LizstarTrek - Lower Decks Season 1

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

I know very little about this show except it was made by nerds like me with a very different sense of humor. God, please be good.

Second Contact - ENT 3.5/10

We’re introduced very quickly to two Ensigns. Boimler and Mariner. Boimler is high strung, lame, and has illusions of grandeur, making a fake captains log. Mariner is a kinda shitty killjoy who has EXTREME illusions of grandeur. Mariner injurs Boimler with a batleth while drunk on Romulan Ale. Okay, next scene!

We’re now introduced to Ensign Tendi, an Orion who’s very bright eyed and bushy tailed, but y’know, she’s lower decks so she’ll be getting beat down over time I’m sure. They also meet another ensign, Rutherford, an engineer who’s a cyborg and ALSO a nervous wreck. There’s a lot of that here. Hey, is this review fast and hard to follow without a lot of detail? Yes! That’s HOW THIS SHOW IS INTRODUCED.

Everyone is talking so fucking fast, jokes are flung in your face every 5 seconds with no time to breath and then we move right on to the next joke or the next scene. If you speak REALLY fast everyone will think what you say is smart, except for Funny this time. It is… NOT easy to follow. And the jokes are pretty rough, IIRC. Lots of awkward humor, which is VERY not my speed.

Boimler is told by her captain to keep an eye on Mariner, and he takes it way WAY too seriously and makes things really fucking weird. That’s his character trait! The two of them scare off some aliens at the planet they’re on and then get attacked by a spider that shoots webbing out of its butt. You might think that’s weird for me to specify, but the show sure does! Ha ha, butts are funny!

Meanwhile, one of the bridge officers got infected with a zombie virus and its spreading violently through the ship. The show cuts from scenes of graphic zombie violence to Rutherford having a date. It’s incongruent. That’s the point and it’s supposed to be funny…. okay, it’s actually not bad. I kinda like this part. They’re walking around “on a date walk” as they blast zombies and talk about the music they’re into. Thats kinda cute. Unfortunately the date doesn’t work cause Rutherford is kind of a huge dork.

Why are their clothes off? Don’t worry about it.

Boimler gets covered in alien slime goo and is taken to sick bay cause it’s a cure for the virus. All of the bridge crew ignore Boimler and his contributions and they are basically having their own Star Trek episode while the Lower Deckers are in the background. I think that’s supposed to be the entire premise and conceit of the entire show but also I kinda hate it? It’s like, really unpleasant to watch.

You gotta take this show with a BIT more of a grain of salt cause it’s a hyperbolic joke show, but this is still not my favorite general conceit. And I’d LOVE a show about lower decks people.

Anyways, Boimler does NOT narc on Mariner, and they become “friends”. Mariner is also the captain’s daughter, who hates her and wants to throw her in the brig for no reason.

This was so fucking hard to follow and write a review of holy HELL. This was a very rough introduction, but I can see how there are sparks of something good here.

Envoy - ENT 4.5/10

Our episode starts with Mariner harassing some evil space wisp with super cosmic power. She bullies it into using up its power and it dies slamming into the captain. Ha ha?

Anyways this episode has an A and a B plot. The A plot is that Boimler is escorting a Klingon warrior down to a planet, while Mariner forces her way on board and ruins it cause she’s actually besties with the Klingon.

Meanwhile, Rutherford promised Tendi that he’s do a thing with her once but he keeps overloading himself on Engineering work. So he decides to change his entire career and is kinda bummed about it. Doesn’t do anything half assed, does he?

Boimler and Mariner get themselves stranded in a seedy Klingon section of a planet cause the Klingon stole their shuttle for a joke.

Rutherford is trying command simulations with the first officer, Jack Ransom. He blows up the ship and kills all the children, specifically. Jack is WEIRDLY into the idea of killing children. Is that. Supposed to be a joke? What? What is this character?

The bridge officers are, for the most part, kind of assholes. The captain and first officer especially, but there are two I kinda like so far. The doctor is a ratty mean Caitian who, while blunt, actually seems to care and understand how people work? And the security officer, who’s a giant braga braga Bajoran and seems like fun tbh. He even takes Rutherford wanting to go back to Engineering super well cause he’s just a nice guy! That’s cool.

Mariner, despite not giving a shit about anything, is instantly good at every single thing she does. It makes Boimler feel so bad that he decides to quit. Then he gets his groove back after being racist at a Ferengi saying they are the least trustworthy race in space. What? What the fuck? Quark did not die for your sins so that you could talk like that. Not to mention ROM. …Okay, the whole Ferengi thing was just a plot by Mariner to make Boimler feel better. Good on her. Bad on you, Boimler >:(

A little better.

