Review: Star Trek Lower Decks “Kayshon, His Eyes Open”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Mariner and the other Lower Deckers work with a new Security Chief to survey a dead man’s collection of galactic curios, Boimler realizes he might not quite be a good fit for the Titan and returns to the Cerritos.

OUR TAKE
Well, Boimler’s back and the status quo is reclaimed, though not without a very Trekkie send off from his time with Captain Riker. Having gained a transporter clone, which is apparently not all that rare an occurrence in this franchise, he’s left a memorable impression on the rest of the crew and a good reason to bring Jonathan Frakes back every so often. And like Mariner last episode, we’re seeing the major development that he’s gone through since the first season’s finale. While she tried out working with her mom and seeing how well that turned out, Boimler got to be on his dream ship for a bit and realize how much it ended up clashing with how he wishes to be a part of Star Fleet. And the show doesn’t portray this as anything wrong with either Boimler or how the Titan crew handles things, they just see things differently and this isn’t seen as a negative. In a meta sense, I think this could be taken as a way of observing all the different styles and facets that Star Trek has managed to have throughout its multiple decades of history and collective hundreds of episodes. Sometimes it’s an action packed and introspective serialized adventure and other times it’s an episodic easy going comedic romp. All are welcome and accepted under the umbrella that is Star Trek.

Meanwhile, on Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford’s plot, we see the return of Jet Manhaver, who we briefly met last season as the previous boyfriend of Boimler’s brief girlfriend, Barbara Brinson. Jet acts as Boimler’s stand in for the episode and fits in rather well with the group, initially bickering with Mariner before working with her and the others to escape the hall of souvenirs. Sad that he didn’t end up a permanent part of the group, though we’ll likely see him again. Though speaking of the collection, it was very likely a Trekkie’s wet dream of references, though that brings me back to my consistent criticism of the first season, which was how much I often felt out of the loop whenever an easter egg or reference was thrown in. As said, I’ve become considerably more familiar with Trek since that season, and there were plenty of Easter eggs here that I appreciated (aside from confirming the giant Spock from TAS is apparently dead, that was a bummer), but plenty that I was pretty lost on and took me out. Even the fact that the new security chief, Kayshon, is a species known as a Tamarian was lost on me, as it is majorly a reference to a well known episode of a previous show, though thankfully his gag still worked as an example of just not knowing how to communicate. I’m still looking forward to the rest of the series, though we still seem to be hitting this same problem.