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“This is feeling pretty ensign-y” — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “In the Cradle of Vexilon”

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“This is feeling pretty ensign-y” — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “In the Cradle of Vexilon”

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“This is feeling pretty ensign-y” — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “In the Cradle of Vexilon”

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Published on September 14, 2023

Image: CBS / Paramount+
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Image: CBS / Paramount+

One of the truisms of Star Trek is that oftentimes promotions aren’t as meaningful as they should be. There have been several occasions where someone was advanced (or, in one case, reduced) in rank and their responsibilities haven’t changed a lick. Spock went from a lieutenant commander to a commander on the original series. Sulu, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov all got promoted throughout the movie series, yet kept winding up back at the same position they were in as lower ranks; ditto for the bridge crew of Discovery after jumping to the thirty-second century. Worf and Bashir got promoted from lieutenant junior-grade to lieutenant and La Forge, Dax, and Tuvok got promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant commander with no change in duties. Sisko went from commander to captain (though that was more of a course correction) but was still the same guy in charge. Paris went from lieutenant to ensign and back to lieutenant with absolutely no change.

This week’s Lower Decks shines a light on that to some degree.

The Cerritos is assigned to a giant ring with a biosphere on it that was built by a long-gone civilization and abandoned. It’s surrounding a sun, and it was colonized by the Corazonians. It’s run by an ancient computer called Vexilon. Everyone goes out of their way to make it clear that Vexilon is not, repeat not, that old Trek standby of an evil world-running computer that dominates the society. Vexilon is a pleasant world-running computer, eager to please, and perhaps a tad neurotic, though the latter is primarily due to it not functioning right.

Which is half of why the Cerritos is there: to try to figure out what’s wrong. It’s nothing major thus far, just some weather anomalies. Freeman, who minored in archaic computer systems at the Academy, tackles that.

Boimler, meanwhile, gets to do one thing that absolutely is a consequence of being promoted, but one rarely seen on Trek due to the people in the opening credits tending to do all the work: being put in charge of teams. (Though TNG did a nice job with this particular learning experience in “Pen Pals.”) He leads a team that also includes T’Lyn, Merp, Taylor, and Meredith. And, because Boimler is the king of self-sabotage, he screws it up. He insists on doing everything himself, leaving the others to sit around with their thumbs in their ears.

T’Lyn assumes it’s because he wants to keep the team safe—the job they’re doing is dismantling an outdated power station by carefully removing its explosively volatile parts, a job made more complicated by Vexilon’s malfunctions. But it’s more fundamental than that: Boimler was just an ensign last week. Now he’s ordering around people who were his peers a few days ago and he doesn’t feel worthy.

Image: CBS / Paramount+

After T’Lyn gives him a kick in the ass, he finally lets Taylor, Meredith, and Merp help out.

Which is good, as Corazonia is falling to pieces. This part of the plot will be very familiar to anyone who owns a computer (which is probably all of you). Vexilon hasn’t installed an update in millennia. The Corazonians—who are artists and philosophers, mostly—have no idea how to do maintenance on Vexilon.

And, as anyone who’s installed a Windows update that made everything worse has experienced, Freeman’s attempt to install the latest update goes horribly horribly wrong. Eventually she’s able to figure out a way to get it restarted properly without it reverting to factory specs—which would include getting rid of the entire biosphere. However, it requires that they transfer Vexilon to the very power station that Boimler is dismantling and, indeed, had almost finished dismantling. Oops.

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They get it back together, and Freeman is able to save the day, with Boimler learning a valuable lesson.

The B-plot back on the Cerritos is a bit more of an issue for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very cleverly written, and a sitcommy plot that actually works (not always the case on this show). But it pulls a fast one at the end that is nicely done, but which ends up in a place I’m not happy about.

Okay, so this is where the lack of consequences to promotion gets play. Lieutenant Dirk assigns them to find the one isolinear chip out of millions that is malfunctioning. It’s another mindless, repetitive task that is just like what they did as ensigns.

