Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks “No Small Parts”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Boimler accidently leaks the secret of Freeman being Mariner’s mom, which immediately changes the tune of everyone around her, much to her annoyance. In order to escape all of this new attention so that she can keep doing her thing behind the scenes, Mariner tries to get promoted to another ship, but a trip to save a different ship soon turns into a fight for their lives against the Pakleds, scavengers who were previous considered non-threats but have since made ships of other species and are now after Starfleet ships. Freeman is injured in the fight, Rutherford brings back Badgey to make a virus to destroy the ships, Shaxs (who I have somehow avoided having to mention this entire season) sacrifices himself, Rutherford loses his memory after his implant is ripped out, and Tendi’s new robot friend Peanut Hamper bails on them. But when none of that is able to stop the fleet, Captain William Riker arrives in the Titan to rescue them. The crew recovers and mourns their dead, though Boimler accepts a promotion to the Titan, and Mariner and Freeman decide to work together on the ship from now on instead of being at each other’s throats.
OUR TAKE
The Lower Decks first season finale helps to show that this series certainly has a range between the comedic and action packed, bringing the initial arc to a solid conclusion. It still suffers from some of the issues it had at the start of the season, though, mainly in how much reliance it puts on references to previous Trek shows. It manages to keep the focus on the crew of the Cerritos sufficiently, but I still found myself in too many points where I was left out of a joke or reference that only made me feel disconnected from the story and characters. I’ve only recently started getting into the many shows of Star Trek, so something like having Pakleds as the bad guys, which I think was supposed to be seen as a massive twist, ended up just making me scratch my head and try to google it. I get that this is for old fans of the franchise, but it shouldn’t feel like it’s pushing me out as a newbie to it. The Riker reveal, however, actually more or less works here, as his legendary status is well-established within this series, even without knowing his history over on The Next Generation. Though he loses points for reminding me of his involvement in the Enterprise series finale.
But hey, this is still a fine episode and a better finale than I expected of it to be honest. I mentioned last week how it was pretty unclear that Marnier being related to Freeman was supposed to be a secret, so the gravity of revealing it got lost on me, but they thankfully make use of its character development potential right away by using it to finally build a bridge between their two methods of being officers, seemingly laying groundwork for them to be a united front in Season 2. Boimler, meanwhile, is not someone I can say I particularly dislike, but the balance of being both a suck-up and a somehow good friend never really landed for me, and honestly I think it might be better to let him just stay on the Titan. And while the status quo definitely feels changed, they don’t quite feel earned. Rutherford’s plot was just a weird gag until it suddenly turned serious, Tendi just kinda feels tacked on with her plot about the flying robot officer, and Shaxs’ death, while poignant, doesn’t quite hit the mark it could have if he was more of a fleshed out character beyond his surface personality. So all in all, I would say…good enough? Guess we’ll see what Season 2 has in store for us when that’s done. It’s the only Star Trek show out of the bunch that are currently ongoing that can actually be completed right now, so I imagine we’ll see more soon enough.
