LizstarTrek - Lower Decks Season 4

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. The last season was really good!! So maybe this’ll be even better?!

Twovix - ENT 8.5/10

New season, new member of the crew! T’Lyn is here. She’s funny.

Boimler is told that as long as he doesn’t do something historically significantly bad, he’s going to be promoted to Lieutenant Jr. Grade. Welp. Sucks to be you, Boimler. The ship goes to the Neutral Zone to find out that they’re going to be transporting Voyager to Starfleet so it’ll become a museum.

Unfortunately, right as they’re about to head out, Billups and T’Ana get fused in the same way Tuvix did. The captain is like “well don’t worry, Janeway solved this, let me look just look up what she- what the FUCK?!”

Honestly the fact that they even bring this up is hilarious. It’s like pissing on the third rail. Tuvix is one of the most divisive things ever. They of course go “no, I won’t kill them, wtf, let’s go fix them” but they look up what happened to Tuvix and decide “I WILL NOT BE TAKEN OUT LIKE THIS. I’LL JUST TURN EVERYONE INTO A TUVIX.

Woah, bird captain is hot.

Meanwhile on Voyager, things get out of hand cause a macrovirus gets loose and gets borg’d. Boimler can fix it but doesn’t, why? Cause he’s anxious about his promotion. Not cause he doesn’t wanna fuck it up but cause he doesn’t WANT to be promoted. But after a pep talk from Mariner, he fixes it all. Well, Rutherford fixes it by gunking it up with cheese.

T’Lyn “fixes” the problem by just teleporting everyone into a holding cell, turning them into… this. This might be the most horrifying thing in all of Star Trek. Tendi fixes it with some quick thinking, thankfully.

In celebration of everyone fixing the day, everyone is promoted to Lt. Jr Class. Except Rutherford, cause he technically broke stuff. Even Mariner gets promoted, which she is very VERY UNHAPPY ABOUT.

Then the episode ends with Ma’ah. Remember him? He’s the Klingon from a while ago, the first real good episode IMO. He and his bird of prey come across some enemy ship that powers down their shields and weapons and are immediately blasted out of space. Oooh, setup for something else :o

I Have No Bones, Yet I Must Flee - ENT 10/10

Absolutely amazing title, holy shit.

The episode starts with some random Romulan ship getting blasted by the random ship from last episode. Every Star Trek season needs some giant arc that’s galaxy threatening, huh??

Holy shit. This is amazing out of context. Anyways Mariner hears Ransom talk about how she’s “not going to be his problem” for long, so she decides to just be a shithead all day so she’s demoted on her own terms. Meanwhile, Rutherford decides to work as hard as he can so he’ll be promoted today. That’s sure to not backfire. Both of these plans. Rutherford’s plan is immediately stunted cause The New Guy, Livik, is stealing his thunder

LOL Boimler’s new room is right in front of the nacelle so it’s super bright. Thats really funny. Someone HAS to get that room I guess. Shax helps him move rooms…. between two holodecks. Now he hears Shax and T’ana fucking. This is very funny. The first few seasons had a lot of Boimler being the butt of jokes, but those were cause people treated him like shit and didn’t respect him as a human being. This is just accidental and is therefore so much funnier.

Ransom, Mariner, and an Ensign named Gary go to a menagerie to get some Humans the guy in charge owned. But someone lets out THE MOOPSY… a cute little creature that waddles aroung, goes “Moopsy :)” and then SUCKS OUT PEOPLE’S BONES. I fucking love him. He’s perfect. Literally as soon as I saw him I went “that thing is going to kill people”. And I was right. Someone lets it out, and it eats the menagerie owner. Mariner and Ransom solve their differences by talking it out and Mariner confronting her personality flaw of being afraid of failure and causing her own failures intentionally. Wow, imagine that. Also the humans they came to pick up released the Moopsy to kill the owner cause Humans are the worst.

Oh, Rutherford turned down a bunch of premotions before so he just… asks for one and gets it. That’s hilarious. He moves in with Boimler, aaaaand is like “oh, we’re next to the nacelle. Computer, dim windows”. Boom. Solved it. That’s so fucking funny.

This episode was nonstop banger jokes tbh. All the characters are handled amazingly and it even has character growth! AND IT HAS MOOPSY! Moopsy :)

In The Cradle of Vexilon - ENT 7.5/10

Over on Carazonia, a ring world that’s totally not Halo, a benevolent computer named Vexilon has been running the ring world for years, but now it’s starting to get old and is making mistakes, so the captain goes to fix it. Meanwhile, Boimler is down there with T’lyn trying to retrofit some old consoles. But he has to do it very carefully or it’ll explode.

