The last two weeks have shown Lower Decks’ tendency to dig up obscure corners of the Star Trek universe, so it’s fun this week to see the show going for some pretty standard Trek tropes and revisiting some concepts from some of their better episodes (as opposed to, y’know, TNG’s “The Vengeance Factor” like they did in “Starbase 80?!”).
This week, we’ve got: a planet where time passes more quickly (Voyager’s “Blink of an Eye”), Mariner wanting to learn the flute while trapped on a primitive planet (TNG’s “The Inner Light”), Data’s disembodied head still fully functioning (TNG’s “Disaster”), surgically altering the crew to blend in with a pre-warp planet’s population (numerous times, from Enterprise’s “Civilization” to SNW’s “Strange New Worlds”), cobbling together equipment to create something approaching Starfleet tech using primitive tools (the original series’ “The City on the Edge of Forever”), struggling to make a living on a planet more primitive than what they’re used to (Enterprise’s “Carbon Creek”), plus the recurring theme this season of a portal opening to another timeline (TNG’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” among others).
On top of that, we’ve got some genuine character work with Tendi and T’Lyn. There’s a bridge science officer position open, and Freeman is having difficulty choosing between those two for the position. Tendi is incredibly eager to get it, but she feels inadequate n the face of T’Lyn’s fabulousness.
The mission involves the Cerritos being sent to close yet another of the interdimensional fissures (first seen in “Dos Cerritos”), through which came an alternate version of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D. The main feature of this alt-Enterprise is that it’s purple rather than silver-gray.
Unfortunately, they can’t close the rift just yet because sensors are picking up tech from the purple Enterprise on a nearby planet with a tachyon core. Freeman sends Mariner, T’Lyn, and Tendi down in disguise as natives to find and dispose of the tech. Mariner is disappointed because it’s taquito night. In fact, Boimler and Rutherford are drinking their funky margaritas while beaming the away team down. Unfortunately, right after beam-out, Boimler spills his margarita all over the console. So instead of beaming them back up right away—which would still be a few days down on the planet—it takes several minutes to clean up the console, by which time a year has passed.
In that time, our intrepid heroes have to make the most of things, trying very hard not to break the Prime Directive. They have, at least, destroyed all the purple Enterprise tech, with one exception: Data’s head, which is also purple. Tendi takes care of Data’s head, while T’Lyn is able to make a living growing mutant fruit and marketing a skin-care product. Mariner, meanwhile, spends a lot of her year on the planet in jail. She makes a flute out of soap, hoping to replicate the experience Picard had in “The Inner Light.” Of course, the flute doesn’t work very well, and Mariner is awful at playing it…
The episode is just fun. Gabrielle Ruiz’s deadpan continues to absolutely nail it for T’Lyn, as always, and it’s such a perfect contrast to Noël Wells’ obsessive need to be the best at science that devolves into obsession. We’ve seen so much of Tendi the badass lately that it’s refreshing to be back to nerdy Tendi. (Though the badass shows up periodically, like when she says she’s wanted to be chief science officer ever since she could pick up a dagger.) And Mariner really is trying to do better, even though it’s swimming upstream against her general Mariner-ness. One of the times she goes to jail is when she puts out the sacred eternal flame, mistaking it for a fire that needed to be put out.
Plus Brent Spiner provides the voice of purple Data! It’s always a pleasure to see Spiner, who has played a ridiculous number of roles in Trek over the years, but who particularly shined as the curious android. While Spiner no longer convincingly play Data in live action (hence the gestalt being created in Picard’s third season that was a mix of Data, Lore, B4, and Altan Soong, thus allowing the character to look as old as Spiner is), his voice is still spot-on perfect, and his friendly calm tones are a delightful contrast to Tendi’s ever-growing anxiety over getting the science officer position. For her part, T’Lyn doesn’t feel she deserves the science officer spot because she doesn’t fit in. She was kicked off a Vulcan ship and is still trying to figure out who she is. This is in direct contrast to Tendi, who has been back home but is self-aware enough to know she doesn’t belong there and has found her place in Starfleet. T’Lyn doesn’t feel she has finished that journey the way Tendi has. Tendi herself pooh-poohs it, especially given how effortlessly she owns living on a pre-warp world…
And it’s Data who talks Freeman into the perfect solution: make them both bridge science officers, because they complement each other so perfectly.
In the end, Data’s head is shot through the fissure in a torpedo so he can go back to his purple ship and the Cerritos closes yet another fissure.
Random thoughts
- Rutherford has decided to follow Boimler’s lead and grow a beard. It’s growing faster and more smoothly, and he’s getting lots of compliments on it. Meanwhile, Boimler’s beard is proceeding very very very slowly, and he hasn’t gotten a single compliment…
- When queried by Data as to the color of her universe’s Enterprise, Freeman says it isn’t any color, which fails her saving throw versus color identification as it is, as I said above, silver-gray. That’s, like, really a color! Honest! Though I agree with Data that there’s no reason why it couldn’t be purple…
- Data’s head was established as being able to operate independently without the rest of his body in the aforementioned “Disaster.” His head was also separated from his body in TNG’s “Time’s Arrow” two-parter, though the head was inactive in that instance.
- Back when I was doing the TNG Rewatch, there was a comment exchange in the entry for “The Inner Light” where one person was firmly of the belief that Picard never told anyone about his experiences in the episode (at least until he shared some of it with Nella Daren in “Lessons”). However, Mariner is aware of it, which proves the contrary theory held by me and most everyone else in the comment thread, that of course Picard reported it in full, especially since that was the whole reason why the Kataan people sent the probe in the first place…
- With his appearance here, Brent Spiner joins an exclusive group: people who have played the same role on four different Trek TV shows. (Once, the list of who appeared in three shows was exclusive, but Picard, LD, and Prodigy have made that list rather long now.) The current list of four-timers:
- Jonathan Frakes as the person born as William T. Riker: TNG (series regular), DS9 (“Defiant”), Voyager (“Death Wish”), Enterprise (“These are the Voyages…”), Picard (recurring regular), LD (recurring guest star).
- Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi: TNG (series regular), Voyager (recurring guest star), Enterprise (“These are the Voyages…”), Picard (recurring regular), LD (“No Small Parts”).
- John deLancie as Q: TNG (recurring guest star), DS9 (“Q-Less”), Voyager (recurring guest star), Picard (recurring guest star), LD (“Veritas”).
- Armin Shimerman as Quark: TNG (“Firstborn”), DS9 (series regular), Voyager (“Caretaker”), LD (“Hear All, Trust Nothing”).
- Brent Spiner as Data: TNG (series regular), Enterprise (“These are the Voyages…”), Picard (recurring guest star), LD (“Fully Dilated”).
- Robert Picardo will apparently be joining this club, as the EMH is supposed to be a regular on Starfleet Academy, which Picardo will add to DS9 (“Dr. Bashir, I Presume?”), Voyager (series regular), and Prodigy (series regular).
