The third season of Lower Decks has continued the good work the second season started in correcting many of the issues the first season had, and doing interesting things with the characters. Mariner and Rutherford in particular have strong narrative arcs that develop their characters nicely, while Boimler and Tendi do more to channel their inner badasses.
Plus there are a lot more direct ties to other Trek series, with some wonderful guest voices.
Having done the good, the bad, and the ugly for the hit-and-miss season one, and the good, the bad, and the awesome for the much better season two, this time around we’re going with the good, the bad, and the interesting, as this season more than the other two has some food for thought…
The Good
In general, there was a fun use of past Trek characters. Having had Q and Borg Queen cameos, guest appearances by Riker, Troi, Paris, and Gomez, they went whole hog this season, with appearances by versions of Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell), Leah Brahms (Susan Gibney), Chancellor Martok (J.G. Hertzler), and Captain Sulu (George Takei), quick visual cameos by Captain Morgan Bateson and Tuvok of Vulcan, and guest appearances by Colonel Kira (Nana Visitor) and Quark (Armin Shimerman).
Those last two are a big part of my favorite episode of the season, and one of the best, “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” which is totally a love letter to DS9 but also a good story, one that makes use of the Karemma from that show and gives us a hint of what life is like in the Bajoran system six years after the Dominion War.
We get an actual character arc for Mariner this season, starting in “Grounded” with her stubborn insistence on trying to be the prototypical action movie hero who bucks the system and gets shit done in order to save her mother from being convicted of a crime she didn’t commit—which proves utterly unnecessary, because Freeman is, instead, exonerated by the system actually working. Mariner then spends a lot of the season being supervised by Ransom, which does actually do her some good. But then when Cerritos is the subject of a journalistic hatchet job by FNN in “Trusted Sources,” Mariner is blamed, even though it turns out she was the only one who said nice things about the ship. She quits, she realizes that playing Indiana Jones to Petra Aberdeen’s Lara Croft isn’t for her, and she rejoins the Cerritos crew, hopefully a better person, in “The Stars at Night.” This is exactly the kind of character growth that Mariner needed in order to continue to be a viable character, because first-season Mariner was too much of a fuckup to be able to last on a Starfleet ship, even one as goofy as this…
In addition, we get some wonderful stuff with Rutherford. The hints dropped back in “First First Contact” are all resolved, as we find out why Rutherford really got his cybernetic implants, and why his memories were altered. Plus, we find out what Rutherford was like before the accident—basically, he was a self-centered asshole—and he’s much better now as the lovable dork we’ve come to know and love, even if it happened for a terrible reason.
Tendi starts her training to become a bridge officer, and also gets to show off her badassery again, while Boimler also embraces the greater confidence he’s gotten over the course of the series to become “Bold Boimler” who does the crazy-ass shit. Sometimes this backfires—like when he loses his shit at a recruitment fair—but sometimes it’s useful—like when he makes the bridge crew realize that Shaxs’ repeated desire to eject the warp core will actually work this time. But either way, watching Boimler’s growth has been fabulous.
Bozeman, Montana being a First Contact theme park was just epic. So were the Klingon Klowns. So is the developing relationship between Shaxs and T’Ana.
The Bad
NOT ENOUGH KIMOLU AND MATT! Seriously, they’re, like, the best characters ever, and they only got two quick cameos. Feh.
Now that I’ve had a week to think about it, I find that I don’t like the LD version of the Evil Admiral Cliché. Having Buenamigo manipulate the Cerritos into failure—first at Deep Space 9, then at Ornara and Brekka—was fine, but it’s when he turned homicidal that I started to have issues. The only other evil admiral who’d actually tried to destroy a Starfleet vessel was Leyton on DS9, and he had the excuse of the Federation being on the brink of war. In general, most of the evil admirals have had their motives in the right place. Buenamigo just wanted to get noticed more, and that level of selfishness just didn’t fly for me given the extremity of his actions.
Speaking of poor behavior, there’s the sniping between Freeman and Captain Maier of the Carlsbad in “Mining the Mind’s Mines,” which didn’t work for me at all. As I’ve said, y’know, a lot, this show works so much better when it’s a humorous Trek show, not a twenty-first-century sitcom sledgehammered into Trek. The immature sniping we saw between the two captains was a sitcom plot, and the show is better serviced by doing funny Trek plots.
The journalist we met in “Trusted Sources” is the worst cliché of a contemporary television journalist, and ruins what should’ve been an important episode for the Cerritos crew in general and the characters of Freeman and Mariner in particular. She manipulates the facts, she comes across immediately as a ditz, and her story is slanted. (It doesn’t help that the franchise has a pretty crappy history with portraying journalists in general, as we got this same lazy storytelling in Generations and Picard.)