And here’s where it starts to get interesting. Tendi starts to wonder if this is a hazing, a notion Mariner latches onto. Rutherford, bless his pointy little head, doesn’t even know what hazing is, which actually makes sense. It’s a pretty nasty practice, and as someone who spent a decent chunk of his early adolescent as a target for assholes (being a nerd wasn’t actually cool in the 1980s), I like the idea of a future where the practice has gone out of favor.

But Mariner and Tendi talk Rutherford into the notion that this mindless, repetitive, endless task (which includes occasionally being in a room filled with nitrogen coolant) is a hazing by the lieutenant of the newly promoted folks. And so they contrive a practical joke right back at Dirk by setting up a Wadi Chula game (the same one Sisko, Kira, Dax, and Bashir got stuck in in DS9’s “Move Along Home”) in his quarters, setting it up in a way that will get him stuck in it with a malfunctioning Betazoid greeting box (like the one seen in TNG’s “Haven”).

Image: CBS / Paramount+

Only after that does Dirk reveal (a) how important the task is and (b) why he fobbed it off on four junior-grade lieutenants. He was stuck in a Chula game when he was a child and couldn’t get out for a month. Mariner distracts Dirk by letting him go on (and on) about Tellarite slop jazz while Tendi goes to finish checking the chips and Rutherford dismantles the prank.

The latter is especially hilarious because Rutherford accidentally trips the prank and has to go through the entire Chula game. But because Rutherford is awesome, he zips through in no time flat.

And then the cherry on top of all this? In the bar, our heroes are toasting their success and lamenting their silly notion that Starfleet officers would do this kind of hazing. Then we cut to across the room where Dirk and Ransom are toasting their successful hazing of the lieutenants, the entire Chula game story being bullshit on Dirk’s part to mess with the lieutenants’ heads.

Sigh. I mean, it’s a clever double-reverse, and it works as a piece of writing and as comedy. But it doesn’t work as Star Trek. And honestly, the story was still funny and clever without that final reveal.

It’s especially frustrating because they’ve done such a good job with making Ransom a more interesting character. There’s a hilarious bit early in the episode when the Corazonians are explaining how traumatic the malfunctions are to Freeman and Ransom, by pointing out that her sculptures have been poor. Ransom agrees, criticizing the form, only to be told that no, those are the good ones, the ones over here (which look exactly the same) are the poor ones. Ransom sighs and says they’re still pretty amateurish. It’s delightful.

And then in the end, he and Dirk are doing the twenty-first-century office dudebro thing congratulating each other on their hazing of the junior-grade lieutenants, and it just makes my teeth hurt. Maybe I’m just a humorless nerd, but I just thought that spoiled the whole thing.

Others will probably disagree, though. That’s the joy of the subjectivity of humor. And it wasn’t enough to ruin the whole episode, especially since the sitcom contrivances of reversing the prank before Dirk found out was actually funny. (I also now really want to hear some Tellarite slop jazz….) And it was also a really good episode for Boimler’s development, with bonus deadpan brilliance from T’Lyn. (“Ah. It is a volcano.”)

Image: CBS / Paramount+

Random thoughts

  • Your humble reviewer actually did a more serious treatment of this same notion twenty-three years ago: a world-running computer malfunctioning, but said computer was benevolent and its being dismantled was a bad thing. It was the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Fatal Error, and in that case the computer, Ganitriul, was sabotaged by terrorists.
  • Taylor is a Kzinti. It’s yet another alien given a generic American white-person name. It was cute the first time, but it’s grown tiresome and lazy. At the very least, we should see it in reverse at some point—give a human an obviously Klingon or Vulcan or Andorian name or something…
  • One of the perks of not being ensigns anymore is that our heroes are allowed in Anomaly Storage. Besides the Chula game and the greeting box, we also see a robot that looks a lot like Nomad from the original series’ “The Changeling,” and two weapons: a Vulcan lirpa (from the original series’ “Amok Time”) and a bat’leth (introduced in TNG’s “Reunion” and seen billions of times since).
  • Billups has a ferret named Lancelot. It escapes, and keeps turning up in various parts of the ship. This doesn’t really go anywhere, but I just love that Billups has a ferret…

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Keith R.A. DeCandido has a story in the newly released eighth issue of Star Trek Explorer magazine, “The Kellidian Kidnapping,” a Voyager tale that dramatizes an adventure alluded to in the series finale “Endgame.” There’s also a DS9 story by David Mack, “Lost and Founder.” You can find it at bookstores and comic shops, or order directly from Titan.