Temporal Edict - ENT 5/10

The captain has a bug up her ass and finds out that the lower decks crew have a thing called “Buffer Time” where they do things slightly half assed by giving extra time estimates on things so they look good and don’t have to rush. She puts a tighter leash on everyone. This IMMEDIATELY backfires and everyone is super overworked. Ah yes, let’s reinvent capitalistic practices. Everyone hates it. Oh except Boimler, he’s having a good time.

Everyone being overworked and exhausted means they make mistakes and piss off some aliens they were supposed to give a gift to.

I think Captain Freeman might be my least favorite Captain so far, and that’s nuts considering one of the options is Captain Lorca.

Ransom and Mariner fight over who has to fight in a battle to the death. Ransom stabs her to get her to stop. There’s also some kind of sexual tension between the two of them I am REALLY not into.

Ha ha ethics are for losers and pencil pushers. I won’t justify that because the show doesn’t.

Anyways they win by loosening up, of course. Boimler suggests it and gets something named after him, “The Boimler Effect”, where you’re supposed to cut corners and do what you can to get out of more work. He is not happy. And far in the future, Boimler is revered for being a lazy piece of shit. But he’s not as revered as “the most important person in Starfleet History”

This is correct.

This one had two jokes I liked!!

Moist Vessel - ENT 5/10

Mariner is rude during a meeting with another captain and this pisses the captain off. She does it cause she’s yawning cause “it’s too much information to take in all at once”. I dunno if this show has the right to say that, considering how fucking fast paced it is.

Why are there class divided replicators? That’s weird.

The captain assigns Mariner to the shittiest jobs on the ship to try and force her to want to quit. Meanwhile, Tendi messes up someone’s ascension to a higher plane of existence and it’s a SERIOUS social faux pas. Yeah, I imagine.

Mariner makes her shitty jobs still somehow fun and loose and that can’t do, so they come up with a NEW plan to make her suffer. They promote her.

Now she gets to sit in on meetings about what kinda chairs we should have in the meeting room, and in on the friendly poker night :D Okay, this is an actually funny joke to me. ACTUALLY good conceit. Can’t wait to see how they fuck it up.

I don’t like the Tendi half though, it’s nothing but awkward humor. Though when she says “I HATE when people don’t like me, it’s like ants in my brain!” holy shit I feel that.

The mission they are ACTUALLY trying to do falls apart cause everyone is being a dick to each other and not paying attention to it, just trying to one up each other and focus on what THEY want not what needs to be done.

They manage to fix everything cause yeah, Mariner is actually good at her job she’s just kind of a dick. The guy Tendi’s been harassing ACTUALLY ascends. It’s horrifying. I think the people who got mutated in the transporter in the first movie suffered less.

The show makes fun of how people say Sensors in Star Trek. Has it earned that? Maybe. I kinda like the joke. Anyways Mariner is demoted again cause she makes fun of an admiral’s pronunciation of sensors, and the status quo is back.

Cupid’s Errant Arrow - ENT 3/10

Let’s play a game. Can you name every reference in this image?

The Cerritos is meeting up with some ship that everyone says is super cool and important for some reason. I dunno why but like, okay. Boimler’s girlfriend is on the ship and is visiting. Mariner is freaked out at first, but turns out, she is great! A little TOO GREAT. And we now have your stereotypical “jealous of your girlfriends’ ex” plotline which I dunno. Boimler is hyper focused on that, while Mariner is CERTAIN she’s a shape changing evil alien.

Meanwhile, we got B AND C plots. The captain is trying to convince weird conspiracy theory aliens to let htem blow up a moon that’ll kill them if they don’t. And Tendi and Rutherford are on the other starship getting jealous of how cool it is. Somehow.

There’s a joke where they talk about how great Trip Tucker was and it legit made us upset.

The “Boimler is jealous” jokes are EXACTLY what I feared them to be. Bad :) I do not like these kind of jokes or this kind of humor. Eventually they get past it.

This is an image of Boimer naked wanting to do sexy times. This episode moves too fast to write up stuff. It’s not very good or interesting anyway tbh. Turns out the aliens were just two rich eccentric assholes so they just ignore them and blow up the moon anyway, then Boimler’s girlfriend and Mariner bond over how lame and bad at everything Boimler is. Okay. Also Boimler was infected a parasite that made him irresitable. She goes out with the parasite instead.

Didn’t like this one much.

Cupid’s Errant Arrow - ENT 5.5/10

This episode introduces Fletcher, an old acadamy buddy of Boimler’s. He’s a nice guy, but is ever so slightly awkward.. He buddies up to Boimler and Mariner very quickly. Meanwhile, Rutherford and Tendi hang out in a holodeck training program.

