Star Trek Lower Decks Thread

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

Wow. With all the gags and jokes this series not only had a storyline and escalated it with a cliffhanger.

Additionally, Captain Gomez in this episode was also in the TNG episode when the Pakleds first showed up, which made me guess before watching that the season finale was going to conclude the Pakled storyline. Looks like I guessed wrong. No complaints.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Episode 8, they got Alice Krige in to reprise her role as the Borg Queen for Boimler's holodeck scenario.

That last episode though, there were parts that were so fucking stupid. There was the USS Archimedes, which (like the crown in the principle it was named after), it was not entirely an Excelsior class ship, having the warp nacelles of a Sovereign class ship attached by Constitution refit-type pylons. The idea that it would collide with the planet it was heading to under its own momentum only works if you assume the solar flare and exploding planetoid had no effect on the ship's course whatsoever, when the shitload of energy imparted would have sent the ship flying off into deep space.

There's the whole removing the entire outer hull of the Cerritos because reasons and no-one thinks to use the ship's weapons to blast their way through the debris. The most inane part though has to go to that whale tank, we have a pair of talking whales wearing Starfleet uniforms for fuck's sake and it falls to Boimler to swim down a tunnel so he can eject the last piece of the hull. Yes, the ending was dramatic and all, it's was just undermined by the overdose of stupid that preceded it.

[AniThyng]

I'm not sure what your objection to sentient talking whales in starfleet uniforms is, to be honest. They were pretty angry the release was not designed for flippers lol ( to be fair the other side was fused and probably this is drydock work normally)

Shooting the asteroid field would probably set off a treknobabble chain reaction. What is lame is we don't really see more of the Archimedes crew trying and failing to save themselves.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm not sure what your objection to sentient talking whales in starfleet uniforms is, to be honest. They were pretty angry the release was not designed for flippers lol ( to be fair the other side was fused and probably this is drydock work normally)

Shooting the asteroid field would probably set off a treknobabble chain reaction. What is lame is we don't really see more of the Archimedes crew trying and failing to save themselves.

You mean besides their unexplained presence/role on the ship and their tank taking up an inordinate amount of space on a ship that's already pretty small? It's not as though they were like the Xindi aquatics who would have the run of their respective ships.

Yeah, not seeing the Archimedes crew doing anything useful bugged me too, they didn't even try using the manoeuvring thrusters to alter their course or failing that, the escape pods. They had 20 hours to do something.

[AniThyng]

Hey, if we can have gigantic empty spaces for free floating turbolifts we can have cetacean ops.

On the fence of explanation is necessary, it's one of the less obscure yet still super obscure TNG references. They do navigation calculations, supposedly.

[LadyTevar]

Hey, if we can have gigantic empty spaces for free floating turbolifts we can have cetacean ops.

On the fence of explanation is necessary, it's one of the less obscure yet still super obscure TNG references. They do navigation calculations, supposedly.

Didn't TNG have something about whales/dolphins being the best for maneuvering in a completely 3d environment? Always made me think that sometimes the ship would be flying in spirals, or in a position where a human would think it was upside down, but works better for the section they're moving through.

[TimothyC]

You mean besides their unexplained presence/role on the ship and their tank taking up an inordinate amount of space on a ship that's already pretty small? It's not as though they were like the Xindi aquatics who would have the run of their respective ships.

Cetacean Ops has been referenced several times in this season, and I'm not sure where you get the idea that the Cali class ships are small - the saucer sections are, IIRC, about the same volume as those of an Ambassador class. While the ensigns sleep in the hallways, these are not small ships.

Didn't TNG have something about whales/dolphins being the best for maneuvering in a completely 3d environment? Always made me think that sometimes the ship would be flying in spirals, or in a position where a human would think it was upside down, but works better for the section they're moving through.

Yesterday's Enterprise ha a background announcement about Cetacean Ops, and The Perfect Mate had a line about dolphins onboard. The bit about them doing navigation was fanon until the most recent episode where Mariner made a comment that they mostly do navigation stuff.

[NecronLord]

That last episode though, there were parts that were so fucking stupid. There was the USS Archimedes, which (like the crown in the principle it was named after), it was not entirely an Excelsior class ship, having the warp nacelles of a Sovereign class ship attached by Constitution refit-type pylons.

