing that pulled me out of this being a Trek show was that, even as much as a lot of Trek characters get away with things without consequences, Mariner had cranked that way past 11. She’s done things that not only would have gotten her demoted, they would have had he dishonourably discharged. If only Discovery could have discovered this with Burnham. There’s nothing wrong with a redemption arc but the characters have to earn it, not just reap the benefits of being the “most important person in the galaxy”.
I think my favourite part of the season was the acknowledgement that people notice that other people keep coming back from the dead. Too bad that Khan’s magic blood wasn’t only discovered in the JJverse. There’s been more than enough resurrections that you’d figure somebody would have finally noticed. And now we know that they have. And theft almost nonchalant about it. “Oh yeah, it’s something the bridge crew do from time to time.”
Also agree that Boimler’s demotion upon returning to the Cerritos makes no sense at all. Much like Decker being demoted because Kirk stepped in as Captain in TMP.
I’ve loved season 2- and agreed that it toned down some of the more annoying aspects of season 1 (and really, most Trek shows after TOS have had a first season that was uneven at best or just awful at worst). Bringing back Shax was the perfect Lower Decks joke- he’s just back one day, and everyone just carries on like normal. Billup’s people cracked me up, too, especially when Rutherford starts speaking in the fantasy-inspired technobabble and Billup’s just tells him him to stop.
Overall it has been a very enjoyable and fun show, and I love that they have kept it relatively episodic!
A mix of things I liked and things I didn’t like. Ironically for a Trek sitcom, it’s at its best when it doesn’t try so hard to be funny and instead just focuses on solid Trek-style storytelling, adventure, and worldbuilding.
Christopher: Yeah, I think McMahan and the gang are learning that lesson. And they learned it before they had any feedback on season one, since season two was pretty much in the can by the time the first season aired…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think the first season was a bit shaky because it took them a while to strike the right balance between Wacky Sitcom Hijinks and good Star Trek stories. The managed to nail that balance in the second season, particularly its backhalf. I can’t wait for Season 3!
Still somewhat hit or miss for me. Some excellent things, like seeing a Vulcan ring ship and its onboard culture. (I have a D’kyr science vessel in STO, which I don’t fly as it’s a lower tier ship, but it has a cool shuttle.) Some terrible things, like Mariner rampaging in the security buggy on the space station, endangering lives and causing massive damage. That alone should have gotten her booted from Starfleet; she’s as bad as Edward in her disregard for safety protocols. That she wasn’t jailed for that is mind-boggling and renders the show silly: these are just cartoon stakes, people; move along, there…
Jennifer will apparently be a love interest for Mariner in season 3. Mariner should visit DS9 in STO: there’s an certain Andorian NPC that wanders around, playing dabo, doing jumping jacks, and laughing at people’s jokes.
Billups’s mom may become the new Lwaxana in terms of plot.
I’m way more excited for Prodigy than I was for this show.
I felt both seasons were glorious. I love the references to past Trek, showing that the writers really know their history, which has been sadly lacking in so many other Trek sequels. I still stand by my declaration that Lower Decks is the best Star Trek since Galaxy Quest!
I have to say that this second season was not only an uptick in quality for the show, but a real pick-me-up in the way STAR TREK has always been at its Best; outlandish, frequently-dangerous but nothing you can’t handle with your crew – basically the future we’d love to see (give or take a Phenomenal Cosmic Disaster or so).
One would also specifically like to agree that Billup’s Mama (with a lot of help from the rest of the Planet for Creative Anachronism) somehow manages to produce the most outrageously sexy starship in the season that introduces us to the Excelsior/Sovereign hybrid one never knew I always wanted … y’know, krad, I’m still willing to bumble along as comic relief if you’re willing to operate as the resident STAR TREK bad*** while we –ahem– borrow that pretty, pretty royal starship! (-;
Oh, and while I’m also hoping to see more from those Klingon & Vulcan starships, part of me hopes that next season’s equivalent to their episode bounces us through time instead of/ in addition to species (giving us a Worm’s Eye view of Starfleet from the beginning on): it might be fun to see which Lower Decks grumbles have come & gone, while others remain timeless (Bonus points if The Redshirt Who Would Not Die, whomsoever that may be, is point of view character for THE ORIGINAL SERIES era).
Scratch that, The Redshirt Who Would Not Die is a character who may well deserve an episode all to his- or herself!
