Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks “Fully Dilated”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Mariner, Tendi, and T’Lyn go to a planet where time passes quicker, with Tendi feeling pressure to show up T’Lyn to seem like a better candidate for Senior Science Officer.

OUR TAKE

Lower Decks continues careening towards the end of its run, though this week we get one of the most fun episodes this season, and probably the most fun so far! It’s another girls trip episodes, meaning ones with Mariner and Tendi and now T’Lyn, and may be the last of the series, so it fittingly ends with the latter two actually getting a major promotion to Senior Science Officer, a position held by many famous characters across the franchise. I guess I wish it didn’t take pitting two women characters against each other to get there but all’s well that ends well I guess. We also get an unexpected cameo from Brent Spiner, AKA Commander Data, which would feel a bit more meaningful if we hadn’t had Spiner all over Star Trek: Picard’s three seasons. But they also make his inclusion meaningful as someone with parallels to Tendi, as they are both the first of their kind within Starfleet. This is the kind of legacy character guest star appearance that works the best: it’s a treat for older fans who are familiar with them and their history, but for those who aren’t, they contribute to the character arcs with regular cast members in a non-intrusive way.

I’m still gonna give this episode a high score, but I also couldn’t help but notice that Lower Decks did that thing again that bugs me, which is pretending that references are substitutes for jokes. It seems I am a minority in terms of bothering, but I’m the one writing the dang review so if you’re reading this, you just gotta deal with it. If you’re a longtime fan of several Star Trek shows, you’re probably gonna notice some shout outs to a few choice episodes like “The Inner Light” and “Time’s Arrow”. A couple episodes I actually watched for the first time recently as I go through TNG for the first time! If you have functioning eyes and working brain, you may be able to notice these references on your own without acknowledgement. But if for some reason you don’t, there’s Mariner to go ahead and state it out right repeatedly. And I get that we’re nearly at the end of the show so I should really stop bothering to even point it out, but why the hell not rant about it one more time before the curtain falls? Just don’t let this distract you from the fact that this is still a great episode and hopefully a sign of more good things to come as we near the end.