Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks “Temporal Edict”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

When the Peace Summit is suddenly relocated away from them, Captain Freeman takes it as a personal insult that must mean their crew is slacking off. She doesn’t know how right she is, as apparently Mariner, Rutherford, and now Tendi are making use of “Buffer Time”, AKA lying about how long a task will take in order to take more time goofing off. That is, until Boimler accidentally blabs about it to Captain Freeman, leading to her cracking down on the whole crew and making them all work non-stop. As a result, everyone is overworked and slowly losing grip on their sanity, aside from Boimler of course.

This also ends up having First Officer Jack Ransom’s away mission going totally off the rails as they end up picking the wrong complimentary gift, which insults the natives and somehow has them start invading the ship. While Boimler convinces Freeman to let up on the time crunch (which somehow gives the crew enough strength to fight back the aliens), Mariner and Ransom bicker over who gets to fight their champion in order to save the away crew. Ransom because he’s the first officer and Mariner because she thinks breaking the rules at the right time is worth it, so Ransom stabs her in the foot, therefore breaking the rules in order to put his life on the line instead of her. He wins and saves everyone, but Mariner decides not to report him because she respects him a bit more now. And Boimler has a new Star Fleet rule named after him, even though it stands for the exact opposite of what he stands for.

OUR TAKE

The two plots this week seem to overlap in a theme relating to what the proper way to manage a team is, with Freeman’s stricter policies on workflow to build up her lack of reputation running everyone ragged, while Ransom’s urge to rush into the fray to protect HIS crew is criticized for being too eager to…sacrifice himself for his crew? And then the way they’re solved is that he DOES try to do it but only after breaking a rule, while “buffer time” situation is decidedly on the side of the less restrictive workflow. It seems kinda boring for the story to HAVE to pick a side on an issue that seems like it has, and should have, reasonable points on both sides of the issue. Yes, overworking your workers so hard that they are constantly screwing up is a terrible and unethical idea (which sadly many jobs do anyway) especially when it’s just to build up the captain’s fragile ego, but then perhaps it might also be problematic for the crew to need to fudge their needed worktime, though that’s not really touched on here. Plus, considering how ragged they were before their ship was boarded, it seems unlikely that telling them they were free to take their time NOW would actually give them the willpower to get control back. I know what the emotional beat is supposed to be, but it still doesn’t add up.

On top of that, this series seems to be afraid of making a subtle point for fear a viewer might not catch it, and I think First Officer Ransom is a good example of that. He’s the guy who looks like a buffer Chris Pine (and who I totally thought was voiced by Pine when I first heard him talk) and who looks like he’s meant to represent those of this generation of Star Fleet who would want to replicate the adventures of captains like Kirk (or at least fail them like Kirk from the newer movies). I even figured they would reveal that Ransom looked up to Kirk and was trying to embody him in his behavior, though that hasn’t come up yet, and frankly doesn’t need to in order to leave the idea floating around. What kinda spoiled that (in the way that milk spoils) is Mariner basically going “oh my god, this is just like what happened to KIRK!” just in case people didn’t make the connection. And I understand that this is meant partially for newer audiences, but then that just makes lines like that confusing and alienating for new fans and patronizing for more experienced ones. Lower Decks’ style of humor bounces frequently between too broad with its zany Rick & Morty/Final Space fast talking gibberish and mania AND being too obscure with shoved in verbal references that don’t really add anything for anyone. Perhaps the latter two thirds of the season will show more promise?