Review: Star Trek Lower Decks “First First Contact”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Captain Freeman is given a surprise promotion to another ship, which Mariner overhears. Feeling betrayed, she blabs to the senior officers, causing an uproar in command right as the Cerritos is about to assist another ship with their first ever First Contact mission. A solar flare knocks out said ship, forcing Freeman to pull her crew together and pull the outer hull off the Cerritos in order to stop the other ship from crashing into the planet. Meanwhile, Rutherford finds out that his back up memories of Tendi have messed with his cyborg eye’s display, while Tendi finds out that she’s being taken out of Sickbay, which freaks her out, but it’s actually because she’s starting training to become a Science Officer. In the end, First Contact is successful and Freeman intends to turn down the promotion, but is then met with Star Fleet Security, who accuse her of a bomb going off on the Pakled homeworld, arresting her in front of the whole crew.
OUR TAKE
Star Trek: Lower Decks closes out its second season in a much more dramatic fashion than last year, not only with its first season ending cliffhanger (which seems to be a staple of Trek shows) but also showing how far a lot of its characters have come. In parallel to the last finale, the crux of this episode is Mariner’s heated and complicated relationship with her mother, Freeman, and also comes about through someone overhearing something they shouldn’t have and blabbing it, causing unrest around the ship. Though while last time it was about Boimler slipping that Freeman is Mariner’s mother, now it’s about Freeman possibly leaving the ship for greener pastures. Last season ended with their relationship mending a bit, even if the means they used to heal it required some work, as we saw in the premiere where their attempts to work well together ended up backfiring. Here, the possibility of her mother leaving seems to set back that progress by triggering Mariner’s fear of abandonment and disappointment, forcing the two of them to finally put things aside when faced with a crisis that could get them killed. Mariner’s issues are also touched on a bit with Jennifer, one of the Red Shirts from a previous episode who it seems is also emblematic of Mariner’s tendency to push people away if she comes to like them. Where that’s going, if anything, will have to wait until next season, which thankfully is already confirmed to be coming.
As for everyone else, Boimler seems pretty much pushed to the background for this finale (in that he doesn’t really have a major plot specifically about him, he obviously still did important things) kinda like he was last episode when he was overshadowed by the bigger plots going on there too. Though I guess the fact that I didn’t miss his presence all that much means that he was used effectively anyway. Tendi gets a big step up in her own personal journey, which is definitely better than last finale where her plot was tied to the robot Peanut Hamper and all the good that did, mainly none. Rutherford’s memory issue is at least tied to the beginning of the season, where he was recovering his memories as best he could from before he lost them, though it still feels a bit tacked on.
And lastly, there’s the bigger progression of the Pakled plot that’s been hovering over the show since the end of the last season. Last week seemed to show a major turning point with the main orchestrator of all those events being a rogue Klingon captain who was then killed by his new second in command, but it seems that there are still some players involved that just blew up the Pakled homeworld and pinned the blame on Freeman. If it were as simple as the Pakleds simply doing an oopsie poopsie and blowing themselves up, we probably would have seen it for the comedy, but we didn’t, so something else is up here. This added intrigue turned what might have been another disposable episode into a major hook for next season, which I am pretty frustrated that I’ll need to wait another year for. Thankfully that’s not the last we’ll see of Trek shows this year, but Lower Decks will have to go back up on the shelf until next summer.