I also think that, with “wej Duj”, the Kurtzman era finally produced an episode that belongs up there with the top 30ish episodes of all time (which sounds like faint praise, but really isn’t given just how much Star Trek there is)
I thought they had with Season 3 as it had a much better balance of Tilly, Saru, and Michael as the main characters. Michael also was doing her own thing as the Han Solo rogue. Then, pfft, she’s apparently the Captain of Discovery now. :sigh: I LIKE Michael but it’s like they don’t want us to ever forget she is THE star.
Speaking of Lower Decks Season 2, though, my own list reads like this:
THE GOOD
1. T’Lyn as the Vulcan Mariner is hilarious. She is totally out of control for her unchecked initiative and competence.
2. I did appreciate Sonya Gomez’s return and think she was awesome.
3. I approve of Boimler’s growing competence.
4. Cetecean Ops was good. The whales having uniforms and dialog is perfect.
5. REDSHIRTS! Jennifer the Andorian is amazing and I wish we’d have a show with her and the Kzinti need their own show. Redshirts is a pretty badass name!
THE BAD
1. Mariner has already admitted to being a black gray ops agent. Why are they freaked out about it now?
2. Boimler being demoted to Ensign just because he’s gone back to the Cerritos makes no sense.
3. The Pakleds shouldn’t be so overtly stupid. It was funnier that they took a level in badass. They can build starships after all. Some random Klingon captain being their mastermind was also underwhelming as all get out.
4. The Klingon captain being behind them was fine but he was an anticlimax for the plotline that had been brewing this entire time.
5. Tom Paris was criminally underused in his glorified cameo.
The Mixed
1. I really wish they’d named the Archimedes the Da Vinci-A. I think its still a shout out but they should have gone whole hog.
2. Shanx’s return really did suck a lot of air from the room even if he is infinitely funnier to write for than Kayshon.
3. The evaluation was great work place comedy but I don’t know how team building/tests work in Starfleet.
4. Billups being ace and a prince made him one of my favorite characters. Dragon Land’s biggest problem is it wasn’t in ENOUGH of the season.
5. Oddly, I think Mariner was too INCOMPETENT this season. They overcompensated so she was doing constant screw ups.
I dunno, the similarity between the asteroid they tested blowing up and their homeworld blowing up, the getting a second bomb, the blame being deflected to Cpt Freeman…
I still hope all this will turn up having been a kind of mixed-dumb-smart plan on the Pakleds part, something like “haha, we blew up our old used planet, and we make it federation’s fault, so they have to give up a lot of powerful stuff to compensate us!”.
We will see how the third season will play out…
I also really enjoyed this season of STLD (though I overall liked the first season too); so much so that it makes me worry for The Orville.
I do disagree about the violence in LD though. I think in comedic animation, the exaggeration of everything in comparison to live action makes it acceptable and even necessary. Otherwise it would come off as too tame.
@12. vinsentient: An over the top style is a choice, not a necessity. Some parts of this season would be more comfortable in the world of Looney Tunes. The horn on Mariner’s buggy may as well have done the Road Runner “meep meep.”
Everything is a choice in animation. The only necessity is that it runs at 24 frames a second, and, as Filmation proved, even that isn’t a hard rule. ;-)
What confuses me is why some think this cartoon is bound to the same rules as live-action “serious” Star Trek. It’s obviously meant to be a lark more than anything else. The funny papers at the back of the very serious and important newspaper.
We need a dystopian future where the Pakleds rule the Alpha and Beta Qadrants that TRANSPORTER BOIMLER must go back in time and prevent. He needs to earn his reputation as the most rule breaking outlaw Starfleet officer of all time.
@14/Gerry: “The only necessity is that it runs at 24 frames a second, and, as Filmation proved, even that isn’t a hard rule. ;-)”
The standard frame rate for 2D animation is actually 12 fps, aka animation “on twos” (one new pose for every two film frames), which is why 3D computer animation done “on ones” often looks incongruously smooth compared to 2D animation. I believe Filmation did animate on twos; it just had a lot of shots where the characters moved very little, but when movement sequences were featured (such as the rotoscoped action moves they began using in the mid-’70s), they were at 12 fps. It was in the ’80s, when animation became subcontracted out to Asia by everyone except Filmation, that it became commonplace for animation to be done on threes (8 fps) and be more visibly jerky, because that’s the absolute minimum frame rate that can fool the eye into perceiving the illusion of continuous motion.
These days, a number of Asian animation studios use cel-shaded 3D animation where the character animation is done at a deliberately reduced frame rate to emulate the look of traditional 8 fps animation. It’s rather incongruous in the case of something like Pacific Rim: The Black, where the Jaeger robots are animated at a higher, smoother frame rate while the human characters are at a lower, jerkier frame rate.
