{"id":1196562,"date":"2023-10-26T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1196562"},"modified":"2023-10-26T09:00:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T13:00:01","slug":"star-trek-lower-decks-goes-back-to-its-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1196562","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek: Lower Decks goes back to its beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article contains major spoilers for Season Four, Episode Nine<\/em><\/p>\n

Star Trek: Lower Decks<\/em> takes its name and premise from a late episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>. \u201cLower Decks<\/a>\u201d pivots away from the show\u2019s usual format to focus on four junior crew members and is told mostly from their perspective. One of them is Sito Jaxa<\/a> (Shannon Fill) who had appeared two years earlier as a cadet in \u201cThe First Duty<\/a>.\u201d That episode focused on Wesley Crusher\u2019s involvement in a conspiracy to cover up an accident that killed a fellow cadet. It also gave us our first look at Nicholas Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill), the episode\u2019s ostensible villain. Locarno<\/a> was, at some point, intended to be the helm officer in Voyager<\/em> and was named as such in an early draft of the series’ bible. But, during pre-production, Locarno\u2019s name was dropped and McNeill instead played Tom Paris, with the same backstory. Producers have, in various interviews, said the issue hinged on Locarno\u2019s redeemability after his actions in \u201cThe First Duty.\u201d But it\u2019s equally plausible that the character was changed to avoid paying royalties to the character\u2019s creators. But, even if you knew none of the above information, I don\u2019t think you\u2019d get any less out of this week\u2019s episode of Lower Decks<\/em>. Because while this series was conceived at the get-go to play to the crowd and bury itself in references, it rarely does so at the expense of telling a good story.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mariner is once again throwing herself into harm\u2019s way to save her friends without regard to her own safety. Her cavalier attitude to life, death, and her own career have threaded through much of this season to the point that now, even Captain Freeman is worried. She pulls the rest of Beta shift into a plan that\u2019ll keep her daughter out of harm\u2019s way on the next mission. Starfleet thinks the rogue ship destroying everything in its path might be targeting former officers. The list of at-risk individuals includes high-profile figures like Dr. Crusher but, this being Lower Decks<\/em>, the Cerritos is sent off to find Nicholas Locarno. And while that\u2019s going on, Freeman sends Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and T\u2019Lyn on what she hopes will be a zero-stakes assignment to fix a weather buoy in orbit around Sherbal V. Except, of course, the crew\u2019s shuttle is attacked by a Klingon Bird of Prey and the crew have to beam down to the hostile planet below.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Freeman, Shaxs and Rutherford head to what can only be described as a Star Wars<\/em> planet where Locarno is meant to be plying his trade. Despite its reputation as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it\u2019s got a muscular bureaucracy that the inhabitants use to frustrate Starfleet officers. The episode makes full use of that disconnect between the stuffed-shirt crew and the rougher corners of the universe. It was rare that we\u2019d see the Next Generation<\/em> crew really get their elbows dirty \u2013 the best I can call to mind is the awkward moments in \u201cGambit.\u201d There\u2019s just something inherently funny about the primary-colored space communist scouts encountering hairy-assed people who live in the \u201creal world.\u201d That\u2019s before you get to Captain Freeman trying to beat up a Balok puppet that turns out to be a real alien. Of course, it\u2019s a double bluff \u2013 at each turn, the villains put bureaucratic obstacles in Starfleet\u2019s way but wave through a sinister bounty hunter type out of spite. Except the bounty hunter in question is Billups wearing a silly helmet, who got the necessary data to track down Locarno.<\/p>\n

On the planet, the rest of Beta Shift is left fending for their lives as chaotic weather makes survival even harder. It doesn\u2019t help that the victims of other attacks, explorers from several other alien races, are all fighting to the death for supremacy. Mariner, frustrated at the gang\u2019s wise refusal to fight their way to safety, opts to go it alone and bumps into a Klingon. But their own fight to the death is interrupted by a rainstorm of glass shards and, while they shelter, Mariner finally reveals the source of her angst. She\u2019s been sabotaging her career because she\u2019s deeply resentful about Starfleet, and her role within it. When she signed up, she\u2019d bought into the idea of exploring strange new worlds, but instead the Federation has been embroiled in an endless parade of galaxy-threatening wars. Her best friend was Sito Jaxa, from \u201cLower Decks,\u201d who in that episode was sent to her death on a covert mission. Starfleet quite literally chewed up and spat out one of her friends, but as much as Mariner may hate what Starfleet is, she can\u2019t quite just walk away because of what the Starfleet ideal represents<\/em>. And you don\u2019t need to be fluent with the events of a TV series from 31 years ago \u2014 Good God, I feel old <\/em>\u2014 or the para-narrative around Voyager\u2019s pre-production, to appreciate that dilemma. Of course, her Klingon opponent counters, saying that Mariner’s angst dishonors Sito’s sacrifice, and that she needs to get on with the job at hand. And, much as she agrees, she adds (just before hugging her former opponent) that she’s still duty-bound to call out when Starfleet “can do better.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite its love of self-referentiality, Star Trek has often struggled with any degree of on-screen self-interrogation. There are moments, best exemplified by the Root Beer scene<\/a> in \u201cThe Way of the Warrior,\u201d where the show touches on the values it espouses. The show\u2019s numerous creative teams have often pushed the idea that Starfleet, and the Federation, aren\u2019t as noble a force as the myth suggests. With Beyond<\/em>, Simon Pegg wanted to focus on the nature of the Federation as a colonizing force, even if that concept is almost entirely erased from the finished film. I\u2019ll leave it to better writers than I to explore this in depth, but it\u2019s rare we get moments where Starfleet officers wonder, out loud or in private, if they aren\u2019t the universally good force they\u2019ve been led to believe they are. This thread is also paid off in the B-story as Freeman and Co. are told, more or less, that nobody in the real world likes having them around. Sure, it\u2019s a gag in a sitcom, and our sympathies are almost universally with the Starfleet crew, but the fact it\u2019s here at all isn\u2019t to be sniffed at.<\/p>\n

By the time we\u2019ve reached the cliffhanger, Beta shift is trying to cajole the warring parties to work together. And, if we\u2019re honest, the idea of disparate groups coming together to solve a problem as a whole is, surely, an idea worth upholding. But before we can see if they are able to be rescued, Mariner is beamed away to an ultra-minimalist starship. After forcing the door, she comes face-to-face with her rescuer \/ captor, and it\u2019s\u2026 Nicholas Locarno.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/star-trek-lower-decks-goes-back-to-its-beginnings-130001207.html?src=rss
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\nSource: Engadget – Star Trek: Lower Decks goes back to its beginnings<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article contains major spoilers for Season Four, Episode Nine Star Trek: Lower Decks takes its name and premise from a late episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. \u201cLower Decks\u201d pivots away from the show\u2019s usual format to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1196562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1196562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1196562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1196562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1196562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}