The cabin lottery rigging race between Beta and Delta shifts in “Room for Growth” was pretty much wrong on every level.
Kayshon has been speaking in Tamarian metaphor a bit more, but mostly this character has continued to be a wasted opportunity.
NOT ENOUGH KIMOULU AND MATT! Did I mention that already?
The Interesting
While I don’t think the episode as presented was entirely successful, I admire the fact that LD was willing to break the format up a bit and give us an entire episode centered on Kether Donohue’s Peanut Hamper. And the reasons why the episode didn’t work weren’t because the show broke format. I’d love to see more storytelling risks being taken.
On the one hand, I’m glad they haven’t just forgotten about Boimler’s transporter twin on the Titan. On the other hand, he’s apparently joining Section 31, which means that the worst, most contemptible, most un-Trek-like thing to be created in the Trek universe has now shown up in four different series (as well as one movie), and I’m really tired of it and want it to go away. But I’m also willing to give LD the benefit of the doubt, because if any show will portray 31 as garbage, it might be this one…
One of the dichotomies this show has had to face is the desire for a big-ass climax to end the season, which is at odds with its mandate as the show that focuses on the belowdecks personnel. “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption” and “The Stars at Night” contrived to put Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford on the bridge because that’s where the action is, and yet it contravenes the whole point of the show to have them regularly having bridge duty. “Grounded” did a much better job of this, having Mariner and the gang doing their thing while the good stuff all happens off-camera.
I almost put this part in the “bad” section, but I’m taking a wait-and-see approach: I was really looking forward to seeing the relationship between Mariner and Jennifer develop, and it, well didn’t. There was anxiety in “Mining the Mind’s Mines,” there was bonding over tormenting her pretentious friends in “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” and then Jennifer took everyone’s side against Mariner in “Trusted Sources,” and then it wasn’t resolved at all in “The Stars at Night.” I’m hoping we see more of these two crazy kids in season four, and see what impact Jennifer’s willingness to believe the worst of Mariner has (if any—after all, Mariner’s own mother and best friends also believed the worst, and Mariner forgave them…). If we don’t, then it was a totally botched storyline.
The series has settled down into a fun show. The characters have actually been progressing, which is great to see, and they only occasionally devolve into dumb stuff. I have become invested in everyone on board—not just our four main characters, but even the bridge crew, all of whom have become more interesting and complex as the show goes on. This is turning into a, like, real Star Trek show and stuff!
And there’s lots of stuff set up for next season, from Boimler’s twin joining Section 31 to the potential evil-AI team-up between AGIMUS and Peanut Hamper to whatever that was with Badgey in the post-credits scene of “The Stars at Night.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido is going to be writing one of the four novellas in Sherlock Holmes: Cases by Candlelight Volume 2, which will be released next summer. The other contributors include fellow Trek scribes Michael Jan Friedman and Aaron Rosenberg, as well as renowned Holmes scribe Christopher D. Abbott. Here’s a preorder link for the Kindle edition.
Wonderful overview, @krad and agrees with a lot of my own views on the subject (for anyone interested).
I have no issues with Section 31 but it seems every Trek writer, show or Expanded Universe, has a different idea about what it’s supposed to be. The idea it’s a paramilitary militia like Mass Effect Cerberus, SPECTRE, or so on makes perfect sense. The idea it’s an all powerful conspiracy within the Federation or actually a legitimate intelligence organization does not. I also feel like someone needs to remind whoever does them that they are 1:] Bad Guys. 2:] Understandable bad guys. Sloane and Bad Boimler now I suppose have the same issues where you have with Admiral Goodfriend. S31 making a genocide wepaon against the Founders=Fine. S31’s actions? Should result in everything getting much worse.
Ehhh, I’m going to disagree with you here. I think the subversiveness of it actually benefited from the show’s portrayal. All we knew of Jennifer from before the show was that she was with the snooty elitist Red Squad-esque Redshirts, that Mariner thought she was a jerk, and that she liked yoga. As we find out, later, Jennifer turns out to be a snooty elitist jerk and enjoys seeing her friends phasered. The show did a pretty good job of making it clear why the two didn’t work and that they weren’t going to develop further but it was on Jennifer rather than Mariner.
It’s a queer relationship that gets to begin, run into trouble, and end for entirely “normal” reasons. Though I hope it’s not Mariner’s last on the show.
I also feel like your review is lacking comments on “CRISIS POINT II” with its Sulu cameo as well as the horsey biting him. I think the Kitty Hawk reveal is one of the funniest things in Star Trek period too.
I didn’t love it quite as much as the second season (mostly because I didn’t think that any of the episodes were quite as good as “wej Duj”), but I’d have to say that Lower Decks is my favourite of the new series and this season helps to cement it there in my mind. I love the characters and the fact that even complete background players seem to have lives of their own. It gives the Cerritos a feeling of being a real place.
