Five years ago when Star Trek: Lower Decks was announced, I was insanely skeptical of what kind of show this would be. There were only a handful of early promo images, all with the same static faces or poses, brief character descriptions of the four lower deckers, and a vague outline of the show. It wasn’t a lot to go on, and given the volatility that surrounded the franchise with Discovery and Picard, fans were nervous that this animated jokey-joke show would take a Rick and Morty-style dump on the legacy of Trek given producer Mike McMahan’s involvement. What fans, including myself, didn’t realize was that McMahan was a bigger fucking Trek nerd than we knew. I had been following TNG_S8 on Twitter since 2011-ish until it went mostly dark around 2016-2017, briefly posting in 2018, and then becoming the early promo spot for Lower Decks along with the author reveal. This whole time I had been retweeting the foundation for this show. What a time to be alive.
The final season, and series finale, were perhaps a little more muted than previous seasons. Unlike Discovery, which made every stupid attempt under the sun to have some kind of universe-ending problem only Michael Burnham could solve, Lower Decks stuck to some plot lines more familiar with DS9/VOY sort of seasons centered more around crew conflict, Mariner’s conflict and growth, Boimler’s Boims, the return of the Pakleds, a neat ending to the Nick Lorcano saga, and in this season, The Multiverse. Each kind of lampshaded those arcs in different ways while also not pretending about them at all, which is to say the one thing this show did extremely well was do it’s wacky antics and deadpan humor while still very much acting like a proper professional Trek series. The duality was refreshing, and it definitely rubbed off onto Strange New Worlds and even Picard Season 3. It’s also the deepest fucking cut reference in Trek’s own production history, as Armin Shimerman and Garrett Wang note a lot on the podcast The Delta Flyers, because the cast of TNG kept derailing production a lot by goofing around, Rick Berman got more strict with DS9 and VOY to where there was less fun and less ad-libbing of the script.
The last half of the season was on par with the first half, with a handful of one-off episodes adding a couple more characters with more than two lines. But the final two episodes was what really cemented both the multiverse arc and maybe this show in general, and thus becomes the focus point for this final review of Lower Decks. One of the selling points of this show’s animated format was that it could easily rope in Trek alumni who aren’t really keen on reprising their roles in live-action, usually due to the uniforms or makeup, but have no trouble lending their voice. Indeed throughout the fifty-episode run we got spots from a large number of returning cast, including some one-off characters who hadn’t reprised their roles in over thirty years, such as Shannon Fill as Sito Jaxa, Lycia Naff as Sonya Gomez, Susan Gibney as Dr. Leah Brahms, and in this penultimate finale “Fissure Quest”, Jolene Blalock as T’Pol and Alfre Woodard as Lily Sloane.
I reasonably expected the final two episodes to be the series’ swan song both in terms of plot, and in terms of guest stars. I know it’s not cheap to get Trek’s alumni on the show, but McMahan managed to not only score Garrett Wang’s Harry Kim, he also got Jolene to come back as T’Pol, Andrew Robinson as Garak, Alexander Siddig as Holo-Bashir, and Alfre Woodard as Lily Sloane. That is such a stacked cast, I am guessing they gave Curzon to Fred Tatasciore because they couldn’t maybe afford Terry Farrell to reprise her role as Jadzia, maybe from a universe where she didn’t die. I ended up watching this episode three times mostly to get screenshots of the Nax, but also because it was structurally such a good episode from start to finish. Trek has flirted with parallel dimensions and alternate universes many times, but it hadn’t ever really worked with it as a larger-scale dilemma or seen multiple versions of a character interact with each other. That sort of thing was expensive to do, even with the Mirror Universe. Then Marvel came along and started fucking with the multiverse in shows like What If…? and McMahan must have thought “Yeah, we can go out on this!” and pulled it off, Trek-style.
Certainly the highlight of this episode was that the writers made “Garshir” pseudo-canon, at least two versions of the characters anyway, and one being holographic. This of course is a big deal in the fandom because popular fan theory for decades was that Garak had a thing for Bashir, even if Bashir didn’t really swing that way. This has been confirmed many times by Andrew Robinson in interviews and podcasts, where he said that it was always his intention to play the character that way, but he had to “tone it down” for the network censors in the 90s. I had seen some mention on a couple pages that they should have gone farther, like making the prime universe characters gay or bi, or not making Bashir holographic. I understand the need of the LGBT∞ community to have the legitimacy, but I think this is a wonderful instance of everyone having their cake AND eating it too. It still accomplishes the mission of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations and that is the overarching goal of the Trek fandom.
