I really only had one desire for season three of Lower Decks, and that was more Kimolu and Matt. The two cetaceans who run Cetacean Ops on the Cerritos were absolutely magnificent in their first appearance in “First First Contact,” and I’m thrilled to see them back in “The Least Dangerous Game.” It’s only for a few seconds, and they mostly just bitch to Boimler about jumping into their pool with his boots on. (“That’s messed up,” they grumble, also saying that Boimler is “such a drama magnet.”)
And that’s not even the best part of “The Least Dangerous Game”!
WARP SPOILERS AHEAD!
The best part of the episode is the introduction of a role-playing game called Bat’leths & bIHnuchs (which translates to “honor swords and cowards”), which comes complete with an interactive AI game master patterned after Chancellor Martok (voiced, natch, by J.G. Hertzler, who has already provided a voice for LD in “Terminal Provocations”). It’s actually a Ferengi knock-off, as Martok is way too busy running an empire to have had time to provide all that stuff for a silly game.
We open with all four of our lower-deckers playing the game, in which you are guaranteed to die, but the trick is to die with honor. I love the idea of an RPG with an AI game master, first of all—that would seriously cut down on rules-lawyering by the players—and it’s always a joy to hear Hertzler do Martok, even if it’s not really him. (We’ve now got three shows in the post-Nemesis timeframe, and none of them have given us any kind of clue about the state of the Klingon Empire under Martok’s rule, though the fact that he’s still chancellor in 2381, six years after he got the job in DS9’s “Tacking Into the Wind” is a good sign.)
While Bat’leths & bIHnuchs starts out as a gag, it later becomes important when Boimler gets in over his head.
It’s not unusual for our dear Bradward Boimler to get in over his head, of course, but this time it’s in service of character development. He finds out that Vendome—a Bolian whom we saw as an ensign on Cerritos in season one—is now a captain. Tendi explains that he always said yes to new opportunities, while Boimler only goes for something after a detailed risk assessment.
Between that and the urging of the Martok AI to be bold, Boimler decides to start jumping at more opportunities. First he accepts an invitation to play Springball. When Boimler screams in abject fear before being knocked down by Shaxs, the security chief invites Boimler to join his Bajoran dirge choir, which needs a soprano. Shaxs is so impressed with how he honored the Prophets with his dirge-ing that he says that if Boimler ever needs anything, Shaxs is just a combadge tap away. Transporter Chief Lundy then asks Boimler to sit for his drawing class, as they need someone “skeletal.” So emboldened by all this—particularly the fact that he’s not scared of Lundy anymore—Boimler also says yes to Kranch, an alien hunter who needs someone to hunt.
For most of the rest of the episode, Kranch chases Boimler around the ship, throwing boomerangs and spears and things. Boimler barely manages to stay ahead of him, and realizes that he shouldn’t have said yes to this one. He even tries to appeal to Freeman, but the captain just had brunch with Kranch, and he’s a swell fellow, and we should respect other cultures. It isn’t until he talks to the Martok AI in the Bat’leths & bIHnuchs game that he decides to take the offensive—and promptly gets speared in the chest, mostly because he speechifies that he’s going to fight back instead of actually fighting back.
Of course, it really is all fun and games: Kranch’s people respect life. All he does when Boimler is defeated is take a selfie. He says that Boimler has been excellent prey, though he does have notes…
The only reason Kranch is on board is because he is stuck there. They’re in orbit of the planet Dulane, which has an atmosphere that transporters won’t work in. They have a space elevator (Ransom insists on calling it an “orbital lift”), but it’s broken. So Cerritos is hosting the Dulanians who got stuck, while Ransom leads an away team to repair the orbital lift and make nice with the Dulanians.
We get to see the results of Ransom being in charge of Mariner’s entire on-duty life, insisting she show up early for away-team duty, and then insisting that she help him fix the orbital lift, leaving Billups and Rutherford to do meet-and-greet duty with the Dulanians. Billups and Rutherford are surprised, as is Mariner, who all figure that the engineers should be the ones fixing things and Ransom and Mariner should be the ones to meet up with the wellness-focused physically fit Dulanians, but Ransom insists.
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This goes badly on every possible level. Mariner and Ransom take forever to effect a repair that Billups and Rutherford could probably do in a quarter of the time with their eyes closed. And Rutherford and Billups make a pig’s ear out of their diplomatic mission, because apparently they didn’t display their belly buttons, and then did it wrong. Eventually, the pair of them are condemned to death.