About the Author

Keith R.A. DeCandido

Author

Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing about popular culture for this site since 2011, primarily but not exclusively writing about Star Trek and screen adaptations of superhero comics. He is also the author of more than 60 novels, more than 100 short stories, and more than 70 comic books, both in a variety of licensed universes from Alien to Zorro, as well as in worlds of his own creation, most notably the new Supernatural Crimes Unit series debuting in the fall of 2025. Read his blog, or follow him all over the Internet: Facebook, The Site Formerly Known As Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, YouTube, Patreon, and TikTok.
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Mary
1 year ago

Wow, they went all out on the absurdity here.

I feel bad for Boimler. He’s really getting in his own way. Hopefully, he’ll continue to learn and grow . I could’ve done without the near death experience. it just seemed a step too far for the episode.

T’lyn was excellent here! She was the steady head that Boimler needed.

Speaking of getting in one’s own way—why Carol felt the need to upgrade the machine herself when she has capable engineers, I have no idea. The destruction that she caused because of her own arrogance–it was just totally uncalled for and, as much as I like her, worthy of a reprimand.

The stuff on the ship, I found really fun. Me, I love the moment when we found out that they were being hazed all along! “New Lt.’s give me life.” 

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1 year ago

re: Hazing around promotions doesn’t work as Star Trek…

Star Trek: Generations, Worf’s promotion ceremony. “Computer, remove the plank!”

You could argue that’s more of a prank than hazing, but I feel like the spirit was the same – “Harmless” fun at the expense of the person who just got promoted.

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1 year ago

My favourite joke in the entire episode was when Billups beamed down to Vexilon’s control room and asked “wow, what is this? Unitronic?” It sounded like the exact kind of pun that a 24th century engineer would say; just the exact right combination of Star Trek deep cut (23rd century computers were duotronic) and standard STEM humour.

Also I’m loving the addition of T’Lyn to the mix! I feel like she’s the “straight man” to everyone else’s wackiness that this series has honestly needed. Plus, her line about how everything that has ever happened is “science stuff” is right up there with the kind of pithy logical observation that Spock would make.

Finally, isn’t this technically the third time that Boimler has been clinically dead? It just felt weird having Ransom call it his first time this time around.

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Tom
1 year ago

There was also the Sargon Orb Prop in it’s Cloaking Device form from ‘The Enterprise Incident’ on a high shelf when they get called to the Isolinear Chip Room.

I keep trying to place the four-sided diamond thingamabob that Rutherford used as a counterweight it looked like in his Chula Trap – it could’ve been a Vinculuum but without the green crystalline elements, but I’m not sure!

A fun episode though, albeit another one to add to the Category of ‘First Officer doesn’t do much’ – like with Number One in SNW, (and Chakotay on VOY) the writers seem to have problems in some episodes when the First Officer isn’t doubling up as some other role (i.e. Spock as Science or Riker as Picard’s Action Man) – is it me or do they always seem to focus on either the Captain or the First Officer but seldom both in the same episode having the same amount of involvement? (And I realise that’s not really surprising on a show that focusses on the Lower Decks but still…)

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Chase
1 year ago

The funny thing about Dirk’s lie is that it should have been blatantly obvious to the lieutenants that it was a lie as soon as he said it. The Wadi are a Gamma Quadrant species that only made contact with the Federation 12 years before this episode. Dirk has to be in his late 20s at the youngest, so the idea that he got trapped in a Wadi game when he was child can’t possibly be true.

Ransom’s definitely being depicted as a more three-dimensional person these days, but he’s still the same guy at heart. A fairly harmless prank on new lieutenants seems exactly like something he would do.