Back on the ship, the others seem to be being hazed by an upper commander and forced to do terrible ensign work.

Boimler is micromanaging his team because he’s afraid of them making mistakes and getting hurt. This is a very relatable and good thing to talk about. The captain does the same thing, and the computer becomes evil, causing severe dangerous terraforming.

Boimler: “Just last week I was their peer. The same level. Now cause of some random promotion I could accidentally send them to die. What gives me the right?”

T’lyn shuts that right now. She gets to the point. She’s a great addition to this series.

They try and prank the officer back but then quickly have to fix the problem cause they feel bad. Alamaraine references. I thought everyone hated that episode but me.

Boimler is killed protecting the others and fixing the problem. But he’s brought back to life. You know how death is. This one was good.

Something Borrowed, Something Green - ENT 9/10

We start with another ship being obliterated, this time Orions. Our first ever onscreen Orion vessel actually.

Umm, hello sexy orion lesbian captain, my name is Liz :)

Tendi gets leave to go visit Orion for her sister’s wedding. She is VERY unhappy about this idea. It’s just boring old traditions. T’lyn and Mariner offer to go with her, which she ALSO hates but decides to let them when they say they want to learn more about Orion cause outsiders rarely get to go.

I fucking LOVE T’Lyn more and more. She’s the best Vulcan since… Spock. She’s a sarcastic little bitch sometimes but like… in that Spock way, where he makes biting funny comments all the time? She clearly does care and wants whats best for people. Unlike most modern Vulcans where they just don’t care about others.

Meanwhile, Boimler and Rutherford have been getting along as roommates, but they’re starting to butt heads being next to each other so much. Can you BELIEVE the other had the AUDACITY to come to the Holodeck dressed as Twain? I WAS GOING AS TWAIN!

Tendi and the girls have to go do some shenanigans because her sister got Bridal Kidnapped, which is apparently just a thing Orions do. I love Tendi. She’s so amazingly perfect at being an Orion but she HATES it, she’s like the opposite of Worf or Quark.

Pheromones are drugs in the Orion society. Alrighty then. Tendi developed a compound that counteracts their effects, and threatens to use it to stop a drug lord, so she immediately folds and gives information.

I don’t need to explain this one.

Tendi has a scene where she breaks down about how she was trained to be an assassin, a “prime”, and thats the “real her”. The others are like “no girl, that’s not the real you. You choose who you wanna be.” Its a very cute scene. It’s interrupted when they find out that Tendi’s sister actually kidnapped herself to drag Tendi here. They have a big fight because “you left and I had to take your place as the prime!” it turns out it’s just cause Tendi’s sister is anxious and feels she’s not good enough to take Tendi’s place. They hug and make up after some mild stabbing.

T’Lyn was here to learn info on the Orions and give that data to the Vulcans. She throws it all out because “getting data from an unwilling subject is unethical.” WOW. A GOOD VULCAN.

This was another great one

Empathological Fallacies - ENT 8.5/10

WE HAVE WATCHED HUNDREDS OF EPISODES OF STAR TREK, AND THIS IS THE FIRST EPISODE THAT DOESN’T HAVE AN IMAGE AT ALL ON MEMORY ALPHA. How is that POSSIBLE? Memory Alpha has a fucking article on GRASS, it’s missing THIS?

Anyways they’re escorting some high level Betazoid women somewhere, and it’s like having three always drunk Lwxana Trois. They’re throwing a big party and flirting with everyone and getting stinking drunk. T’Lyn is unhappy about this. She wants off the ship and back to the Vulcans. But communications are out for some reason. So she DOES go to the party, mostly to inquire when it’ll be over. But everyone is acting… weirder than usual.

Meanwhile, Boimler is invited to the safety’s team’s charades and slam poetry night. He wants it to be a test. But they just want to hang out with him. Thats cute.

T’Lyn is the only one not effected by this. She theorizes that its being caused by the Betazoids. Their cover seems blown so they go nuts and show that they’re betazoid super soldiers.

The Betazoids take over the ship and send it into the Neutral Zone to get back to Betazed. You won’t get away with this! …They get away with it.

Turns out the cause of the emotional outbreaks are… T’LYN! She seems to have some thing that’s causing everyone’s emotions to outbreak. She has a kind of spiral about not being a good enough Vulcan. Mariner talks her down from it and tells her that she’s MORE than good enough, the others who punished her for helping them were being awful. Just cause you’re Vulcan doesn’t mean you can’t be awful. She comes to terms with who she is and this fixes the emotional turmoil.

Boimler’s side story ends when he’s like “why aren’t you all being badass?! Aren’t you safety?” and then they stop the Betazoids with a badass maneuver. Shaxs goes “we were told you were pushing yourself too hard. Safety is about protecting the crew. Phyusically, and mentally. We’re here for you.” I love you, Shax.

Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place - ENT 9/10

THAT FUCKING NAME. HOLY SHIT. More things need to reference Garth Merengi.

Another episode, another ship blowing up. This time it’s the Ferengi.

The Ferengi are visiting! ROM IS HERE! AND LEETA! Holy shit it’s nice to see them. Rom is trying to join the Federation. Um, holy shit. That is uh, that is Huge. Thats the biggest lore thing they could EVER do here.

Meanwhile, the entire Crew is being sent down to Ferenginar to tour the planet and help make a travel brochure. Tendi and Rutherford have to pretend to be married, which is awkward when they realize they actually ARE into each other. Mariner gets up to hanging out and complaining about how everything is good and perfect which weirds her out with her Ferengi friend. Aaaaand boimler plans to review 40 different joints, but then gets addicted to Ferengi television, which is awful corporate shlock. That’s SO funny.

Holy shit. The Paramount logo above his head as he talks about immoral programing. “They put commercials for other shows in the show?! Wow, diabolical.” THE PARAMOUNT LOGO SPARKLES. HOLY SHIT.

Omfg. Rom is playing up being an idiot and Leeta is playing the part of his actually competant wife to fucking scam the Admiral into better deals for Ferenginar. The captain sees through this but he ignores her. That’s so fucking funny.

They make chocolate statues of Tendi and Rutherford. Holy shit, Tendi’s horrifying cone tits. They eventually make a giant show of breaking up just to get out of this mess

The captain fixes the situation by out swindling Rom. Rule of Aquisition #9. Fantastic.

This was mostly an episode of like, small little scenes and character moments. GOD I MISSED CHARACTER MOMENTS.

A Few Badgeys More - ENT 6.5/10

Badgey is back D: He’s taken over a Drookmani salvage ship and it’s going around killing people. He destroys a Bynar this time. Poor Bynars ):

The Cerritos is heading to Bynar space to look into it. Meanwhile, Peanut Hamper is getting out for good behavior, and Tendi is being sent to her hearing. AGIMUS is NOT, but he claims to have knowledge of the Bynar attack and demands for Boimler to come so he can tell him.

We see the two of them claiming they’re going to trick them so they can escape. Clearly not evil.

AGIMUS is very bad at pretending to be good. But I’m so happy to hear Jeffrey Combs

The Cerritos is attacked by Badgey and is almost blown up. Rutherford tries to sacrifice himself so his friends don’t get booped. Mariner goes with him, and Rutherford… makes up with Badgey, hugging him. Badgey has a crisis of hatred, and spits his goodness out as Goodgey. This is some Majin Boo shit. But that didn’t fix the problem, so they stick to another solution and get him in a logic loop. This fixes it for a minute, but then he ejects all his logic. Ooohh we’re gonna get like 50 Badgeys by the end of this.

AGIMUS is doing his thing, but Tendi and Boimler are mostly just letting him so they get any kind of info they can. But it’s pretty obvious he’s got none. But he feels restless cause Peanut Hamper didn’t come like she said. They go and find out she just… wasn’t actually interested in dominating anymore. She’s chilled out. AGIMUS drops the evil stuff too so he can hang out with her more. It’s cute. He’s sent back, but he’s actually interested in rehabilitating.

Badgey brings himself to warp 10 and touches all of space, becoming an omniscient god gaining all knowledge and power from all computers. This makes him realize, wtf is he doing? He has better shit to do. He ascends to another universe. Well, that was sudden. Fair enough, bro.

This one was just alright, but still good.

Caves - ENT 7.5/10

The Beta Shift is back together for a mission! And it’s a Cave Mission! I can’t believe we’ve had so many wordy episode titles tonight and this one is literally just “caves”. They go down to study moss in a cave. Mariner is grumpy cause bad shit always happens in caves and they all look like the same sound set. Aaaand yep, they’re trapped under rubble.

Holy shit it’s a clip show. They talk about all the times they’ve been stuck in caves before and we get small snippets from those times.

The first one is Boimler being stuck with Levi, the conspiracy theorist. I dunno how the fuck this guy is in Starfleet, but tbf, he probably has an AMAZING future as an Admiral. Boimler blows up at him after he goes off on this all being the Vendorians. Anyways it all actually was Vendorians. He’s still a crackpot though.

God I forgot about these guys. They’re from TAS.

The next story is how Rutherford got stuck in a cave with doctor T’ana and had a baby together.

Oh I’m sorry, did you expect T’Ana to be the one who was pregnant? Nope. Mpreg. This truly is a Trek show. The alien guide they’re with dies by a monster but makes a clone baby in Rutherford. They need to survive in the cave while also raising the clone baby. Turns out the monster was just protecting its baby but it sees them being good parents and leads them out of the cave.