Ransom finally realizes that he’s being ridiculous, and he says that he and Mariner will skydive down (Billups and Rutherford took the shuttle) to save the day. The problem is that he decides this after Mariner has decided to flout orders and skydive down to save the engineers herself. Mariner then has to grab the side of the elevator and then run back up the distance she’s dived. She is only able to make it in time because Ransom stopped to pee….
They arrive in the nick of time, as the Dulanians, as ordered by their co-leaders, a telepathic baby and a sentient computer, are about to sacrifice the engineers to their volcano god. (Mariner’s comment: “Wow, psychic baby, evil computer, and a volcano? You guys never heard of overkill?”) But Ransom saves the day by ripping his shirt off and showing off his washboard abs to the Dulanians—who, as previously established, are wellness-based.
I’m enjoying the hell out of Ransom fulfilling the stereotype of the white-guy leading man action-hero-type, embodying the worst aspects of Kirk, Riker, Paris, and Archer and turning them up to eleven. Him saving the day with his mighty mighty pecs is just perfect.
I also must say that one of the things I like best about this episode is that it pairs up Boimler with Tendi, which is a combo we haven’t seen much. Tendi gives Boimler really good advice, too. Tendi and Rutherford are way better adjusted than Mariner and Boimler, and it’s nice to see Tendi thriving here, being rewarded for her hard work with the promotion she got at the end of last season, and paying it forward to dear old Bradward…
Random thoughts
- There are apparently versions of Bat’leths & bIHnuchs with other Klingons as GMs. Boimler comments that he’s been trying to get the Gowron expansion for ages. Gowron was Martok’s predecessor as Klingon chancellor, having ascended to the position in TNG’s “Reunion” and “Redemption” two-parter, and then was replaced by Martok after Worf killed him in “Tacking Into the Wind.”
- Bajorans were established as having a very lengthy death chant back in TNG’s “The Next Phase” (which we saw a version of in DS9’s “Battle Lines”) so a dirge choir isn’t really that much of a stretch…
- This is the second time we’ve seen a space elevator in onscreen Trek, the previous one being in Voyager’s “Rise.” They called it an “orbital tether” there, probably because the writers thought “space elevator” was too pulpy, a silly bit of pretentiousness that is nicely lampooned here by Mariner insisting on calling it a space elevator, to Ransom’s annoyance. There was also a space elevator playing an important role in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Ring Around the Sky by Allyn Gibson. The notion was first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895 and has been a staple of science fiction stories over the decades.
- The planet of hedonists who condemn Starfleet personnel to death for something silly is very obviously a riff on TNG’s “Justice,” where the planet full of Hedonistic Aryan Youth condemned Wes Crusher to death for falling on a flowerbed.
- Finally, the title is, obviously, a play on “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, one of the most popular short stories in the English language, and which has been adapted and riffed on many billions of times.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is a guest at Dragon Con 2022 this weekend in Atlanta, where he’ll be doing panels, workshops, readings, autographings, and more. His incredibly crowded and insane full schedule can be found here.
This episode was okay. Personally, I found the Boimler story a lot more interesting than Mariner’s. I like Boimler’s decision to take chances. He’s right, it will be good for his career, though I agree with Tendi, it needs to be done in moderation.
Even though I knew the hunt would be non-fatal, I still found the “catch and release aspect” unique. Maybe K’ranch’s species started out like the Hirogen but they adapted to a catch & release system of hunting. Of course, now that I think about it, Boimler should’ve done his research–he had a whole hour. Either there’s no information on Kromsapoids or he was too frightened to look it up.
The best bit was Capt. Freeman calling for security when Boimler says he’s being hunted, then immediately belaying the order when she finds out K’ranchis the hunter.
The Mariner/Ransom story fell really flat for me. You have an engineering problem–you get engineers to fix it. But, no, Jack decides to use the mission to test Mariner. Granted, I’m sure it wasn’t a huge technical problem so he was confident he could do it but it still didn’t seem like a professional thing to do. It made him look stupid. That said, he did do a great job “parlaying” with the Dulainians. That goes to show, he needs to stick to what he’s good at–and engineering isn’t it.
As someone whose father ALWAYS likes to be early, my favorite line was Rutherford’s “I’ll just be regular early.” LOL.
