Comic Review: Star Trek – Lower Decks #11

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Cerritos is diverted from a Second Contact mission to help continue the plot of Star Trek 4.

OUR TAKE

On to another two part arc, this time involving the ship’s Cetaceon Ops officers, Beluga Whales Kimolu and Matt. The Cetaceon Ops is a pretty out there concept within the franchise (and that’s saying something considering they also have time crystals and turning into salamanders if they go too fast), basically a whole section of the ship used for navigation and housing an aquarium to do so. This apparently was never fully visualized within the main shows until Lower Decks, where animation was more able to do it justice. As for Kimolu and Matt, they’re funny members of the Cerritos crew, talking in squeaks with subtitles, so it would make sense for the follow up comic to give them some focus. And appropriately, it’s in a story that follows up on the plot of the fourth Star Trek movie, The Voyage Home, wherein Kirk’s Enterprise crew (incidentally piloting a stolen Klingon ship) travelled back to the 1980’s to find a pair of humpback whales, extinct in their time, to appease a giant probe attacking Earth. Well, turns out that pair only managed to make a single child, so they’re back to square one, and thus will need to go back to the same time period and try again.


This is certainly not the first time the Lower Deckers have had to deal with the regurgitated leftovers of a previous show’s cast, though it may be the first time they’ve done an indirect sequel to the plot of a Trek FILM. And in terms of which ones for them to do, The Voyage Home is probably the best fit, being the one that most fans consider the most fun and funny, making it right up Lower Decks’ alley. Also, we get another time travel plot in a Lower Decks specific story, which we never got in the show itself, so I’m certainly not complaining there. Also interestingly, the solicitations for this issue mentioned it was “the penultimate arc of this season’s run”, though what that means hasn’t yet been clarified. Issues twelve through fourteen are out at the time of this writing and none imply that Issue 14 is going to be the final one, but it does look like their plots will be connected to this one in some way, so we’ll just have to let you know if that’s where we leave the Cerritos when we get there. In the meantime, see you next time for another whale of a tale!