Okay, a thing I’m noticing. Why is EVERY episode Boimler and Mariner team up, while Tendi and Rutherford team up? Can’t we like, split them up every now and then into different configurations?

Fletcher is attacked and some stuff is stolen. They don’t go to the officers cause why would they that’d be silly. He’s clearly making shit up to get out of fucking up.

Rutherford invented a training program AI called Badgey. It’s very clearly a Clippy thing, and is extremely sinister. I like it. When the ship is attacked, the holodeck loses its safety protocols and Badgey starts attacking violently. Uh, got our first Shit Goes Wrong In The Holodeck episode I guess.

Holy shit Badgey rips some heads off. Well, it is an “adult animation”, so that means it’s gotta have SOME weird gratuitous violence.

Whoops Feltcher got some brain damage and caused an evil thing to happen. Basically his personality is uploaded to a computer core. Turns out he’s kinda awful. They tie him up so he doesn’t get in the way. Fair. THey kick it out an airlock and it blows up the ship attacking them. Fletcher is promoted off the ship for his daring creativity and genius…. Ha ha??

Cupid’s Errant Arrow - ENT 6.5/10

Tendi re-created a dog from scratch. Ha ha nope it’s a horrifying spider monster. That actually made me giggle. And it’s still a cute perfect pupper :3 It turns into a cube. I want one. Tendi loves it regardless. Oh no, I AM Tendi aren’t I?

A sub captain comes to visit and take over for a while. Turns out it’s Mariner’s old best friend! Oh boy, surely this’ll be wonderful. Meanwhile Boimler wants to kiss up but he goes throuh some kind of phasic nonsense and is out of alignment. So they send him to The Farm upstate. No seriously it’s called the Farm. Okay good, this time Tendi and Boimler are together, good.

Meanwhile, Mariner goes down with the new captain on an away mission. She’s immediately incompetent and bad at everything and the rest of the captain’s crew doesn’t like her. What? She’s always been hyper competent that’s like her character trait. I think the idea is she FEELS inadequet next to her best friend who is now a captain but it doesn’t come through super well?

Turns out the Farm is where they send freaks they can’t fix so they don’t ruin the shiny prestige of Starfleet. They even have one of the fish lizards from the end of Threshold. The “freaks” as they call themselves plan a mutiny. The dude in charge finds out and charges to kill them all cause they have no rights. What the fuck is going on? Like yes it’s a joke and the series is hyperbolic about everything but this is like the most dark thing I’ve ever seen and they’re playing it VERY straight.

Okay turns out she’s INTENTIONALLY fucking up. She’s just a VERY good actor. She’s fucking up cause she doesn’t want to be forced into a command job. She just wants to be “a super good ensign”.

Okay turns out the farm is real everyone just completely misunderstood the situation cause the guy in charge has a short leash and is SUPER creepy and menacing. He says he’s working on it. I also like that he’s one of the three armed guys from TAS. Boimler loses his phasy-ness and is kicked out for not being a freak.

Mariner and the captain end on good terms. Mariner says she still has stuff to figure out. In the end I kinda liked this one? Has some weird problems, but in the end it twisted itself to some funny ends.

Veritas - ENT 4/10

The Lower Deckers are put in front of an alien tribunal to give testimony for the actions of the bridge crew. They demand that Mariner explains what happened on a certain stardate. In that date, they were on the bridge as some aliens were attacking over a misunderstanding about a map of the neutral zone. The tribunal doesn’t like this and asks Rutherford about another unrelated date.

It’s a bunch of weird unrelated plots. Basically any time Rutherford’s implant updates he passes out and it takes over, being super competent. But he blacks out a lot. So it jumps from scene to scene. Including a weird Gorn Wedding scene.

Tendi is super sus. She clearly knows something.

Yeah so basically she was accidentally roped into a commando bravo mission with Ransom. They’re all very Broohaha marine style about all this and going into the neutral zone for stupid nonsense.

She gets too into it and beats the shit out of some armed guards. The tribunal doesn’t believe her.

Boimler defends his bosses by saying yes they fuck up cause no one actually ever knows what they’re doing, and they’re NEVER told what’s happening ever. But they do their best. Turns out this guy holding them in trial, Clar, actually is just throwing a party for celebration of them. It’s weird.

I’m not sure about this one. Also it turned Q into Myzlplx for some reason.

Crisis Point - ENT 2/10

Mariner frees a species of lizard people from rat tyrany. Captain Freeman tells her off cause Prime Directive. Oh please do not tackle that topic you clearly can’t handle it. She gets sent off for therapy, cause it’s… bad to want to stop this? What the fuck is this show trying to say

No seriously, that’s a big problem. I’ve been wondering it quietly but Neli broached the subject. What is it TRYING to say? Starfleet bad? Starfleet good? It never seems to know.