One more for the “interesting” column: adding T’Lynn on as Tendi’s study budy in the last few minutes of “The Stars at Night.” With the exception of Saru, the new series haven’t really had “outsider” characters in the same way as older series, and I look forward to seeing this play out.
jaimebabb: Saru’s not the only exception, as Strange New Worlds also has an “outsider” character. The fact that it’s the same outsider character that the original series had doesn’t change that. *wry grin*
Also, all the characters in Prodigy are “outsider” characters, as that’s the whole point of the series. Though I suppose, given that, you could argue that the Janeway hologram, as the closest they have to a human, counts as the “outsider” character……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Exceedingly minor point, but I really wish they’d cut out of the opening credits the sequence where the Cerritos turns-tail and runs from a battle between the Federation and Klingon starships, a Borg cube, and the Crystal Entity (plus a few more, I guess). I get the joke but given the tone of series and the nature of the characters, it’s not really reflective of the show as a whole.
I agree that getting the Cerritos involved in big crises, conspiracies, and such does kind of undermine the show’s mission statement. I mean, yeah, the big finale arc here was more about admirals’ internal rivalries than anything else, but it still ended up being a pretty big catastrophe.
I’m surprised they set up the Section 31 and Peanut Hamper/AGIMUS threads without paying them off this season. They like playing the long game.
@1/C.T. Phipps: “It’s a queer relationship that gets to begin, run into trouble, and end for entirely “normal” reasons. Though I hope it’s not Mariner’s last on the show.”
It seemed likely to me that Mariner and Petra Aberdeen were doing more together off-camera than just chasing artifacts…
I seem to recall a post by you on the idea of whether or not the Enterprise is exceptionally unique in all its crazy and wacky adventures versus other starships. For me, I have always preferred the idea that EVERY ship in Starfleet gets up to all manner of crazy hijinks. I don’t think the show would be nearly as entertaining if not for the fact our heroes are always neck deep in Star Trek wackiness.
Which is better than “and we clean the power conduits this week while the Bridge Crew have all manner of fun weirdness.”
Agreed.
@6/C.T. Phipps: But there I was talking about ships of a particular type, e.g. capital ships like the Enterprise. They all have the same kind of mission profile, so it stands to reason that they’d encounter the same kinds of situations with the same kinds of stakes. But the whole point of LD is that the Cerritos is a support ship that does the smaller missions, the followups and cleanups and unglamorous working-stiff jobs. It doesn’t stand to reason that ship classes with different mission profiles would have exactly the same homogeneous kinds of experiences.
Anyway, weird stuff does happen to the Cerritos all the time. But it’s weird stuff that’s commensurate with their type of mission profile, like cleaning up the illusion-creating orbs or getting roped into a ritual hunt. I’m not objecting to that, and neither is Keith. The issue is when the stories cross over into the kind of large-scale crises and dangers that the other series would deal with, like a planet blowing up, a Section 31 conspiracy, or a fleet of robot ships going rogue and attacking a starbase.
This is what my friends and I have been saying over and over again for the last week. As a LGBT Trek fan that kinda hurts, but as a mlm it wouldn’t hurt me as bad as it would wlw fans. Yes we have Raffi and Seven in Picard but this felt even more special. This one involved the central protagonist and wasn’t pushed to the background or just not allowed to happen (looking at you, DS9.) So seeing a LGBT relationship at the front and center was great. Unfortunately when I watched the finale, I turned to my husband and said “Trek is gonna Trek I bet.”
Frankly I still think everyone is being too hard on Jen.
A friend of mine made the observation that the interviewees said they didn’t like writing romance and that they’d included Jennifer because she was so popular but there was never a chance she’d be elevated to main cast status because they don’t fit the stories they want to tell. So she was never going to be an EndgameTM for Mariner. In which case, I suppose the best thing is that they pull the bandaid quickly rather than let the fans get too attached.
I hope they compensate by having Jennifer continue to show up and maybe end up with Ensign Barnes.
I can understand that, looking at how long Brinson and Boimler lasted. I’m also addressing how the fans are treating her for the writing doing that to the relationship. Quite frankly it’s unfair because these characters, like people, are never perfect and will have bad traits because they are, after all, people too. If we can show Captain Freeman compassion for the way she reacted in “Trusted Sources”, we can do the same for Jen.
My personal favorite was the fabulous Romulan triplets – yes, yes, they are in-universe fictional characters, but they were awesome.
For some reason, I liked the first half a lot more than the second. I loved eps 1 – 5 but was let down by the DS9 ep (probably because I set my expectations too high) and the finale I had issues with as well.