So, two years ago Vendome was an ensign and now he’s CAPTAIN?? Boimler’s right–that’s pretty meteoric. Granted, the Inglewood is probably a California-class starship, so it doesn’t get the high priority missions, but you’d think they’d want someone with more experienced. That’s a pretty big rank jump. I think Vendome must have some friends in high places.
Lastly, I’m going to spend the rest of my days wondering about Captain Chapman. Were they able to change him back or does he have to grow up all over again? Now that I think about it, it may have been the whole senior staff of the Inglewood (since we know Starfleet likes to keep the command crew intact on California class ships) When we think about the dangers of Starfleet, we never think about being turned back into a baby.
When Hertzler came in for that audition for “Way of the Warrior” back in 1995, I wonder if he ever imagined he might still be playing Martok over 25 years later.
Having Hertzler back as the cycloptic Klingon’s always a pleasure.
I remember playing Armada II back in the day when, in the Klingon campaign, you could command the Negh’Var. Hertzler reprised the role of Martok — and every time the Negh’Var cloaked, Martok would start laughing manically. Always made me grin like a stupid idiot.
We had an old ST role playing game (I think you actually put in a videotape!) with Gowron as the host, along with a game board. Ah, I’m dating myself.
Another enjoyable episode. Liked the comment about nose ridges.
That Klingon board game gave me flashbacks to playing the “interactive” VCR game from the 90s with Not-Gowron barking at you every ten minutes. Ah wasted youth…
I’m saddened that Boimler/Tendi is a ship that will not sail. Even with Tendi right next to him in a towel, he’s completely uninterested. It’s interesting to note this is the second time in this season that Boimler is being written as having none of his earlier nerdy sex drive. The first time being ignoring all the Raisin GirlsTM.
I also feel bad for Boimler because he WAS a lieutenant junior grade.
But yes, if Boimler isn’t taking chances, he may end up like Captain Picard in “Tapestry.”
I actually had a copy of that VCR board game. Such an early-90s thing…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I often wish this show were just a little less broad and more plausible with its concepts, so it’d be easier to accept as part of the canonical Trek universe. The tropical natives sacrificing to a volcano god — let alone a “sentient volcano” existing at all — is just a little too over-the-top, as is the cavalier acceptance of a violent hunt taking place aboard the ship. Although I do like the idea of the tricameral system of weird alien gods providing checks and balances. Every good government needs checks and balances.
I’m torn on whether Ransom’s approach here was a good idea or a bad idea. On the one hand, yes, it makes more sense to give the engineering task to engineers and the diplomatic task to command officers. But on the other hand, it’s important to cross-train junior officers and challenge them to expand outside their comfort zones. I’d say Ransom just underestimated the seriousness of the diplomatic problem, and overestimated his own engineering prowess.
Calling space elevators “pulpy” seems off-base to me. While Tsiolkovsky had the idea in 1895, it was considered too impractical and wasn’t taken seriously until the 1960s, when the idea of an orbital tether replaced Tsiolkovsky’s unfeasible idea of a compression-based tower of the sort shown in this episode. Space elevators weren’t popularized in science fiction until long after the pulp era, with the near-simultaneous publications in 1979 of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise and Charles Sheffield’s The Web Between the Worlds.
@5/C.T. Phipps: “Even with Tendi right next to him in a towel, he’s completely uninterested. It’s interesting to note this is the second time in this season that Boimler is being written as having none of his earlier nerdy sex drive.”
I don’t think that’s it. I mean, we’ve seen that these ensigns shower together and sleep in adjacent bunks on a daily basis. By now, he’d be used to seeing Tendi in a towel and it’s a casual thing. Although I guess she’s not one of those Orion women who have irresistible pheromones like in ENT: “Bound,” or else Starfleet found an antidote for that at some point.
@6 / KRAD:
I actually had a copy of that VCR board game. Such an early-90s thing…..
Absolutely.
I remember having the Gargoyle Pilot VHS, which had its own similar interactive game on the second cassette.
I choose to believe that Martok actually did do this game as a favor to Quark.
Am I alone?
Random comments in no order: I had one of those VCR games but ours was a late 80s winter Olympic theme. Kind of glad that trend never modernized. Also Tendi in a towel on Boimlers bed gave a moment of will they/won’t they. I don’t know if it was intentional by the writers or not but I always like wrinkles to group dynamics.
Bigger point: once again I applaud the creators for coming up with a very interesting, low-stakes show. The galaxy wasn’t at risk, there were no big mysteries to solve, it was just fun dynamics. As much as I love Disco and SNW I think it’s Lower Decks that is the most fun/rewatchable of the current er
@9/CT Phipps
I didn’t but now that you mention it–I like the idea. I can hear Quark with this huge sales pitch and Martok grumbles “All right!”
