Much Ado About Boimler

 DVD, Lower Decks S1 (Much Ado About Boimler)

One of those episodes I'm not quite sure what to make of. We're supposed to accept what happens on the series as canon, no matter how farfetched, but they sometimes (actually quite a lot), go a bit too far into wackiness so that it's hard to take seriously. But then it's also not supposed to be taken seriously because it's meant to be a comedy. And that's why the series took a long time to win me over because comedy and the seriousness of Trek don't fit hand in glove. Maybe one finger in glove, but more than the occasional witticism or comedy episode and it gets to be... something I'm not quite sure what to make of, to bring it full circle! This is the one with the dog, which is named The Dog by its creator, Tendi. The joke here is that she's an Orion, so doesn't actually know what's normal for a dog, despite all the extreme weirdness this particular science project exhibits... And that's about the extent of that joke. I suppose you could say it fits with the theme of the episode, which is science projects gone bad: Boimler gets more than he bargained for (well, actually less than he bargained for since he doesn't fully rematerialise), when Rutherford uses him to test a faster Transporter. In the meantime Captain Freeman is off on a covert ops mission with Shaxs and Ransom to... plant some seeds... an odd choice of mission and I'm not quite sure what was covert about it unless I missed something in the machine-gun dialogue. That leaves the Cerritos with a 'babysitter' Captain, as Mariner puts it, while Dr. T'Ana sends Boimler and The Dog off to 'The Farm.'

A very odd sequence of events, almost like they were just throwing things at the board. It does sound as if they were either running out of ideas at this stage of the season or had one too many late night break sessions and got hopped up on coffee so they came up with the wackiest story they could. As often is the case, there are seeds of good a story in here: the idea of a temporary Captain coming in like Jellico (one of the few references of the episode, as Mariner says his name as if everyone knows he goes around subbing for other Captains - side note: he's one of the characters to return voiced by the original actor, Ronny Cox, though in 'Prodigy,' not 'LD'!), in 'Chain of Command' to shake things up. Again they find a novel way of subverting expectations and it turns out Captain Ramsey of the USS Oakland is a great mate of Mariner's from the Academy so they get on like a house on fire - except suddenly Mariner turns into a clumsy, useless, bumbler rather than the usual confident, competent expert we know she can be. It's all a ploy so she doesn't have to transfer to Ramsey's ship and rank up, so in other words she's just incredibly lazy and good-for-nothing, the opposite of what Starfleet officers are all about! Will we ever find out exactly why she became this way? I can't remember if it's addressed as the series goes on, but it's a pretty bad commentary (yet again), on Starfleet, that they allow such attitudes.

But then the whole premise of the series is that it has a two-tier (at least), system, with California-vessels crewed by the B-team who go around doing clean up jobs and bedding in new races while the 'serious' starship crews explore and make the first contacts. The whole thing pours scorn on Starfleet and the Federation being as good as we thought. You can still take it that that's just an attitude some have, and that the missions the Cerritos carries out are just as important to the workings of the Federation, but it seems to be another way of undermining the more pure vision of the future, even if that vision was flawed and impossible in the first place due to humanity's fallen nature - no doubt if the Kurtzman era had gone the opposite route and enforced utopian values and ideals into every pore of their productions I'd find just as much to find fault with as I do their broken, less than ideal version of the Trek future where every series likes to remind us that poverty, hatred, bigotry, etc, still exist in the Federation. Primarily this series is made to have fun, but I can't say this particular instalment was very funny. They were going for a more creepy style, whether that be the gruesome glitches in The Dog's behaviour (turning into a spider and crawling along the ceiling, its neck becoming a giant mouth while the eyeballs fly out of it like bats...), Mariner and her new team creeping around the dark, empty USS Rubidoux in EVA suits, or Boimler's journey aboard the NX Osler, a medical transport, to The Farm where Starfleet's 'unsolvable illnesses and science mysteries' go to be cared for.

The look of the Osler, with its Gothic lines and sleek design, wasn't bad, and it's fun to see another Edosian (voiced by Shaxs' Fred Tatasciore), the three-armed, three-legged race Lt. Arex represented in 'The Animated Series,' as the... well I'm not sure what he was meant to be, he certainly didn't seem to be a Captain, more like the governor of a prison or mental health facility, so maybe the vessel itself was under his authority, but the crew had a Captain, too, since we never saw the Bridge. They do like their 'TAS' connections, and it's enjoyable when they work something like that in, but it doesn't say much for Starfleet (again), that they have a special organisation for the extreme cases which they can't help - Division 14 is the name of it (suspiciously like Section 31 - at least it wasn't them!), with perhaps the funniest line being Boimler thinking they're "the time travel police?" Everything is made creepy and unsettling, the Edosian even cackling evilly, but as we find out, that's just how he laughs, and he thinks maybe the ship should be painted in brighter colours and more lights should be turned on to make it less creepy, because The Farm really is only a resort for the 'freaks' to be taken to.