Per the producer's twitter, the Archimedes is a new class, the Obena class, which is apparently designed in homage to the classic Excelsior class (perhaps it too is intended as a transwarp testbed?) but larger. So, yeah, not an Excelsior.

We have a cool new ship in this week's Lower Deck's finale: the USS Archimedes, an Obena class ship. Inspired by the Excelsior class (which is still in service) but larger with some other changes. #starfleetstuff

There's the whole removing the entire outer hull of the Cerritos because reasons and no-one thinks to use the ship's weapons to blast their way through the debris. The most inane part though has to go to that whale tank, we have a pair of talking whales wearing Starfleet uniforms for fuck's sake and it falls to Boimler to swim down a tunnel so he can eject the last piece of the hull. Yes, the ending was dramatic and all, it's was just undermined by the overdose of stupid that preceded it.

You... know you're watching a comedy right? I loved it.

[AniThyng]

Everybody shouting down kayshon for even suggesting that they could maybe warp around was the icing on the cake XD

[EnterpriseSovereign]

That last episode though, there were parts that were so fucking stupid. There was the USS Archimedes, which (like the crown in the principle it was named after), it was not entirely an Excelsior class ship, having the warp nacelles of a Sovereign class ship attached by Constitution refit-type pylons.

Per the producer's twitter, the Archimedes is a new class, the Obena class, which is apparently designed in homage to the classic Excelsior class (perhaps it too is intended as a transwarp testbed?) but larger. So, yeah, not an Excelsior.

We have a cool new ship in this week's Lower Deck's finale: the USS Archimedes, an Obena class ship. Inspired by the Excelsior class (which is still in service) but larger with some other changes. #starfleetstuff

There's the whole removing the entire outer hull of the Cerritos because reasons and no-one thinks to use the ship's weapons to blast their way through the debris. The most inane part though has to go to that whale tank, we have a pair of talking whales wearing Starfleet uniforms for fuck's sake and it falls to Boimler to swim down a tunnel so he can eject the last piece of the hull. Yes, the ending was dramatic and all, it's was just undermined by the overdose of stupid that preceded it.

You... know you're watching a comedy right? I loved it.

Yes, but this bit lacked the requisite humour to qualify and just comes across as stupid.

They could have put in some more thought than just taking an Excelsior and slapping some Sovereign warp nacelles on it. STO did a better job with a variant on the class.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Everybody shouting down kayshon for even suggesting that they could maybe warp around was the icing on the cake XD

I thought the debris surrounded the ship so that wouldn't have worked anyay?

[Alferd Packer]

Season 3 started up yesterday, and I really enjoyed the first episode. Bozeman, Montana becoming a First Contact amusement park really tickled me for some reason.

[TrekkieJeff2000]

Im so excited for season 3, this has definitely turned out to be one of my favorites of the streaming era.

[Adam Reynolds]

I rather liked the subversion with Captain Freeman's trial. It was nice to see the sense that Starfleet is actually competent when it comes to something like this.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

And that they actually resolved it about 2/3 of the way through the episode, and offscreen too. Blowing up their own planet was dumb even by Pakled standards. The whole episode was one great call-back to First Contact.

This was the improved Excelsior design from STO I was trying to link to in my previous post but for some reason the link didn't work.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Ugh, still can't get the fucking links to work. Because in the message preview they work perfectly!

Series is still strong, it says a lot about how the engineers are so dedicated to their craft that more engineering is how they relax, and they actually built a chamber for the captains that was more effective than the spa (which wasn't even on Risa). Why they needed to go there in the first place instead of the holodeck is never addressed They could easily build more such chambers for the rest of the fleet

This week it was nice to give Rutherford the spotlight and revealed how he got his eye/head implant similar to the one used by Discovery's Keyla Detmer. I'm a bit annoyed that he didn't use the pop-out impulse thrusters that he mentioned when describing his version of the second Delta Flyer though. And Boimler finally snapping and going berserk at the recruitment stand was awesome!

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Latest episode and it did leave me wondering- was the tribe of bird people that the traitorous Exocomp lived with related to the Xindi-Avians? Their ancestors actually being space-faring and fleeing war centuries earlier would certainly tie in with the time period Enterprise was set in. That their ships would turn out to be superior to the Cerritos comes as no surprise, though how they would still be operational after centuries sitting idle gathering dust is another matter.

They're upping the ante with the opening credits, adding the Crystalline Entity to the battle between the Borg and the Romulans, and last episode included a couple of Klingon Birds-of-Prey to the mix.