#10
I dunno, now seems like a good time to modernize the VCR game concept. I mean now they could make it actually interactive, like we saw here with Martok.
I had that game too! Someone should dig it up and turn it into an app. It would be amazing.
I liked this episode, though I agree with CLB that it was a little bit too over the top to be considered as existing in the same universe as the live TV shows, though I generally don’t care about caononicity (is that a word?) that much.
Everyone’s talking about VCR board games. Did anyone else have those MysteryDisc interactive murder mystery games on laser disc, starring Paul Gleason as the detective? There were two of them in 1982-3, and the first one was the screen debut of Lea Thompson.
Wasn’t there a space elevator in one of the recent Star Trek movies?
@15/wiredog: There was Nero’s drill in ST ’09 — that’s probably what you’re thinking of.
Oh wait, how could I forget, there was an interactive game a few years ago similar to the old VCR games. It was called Erica. A friend of mine acted in it. I don’t think it had a board, though.
Less than Tendi in a towel, but it was Boimler hugging Tendi at the end that put that ship solidly in port for me, hoping it will launch.
Interactive videos are still a thing! There are a few on Netflix right now.
I was a bit disappointed that Martok AI didn’t order any of the players to “Experience biJ!”
@13 I have the game. Still sealed. My wife assures me the video portion is available on Youtube.
@5 The whole point of Boimler’s arc this episode is that he’s so focused on his plan that he’s missing opportunities. And two episodes in, I think that’s where they’re going with girls throwing themselves at him. Tendi, on the other hand, wasn’t throwing herself at him, but there was a casual familiarity there that could develop into something.
Christopher: I didn’t say that the concept of space elevators is pulpy, I said the term “space elevators” is pulpy, which is why Tuvok called it an “orbital tether” and Ransom called it an “orbital lift.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
IIRC Clarke used “orbital tower”. I don’t remember what Sheffield used (though IIRC they independently came up with “spider” for the service vehicles) I think Heinlein used “beanstalk” in Friday, while David Brin used “needle”.
@20/lerris: I don’t see Tendi’s casual nudity here as being narratively directed toward her relationship with Boimler; it’s just a reflection of the general ensigns’ culture the show has established. We’ve already seen the whole group showering together, casual about their mutual nudity. The implication is that 24th-century Federation society is past its nudity taboos, or at least doesn’t see nudity as automatically sexual the way Americans tend to.
@21/krad: I know you were referring to the term, but that’s my point — the term was never used in the pulps, so it seems odd to describe it as “pulpy.” If anything, I think a pulp-era term for the concept would’ve been more contrived and ornate, like “Orbitalifter” or “Exo-Ascender” or “Strato-Hoist.” “Space elevator” is far too mundanely descriptive to be pulpy.
Heck, you know what the pulpiest term ever coined for a sci-fi elevator was? “Turbolift.” We take it for granted, but if you step back and look at the word, it’s immensely corny. So I question the idea that any term is “too pulpy” for Star Trek.
@22/mschiffe: Clarke used both terms interchangeably in The Fountains of Paradise. The general concept was called a Space Elevator (capitalized), but Vannevar Morgan preferred the term “Orbital Tower.” Other characters called it a Space Elevator at first, but over time, they came around to using Morgan’s term.
What’s the deal with the white slugs all over Ransom’s bare chest? I suppose they’re meant to indicate that his physique is glistening, but they don’t move and have a tactile look, as if he’s ridden with shiny leeches.
It occurs to me that “Bat’leths and Bihnuchs” was probably also riffing on the CD ROM game Star Trek: Klingon, and the weirdness of its framing story about a low-ranking Starfleet Officer going off to cosplay a Klingon on the holodeck with a representation of the real-life Klingon Chancellor growling about what a petaQ he is.
@23 I’m reading more into the way Tendi touched Boimler’s foot ( before he recoiled ). than in the fact she was walking around in a towel. And while it’s not real body language, someone animated it on purpose, and fits patterns I’ve seen IRL. Boimler’s recoil can be read as a reaction to thinking he’s touching his shipmate inappropriately. But Tendi clearly cares about Boimler, and that may just be friendship from someone who grew up in a touchy-feely culture.
@9, @11. If anything, Martok might have volunteered for this.
