Star Trek: Lower Decks

[Bruce]

IMHO yesterday's episode had a better story than I have come to expect out of Lower Decks. More believable. BTW - it was the1st half of a double season finale.

The first season was closer to the tone of Rick and Morty, but it has really turned into a real Star Trek show, love when that bring up past stuff from other series.

The Vulcan has been a good addition to the core 4 group.

Already renewed, thanks to the long production, next season was already written and voice work already finished, so it should come out after Star Trek Discover’s final season, would of been SNW, that show only filmed 5 episodes with a lot of work still needed from the cast, ADR mostly.

 

[harshness]

Disco isn't due until Q1 2024 or maybe April so that's a ways off. The latest buzz on SNW is late 2024.

I've canceled my Paramount+ subscription (effective sometime next month) until something new happens on the Star Trek front.

 

[Foxbat]

IMHO yesterday's episode had a better story than I have come to expect out of Lower Decks. More believable. BTW - it was the1st half of a double season finale.

I went and watched the ST:TNG Season 7 Episode “Lower Decks” as Mariner refers to another lower decks ensign, Sito Jaxa, who was featured in that episode. Sito Jaxa was part of the cover-up that almost got her and Wesley Crusher expelled from the Star Fleet Academy after Nick Locarno convinced them to lie about performing a banned maneuver which killed a fellow cadet (covered in ST:TNG Season 5 Episode “First Duty”).

A good deep-dive into this episode is over on Comic Book Resources:

Lower Decks Finally Answers Season 4's Biggest Mystery and It Ties to TNG

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 reveals the mysterious alien vessel's pilot that solves an even bigger Star Trek mystery.

www.cbr.com

 

[Bruce]

And cancelled, Season 5 is the last.

 

[Foxbat]

Now it’s the Cerritos turn…

​

 

[TheKrell]

Has anybody caught the 1st two episodes of season 5? I forgot about this on the 24th and nobody mentioned it here.

 

[Bruce]

Has anybody caught the 1st two episodes of season 5? I forgot about this on the 24th and nobody mentioned it here.

Watched last Thursday.

I was not that happy with the show when it premiered all those years ago, now, will be extremely sad when it finishes up this year, amazed how much it has grown on me.

 

[TheKrell]

I was not that happy with the show when it premiered all those years ago, now, will be extremely sad when it finishes up this year, amazed how much it has grown on me.

My feeling exactly. I couldn't watch it until 3 seasons were out, and then I had to do some backfilling. It was just too unserious for me back in the early days.

 

[Foxbat]

I appreciated how they made Star Trek: The Animated Series canon. They were not afraid to pull from all the shows and made some pretty deep references. In the last season where they made light of the fact two characters from two different shows were played by the same actor, leading to Rutherford asking, “Doesn’t he look like Tom Paris?” and Bohmler replying, “I don’t see it.”

 

[TheKrell]

I appreciated how they made Star Trek: The Animated Series canon. They were not afraid to pull from all the shows and made some pretty deep references. In the last season where they made light of the fact two characters from two different shows were played by the same actor, leading to Rutherford asking, “Doesn’t he look like Tom Paris?” and Bohmler replying, “I don’t see it.”

And from the crossover in SNW we have Boimler performing the Riker Maneuver:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIqQ7OUm9GE

 

[TheKrell]

OK, I thought I heard the term "Kzinti" in a passing reference on S5E1 but it didn't hit me that was from Ringworld and not from Star Trek. So I looked it up... Apparently the Kzinti made an appearance in ST The Animated Series. I never watched those so I didn't realize Kzinti were part of canon.

 

[Foxbat]

Before “Ringworld”, the Kzinti were part of Larry Niven’s Known Space stories. The producers of “Star Trek: The Animated Series” used one of the Known Space stories, “The Soft Weapon”, as the basis of “The Slaver Weapon” to introduce several of the Known Space elements into the Star Trek universe. In this timeline, the Kzinti were still hostile to Humans (they hadn’t learned their lesson yet, apparently) and capture Spock, Uhura, and Sulu as they detect and track down another Slaver box.

In last season’s episode “In the Cradle of Vexilon”, Boimler had a Kzinti ensign in his away team on a mission to the AI-managed alien world:

So, it appears the Kzinti, like most alien races, have made nice with the Federation and are part of their star ship crews.

 

[TheKrell]

Before “Ringworld”, the Kzinti were part of Larry Niven’s Known Space stories.

I confronted Niven at a Star Trek convention many many years ago and sorrowfully informed him that a ring around a star is at a gravitational saddle point and as such is unstable. (The stable location is with the ring going through the star.) Niven replied that he knew about that, and what he hadn't told anybody was that there was active station-keeping around the ring. And later he fixed it with The Ringworld Engineers. Yes, I am an old guy.

 

[Foxbat]

Did you read any of his fantasy stories? He had an interesting plot device in that Magic was the manipulation and consumption of a fixed natural resource, so a powerful magician would have to move on after some time, having depleted the “manna” in a region.

Spoiler: Hero comes looking for a fight with a Wizard

He had several stories that made use of this canonical attribute, and one of his better lines was when a wizard was attacking a burly hero-type with a dagger. The wizard had depleted the manna around them during their fight, so the Hero figures he’s safe since no magical item had any power. The wizard skewers the Hero and says, “A knife always works”, to which the Hero can only say, “Oh…” as he dies.

 

[Pepper]

Did you read any of his fantasy stories?

Not yet, but your spoiler made me smile.

 

[TheKrell]

I didn't much care for the Klingon episode Farewell to Farms. But Klingon aficionados sure do: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Breaks Format To Deliver A Story Fans Have Wanted For Years - SlashFilm

 

[Foxbat]

Seems odd that Starbase 80 would have all this outdated Federation tech since you would figure Starbase 1-79 would be even older. But it was another fun episode featuring the Slough House of the Federation.

 

[Foxbat]

I am bummed that "Lower Decks" is down to one Episode left. I hope they give us a double episode Series Finale!

 

[TheKrell]

Nope, they did not. Yes, I too am sorry to see it go. The finale was better than the average and didn't offend me like the end of STD did. IMHO the crossover was the best, but that technically speaking was SNW and not LD.

 

[TheKrell]

Spoiler: Garak and Bashir

By the way, am I the only one surprised that Bashir and Garak turned out to be gay?