[Lord Revan]

Latest episode and it did leave me wondering- was the tribe of bird people that the traitorous Exocomp lived with related to the Xindi-Avians? Their ancestors actually being space-faring and fleeing war centuries earlier would certainly tie in with the time period Enterprise was set in. That their ships would turn out to be superior to the Cerritos comes as no surprise, though how they would still be operational after centuries sitting idle gathering dust is another matter.

They're upping the ante with the opening credits, adding the Crystalline Entity to the battle between the Borg and the Romulans, and last episode included a couple of Klingon Birds-of-Prey to the mix.

From what I remember it was implied that Xindi-Avians died before the Xindi became a spacefaring race and thus should be as dead as they said in ENT, but I'll admit it's been decades since I last saw those episodes so I could be recalling things incorrectly.

[Steve]

Great episode, and it solidifies one thing for me among others.

There's a good reason Carol Freeman's CO of a California-class, and I'm pretty sure Starfleet's not unaware of her negative qualities.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this was all a set up, at the very least, to debut the Texas-class.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

Necro-ing for the latest season.

S4E1 Demonstrated how bonkers Starfleet is with handling shit on their ships: It's 3 years since Voyager has returned and everything ranging from the dangerous holograms to Neelix's cheese is still on the ship waiting to hit the fan. Not to mention 7 of 9's Borg equipment which is capable of assimilating things that it gets into contact with.

At least the Cerritos has lower deckers to do "anomaly consolidation", even if it's annually done.

[AniThyng]

I really just want SFDebris to get to the moopsy episode and make a Kyubey joke.

[bilateralrope]

Necro-ing for the latest season.

S4E1 Demonstrated how bonkers Starfleet is with handling shit on their ships: It's 3 years since Voyager has returned and everything ranging from the dangerous holograms to Neelix's cheese is still on the ship waiting to hit the fan. Not to mention 7 of 9's Borg equipment which is capable of assimilating things that it gets into contact with.

At least the Cerritos has lower deckers to do "anomaly consolidation", even if it's annually done.

Giving us a very good reason why they didn't want to pull Voyager out of the ship museum in Picard.

[Crazedwraith]

So after SNW's crossover I did at last get into Lower Decks.It wasn't on Paramount+ when I got it and I'd never bothered watching it on Prime when I had it. For much the same reasons as didn't leap to watch SNW straight away. It's a favourite of people screaming about how Dis/Pic aren't real Star Trek and I took a set against it.

That's not fair really it's a very fun, lighthearted and heartwaming series but it's not exactly my favourite. Still it obviously knows and loves the minutia of Star Trek and as it gets on it's got a lighter touch about taking the piss out of the franchise so it doesn't as blatantly nasty as it did in early episodes if that makes sense?

I think S2 was the strongest so far. The second half: I,Exretus, Wej Du and First First Contact is a very strong finish. The last couple of season 3 and especially the rare Rutherford A-Plot in Reflections are also my favourite.

Now, things before I start watching = good, things after = bad, is like a reoccurring mental pattern but I didn't think a lot of the first couple of S4. Like a reoccurring villain plot is something you "teased" the Titan about. Twovix felt a lot more mean about Voyager than previous episodes were about previous series and brining back Ma'ah to kill him?

The Romulan lower decks scenes, the mariner excerise outfit, it seems to be trying to repeat it's own hits in these couple of episodes if that makes sense?

[AniThyng]

This show still warms my heart but S4 so far seems to careen wildly between character-based comedy (good) and kinetic cringe comedy (bad).

[Crazedwraith]

Well I posted my thoughts in a couple of different places and got yelled at 'No! T'Lyn doesn't have Bendii's you fool', so obviously I'm going for three because I'm glutton for punishment. Given Mariner basically says: "You don't have a character flaw, you have bendii's syndrome like Sarek it's not your fault" they seemed to all but say T'Lyn emotion projection was more than just what happens when a vulcan gets stressed. But obvious Mariner isn't a doctor so... Maybe another episode will clarify or maybe I'm just wrong about and the project is just a wacky thing that happens in Lower Decks.


Still, it was a fun episode but I'd hoped for more interpersonal drama where T'Lyn wants to go back to vulcan fleet and her friends don't understand why she doesn't want to stay in starfleet where they are cool and accepting of her.