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

I liked the ring-habitat plot — nice to see a solid science fiction idea like that show up in Trek, which is usually way too planetbound. A good use of the potential of animation to go farther than live action easily can. There’s no way it was big enough to surround a sun, though; it’s hardly a Ringworld, more like a Bishop Ring or a small Banks Orbital. If there was a “sun” in the center, it would’ve been tiny and artificial.

I liked that Boimler’s panic at learning of the danger didn’t provoke him to run away, but to take all the risk onto himself because he feared the responsibility of putting others in danger. Also interesting that the power reactors were modeled on NX-01’s warp core, suggesting that first contact happened in the 22nd century.

I didn’t like the “Anomaly Room” plot, which relied far too heavily on familiar references. Why would all those particular items have been on the Cerritos? And why would a Chula game or a Betazoid gift box even count as an anomaly? They’re routine items in their respective cultures — it’s pretty damn ethnocentric to define them as anomalous, especially the Betazoid one.

 

@4/Tom: “I keep trying to place the four-sided diamond thingamabob that Rutherford used as a counterweight”

I think it was a variant of the Kataan probe from “The Inner Light.” Hence the gag at the end where it zapped the Betazoid gift box and it got a lifetime of memories in an instant.

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1 year ago

 
Okay, it can’t just be me.
 
T’Lyn is AGGRESSIVELY flirting with Boimler in her very Vulcan way. Right? 
 
While I wouldn’t want it to be Endgame, I think Boimler is due for his own Jennifer romance. Take note the only other time we’ve seen a Vulcan be as aggressively mean before suddenly switching to being weirdly complimentary in the same scene was T’Pol and Trip Tucker.

It’s also very common in anime.

:)

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Charles Rosenberg
1 year ago

With Characters like Spock, LaForge, Worf etc, they were essentially put into a position that normally would have an officer of somewhat higher rank (at least based on the class of ship they’re serving on). Eventually they were promoted to the proper rank for the billet. With the Bridge Crew on the Enterprise, IMO it’s a case of Kirk seeking to keep his command team together even though normally with promotions, they would have moved on to other assignments. Tuvok most likely would have been in line for a promotion had Voyager not been stuck in the Delta Quadrant. Paris was essentially given the rank of Lieutenant in Caretaker. Janeway could (and should) have made him an Ensign. Bashir was assigned to DS9 as his first major position out of the Academy. When he was assigned, there was no knowledge of the Wormhole. He was expecting to do frontier medicine, but not necessarily dealing with dozens of new species 

Harry Kim is the outlier. He gets more responsibility over the years yet was stuck at Ensign until after Voyager made it back.

 

 

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miaulements
1 year ago

the koala is back! what does it know?? also, did the room Boimler found himself in give anyone else some Twin Peaks vibes?

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1 year ago

Oh and this is all one giant reference to Larry Niven’s RINGWORLD. While people are probably now more familiar with Halo, the inclusion of the Kzinti on it is just *chef’s kiss*. I also really loved that particular Starfleet Corps of Engineers book, and also thought of it.

I disagree on the fact the Kzinti is named Taylor being a mistake, though. One of the things I put in my SPACE ACADEMY DROPOUTS books is the fact that virtually every alien (including humans) learns to develop an “alien” name. It’s just a way for people to interact if their vocal chords can’t really pronounce something. But it’s also possible Taylor is from Idaho like that Ohio Orion too. In a multicultural setting like Star Trek, not everyone is going to have a name reflecting their species.

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Anthony
1 year ago

If Trek Kzin are anything like the originals from Known Space then ‘Taylor’ would probably be a name assigned to him when he entered Star Fleet Academy. Until he does something that merits the award of a partial or full name of his own he’d just be referred to as something like “Fifteenth Ensign” by his fellow Kzin.

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Mary
1 year ago

I was thinking about Taylor last week. I figure he was either adopted by a human family or, since Kzinti have to earn their names (which I found out on the internet), maybe he chose the name based on a mentor?

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1 year ago

Maybe someone ripped their pants and he mended them and thus earned his name in that fashion.

