OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)The Cerritos needs some spare parts and must get them from the nearest Star Base…the infamous Star Base 80.OUR TAKEDid you like that comic review? Well, good because here’s more Lower Decks! And once again, the show being on its unintended final season ends up working in its favor. Last week we saw both Ma’ah come full circle with his development as well as bring back a minor character from the second ever episode of the series. This week, we pay off a joke that started in the third episode ever: the constant references and allusions to Star Base 80. Back when I first started watching Lower Decks, I had virtually no knowledge of Star Trek and its expanded universe, so whatever joke they were trying to do with that just made me think it was another deep cut reference that I needed encyclopedic knowledge to understand. Turns out that it was a totally wholecloth thing made just for this show! We only ever got to see some of it at the end of the third season when Mariner was briefly sent there for something she didn’t do, but we at least got the impression that it was a sleazy, dirty, almost lawless place that lived up to the reputation it got of being somewhere that NO ONE would want to go willingly. Now, we finally get to see it in its entirety AND…yeah, I would say that’s still accurate.This episode is actually quite a lot of fun, not just with the crew wandering around in a daze like they’re in a dead mall themed haunted house, but also as the crew becomes overtaken by a creepy green glow from their comm badges that turns them into zombies. Though I am a bit let down for reasons that have nothing to do with the episode itself. Back when the trailer dropped, we saw the crew lathering themselves in gel in homage to Star Trek: Enterprise, the prequel show. I was kinda hoping that meant that we would be getting an Enterprise tribute episode like we got for DS9 in the third season and for Voyager in the fourth. But we got plenty of nods to Enterprise like the gel and some of the uniforms being used and probably other things, so I think it’s safe to just count it. Though that does remind me they only have five more episodes to have a time travel story, otherwise they’ll be the only Star Trek show to NEVER have a plot involving it!