“What confuses me is why some think this cartoon is bound to the same rules as live-action “serious” Star Trek.”
Because it’s set in the same continuity. Whether something is live action or animation has no bearing on its seriousness or intelligence, because you can tell any kind of story in either medium. All that matters is to depict a continuous fictional universe in a consistent way, across however many media it appears in. Canonical animated Star Wars productions, for instance, take the universe, its worldbuilding, and its rules as seriously as the live-action productions (which isn’t that seriously, admittedly), so much so that animated characters like Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kryze have made a smooth transition to live action. Even a more lightweight, kid-friendly show like Star Wars Resistance approached the universe in a way that fit believably with the other productions and got its humor from the characters and their interplay. A farcical interpretation is reserved for non-canonical animation such as LEGO Star Wars.
The original animated Star Trek strove to tell the exact same kinds of story that TOS did, aside from toning down the sex and violence. While it had some fanciful elements, they were no more fanciful than those that TOS featured; for instance, the fantasy creatures of Megas-tu were no more implausible than Apollo, and the crew getting shrunk was no more implausible than Kirk being accelerated to hyperspeed. TAS’s makers understood that the medium is not the message, that the universe didn’t have to be dumbed down or made implausible due to being in animation. The reason Roddenberry went with Filmation is because they were the only studio that did understand that. So wanting the same degree of authenticity to the way Lower Decks portrays the Trek universe is simply following the established precedent, both of Star Trek and Star Wars.
Yes, LD is a comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be set in a believable universe. There’s nothing intrinsically ridiculous or unrealistic about, say, a MASH unit in the Korean War, a New York City taxi company, a radio psychologist in Seattle, or six friends sharing an apartment. Most non-genre sitcoms are set in realistic, grounded worlds and get their humor from their characters and situations. I’ve always thought there’s no reason science fiction sitcoms can’t do the same. (That’s the approach I used in my Hub series of SF comedy novelettes appearing in Analog; I originally conceived the Hub universe as a potential sitcom pitch before I decided I wasn’t interested in writing for TV.)
Besides, as we’ve seen, Lower Decks is really good at telling straight-up Trek-style adventure stories — arguably better than it is at doing goofy character humor or positing ridiculous premises like the Dooplers. Its best comedy comes from the parts that are rooted in relatable human emotion, such as Billups’s relationship with his mother, rather than farcical worldbuilding or over-the-top slapstick violence. So the goofy, implausible parts are also the least funny parts.
I enjoyed the season.
My hopes for the plot are that:
1) The Pakleds are playing up how their communications come across. They’ve gotten some nice ships and weapons out of it. Plus, somehow their spy failed so badly he got flung into space; he survived, with the implication he was too dumb to die. A little later, he spilled the Pakled secret plan to bomb Earth. Or, perhaps, he encouraged their belief in his stupidity so they would believe the information was tricked out of him and his survival was thanks to clever Pakled medical technology. In this version, a great deal of what we’ve seen has been staged, even the Pakled Emperor being struck in the back (but never confirmed dead). Not sure how much damage they would consider acceptable from setting off the bomb on their own planet, but they did test another beforehand to see what it would do.
2) Kayshon, the only person on the show regularly swapping between his native mode of expression and Federation Standard, is the one who pick up on what the Pakleds are about. His character has some potential and I’d like to see him get more dialogue.
@13 Sunspear. I respectfully disagree. I think over-exaggeration is absolutely a necessity.
Somewhat analogously, have you ever seen the fumetti books of Star Trek that used footage from the show to build comics? They look dead and static compared to illustrated work.
In my opinion, if the show is animated, it has to be over the top compared to live action.
@18. vinsentient: I respectfully disagree back. :)
Your use of “over-exaggeration” is telling, as if the creators felt even ordinary exaggeration wasn’t enough. A bit of a heightened sense of freedom from the constraints of live action, sure. But just because it’s animated doesn’t mean it should feature cartoon violence and cartoon physics.
The first season was entertaining, but the second is definitely better. :) I was not annoyed by the “bad” parts of the first season that much, because i just don’t take the whole series too seriously, so i was fine with its stupidities and extreme approaches. :) but the 2nd season’s tone is definitely an improvement, so now i’m looking forward for the third one. :)
Rewatching this season for the first time, I was starting to get worried. While there were no absolute clunkers (unlike last season), I only really enjoyed two of the first six episodes. Then all of the sudden the show turned itself around and got REALLY GOOD! Okay, it wasn’t out of the blue. It was just all pieces those earlier episodes were setting into place finally came together. But it still felt like where this season started and where it ended were miles apart.