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Gareth Wilson
1 year ago

@8 Apparently Garrett Wang was so frustrated at Kim not being promoted that he asked Kate Mulgrew directly for it, as if she was actually his commanding officer. 

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@10/C.T. Phipps: “Oh and this is all one giant reference to Larry Niven’s RINGWORLD. While people are probably now more familiar with Halo, the inclusion of the Kzinti on it is just *chef’s kiss*.”

Hmm. As I said, I didn’t think of it as a Ringworld because it’s wayyyyyyyyy too small, on a totally different order of magnitude. Halo or the Culture would be the more likely referent. But the inclusion of a Kzin does make me wonder. I didn’t make that connection before.

 

“I disagree on the fact the Kzinti is named Taylor being a mistake, though. One of the things I put in my SPACE ACADEMY DROPOUTS books is the fact that virtually every alien (including humans) learns to develop an “alien” name. It’s just a way for people to interact if their vocal chords can’t really pronounce something. 

Like how Chinese or Chinese-American people tend to adopt Western names for their interactions with English speakers, and conversely Westerners in China need to be given alternate names that Chinese speakers can pronounce. Makes sense.

 

“In a multicultural setting like Star Trek, not everyone is going to have a name reflecting their species.”

Yes, but I think Keith’s problem is that LD only does it in one direction — plenty of the aliens have “ordinary” human names, but none of the humans have alien names.

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1 year ago

The A-plot was a bit predictable (new guy in charge having troubles with giving tasks to others, delegating and taking responsibility for others), the B-plot was nice, but I was sad about the ending as well. The prank was not that bad (in the end of the day, the work had to be done and there WAS a malfunctioning chip), but was not necessary, the story would have been better without it. 

And for the other part of the A plot, i have no idea, what fixed the computer in the end and what was wrong with it in the first place…not even a proper technobabble…

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1 year ago

@14/Garreth Wilson – For me, the problem wasn’t that Kim never made Lieutenant (though he should have at least outranked Tom Paris after “Thirty Days,” my god); it was that they recycled the same plot point about him not being a naive young ensign anymore about five times without ever paying it off. No matter what happened to him, he just remained the same dorky, overly-optimistic, unlucky-in-love clarinetist* that he was in the first episode. Actually come to think of it, it would be a lot like if Boimler was locked into his first season characterization.

*Actually I just remembered that he was a saxophonist by the end of the series; but my point still stands

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

What bugs me is, why were the lieutenants so unfamiliar with the details of the chip room like the second tier of chips or whether it was vital to ship operations? I mean, at least Rutherford should’ve known every detail of the ship’s workings by heart.

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David Pirtle
1 year ago

I didn’t buy Dirk’s sob story for a second, so I was pleased to be proven right in the end. However, I do understand Keith’s disappointment that hazing is still a thing in the 24th century. I would also like to think that humanity could move past more of its petty traits by then, but I still found it funny.

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1 year ago

CT Phillips @@@@@ 7
 
“Okay, it can’t just be me.

 T’Lyn is AGGRESSIVELY flirting with Boimler in her very Vulcan way. Right? “

It is NOT just you.

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Athelind Llewellyn Long
1 year ago

It occurred to me that, despite the spelling in the closed captions (and the credits? I didn’t check), our Kzin ensign might actually answer to Tailor — he hasn’t earned a name yet, and Starfleet just treated his occupational designation as a name.

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zuriel45
1 year ago

@6 I liked the ring-habitat plot — nice to see a solid science fiction idea like that show up in Trek, which is usually way too planetbound. A good use of the potential of animation to go farther than live action easily can. There’s no way it was big enough to surround a sun, though; it’s hardly a Ringworld, more like a Bishop Ring or a small Banks Orbital. If there was a “sun” in the center, it would’ve been tiny and artificial.

Ringworlds (of this design) always kind of bothered me since they not gravitationally stable, but on the other hand they are faily neat. I think for this episode I would have liked the catastrophy to be that without the computer running whatever tech keeps it stable the sun has started to drift towards one side and away from the other, but this worked just fine.