The end of “Fissure Quest” rolls into the series finale “The Next New Generation” when William Boimler moves the reality-threatening problem into Brad Boimler’s reality, thus making it the Cerritos’ problem. This extended runtime episode took us through a whirlwind of what I consider nerdservice by McMahan and Co. because the whole point of this exercise is that he loves Star Trek, and so do you, meaning if you’re going to watch this series end, it’s going to end in the most uplifting, epic way possible by having each and every star crew member helping both eliminate the Klingon threat to Ma’ah, and close the rift that threatens to destroy the universe. But nerdservice goes beyond that, and into the very visuals and sound effects itself. The changing ship classes, the Master Systems Display changes and details, Rutherford’s declaration and how he goes about fixing it, Tendi and T’Lyn’s Evangelion-esque synchro-solution, and Mariner’s final hurrah at Malor’s suggestion. The entire episode is bookended by such fine detail that excites fans like me who are not only fans of what’s in the foreground like characters and aliens, but the background like the ship, controls, ambiance, and Okudagrams.
But in-between all of that, they also slipped in this little bit of Dragonball-inspired nonsense to disable and destroy the Klingon bird-of-prey
Yes, Ensign Olly pulls a Goku-style move to defeat the Klingons here, and I don’t actually hate it. It’s so unbelievably cheesy in a way that only this show can do and no other. That’s the charm this show has, and it made me tear up a little in the final few minutes, not just because of Freeman’s farewell to Starbase 80, but because barring a new show announcement or Paramount getting their fucking shit together, this show is over for good, and that leaves me feeling about the same way I felt after VOY “Endgame”.
The only wiggle I have about this episode is that at the end with all the starships positioned in front of the new multiverse gate, you can clearly make out the ship name of the Sovereign-class there as the USS Enterprise 1701-E. I don’t know if McMahan and the writers tried to get Picard and Co. for a bit there at the end and had to cut it, but my “Missing Scene” addition for this episode would have been to have a viewscreen conversation with Picard where he says something like “Well we tried to get here as fast as we could, but Nurse Ogawa turned out to be a changeling, a bunch of fireworks accidentally got fired off in Cargo Bay 2, Barclay got locked in his quarters, and they had to caulk the ship in order to float through a tachyon storm.” among a litany of excuses as to why the Enterprise couldn’t save the universe this time. I feel like if you’re going to end this series on its highest note, you should have circled around to where it started. Though I suppose the cut-aways occurring behind Mariner’s dialogue at the end kind of serve that same spirit.
At the end of all this, we are treated to one of two potential spin-off ideas for future animated Trek, one on Starbase 80, and another continuing with the crew of the Cerritos. The former would most certainly be interesting since it would involve multiverse travel, and although I do think the multiverse is very played out in other franchises, it’s still fairly unexplored and new-ish to Trek. It would be an almost absurd What If…? style mockery to make, but also one that would probably prove too expensive to do. Fans would certainly expect to see a lot of classic characters show up in their various AU counterparts, and that would invoke guest star money, even if the premise of the show involved the captain and a new original crew. The latter would certainly be what most folks want, but at that point, what is your catch? They’re not “Lower Decks” anymore. Do you timeskip a few years to where they’re more senior staff? The New (REAL) Lower Decks with four new lower deckers? A entire series that revolves around Kimolu and Matt in Cetacean Ops? Unfortunately, as many ideas as we can generate here, Paramount is ultimately not funding the winning formula, and I do not know why. I have seen more fans coalesce around this series and Prodigy than the rest aside from Picard S3, but mostly for a potential Legacy spinoff. Maybe with any luck they’ll let him shop a spin-off to one of the other platforms and get the gravy train rolling.
Boimler’s Boints and Bobservations
- In another classic deep-pull from older content, the character of Olly refers to the TOS episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” where the Enterprise crew visit the plant Pollux IV, home of the last Greek gods. Although images of the planet were later depicted in subsequent series, Olly would be the first demigod character in Starfleet to be featured in a series, though hilariously as having had to transfer six different times due to accidents revolving around her powers.
- Brent Spiner reprised his character of Data, this time in the color purple, for the episode “Fully Dilated”. This would mark his fourth series appearance, having starred in TNG and four movies as Data, Lore, B4, and Noonien Soong, ENT as Arik Soong, PIC as Altan and Adam Soong, and the merged form of Data, B4, and all the Soongs in Season 3, and finally Purple Data in LD.
