Culture I saw the trailer for Star Trek Lower Decks......killll meeee.

[Big Steve]

While originally skeptical, now that I've actually watched it I love this show. I think it's because, for all it deconstructs and has fun with Star Trek tropes and such, it's still ultimately rooted in respect for the franchise. The LD characters love being Starfleet (Even Mariner, who just has low tolerance for protocol and obstructive rules getting in the way of being a good guy), rather than being cynical about Starfleet's purpose or goals as other deconstructions might do. Frankly it has more in common with Orville than it does the other All-Access ST revivals.

 

[Captain X]

I've not seen a lot of Star Trek, but I thought the more 'mundane' jobs had occasional chances to shine?

Yes, actually. This new show is actually named after an episode of TNG that did this premise rather well, in part because it made the senior officers kind of distant, intimidating, and mysterious to the episode's viewpoint characters, with what we wold normally have gotten as the main plot turned into a kind of mystery that is eventually revealed to them as they end up participating in it in their own ways. It mostly works, but is a bit awkward in places.

Anyway, if you haven't watched much Star Trek, I can't recommend Deep Space Nine enough. It starts out kind of "meh" and has some real stinkers early on, but then you also have really great episodes like "Duet" early on as well to help make up for it, and the show really gets good as it goes on. I'd still call it the best the franchise has to offer, which sadly seems to be in no danger of losing that status.

 

[Captain X]

Not only are you wrong, you are completely off base on what this show is. Let me go through what happens/what's the message of each episode:
-Pilot: Establishes friendship between Boimler and Mariner (who takes it upon herself to be his mentor)
-Ep. 2: Mariner purposely makes a fool out of herself to help restore Boimler's confidence after a day so bad, he was planning to commit Trek suicide (go to an obscure outpost where he'd probably die and leave nothing but logs behind). Rutherford's subplot is him trying to impress a girl by transferring to different departments, but realizing that to be true to himself, he should be an engineer.
-Ep. 3: Boimler talks the captain out of a bad decision born from feelings of disrespect from Starfleet Command. Ransom defends his captured away team in a trial by combat, while attempting to resolve the situation diplomatically as he beats up a green giant with Kirk Fu.
-Ep. 4: Trying too hard to get people to like you/ascend to a higher plane of existence is counterproductive, especially when it is for selfish reasons.
-Ep. 5: Mariner tries to look out for her friend Boimler when a suspicious romance occurs, although her efforts are partly driven by paranoia and PTSD. The chief engineer of another ship cracks under the pressure of having to save the day all the time.
-Ep. 6: Diplomacy is the first resort of Starfleet, with violence being used only when all other options are off the table. Rutherford risks his life to protect Tendi from his holographic creation that has gone amok. Mariner and Boimler do their best to help a friend, up until the point where it is revealed he caused a much larger problem that endangers them and the ship due to deep personal issues.
-Ep. 7: It's alright to take time to sort out personal issues. Also, clear communication of information can prevent misunderstandings and interpersonal conflict.
-Ep. 8: Starfleet officers do good things, despite them not all being infallible heroes or sharing information with everyone.
-Ep. 9: Mariner does self-reflection in the holodeck and apologizes to people she's been an asshole to.

This kind of sums up not only Lower Decks, but Kurtzman Trek in general for me.

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

This kind of sums up not only Lower Decks, but Kurtzman Trek in general for me.

You know, I get you don't like it, but honestly? This cartoon is the best out of the whole patch. It tends to shit over older episodes, but at least it is entertaining and the characters end up trying to become better than what they were at the start of the story.

 

[Captain X]

Abrams Trek could be called "entertaining," but it's still pretty bad just as a movie. And I may not always agree with Major Grin, but he's pretty on point here.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

This kind of sums up not only Lower Decks, but Kurtzman Trek in general for me.