I think you’re wrong about it not surrounding it sun since the first shot had the star at the center though of course the star was massive compared to how it should be.  The view of the ship next to the ring also made the ship look way to big. At the end of the day I always just put this down to choosing to make things visible at the expense of accuracy since the scale in space is absolutely ridiculous.

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1 year ago

@22: The character names are not included in the end credits – just the actors’ names. I checked the IMDb page for the episode, but they don’t have the guest cast listed yet.

I think the title of the episode is a riff on “By the Rivers of Babylon.” I sense a filk opportunity.

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JasonD
1 year ago

@7, @21:

I agree entirely, although this may sink my Boiler/Tendi ship.

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1 year ago

Anyone else get serious Superfriends Hall of Justice vibes?

comment image

I loved “It is a volcano.” 

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1 year ago

@26: I noticed the Hall of Justice similarity too

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@23/zuriel45: Could you (or the moderator) edit your post to put my quoted paragraph in quotation marks so it’s clear where my quote ends and your comment begins? Thank you.

As for the sun, yes, it was in the center of the ring, meaning it can’t be an actual sun but a tiny artificial one. Plenty of precedent in science fiction for artificial or terraformed worlds having their own mini-suns.

 

Arben
1 year ago

“But it doesn’t work as Star Trek.”

Not to hijack the comments on LD but neither of the absolutely terrible Very Short Treks released so far work as Star Trek or IMO even as humor…

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@29/krad: I was tempted to bring that up given that I live only a couple of miles from Union Terminal and have visited it many times over my life (and actually worked there briefly once, as a tour guide for a Star Trek-themed science exhibit). Although I actually didn’t consciously register the resemblance until it was pointed out here.

(For those who don’t know the story, Super Friends was sponsored by Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, and the producers of the show were inspired by seeing Union Terminal during a visit to the sponsors’ offices in town. This came full circle when the Arrowverse used a digitally modified image of Union Terminal as their version of the Hall of Justice’s exterior, though they filmed its interior in an aircraft hangar somewhere around Vancouver.)

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1 year ago

So my first thought in this episode was *GASP* we’ve got a Dyson Ring (I know, Niven Ring)! WE’VE GOT A HALO IN STAR TREK!!! Which was surprisingly thrilling. I think the star itself is some kind of dwarf star, though an artificial star is certainly in the realm of possibility for an advanced precursor race.

@7, C.T. Phillips,

I was thinking it was just my shipping goggles, but yeah I was thinking T’Lynn and Boims might make a good match. Him having someone who is absolutely level headed versus his chronic neurotics would be a good balance. If nothing else, ten or fifteen years down the line she should be his first officer. But yeah her saying his record is exemplary….(“Satisfactory…for a Vulcan that’s high praise.” ~ Jean-Luc Picard), that’s practically saying she admires him. It makes some sense that she would gravitate towards the rules following member of the team. I’m still very invested in her and Tendi becoming besties.

On the subject of T’Lynn more generally, agreed she is the straight man our crew needed. She was also incredibly supportive with no caveat which was welcome.

I also appreciate that Boimler while getting in his own way of doing his job effectively in his first command, was also ultra competent. One would expect that part of the joke would be that he would trigger his own failure by trying to do the whole mission himself. But he almost succeeded at the task, until it had to be reversed. Shades of the same ensign who got the 100% on the rigged Borg simulation. I like that they keep showing that Boimler really is that good, which is why he got promoted. And when T’Lynn got him out of his own head, he clenched up and showed why he got promoted and it’s not The Peter Principle.

The whole hazing plot was funnier when it was a misunderstanding. It being actually a Lieutenant hazing thing kinda took the wind out of it AND undercut Ransom being an actually good XO. On the other hand I appreciate that it was Tendi who recognized it from Orion ship culture and Mariner who thinks everyone is a jerk who recognized it, and Rutherford the most traditional Starfleet guy there hadn’t even heard of it. I was wondering why the Isolinear chips would get so hot, one would think that would be something Starfleet had a better solution to than an hourly nitrogen bath. Nevermind the fact that computer cores have a low level subspace field to allow for superluminal processing.