Boimler makes a holodeck tool using the crew’s private logs so he can practice brown nosing them. Mariner hijacks it to turn it into a movie so she can let out frustrations. Boimler continues to try and brown nose. It’s awkward and embarassing. It’s filled with a lot of jokes about the way the TNG movies were filmed. It’s scarily accurate. But I didn’t LIKE those movies so…

Credit to all the lens flares and dimmer lighting though.

In the movie, Mariner plays a space warlord trying to take over the ship. Rutherford goes off to geek out with the Hologram Lead Engineer, while Tendi is like “what the fuck this is gross”. Mariner is ALSO racist about Orions, and Tendi eventually just walks out.

The ship crashes pretty much exactly like in Generations.

LOL okay good joke. “It’s okay sir I did a repeating beaming sequence and saved them all” “That’s literally impossible??” “No, it’s a movie, you can do whatever you want in a movie.” “Oh, okay!”

Mariner’s simulated self fights her real angry self.

What THE FUCK, THIS SHOW JUST DROPPED THE F SLUR. Rutherford went off with his boss after they confess their love for each other, and the doctor calls them the f-word. This is not a joke. Like, not in a bad way? But like…

no. You did not earn that. What in the fuck.

Anyways it all ends, Mariner feels better about it, says therapy works, and all’s good. Also Boimler finds out Mariner is the captain’s daughter, which is apparently a secret.

The memory alpha page says it says “fucks”. It’s bleeped. But it DEFINETLY sounds like ts at the end, not cks, and the lip flaps fit the f slur.

Okay, I found an uncensored version of the scene. She says “Godspeed, you crazy fucks” for sure. Holy SHIT it did not sound like that. And the context did not help. Okay. It’s fine then.

Anyways I still didn’t like this much. It just seemed kind of unhinged in a way I didn’t appreciate, cause it turns out her murdering everyone was good therapy and Tendi was wrong! What?

No Small Parts - ENT 3.5/10

This episode starts with them calling the TOS era the TOS era. It stands for Those Old Scientists. Alright. They just stopped Landru, from The Return of the Archons, from doing that thing he does. I don’t even think I remember that episode.

Anyways Boimler tells Mariner he knows her mom is her mom. Right as her mom is watching them and broadcasting them to the bridge. So now EVERYONE knows. Whoops!

:o there’s a new Exocomp on the crew. She’s a genki girl. I love her already. Her name is Peanut Hamper. Tendi is being weird about trying to make sure she has help. Is this a take on people with disabilities?

Everyone is suddenly EXTREMELY weird about Mariner. They’re giving her gifts and treating her extremely differently, so she wants to dip as soon as possible. But there’s no way she can transfer like this, so she decides to take things seriously and be a perfect little ensign for a while so she can get off the ship.

They beam in to help someone with what they think is routine, find the ship completely destroyed by some scary ship, and then nearly destroyed themselves. Who could this mystery villain be?? It’s… it’s… the Pacleds.

Yes.

THe fucking Pacleds. Remember them? They’re the ones who were a joke. Every alien is a “species of hats” and their hat is that they are supposed to be R-words. It was the 80s. They were a massive mistake. Anyways they’re here now, but they’re EXTREMELY menacing and evil instead. They were always morally bankrupt (ha ha, cause people with mental disabilities are actually evil). That whole thing is toned down, it’s not really here. But I can’t help but fucking think about it every time they’re back.

They literally go “wait but you’re a joke”. So it’s entirely on purpose.

They need Peanut Hamper to save the day. She says no, she’s not gonna sacrifice her life. I mean, fair, but she’s kinda a dick about it. She sayus she was just here to piss off her dad, and just dips.

Rutherford goes instead, with Shaxs the security officer, and uses a virus made by Badgey to blow them up. Badgey betrays them and Shaxs sacrifices himself to save Rutherford, dying in the process.

More Pacleds show up, but are scared off by… THE TITAN! Commanded by William Riker (who Mariner is friends with btw), who is cool and scares them off easily.

Rutherford lost his memory, but Tendi takes this as a time to become best friends all over again. Okay. I guess that’s a fun subversion of this thing. The captain makes Mariner her personal “you can do illegal things when I need them”. Her personal Section 31? That’s kinda fucked up. And Boimler uses all this to sneak a promotion over to the Titan, and Mariner is PISSED. The end.

I’m not sure I liked this season very much. But I’m not gonna write off this series yet, I hear it gets better. Here’s hopin’!