I'd argue that they're not actually opposite. Picard wants Ensign Crusher to step up and admit the truth in a situation where someone was killed, whereas Captain Freeman is displaying vindictive reverse nepotism -- she feels *for personal reasons* that her daughter is a lazy, underperforming slacker and wants an excuse to take harsh disciplinary measures against her.

 

[Captain X]

Honestly it's completely inappropriate for her to have her daughter serving under her on her ship to begin with. But isn't there some truth to her daughter being a lazy, under-performing slacker?

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Honestly it's completely inappropriate for her to have her daughter serving under her on her ship to begin with. But isn't there some truth to her daughter being a lazy, under-performing slacker?

If you watch the rest of the season -- yes it is, but it's shown (and further implied) that Mariner has pretty understandable reasons for it. It'll probably be explored more in Season 2, but the short version is Mariner was at the top of her class in Starfleet Academy and her peers widely expected she'd be the first in class to earn her own command, but there was some sort of incident in her early career which caused her to become severely disenchanted with Starfleet. It's strongly implied that this incident had something to do with her being punished for doing something that was clearly morally right but went against Starfleet regulations, even though Starfleet *teaches* that you're supposed to follow its moral ideals above all. In parallel with this, she also has a lot of personal resentment towards her parents, both of whom are Starfleet officers who clearly put their careers over caring for her and who almost certainly aggressively railroaded their "gifted and talented" daughter into joining Starfleet.

Mariner's slacking is also very, very specific. She's a cynical little shit when it comes to following Starfleet regs, but she consistently steps up every time there's actual danger to her crewmates. Boimler, on the other hand, is the classic ass-kissing, by-the-book blue falcon that really deserves his chew toy status (he gets somewhat better over the course of the season, but not entirely).

 

[Captain X]

Okay, so, supposedly the future humanity is so evolved, and Earth in particular is supposed to be a paradise - why doesn't she just quit Starfleet and go do her own thing like Jake did? Does she have no agency of her own?

And I hope you'll excuse me if, having watched the trailer and clips of what reviewers have shared in their discussion of the show, I take it as yet another example of a cynical, post-modernist deconstruction that serves as a soapbox for regressive leftist politics, because that's kind of what it looks like to me.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Okay, so, supposedly the future humanity is so evolved, and Earth in particular is supposed to be a paradise - why doesn't she just quit Starfleet and go do her own thing like Jake did? Does she have no agency of her own?

She's not disenchanted enough with Starfleet to want to actually quit; she just slacks off in a very specific manner as a sort of passive-aggressive rebellion against the bureaucratic rules-and-regs aspect of Starfleet. The show does not portray this as a good thing, and it is something that she's working through and moving forward from, in a fairly realistic manner.

(It does not help that Captain Freeman is the exact wrong sort of personality to deal with her daughter's personality, or her entire ship for that matter. She basically comes off as someone who was previously assigned to a frontline ship and still has that whole "best of the best" attitude even though her current ship is anything but, and she often seems outright oblivious to how she's overworking and antagonizing the crew by expecting them to work as if they were Enterprise elite. Honestly, she's probably someone who got pulled off the front lines for psych reasons, and isn't really coping well.)

And I hope you'll excuse me if, having watched the trailer and clips of what reviewers have shared in their discussion of the show, I take it as yet another example of a cynical, post-modernist deconstruction that serves as a soapbox for regressive leftist politics, because that's kind of what it looks like to me.

Honestly, Star Trek Picard is much more of the cynical deconstruction. Lower Decks is a lot more light-hearted with a very strong comedy streak.

 

[Captain X]

You mean a strong wahmen of color is being portrayed as in the wrong? In current year even? 😮

And what of the portrayal of dude-bros among the senior staff? It's just one example amongst many, just from the trailer, which strike me as being entirely in line with the current proclivity for making Star Trek full of characters who talk and act like people from 2020. I have to admit that most of the comedy I've seen from the show fell pretty flat for me, too.

 

[Terthna]

This cartoon is the best out of the whole patch.

