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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • Star Trek does this thing where formal rank isn’t actually as important as being in the captain’s in-group. Can you name anything important that provisional Lt. JG Ayala did on the USS Voyager? I sure as hell can’t, but it was less important than Harry “eternal ensign” Kim.

    As much as the Lower Decks gang would like to think of themselves as unimportant, they’re very much confidants of the Cerritos’ senior staff so it’s illogical, but consistent for Boimler to be at the top of the list for acting captain when stuff’s going down.

    Out of universe it’s obviously a narrative/screen time thing, I’d say you’ve just got to accept it and move on.





  • Dunno why they didn’t bother promoting this episode, it was great. I was initially skeptical that it was just going to be a “Mariner is angsty” episode without much of a payoff, but they finally revealed everything. And they gave Ma’ah screen time doing it!

    The confirmation of how the Dominion War scarred Mariner wasn’t much of a surprise, but the tie back to the Lower Decks of old was. What an absolutely crushing reason to lose the optimism in what Starfleet can be. Props to Tawny Newsome for some good voice acting for an emotionally vulnerable moment.

    Minor complaint/discontinuity: in this episode Mariner seemed surprised that T’Lyn was present at the fight against the Pakleds and the Klingon BoP in Wej Duj, although I seem to recall T’Lyn explicitly referencing that incident to her in Empathological Fallacies.

    Speculation about next week: I’d hazard a guess that Locarno is a thematic version of what Mariner could become if she isn’t careful. He’s a Starfleet ace gone bad, and also Sito’s former friend, so he’s presumably got a lot to sell her on the troublemaker’s life.

    God, I typed a lot and didn’t even get to Freeman’s misdirection this episode. It was good, watch it!




  • A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn’t solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.

    Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn’t list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she’s been in Daystrom for less than two years.

    IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn’t an anomaly, Rutherford’s got it bad for Tendi. It’s kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.





  • maybe they’re doing the star trek thing of having bad/meh early episodes, just on a more compressed time scale. (yeah it’s subjective, but I certainly liked these ones a lot more than the first ones).

    I liked this one, just some wholesome series-to-series love wrapped up in a goofy package. A very Lower Decks feel. The Prodigy erasure continues to be a thing but I don’t think that’s ending anytime soon.

    And if heavens forbid this is the last Star Trek thing George Takei does at least it’s on the same fun retrospective note as he had in his Crisis Point II appearance.



  • Man, I was hoping they’d confirm the commonly held theory that Sokel is T’lyn’s father (since she’s the Sh’val’s version of Mariner). No dice unfortunately.

    Really like how Mariner was emotionally mature enough to solve the problem by just talking. Sure, she’s done that some other times (Crisis Point II comes to mind), but she doesn’t really know T’lyn nearly as well as those other examples. Really shows how far she’s come from the therapy-hating Mariner in Season 1. She’s not wrong to point out how Vulcans tend to have a very narrow view of what their species should be like while idolizing paragons who don’t fit that mold. Tear them space elves down, girl!

    Other notes:

    • One of Shaxs’ officers at the gathering reaaally looked like a Kiley (Kileyan?) from SNW episode 1. Guess Pike’s message stuck.
    • I noted previously that they drew the betazoids with larger eye dots to reference their dark irises. Looking back, I think they even did that when drawing Counselor Troi in season 1.
    • we don’t often see Tendi being the butt of the joke. guess there’s no place to ham up her excessive emotionality than a T’lyn episode.