Comic Review: Star Trek – Lower Decks #15

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Freeman and the Cerritos do their best to avoid being destroyed by the newly arrived invading mystery ship, while Boimler finds himself suddenly in command of the Away Team.

OUR TAKE

It’s our first Lower Decks comic review of the year, kicking of Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary year and overlapping with the premiere of another new Star Trek show, Starfleet Academy (it’s okay so far, I’ve heard the fifth episode is supposed to be REALLY good but we’ll see). We’re now half way through this (possibly final?) arc of the comic, officially being longer into this arc than any other in the comic thus far, and it finally feels like we are hitting the meat of the story. We still don’t know who these mysterious evil looking invader ships are or what their intentions with this planet’s population or its sister planet, but we can at least say for sure that they mean business. And we’re probably not going to learn who they are until AT LEAST the end of next issue, so we’ll leave the speculation on the backburner for now, except to point out that if they’re hiding something, that probably means it’s someone we know of or have seen before so that the reveal is a surprise. So maybe the sister planet actually became the invaders? For now, the point is that they’re big, scary, and can zap you with lasers and kill you, so that’s probably sufficient at this time.

Our crew have been split up into the away team on the planet and those still on the Cerritos, with the latter mainly just being focused on Freeman trying to keep her ship together while being pummelled by overwhelming firepower and engineering, which includes Rutherford, barely managing to hold their shields up, which do eventually fail, allowing the ambassadors to be beamed out. Meanwhile down on the planet, Boimler finally gets his shot at commanding a team after his only superior, Sun-Sanchez, dies of a “nut butter” related allergy. Sun-Sanchez has been present the past few issues, and even a little bit in the arc just before this about the whales, but I didn’t really feel the need to bring him up much because…the only joke about him is that he is indistinct and has a specific name. Well, now he’s distinct in that he is the Red Shirt of this mission, even if he was wearing yellow. And the issue ends with Boimler’s team heading into space and doing some damage to the enemy mothership…right before getting blasted out of space. But it’s full of named characters so they’re fine, obviously. Onto the second half of the arc!