You realize that amounts to little more than damning with faint praise, right? Because every other iteration of modern Trek is so impressively awful, I dare say it would have been damn near impossible for them to make something worse.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

*shrugs*

Opinions are subjective. In my opinion, the original Star Trek is so unbearably awful that I'm genuinely shocked it got a second season, much less that it birthed a global franchise.

 

[Captain X]

Maybe that's why you like nuTrek... 😏

 

[ShadowArxxy]

In all seriousness, part of it is definitely that quality expectations back then were far, far lower.

Just like once upon a time, you could win an Olympic Gold medal with running times that these days a mildly above average high school kid could beat.

 

[Captain X]

I suppose that's at least partly true - after all, TOS's contemporaries can hardly claim to be much better. But then, the same could be said of modern shows.

 

[S'task]

And what of the portrayal of dude-bros among the senior staff?

Actually, that was an area where Lower Decks kept turning expectations on their heads.

In the Senior Staff I guess you could say there were two "Dude-bros", the Chief of Security and the XO.

Said Chief of Security, while he had a few comedic violent bits, was, when the chips were down, nothing less than a Big Damn Hero who was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and his making said sacrifice was treated as a dramatic moment and taken seriously and not made fun of.

As to the XO, he's a bit of a brownnoser to the captain and clearly is attracted to Mariner, but he's also put Mariner in her place more than once for not following orders and disrupting the chain of command, and he's not been shown to be wrong for doing so. Meanwhile, he's at his worst when he's not being a dude-bro and rather being a brownnose...

 

[ShadowArxxy]

The XO was simultaneously great and terrible when he stabbed Mariner in the foot to prevent her from throwing herself into an apparently-unwinnable gladiatorial contest to save the team, saying it was *his* job as the senior officer to make the sacrifice play even if he had even less chance of pulling it off than she did. Especially since she just did a dramatic speech about it.

 

[S'task]

The XO was simultaneously great and terrible when he stabbed Mariner in the foot to prevent her from throwing herself into an apparently-unwinnable gladiatorial contest to save the team, saying it was *his* job as the senior officer to make the sacrifice play even if he had even less chance of pulling it off than she did. Especially since she just did a dramatic speech about it.

Honestly, I tended to side with him in that exchange almost fully, consider it from his perspective.

She's an Ensign, yes she's decorated, yes she's highly competent, but she's not the one who selected everyone for the team and knows everyone's capabilities, she's not the one in charge. Further, she doesn't necessarily know exactly his OWN capabilities, she's just assuming she's more suited for the situation than he is. On top of that, she'd been insubordinate the ENTIRE mission and acting as if she should be in charge OVER an officer who seriously outranks her; remember, there's four rank grades separating them (Lt. JG; Lt; Lt. Cmdr; Cmdr), this is not a closely ranked senior subordinate lecturing him on how to run an away team, this is the junior most member of the officer corps trying to tell her how to do his job, one with a long history of disciplinary problems and other issues.

So yeah, she kinda deserved to be put in her place there, and in a subversion done right, rather than Mariner being shown to be right and having to save the day... he managed to pull it off himself while holding to Starfleet diplomatic ideals in a very Kirk-esq. manner.

To be honest, this was the episode that sold me on Lower Decks since it did this subversion. The first two episodes seemed like they were setting up Mariner as, well, an Ensign Mary Sue (and I mean that in the truest sense of the word, given the origin of the term ), but rather than doing that they actually actively, well, Lower Decks IS a deconstruction. It's a deconstruction not of traditional Star Trek (when it comes to traditional Star Trek the show clearly respects and loves it even while poking fun at it), rather it's a deconstruction of the recent trend of otherwise flat but faultless female Mary Sue esq. characters like Rey and Michael Burnam. As the first season progressed Mariner not only became less and less of a Mary Sue, she genuinely grew as a character and became more rounded and, to be frank, one of the major things that they showed through the series was that she was genuinely flawed.