Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks “Something Borrowed, Something Green”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tendi, Mariner, and T’Lyn head over to Tendi’s sister’s wedding but find out she’s disappeared. Meanwhile, Boiler and Rutherford help settle a possible incident by using the holodeck, and the mysterious ship attacks another vessel, this time an Orion ship.

OUR TAKE

I am actually pretty hard pressed to remember when we had a full on episode about Tendi, and I mean JUST Tendi, in an A plot. She’s had her Orion heritage sprinkled in throughout the show, namely to show how much she wanted to get away from it and be a scientist instead of a swashbuckling space pirate, even when she was apparently born a pretty natural one at that. It’s here that we finally get to meet her direct family through her parents and sister and see how her reputation was back in her home, namely a pretty threatening one. However, even as she very easily steps back into the life and pirates the crap out of just about everyone, she shows that THIS wasn’t the life she chose for herself, it was the pursuit of knowledge and curiosity that Starfleet helped her cultivate. There’s been some fan readings of Tendi as trans, and while I’m not sure that the show itself will make those happen, I do see the parallels, with Tendi being born into one version of life where she was told she had to be a certain way, even a way that she may be exceptionally gifted at, that life simply wasn’t her. Star Trek could definitely use more trans characters, and if they choose so, Tendi would be a good addition.

The B plot is not one of the show’s strongest. While it is somewhat nice to see more of the show’s wholesomeness as Boimler and Rutherford are great roommates until something minor occurs, the alien negotiation scene was a bit undercut by the fact that it is dominated by the Mark Twain holodeck jokes, which are a reference to an episode in TNG about holodeck Mark Twain. The hardcore trekkies may enjoy that, but I’ve long since shown impatience for reliance on deep cuts for entire plots. As for the OTHER other plot, we get a third scene with the killer mystery ship, this time attacking an Orion vessel that I thought may end up being relevant to the episode, but was not, though that’s not my problem. It’s that these three scenes have been structured the exact same way with no new details about what the ship is and not even any real new scenes. We’ve got at least one more of these coming and I really hope it’s not just leading to a big punchline.