Regarding the evil admiral trope–Keith, I had the opposite reaction that you did. I had an issue with his motivation when I first watched, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Originally, he does say his motivation is that he hit a wall as an admiral. However, we know from the flashback that he started the Texas class program (and had Rutherford’s memories erased) back when he was a Lt. Commander. So, I think his need to make a name for himself carried through his entire career. It’s not like he just became shady as an admiral; he was always shady.
His willingness to destroy the Cerritos makes more sense too because after ten years, he’s so close to fulfilling his dream. By this point, his ambition has run rampant and he’s desperate.
My biggest complaint is Paramount+ keeping the SKIP INTRO button onscreen through the entire opening credits. I hope that ‘feature’ goes away by the time Strange New Worlds comes back, because there’s a reason I never skip that intro!
Interesting. I watch P+ through my phone, casting it to my ChromeCast, and I don’t even get a “skip intro” button. There are so many different ways of watching these services — through a Blu-Ray player, through a SmartTV, through your computer, through your phone, through your tablet — and each method has slightly different features and methods of doing things….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@14/krad: “casting it to my ChromeCast”
I have no idea what that means.
Christopher: A ChromeCast is a device created by the fine feathered finks at Google. You attach it to one of your HDMI ports in your TV. Then, when you play something on a device — phone, computer, tablet — if you’re in range of the ChromeCast, there’s an icon you can touch that will play that on your TV instead of on that device. Kind of the same way bluetooth works. When we dropped cable and switched entirely to streaming services, we got the ChromeCast (as well as an Amazon FireStick, which works differently).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@16/krad: Ah. I wish I could afford to get a new TV. Mine is a 19-year-old CRT set that only has coaxial and RCA-jack inputs. Since I don’t have cable anymore, I can only use it to watch DVDs (or occasional VHS tapes). I normally watch TV on my desktop monitor.
Another rock-solid consistent season done. Some great character evolution with Mariner, some great Bold Boimler moments, a superb DS9 love letter, a long-term answer to Rutherford’s implant, and enough threads left for next year.
I’m now wondering just how much juice Lower Decks still has. How long can they keep up with this level of quality and originality? Looking back on Trek as a whole, it’s clear these shows have expiration dates. TNG set the bar at 7 seasons, and it became clear that during season 7 the show was already at a point where it seemed to be running out of steam. Of course, that was a show with 26 episode seasons. LD presumably could run longer with these smaller seasons. It’s hard to gauge just how long this type of animated show could last. McMahan’s last show, Rick and Morty, is still going strong. Futurama just got renewed for an 8th season. And let’s not talk about a certain yellow skinned family, going well past the number 30.
@13/Zodda @14/Krad @15/Christopher: The skip intro message usually disappears after a few seconds on my 55 inch Samsung display, as far as I can tell – I believe that can be changed on the service’s settings (I just got a fresh QLED 4K model). Personally, I’ve never had a particularly good experience with ChromeCast. The connection was always iffy.
I haven’t dropped cable entirely, but it’s a possibility, given that I subscribe to pretty much almost every streaming service there is. My only complaint with Paramount+ is that at least here in Latin America, they don’t have the new 4K director’s version of ST: The Motion Picture. And for whatever reason, the current Trek shows aren’t presented with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, only regular stereo (even though Handmaid’s Tale is part of the Paramount + library, and gets 5.1 sound).
Also, I did my Paramount+ subscription as part of my Amazon Prime subscription, getting a better deal overall.
It looks like I’m getting 5.1 from Paramount+ via Amazon as a Prime Video channel.
https://help.paramountplus.com/s/article/PD-Is-Paramount-available-as-a-channel-on-Prime-Video
Here in Canada it’s just on regular cable TV — I don’t get a ‘skip intro’ button but I usually PVR it so I could hypothetically fast forward the credits if I wanted to. (I do get commercials though.)
Good review and I mostly agree with the points (I might not hate Section 31 quite as much as KRAD, but it’s close). Can’t wait for Season 4.
I am not the underserved audience for the Mariner-Jen relationship but personally I’d like to see Mariner do better anyway. I don’t love the media “this person hangs out with jerks but OMG turns out THEY’RE not a jerk!” thing in general. I like it even less how they’ve handled it with Jen by having her… like to see all her friends tormented for their shitty behavior?
Aside from the basic “what sort of person is even like that” question, it also gives their relationship a real “I’m just dating this person to get back at my parents” sort of vibe. Someone who can push back on Mariner’s big personality might preclude her being with someone who’s a Tendi style of nice, but I found this construction made it hard to like Jen at all.
This season wasn’t as good as the previous one, which had two straight-up classics in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” and “wej Duj,” but it was still quite a bit better than the first, with over half of its episodes being at least very good. It did a great job developing its regulars, but I repeatedly came away from episodes (especially the last one) thinking they could have been terrific if the people writing the show had put as much thought into the stories as they did into the characters.