The next story is how Mariner is stuck in a cave with the Delta Shifters she hates. Its a cave that makes you old. But they find a section that makes you young and get the stuff they need to contact the ship.

The three of them are angry at each other for not telling each other about their stories. Tendi is stuck in the middle, but then they’re all eaten by the Moss who’s like “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE UNTIL I HEAR TENDI’S STORY, I AM CURIOUS”, so Tendi tells the time they were stuck in a turbolift for a few hours and hung out as friends. This pleases the moss. As they wait to be rescued, they keep telling stories to their new friend, the Moss.

Cute one.

The Inner Fight - ENT 7/10

Mariner has a deathwish and is intentionally putting herself in dangherous situations. And at the same time whoever is attacking people in the quadrant is now attacking ex federation officers. So they have to go rescue people like Bev Crusher or Thomas Riker while Mariner is sent with the LD crew to do a boring lazy thing so she doesn’t get herself killed. But then a Klingon bird of prey attacks anyway and they have to beam down to a planet.

While on the planet, they find the people who were seemingly killed by the ship all season! Mariner goes out to fight them and gets her ass kicked by a Klingon.

Meanwhile the captain needs information from a backwater crime planet but everyone blows her off cause she’s Starfleet. I find it more annoying than funny sadly.

Mariner gets pissy and runs off alone. She gets into a fight with the Klingon, who is Ma’ah, remember that guy? He claims his people abandoned him here and betrayed him, so it was his crew up on the bird of prey I guess. They get stuck in a cave cause of a storm (MORE CAVES), and they start talking about this. Why IS Mariner doing all this?

Turns out it’s PTSD :) Yaaay.

Turns out she was friends with someone. Sito. Remember her? She was the Bajoran in TNG who got herself killed following orders. Lower Decks mentioning Lower Decks yay! She’s not cured, but she comes more to terms with it. “there’s been enough fighting and killing”. She ends up getting everyone to team up, but is suddenly transported off planet. They assume she was taken by the Klingons and trick the ship down to the planet and take it, buuuut nope. Where could she be?

Hello there, Not Paris!

Also the captain gets the info she needed because she used people’s hatred of the federation against them, tricking htem into giving information to “a bounty hunter”, one of her officers in disguise. Fair enough. I didn’t like that plot point but I liked the Mariner stuff a lot!

Old Friends, New Planets - ENT 8/10

This looks like a meme.

We flash back to Mariner’s first year in the academy. Gosh, remember the Nova Squadron TNG episode? Who knew that’d be such an important episode for lore. They get everyone back, which is cool.

Back in the present, Nick Locarno is like “I saved you :D You can join me now!” She is…. NOT interested, but pretending to be basically, so she can try and stop him from the inside. Locarno sends out a message to everyone. He’s forming the Nova Fleet, the “first unaligned fleet in the alpha quadrant” (sorry, Maquis). It’s formed of “lower deckers and people who are under appreciated by their stuffy higher ups.” But he also has a Genesis Device that he’ll use as a bomb in case people threaten them. Well, that’s fucked up. At this, Mariner IMMEDIATELY dips, stealing it and running away.

Meanwhile, the Cerritos crew needs to do things against orders so they sneak to Orion to get help. Tendi does BARTER BY COMBAT to force her sister to help them. Buuuut it fails and now her sister owns the Cerritos. To stop this, Tendi offers her the only thing she’d want more. Herself. Tendi noooo ): And it was ALL FOR A SHITTY WARSHIP THAT DOESN’T EVEN WORK. Damn, she’s an asshole ):

Mariner has a talk with Locarno about how he’s a little fucker who’s just mad cause he fucked up and couldn’t take the heat for his failure. He has a breakdown and shows he is in fact still a little stuck up egotistical cadet through all of this.

They break through his shield by THROWING the battleship at it. Boimler gets to do this from the captain’s chair! Yay, that’s badass. Mariner activates the Genesis device, setting it as a bomb, just as Locarno comes and tries to kill her. But she’s rescued by the captain who took the captain’s yacht, first time that thing’s been used. Locarno fucking explodes. Wow, they killed off a canon character. Didn’t know they had it in them.

The Genesis device makes a planet, which they name Locarno. They’re gonna use it for refugees. Neat! Locarno doing something good for the first time.

Everything’s all good! :D No negative reprecussions at all! AND T’Lyn decides to stay, too! She likes it here after all. Oh wait right, Tendi ):

Goodbye Tendi <3 Please please come back in season 5.

Wow. Really good season? It’s so weird to be EXCITED for Star Trek again.