Freeman wanting to do the update herself…I don’t know, I get it. She’s the Captain and she might get bored delegating all the time. But her not having Billups on hand did seem weird. But I don’t think that was the reason for the error, a millennium without an update…first of all where did the update even come from? It would’ve been one thing if the Cerritos crew had to write a new update for the OS, but there was one already queued up and just needed to be installed. Though it is a FANTASTIC joke on Windows updates. Probably would’ve been too on the nose if they had Vexilon repeatedly restarting trying to install the update but failing.

Vexilon being embarrassed about malfunctioning was adorable and I like that all the Corazonians loved him so much. Vexilon is a valued and cherished member of their society, which is sweet and a welcome break from the Peanut Hampers of the galaxy.

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Tom Restivo
1 year ago

In afterthought, all the hazing/gaslighting seemed very Season 1, especially Ransom.

And the Very Short Treks are that people feared that Lower Decks humor would be.

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@32/mr_d: “So my first thought in this episode was *GASP* we’ve got a Dyson Ring (I know, Niven Ring)! WE’VE GOT A HALO IN STAR TREK!!! Which was surprisingly thrilling.”

Those are two different things. A Niven Ring is immensely more gigantic, the size of an entire planetary orbit in a star’s habitable zone, and surrounds the star, making it orbitally unstable because its center of mass isn’t actually in orbit of the star but merely contiguous with it, so there’s nothing to stop it from drifting off center. (When Niven’s readers pointed this error out to him, he wrote the sequel novel to fix it, establishing a series of vast attitude thrusters.) A Halo, Banks Orbital, or Bishop Ring is much smaller and orbits a star rather than surrounding one (hence the name Orbital).

 

“I think the star itself is some kind of dwarf star, though an artificial star is certainly in the realm of possibility for an advanced precursor race.”

Even the tiniest dwarf star would be far, far huger than what was shown here. From the looks of things, the entire ring was a few dozen kilometers across at most. It’s barely more than a big Stanford Torus, probably not even large enough to retain an atmosphere without some kind of force fields holding it in. If that’s meant to be a real star, it’s as nonsensical a mismatch of scale as the tiny “protostars” surrounding the deuterium-harvesting station in SNW’s “Lost in Translation,” or for that matter the supposed protostar in the USS Protostar‘s engine core in Prodigy.

 

Meanwhile, I seem to be the only one here who didn’t see anything flirtatious between T’Lyn and Boimler. I thought she was just being forthright with him.

 

“first of all where did the update even come from?”

Well, given that Vexilon rebooting devastates the ecosystem, the last living programmers probably disabled the automatic update function in favor of “prompt before installing.” So the update has just been sitting there, downloaded but waiting to be installed.

 

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1 year ago

The dialogue refers to Corazonia as a “bespoke” star system, which I think strongly supports the idea that the Star is an artificial one.

And no, I must admit that I didn’t detect any subtext before Boimler and T’Lyn either, but I’m honestly usually pretty oblivious to such things (For example, I’ve seen Voyager 3 times and I still have no idea what the Janeway/Seven shippers are reacting to)

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@36/jaime: “The dialogue refers to Corazonia as a “bespoke” star system, which I think strongly supports the idea that the Star is an artificial one.”

Sure, but the point is, it’s far too small to even be called a star. I mean, as depicted, the ring is no bigger than a Stanford torus. From the size of the cityscape there, I’d guess the land area is only a few kilometers wide, and in the long shot, the “star” looks no more than twice as wide as the torus. So we’re talking something the size of a small asteroid. It’s not an actual star any more than the globe on top of the Daily Planet building is an actual planet. So calling it a “star system” at all is disingenuous — unless the ring and its artificial “sun” are actually in orbit of a real star somewhere offscreen.

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1 year ago

@9 I definitely picked up on a Twin Peaks motif during Boimler’s coma.  It looked quire like the room Agent Cooper would end up in from time to time, and the creepy koala apparition was perfectly Twin Peaks weird.

