Lower Decks is the Star Trek show I’ve had the biggest journey with. The animated comedy has gone from a show I didn’t like to a show I think I love, and what I consider the second best of the modern Trek shows after Prodigy. It’s a journey I think a lot of fans can relate to, with online sentiment shifting to a much more positive place over the years. But was the show always so good and I had to grow accustomed to this bold new step, or did the series evolve? I’m excited to rewatch all five seasons and what better way to examine the show than breaking down each season, looking at the best and worst elements of each, as Lower Decks went from repulsing fans to endearing them.
So was Lower Decks great from the start and I just wasn’t ready to see it? Did the show grow or did I grow? Honestly, a bit of both. Early Lower Decks is a mixed bag of trial and error – an experiment to see how far Star Trek can be pushed and pulled and twisted without breaking. It will become a genuinely good Star Trek show, bringing a fresh take to the franchise while remaining true to the heart and vision, but it’s not quite there at the beginning. The opening episodes are clearly trying so incredibly hard to differentiate themselves and the strain can be felt. There are times where it’s less a Star Trek show with jokes and more a comedy with Star Trek sprinkles, a little too close to Rick and Morty. For example, Cupid’s Errant Arrow is a fine episode but has too generic a sitcom plot. The humour is never at the expense of Star Trek but it is so overwhelming it does obfuscate it, with the best jokes being both funny and specific to the franchise.
But I do enjoy the first season now when I once didn’t. I wrote a pretty sniffy review back in the day talking about how “really fucking annoying” the characters were. Now, I only find them a little annoying. Growth! Knowing their journeys, their evolution, put their origin into perspective. I like these people and their world of the Cerritos, tackling Starfleet’s smaller jobs, even if I think the show does need to slow down. The episodes this season are so loud, so fast, and still a little irritating at points. The show needs confidence, which will come, sooner rather than later, to slow down and let the comedy come from the characters and situations rather than constant gags and references. The writers clearly love the franchise and perhaps show their love a little too much at points, but even in the season’s worst moments Lower Decks still proves itself a joyous, celebratory show, which I couldn’t always see when it first aired.
Best Character: Beckett Mariner
Mariner might be my least favourite character of the season but there’s no doubt she’s the best. This is her season. Rutherford and Tendi are currently one step above being side characters, usually contained to the B-plot, and while Boimler is a co-lead, he’s very much there to bounce off Mariner and aid in her development. The opening episodes have her be acerbic and loud and spewing constant references, personifying the show in many ways, yet as the season continues she becomes more developed and likable. The arc of the season presents us with the reasons why she’s acting the way she is, although I question whether she had to be quite so irritating early on to make this journey work. She’s a brilliant officer, has so much potential, but shirks responsibility and pushes back on the authority in Starfleet and her Captain mother she feels are forcing her into a rule-bound mould, leaving her languishing in lower decks for too long. She feels like a different kind of Starfleet character, perfect for Lower Decks, heightened yet believable and relatable to an extent. I only wish the later episodes of the season could have explored the reasons why she’s so abrasive without her being quite so abrasive early on, where she’s not the easiest character to watch. But, I admit, by the season’s end, she’d charmed me.
Worst Scene: The opening scene of the opening episode, Second Contact (S1E1)
I remember watching the series’ first episode and thinking ‘oh dear, my worst fears are realised.’ Lower Decks felt like an odd move for the franchise, and me and many fans came to it with much concern. I would say I now do enjoy the opening episode, up to a point, but I still have some issues. Overall, it’s a competent pilot episode, introducing the characters, the ship, the vibe of the show. But it does too much for a first episode. It’s so busy and to cram every A-plot, B-plot, C-plot, and introduction into 22 minutes means the episode has to move so fast there’s never a moment to settle and become immersed. It feels its playing in 1.5x speed the whole time. Everyone is speaking so fast it’s migraine-inducing. And nowhere is that more an issue than the opening scene.
The show immediately needs to present itself as a different kind of Star Trek but it does so to the extreme in its introductory pre-credits scene. Mariner is drunk and interrupts Boimler’s fake captain’s log, talking so loudly, so fast, swinging a bat’leth around, and it ends with them both screaming. I didn’t think I could continue watching past that point when I first saw it. Then the final scene is almost as bad with Mariner simply shouting different Star Trek references, which the show soon learns to weave into the episodes more cleverly than simply listing them. It’s a scene which makes recommending the show difficult, requiring a caveat of “you’ll probably find it off-putting at first but stick with it past that opening scene, and make sure to turn the volume down.”
Best Joke: Billups and Shaxs being okay with Rutherford’s career move
Lower Decks has jokes and it has Star Trek jokes. This is my favourite Star Trek joke of the season because it’s not a reference but an understanding of the franchise’s universe used as a great gag. Rutherford questions whether he wants to be an engineer or not so requests a transfer to Security (and then back again) and the show sets up his asking Billups (then Shaxs) for the transfer as an anxiety-inducing moment. That the department heads will be angry or disappointed. But instead, the tension is humorously undercut when they are completely fine with the decision and happy Rutherford is pursuing what he loves. It begins as a sitcom trope but uses that to set up a very Star Trek specific reaction: the utopic Starfleet viewpoint being the punchline, and not at the franchise’s expense but celebrating it, while still using it as a joke. Although it is hurt a little by just a few episodes later Rutherford and Tendi turning down a job on the Vancouver and that ship’s chief engineer going apeshit; the show still working out when to play things the generic comedy way or the Star Trek way.
