Review: Star Trek Lower Decks “Strange Energies”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Months since Boimler transferred to the Titan, Mariner is still missing him and struggling to work with her mother on missions, the latter increasingly annoying Ransom. On a routine second contact mission, Mariner accidently gives Ransom god like powers, which he uses to vent his grievances at the two until he’s stopped. Meanwhile Tendy is worried that Rutherford is not acting like himself since losing his memories and experiments on him to find what’s wrong.

OUR TAKE

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back for the next stretch of its quest to aggressively poke fun at Star Trek lore. With its third season in the works, it’s set to surpass the original animated Star Trek show in terms of episodes, and will soon be followed by yet another cartoon in the franchise, Star Trek: Prodigy, as the brand continues to seek new life in juggling half a dozen shows at once. Last year, I went into Lower Decks being basically an outsider to Star Trek as a whole, with only a couple seasons and a few movies under my belt. But since the first season’s conclusion, I’ve actually found myself compelled to dive into Trek and finally see what all the fuss is about. To date, I’ve watched all of modern Trek (that being Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks) and have nearly completed the Original Series Era involving the original Enterprise team. And considering one of my major gripes about the last season of Lower Decks was its proclivity for deep cut references, it was nice to finally be in the loop on some of them, like what Ransom gaining powers was referencing while still being its own joke.

However, I still value and prioritize accessibility in my critiques, and despite dipping into the reference pool a few too many times, Lower Decks did prove to be able to focus on building its own set of characters as its own story, as well as take full advantage of being able to tell stories in animation that would have been much more difficult in live action, even with today’s tools. And that ability seems to still be going strong in this premiere, which continues the developments from the end of the last season. Boimler is still on the Titan with Captain Riker and doesn’t even properly show up until the end, so the remaining main cast carry on without him, at least for the moment. Similarly, while last season ended with Mariner and her mother seemingly seeing eye to eye about how to make their respective styles of action work, we see that the blurred boundaries of a mother-daughter/captain-subordinate relationship become much too complicated to hold together. So it does set things back to normal somewhat, but not without acknowledging there has been development. And then there’s Rutherford and Tendi, who may or may not be heading towards romance, but if so, there will be other chances to discuss it. Overall, a good start to the sophomore season.