We know that Klingons revere storytelling and storytellers (Dahar masters), and that they love gaming (seen in Discovery), and it’s not hard to imagine (as the novels do) that running the Klingon Empire is like herding wet grishnar cats. Martok would probably jump at the chance to have some fun.
Brilliant callback to Captain Kavok of the old VCR board game from the 1990s!
Tell me if I’m just going crazy, but wasn’t the speech Ransom gave to save the day (“though we may come from different worlds . . .”) a callback to the episode where he and Mariner get imprisoned back in S1? That made me crack up quite a bit.
@29/Charlie Latkowski – I think that Ransom just has a stump speech memorized for all occasions where he needs to talk down aggrieved locals.
“Who is the highest ranking starfleet officer? That player, is trapped in a stasis field.”
That board game ruled! Also, I would very much like a Terrified Boimler sound bank app.
@CLB/23: I have from time to time thought on the word “turbolift”, and you’re right: it’s super corny. It only works because we’ve just gotten used to it over that past 56 years.
And I’m back! This is the first episode I’ve commented on since the end of season one, and I’m truly impressed with how far this show has come since then. I (and my wife!) have genuine laugh-out-loud moments watching this show. These ensigns are people I genuinely care about, including Mariner.
“Though he does have notes …”
Director’s notes?
“Mr. Boimler, your screams of terror need to be more restrained. You’re overacting.”
“Overacting? You chase me, growling, with that thing and you say _I’m_ overacting?”
I’m not going to lie, the major talking point of this episode might have to be my view of Tendi going from a brotherly “awww, Tendi!” to “Oh, Tendi” – I already liked the lady, but I might now be condemned to be hopelessly in love with her for the rest of time.
On a less infatuated note, it struck me just today that we now have the explanation for Ensign Booklet’s tunnel vision in the face of some serious vineyard flirting – sharing a barracks with Tendi means he’s already been blinded with splendour and messing with (and being messed with) by Ensign Mariner probably makes him immune to all lesser distractions for life (no matter how pleasantly diverting).
Poor Bradward never stood a chance! (It might be amusing to show his ‘teleport twin’ coming back to Cerritos and having the most embarrassing realisation that Mariner and/or Tendi is HOT: I’m also tempted by the mental image of Mariner cuttings quite a swathe at the Casa de Boimler when she has a chance to appreciate the local talent without her mother’s court case as a pressing distraction).
Also, this episode was an absolute HOOT – I was especially amused when my suspicions that our planet of the week could actually have a whole pantheon of local demigods was actually confirmed – with a special shout out to Martok the Gamesmaster, Commander Ransom making quite the meal out of an apparently simple mission, the friendliest possible variation on The Most Dangerous Game and the very thought of the late Chancellor Gowron as a GM.*
Let’s hope our heroes and their creators keep up the good work throughout the rest of this season!
*Just imagine the fun even a digital echo of the old schemer would have being handed the Golden Opportunity to lead a flock of innocents around by the nose with (Carte Blanche to practice every dirty, sneaking trick his imagination could supply) … now imagine how ANGRY a gamesmaster based on Mr Worf would be, having to endure the goofiness & cheerfully irreverent attitude to The Rules that can be observed in any tableful of PCs!
And Lower Decks is still on a roll. This show really excels at coming up with these character-based episodic adventures like no other Trek show in recent memory. Somehow, they still manage to surprise me coming up with new ways to push both Boimler and Mariner to their limits.
We’ve seen Mariner and Ransom sniping each other before, but we’ve never seen a situation where Mariner has to roll back her own destructive impulses for her career’s sake. Skydiving and climbing the ‘elevator’ back up was a hoot.
And then there’s new bold Boimler. Of course him saying yes to everything was going to put him in that kind of situation. Loved the hunt. And I like this Boimler/Tendi pairing. It partly reminds me of Jadzia Dax always trying to get Worf to unwind generating some fun tension and comedy (minus that ‘one’ dreadful DS9 episode everyone knows).
Actually, I’m hoping we get to spend some time with William Boimler this season. There’s some untapped potential with the transporter clone still worth exploring.
#1
Maybe you don’t. One of the Star Trek-themed “Which Way” Choose Your Own Adventure-style books (while we’re on the topic of Star Trek themed entertainment of the 80s) had the entire crew get turned into babies in one of the “bad endings,” and the illustration for that particular bad ending is permanently etched on my brain from having been utterly terrified by it as a kid.