Worst Joke: The unnecessary final gags in episodes 3 & 4
The early episodes of Lower Decks just can’t quite bring themselves to let a character beat breathe and instead undercuts some good moments with a cheap joke. The third episode sees Mariner and Ransom come to an understanding with each other… until a final joke makes them hate each other again. The following episode has Mariner and her mother reconcile… until the final scene where Mariner mocks a visiting admiral and the relationship resets. It’s partly a ‘reset button’ so characters don’t develop too much too early, which is understandable, so many comedies are like that, but it’s disappointing that development is always secondary to the joke in the first season. The writers are trying so very hard to make a Star Trek comedy work. Soon the show will have the confidence to let a story or character beat settle without having to throw in a joke every few seconds but the writers haven’t found that balance just yet.
Best Reference: “A Kirk sundae with Trip Tucker sprinkles”
I love Enterprise but often it feels like even Star Trek itself struggles to love Enterprise. It’s my favourite series after Deep Space Nine yet rarely gets acknowledged in the canon, ignored for the more nostalgia-friendly days of The Next Generation. Lower Decks is set soon after TNG in the timeline, which is the best place for this kind of show, so it makes sense that those nineties shows are the most prominent easter egg and reference material. Yet what Lower Decks does so well is to act as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the franchise, linking everything and ensuring even the most far off and ignored material is embraced. Therefore, I loved that the season’s fifth episode, Cupid’s Errant Arrow, weaved in some references to Enterprise, with Boimler describing fellow officer Jet as “a Kirk sundae with Trip Tucker sprinkles,” and even the Suliban getting a namedrop.
Worst Reference: Boimler humming the TNG theme
Being lowly lower deck officers, the show’s main characters look up to past Star Trek heroes, obsessing over their escapades, essentially making them in-universe Star Trek fans. It’s a clever way of naturally weaving in references to past stories yet it can be taken too far. Sometimes it feels too real world a discussion or reference, breaking the fourth wall, with the characters commenting like they’ve seen actual episodes rather than just reading the reports. Xon, a deep cut character from the unproduced Phase II TV show is mentioned yet there’s no reason why anyone would know who this non-existent character is. And then the most damning example is Boimler humming the Motion Picture/TNG theme to himself in the third episode. That’s purely an out-of-universe gag which makes no sense inside canon.
Worst Episode: Terminal Provocations (S1E6)
Terminal Provocations is the worst episode of the season because it’s the episode that feels the least like Star Trek. It has the iconography, even the basic plot, but not the heart and soul. It’s an episode that feels more like Rick and Morty with a Star Trek skin. It pushes the franchise to the extreme, testing its limits, and I appreciate that the writers are willing to experiment to such an extent. But the result is a failure. All my least favourite elements of the first season are heightened, and my favourite lessened.
There’s a conflict with an alien race over salvage rights, which feels like classic Star Trek, but none of the jokes are franchise-specific. The alien race ends a conversation by simply saying “fuck you” and if Star Trek is going to have strong language, bleeped or otherwise, it needs to be cleverer or more purposeful than that. Meanwhile Rutherford is trapped on the Holodeck with murderous AI Badgey, a parody of Microsoft’s Clippy. But again, there’s nothing Trek-y about the story or gags, other than a general ‘holodeck malfunction.’ Badgey murders people brutally in a way I don’t like for the franchise and everything about him, other than his shape, reeks of Rick and Morty. Rutherford also acts out of character, shouting and kicking the initially innocent Badgey. Everyone in the episode is written as an arsehole, with no resemblance to Starfleet at all, including Ensign Fletcher, who is perhaps the most unlikable and unfunny character in all of Star Trek, which is saying something. And that’s extra unforgivable because he’s voiced by Tim Robinson, who I otherwise love.
Best Episode: Crisis Point (S1E9)
Not only is Crisis Point the best episode of the season, it did the impossible job of reviving a dead genre of Star Trek episode: the holodeck story. It felt as if the franchise had exhausted the potential of the holodeck, peaking with Deep Space Nine and then dying a slow death over Voyager, but Lower Decks found a way to make it interesting again. They make it funny, of course, but the holodeck is also used as therapy, with Mariner forced to confront and literally fight a version of herself, recognising and overcoming her worst traits. It’s genuinely insightful and clever but another modern Star Trek show, say Discovery, would present that story in such a saccharine way while Lower Decks is able to do so within a wild, riotous episode. It’s both the deepest episode of the season, making Mariner truly click as a character for me, and, subjectively, the funniest, too.
The episode sees Mariner create and star in a Lower Decks movie on the holodeck, allowing for a loving parody of the movie side of Star Trek. It’s full of great gags from a long exterior flypast of the Cerritos, poking fun at The Motion Picture (which I honestly wish went on a bit longer), the crew becoming more like action heroes, a ship crash like Generations, J.J. Abrams lens flares, and so much more. It’s a packed episode yet the references aren’t just a list for a character to say but weaved into the visuals, something you get or you don’t, with the episode not hitting you over the head with them, never totally distracting from the heart of the episode. It also sells the idea of it being a movie with the increased scale and the wonderful, bombastic score. And it’s the one episode where I didn’t bristle at all at the idea of characters making Star Trek jokes inside Star Trek. The use of the holodeck gives another layer of separation, like a show (or movie) within a show, allowing Lower Decks’ tendency towards the meta make more sense here.
Season 1 Episode Ranking:
10. Terminal Provocations (S1E6)
9. Second Contact (S1E1)
8. Envoys (S1E2)
7. Cupid’s Errant Arrow (S1E5)
6. Moist Vessel (S1E4)
5. Veritas (S1E8)
4. Temporal Edict (S1E3)
3. Much Ado About Boimler (S1E7)
2. No Small Parts (S1E10)
1. Crisis Point (S1E9)
Lower Decks’ debut season concludes with a great and genuinely dramatic episode that speaks to the show’s growing ability to better balance its comedy with drama: a herald for what is to come in the improved second season, which I’ll be discussing very soon.