- Harry “Two-Pip” Kim was teased in the trailer for the season at the start, and to see the episode play out was amazing. Somehow, throughout the multiverse, not nearly enough Kims were promoted past Ensign. It can’t all just be because of Borg incursions or something.
- The holographic Dr. Bashir likely is the “LMH” or Long-Term Medical Holographic Program that was the subject of the DS9 episode “Doctor Bashir, I Presume”. Presumably in that universe, it was never discovered that he was genetically altered, and Dr. Zimmerman proceeded with making Julian the template.
- William Boimler has a black Section 31 delta commbadge on his uniform, however the episode nor finale touch on why he would have needed to be part of S31 in order to have his death faked and sent on his multiverse mission. Especially since the rest of the AU crew are not S31, and would now know S31 exists?
12/28/24 Edit: Apparently, the website “Cosmic Book News” is trying tp peddle a rumor that the entire Star Trek: Discovery series has been retconnec by the final episode of Lower Decks. I fucking hate clickbait shit that is designed to inflame the fandom and bring out the anti-DISCO shitheads to run their laps around about how the show sucks and this and that, without actually having seen it and knowing why it ain’t so great, but most certainly deserves to stay in the franchise canon. I will not link their site here, find it if you want, but don’t give them clicks.
I really hate to break it to you idiots, but that isn’t how Trek’s concept of parallel universes works. You think it works this way because you’re used to Marvel’s idea of multiverses, but that isn’t quite how Trek’s multiverse works. For this, we’ll need to revisit a few classic episodes of Trek.
The Mirror Universe
The first parallel universe introduced to Star Trek was in TOS “Mirror, Mirror” in 1967. In it, Kirk and the Enterprise experience a transporter malfunction that beams them into an alternate universe, one where humans form a fascist, militant empire called “The Terran Empire” For the Mirror Universe, most characters exist there as well, but are “evil” compared to their counterparts. A total of seventeen episodes between three series were made featuring elements or characters from the Mirror Universe, including DS9 exploring what happened when the Terran Empire fell to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, DIS going back and looking at its origins with Emperor Philippa Georgiou, and most recently PRO making a brief appearance in the ISS Voyager-A’s reality.
Time-Travel Alternate Realities
Time-travel is one of the most-used gimmicks in science fiction and as a means of telling alternate realities. However, in almost any movie or series that deals in them, correcting the timeline usually ends up causing the collapse of explored alternate realities, rather than insisting they continue as their own, though that scope has opened up considerably with Marvel’s Loki. Trek’s most iconic examples of time-travel include TOS “Tomorrow is Yesterday” and “The City on the Edge of Forever”, TNG “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Time’s Arrow”, and “All Good Things…” as well as the movie First Contact, DS9 “Past Tense”, VOY’s “Future’s End”, “Before and After”, “Relativity”, SNW’s “Those Old Scientists”, and DIS “Face the Strange”.
Quantum Realities
One of the most iconic episodes that opened the scope for parallel universe in Trek is TNG’s “Parallels” in 1993. In it, Worf experiences a dozen or so alternate realities after passing though a quantum anomaly. Rather than moving from one universe to another though as with previous examples, he constantly shifts universes, where he stays in place, but elements change around him according to various possibilities, such as Riker being captain, Worf being married to Troi, Weasley Crusher not becoming a Traveler, and more.
The important aspect to consider about these universes is that although they are not canon to the prime timeline we are viewing, they do not mean what we have seen in other movies or series isn’t part of the franchise lore. Indeed, the Kelvin Universe where the events of the newer Star Trek films take place may be part of the prime timeline, but they are connected to the franchise canon by way of time-travel events.
Despite all that, what refutes the above’s assertion the most is that in the same episode, Relga and her crew are turned into the same proto-Klingons that Worf had devolved into during TNG “Genesis” in Season 7. To have two different Klingon ships and crews change into two different versions of Klingons (a third had their ship change into a sailing barge) where one is considered canon Klingon evolution would imply that Discovery’s point of Klingon evolution is also valid. Just because they’re presented in this episode as parallel universe variants does not make them exclusive to that reality.
Look, I know you want Discovery gone just like you want Star Wars VII-IX gone. Ain’t happening. Y’all need to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and stop being candy-ass bitches about this show in the fandom. It ain’t a great show, but it’s out there, it’s part of the prime universe, and it’s here to stay, like Enterprise. Oh well.