It's happy endings all round, which is a positive at least: the victims of these various medical problems (including a giant salamander like Janeway and Paris were transformed into in 'Threshold,' and a Delta radiation burns victim in a wheelchair with a beeper, just like Captain Pike), are left having a great time on this idyllic planet, Boimler fully materialises, The Dog stays with the freaks, happily flying off into the sky, and the unknown disaster affecting the Rubidoux turns out to be an 'Encounter At Farpoint' type of space jellyfish that they believe to be peaceful and simply in search of a home. Quite positive, as Trek should be, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny: the biggest problem is Boimler and why he didn't fully materialise, yet could still walk around, interact with solid objects, etc. Usually if something bizarre happened they'd go to the trouble of finding an explanation, no matter how convoluted that might be, but the closest we get here is Ramsey saying he's out of phase. Even worse, the effect just naturally wears off and he suddenly returns to normal. Just from what we know of the Transporter it doesn't make a lot of sense - either you're out of phase and no one can see you, or barely, and you can't have any physical interaction (yes, I know it makes no sense in 'The Next Phase' that they don't fall right through the bulkheads into space, they still have to make a TV series!), or you're fully energised. Part-energised is nonsense, unless you cover it with a technobabble explanation, which they didn't bother to do. Admittedly amusing (though again, the Transporter ringing following Boimler around until they find a way to get rid of it, was ridiculous!), especially as he's so desperate to impress the guest Captain.

Then with the giant space creature at the end it was rather presumptuous of them to assume it wasn't hostile, even after breaking apart the Rubidoux and terrorising its crew. It makes sense for the story and for a beautiful happy ending (just like 'Farpoint' and that episode of 'Picard' Season 3 when something similar happens), but isn't necessarily true. I also can't say I liked Mariner's reasons for not wanting to progress in her career, that she still needs time to 'find' herself, whatever that means. She comes across as simply lazy and unwilling to accept greater responsibility, whether that be from an incident, or incidents in her past, or a general inertia in life, it doesn't provide a very inspirational or aspirational character study and was another reason to be uncomfortable with the series, though of course it fits in very well with the modern attitude to such things. Not to say other Trek characters had it all together, but for the most part I got the impression it was their service in Starfleet that gave them the satisfaction and development they needed in life, with the occasional exception of specific circumstances such as Spock leaving to take part in the Kolinahr, or Paris ending up in a penal colony on Earth, though in both cases they found their worth in Starfleet, and I suppose Mariner still could too. At the same time the premise of the series is that these are lower-deckers, so once they do rise in the ranks it would be a different series, another reason it's not necessarily a good idea to write yourself into a corner with the premise being about lower ranked characters, and why in reality most Treks are about the Captain and senior staff (one more reason 'DSC' never worked, and why I have no interest in 'Starfleet Academy').

Speaking of the Captain, Freeman has very little to do, and that's fine, it was good to have a guest Captain for a change and it's fun to see her and the others aping Picard, Worf and Crusher from 'Chain of Command' with the same skintight, black, covert ops outfits, as silly as that was even then. I'm sure Roddenberry would say that Starfleet officers wouldn't do anything as underhand as covert operations, they'd always be open and above board, but those sentiments are long since crushed into dust, not least by Section 31 apparently being accepted as a legitimate, not to say even desirable, branch of Starfleet in the Kurtzman Treks. It's not like the old days when 31 were first invented, and Bashir and the others were so horrified by the very idea of such an organisation they worked heartily to bring it down in the same way Janeway did to bring down the Borg. They had a ripe opportunity for a reference in this episode which they didn't take, despite the potential, and that was comparing Mariner with Bashir, since he, too, underachieved deliberately (we learn Mariner got the best grades in her class and they all thought she'd be the first to gain a captaincy, which fits with what we know about her having a longer career than her time on the Cerritos suggests). In his case it was to hide a genetically enhanced heritage, but the parallel seemed obvious. The series sometimes makes me think they don't know 'DS9' as well as the other series' when obvious connections aren't made, as much as I note the over-abundance of references generally.

I quite liked Durga, the Vulcan woman, part of Ramsey's crew, as she had that disdainful, restrained air ("Curious that you're still an Ensign," she says to Mariner), of a true Vulcan, something we so rarely see since 'Enterprise' ruined the race. The name wasn't very fitting, and in fact I assumed at first the Captain was referring to the odd-looking, purple-haired guy as that seemed like a name fit for him, but no... We'd get more Vulcan influence in this series as it progressed, something I like since they're my favourite race and any time they get them right is great. There's not a lot else in terms of connecting to other Trek, although when the Rubidoux's Viewscreen explodes out into space and sucks the air out it was just like 'Nemesis' and I think they also did that in 'Star Trek XI.' And Captain Dayton (voiced by Dr. T'Ana's Gillian Vigman), of the Rubidoux was obviously named for Dayton Ward (even if it's a female Captain!), a Trek author of many novels whom I believe was being used as some kind of consultant on the series, unless I'm getting confused with 'Prodigy' - I'm pretty sure he advised on one of the animated series'. We also learn that Borg smell like 'old trash bags' according to Ramsey, which makes sense to me since they do look like corpses, so why not smell like them? And finally, we have the immortal line, "Boim me up," though I suspect Boimler will think twice before saying it again after what happened on this occasion - I thought this was going to be the one where a Transporter double of him was created, but that's obviously Season 2 now that I think of it! Nolan North ('Into Darkness'), gets another role after Niko in 'Cupid's Errant Arrow,' this time as the main freak (old and young halves), and it's a fun fact that Jennifer Hale, the voice of Durga, also did the voice of The Dog. A logical decision, I surmise.

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