I wonder if this was just a total non sequitur homage (odd for there to be one so specific to a non-Trek story), or if this is supposed to mean something.  Did a koala appear in a previous Lower Decks episode?

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Antipodeanaut
1 year ago

The observation of T’Lyn’s “flirting” relates back to why she was kicked off her original ship in Wej Duj where her colleagues are repeatedly rebuking her “outrageous” behaviour… the astute commentators here are playing into that joke 😉🖖🏽

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Antipodeanaut
1 year ago

Oh also – has anyone played the Koala words backwards ala Twin Peaks???

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1 year ago

It should be noted that T’Lyn is a lot more hostile with other crew members or standoffish, even Tendi. However, she makes a lot of effort to be comforting with Boimler and also makes a lot of praise toward his character that seems uncharacteristic. The T’Pol/Trip and anime “tsundere” aspect is also a bit of a joking reference but not something we haven’t seen before.

As we saw with Mariner and Jennifer, the butting heads also might reveal something else.

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1 year ago

@38/Pcal6vb – The koala has been a running joke throughout Lower Decks since the first season; it was one of the things that Lt. O’Connor saw when he ascended to a higher plain of existence in “Moist Vessel”, and people mention seeing it whenever they have near-death experiences; also, if you look very closely  you can see it in the nebular gases in the opening animation of the Cerritos.

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Antipodeanaut
1 year ago

Apparently the Koala said:

It’s not your time Bradward Boimler 

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1 year ago

@42 jaimebabb: Ahhh, yes, I remember the Lt. Conner thing now.  Thought it was random then, but enjoying the consistency of the weirdness.  Thanks for the memory jog!

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1 year ago

why Carol felt the need to upgrade the machine herself when she has capable engineers, I have no idea

 

It felt like this was a deliberate but subtle parallel to Boimler doing everything himself and not letting his team do their job – I kind of liked the subtext of “even good captains can fall into this trap”

ChristopherLBennett
1 year ago

@45/bmac: Good catch about the parallel, but I saw it more in terms of Freeman’s perennial tendency to let her ego sabotage her. She’s very insecure and needs to prove herself worthy. In Boimler’s case, it was more that he was afraid of being responsible for putting people in danger, so he took it all on himself. He was more selfless.

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DG
1 year ago

In real world Navy’s, its unusual for your job to change significantly when you have a promotion. Your assignment might change, but it might not. Plenty of people get promoted in the same assignment/role – its built into the system. Ensign/JG is a super common promotion without any change in actual responsibilities. 

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The minute Dirk started telling Mariner about his Wadi Chula game “trauma”, I knew he was manipulating her. For one, the game and species both came from the Gamma Quadrant and were first introduced to Sisko and company in 2369, roughly 12 years before this episode. In other words, there is no way Dirk played it as a child. And also, it was too obvious. Emotional manipulation 101. If anything, I’m surprised Mariner fell for it so easily.

I’m not so sure Ransom was laughing at Dirk’s prank as some kind of dudebro bonding session over the poor hapless Lower Deckers. By now, we’ve seen enough of Ransom to assume he’s better than that, especially given his newfound willingness to push Mariner to her limits in order to make a good officer out of her. And at this point, I think he’s playing along with prankster officers like Dirk just to get him into believing he’s on their side until the moment he decides to show his true colors.

I adored both the concept of the Ring World and Boimler’s own plot. It plays yet again into his seeming insecurity, but pivots nicely into his reluctance to be a superior officer, which felt quite fresh. Great use of T’Lyn in the story. And I kept waiting for that AI to turn evil. Very nice of the episode to not give in and fall back on that cliché. As pointed out, sometimes, an old system just needs an update. I remember one of TNG’s Roddenberry mandates in the bible was to not have stories about malfunctioning devices and technology like the transporter, but obviously that only applies to Starfleet technology. It makes sense to have such a story involving ancient alien AI.

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1 year ago

Boimler was totally in a Black Lodge reference.  The pattern on the floor, the backwards speech, the chair.  No question about it.