Terminal Provocations

 DVD, Lower Decks S1 (Terminal Provocations)

Badgey, the infamous Badgey. I knew this episode was coming up soon and I knew I disliked the character intensely. But... it wasn't quite as vicious and nasty an episode as I remembered, and I'd forgotten about Fletcher, whose side story was fairly amusing as someone more rule-breaking than Mariner, and has to be dealt with by her and Boimler. And it is always nice to see Rutherford and Tendi together. And then I knew JG Hertzler was coming up, too... So I didn't hate it, but then I didn't hate it the first time round, it just left a sour taste from the 'Itchy & Scratchy' style of over the top gory violence, even if there wasn't as much of it as I'd thought. What I did like were the three plots (or, technically, two and a half, since the Bridge scenes dealing with the intransigent Drookmani scavengers was relatively slight), all fed off each other: Rutherford takes Tendi into the Holodeck to run a spacewalk simulation to help her overcome her fear, while at the same time Boimler and Mariner have to deal with a 'stolen' shield core module that friend from his Academy days, Fletcher, claims has been stolen, while the Drookmani try to provoke the Cerritos into firing on them as they attempt to stake a claim on one hundred year old Starfleet cargo (fairly accurate dating since I'm sure one of the ships was from 'TAS' in another nice little visual reference to the forerunner of this series!), as they don't have weapons, then using their Tractor Beam to fling cargo at the Cerritos, whose shields aren't at top spec thanks to Fletcher borrowing the isolinear core for the shield array, which in turn causes ship's systems to be damaged, leading to Rutherford and Tendi trapped in a malfunctioning Holodeck with a psychotic character trying to kill them. And the safeties are off.

Therefore a good mixture of typical Trek tropes, which are complimented by the occasional little wry observances on certain characters' behaviour, such as Shaxs being so desperate to fire on the Drookmani, yet continually put off by the Captain, much like Worf used to be in the same position on the Enterprise. Or reminiscing about the time back during the Academy days that Fletcher talked a bunch of Nausicaans out of eating Boimler's heart, encouraging them to merely spit in his face (much like Picard's encounter with the species, only he got stabbed through the heart). Then there's Fletcher's stupid idea to make himself more intelligent so he can finish tasks quicker by stealing an isolinear core and hooking up his brain, much like Barclay in 'The Nth Degree,' except it didn't work this time. Even Badgey and Rutherford are acting like Doc Soong and his creation, Lore, who was thoroughly evil, yet Soong still felt for him. There are also references that could be subtler, such as when they're having to replace all the isolinear chips in the cores and Mariner complains a core should mean one big one, rather than all the little handheld modules they have to manually swap out, which look very much like the Spore Drive cylinders in 'DSC' - could it be a nudge at that series' expense?

Of course it's full of much more overt humour and the now-familiar list of references, which in the case of Rutherford pouring out a list of all kinds of people which the Holodeck isn't just for meeting, long enough that the extent of the list itself was obviously meant to be funny, over and above the fact we're getting references to various characters that have appeared over the years in Holodeck scenes (either as characters or acted by our characters), from 'TNG' and 'Voyager' (Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Sigmund Freud, Cyrano de Bergerac, Einstein, da Vinci, Stephen Hawking, Socrates!). He also gets in a more obscure reference when questioning if there are cryogenically frozen princesses in the cargo, a pointer to one of, if not the, worst episodes of 'Enterprise' ('Precious Cargo'). And even broad statements like Mariner reassuring Fletcher the missing module is only the backup of a backup is very true to what's been previously established, and Fletcher's line about there being a baseline of goodness to everyone in Starfleet is something you can almost believe, except it's ironic in his case since he turns out to be a cowardly liar so desperate to impress people that he'll steal something to enhance himself, then threaten to bring down his friends if he gets caught, when they had just graciously offered to help him. It seems he wasn't a true Lower-Decker, since they stick together!

Fletcher's solution is to blame it on the Q since they're unpredictable and might do anything. This is also a little bit of foreshadowing since Q would be showing up soon in the series. Another big preparation for the future is mention of the Titan, and ultimately in Fletcher's promotion and transfer to that ship, which is what Boimler's dream has always been, except this guy's getting it for doing something wrong which resulted in him accidentally saving the ship when his neural pattern (oh for Treknobabble again - so beautiful to hear!), turns the isolinear core into some artificial intelligence that tries to pull technology towards itself and becomes ever larger, while Boimler and Mariner desperately try to get it off the ship, resulting in it floating over to the Drookmani and disabling them! That side of the story was quite fun, although once again showing a Starfleet officer to be a pretty bad sort, which is a negative view of Trek's optimistic idea of humanity (though sadly true), but I can't help feel that two semi-sentient, or malfunctioning, technological creations (the core and Badgey), was a bit much in one episode. It could be looked on as paralleling the two stories as each set of two main characters interacts and deals with something similar, so it's a shame there isn't a scene at the end where all four get together to share and compare experiences, to hit home they were dealing with the same thing. So it doesn't have the satisfaction old Trek used to deal in, something the series has yet to grasp while it's more interested in shock humour and grossness.

Being a Mac man, I never had a PC in my life, so Badgey's resemblance to Microsoft Word's 'Clippy' character, while not lost on me, didn't have instant amusement and appeal. It is funny when it takes ages for it to load a program, but otherwise it wasn't aimed at me. It's just a shame they enjoy crafting malevolent, cruel or selfish characters so much, as Badgey and Peanut Hamper are up there with such awful live action characters as Mirror Georgiou for being disappointingly relished by the writers. It shows a cynical modern attitude that can't be pumped out by such open eagerness and integrity such as that shown from three of our four main characters on a regular basis. It's almost like the creators are laughing at their naive dedication to Starfleet when there are these opposite people or enemies that they want to indulge in. And it's not a question of having no villains, not by a long shot, it's about making villains with a sympathetic point of view: the greatest of all time was unquestionably Gul Dukat, a man who was the epitome of selfish ambition, as evil as they come, and yet he was charming and you really do relish seeing him interact with the 'DS9' crew, and over time new elements were added to his character that give you more and more appreciation for the reality of a man with dimensions. But there isn't that much time for this kind of development in a twenty-five minute cartoon comedy, and one that has only ten episodes a season. You could make the argument that we should have more of Badgey and others like that so we'd have time for development, but it makes it even less appealing when there's so little time to go around.

One thing I can say is a good thing is the first definite use (I don't count Nolan North for 'Into Darkness' as I consider that part of this era, 2009 on, and I'm not sure on Al Rodrigo of 'DS9,' as mentioned in recent reviews), of an actor from 'legacy' Trek in JG Hertzler - the grand old man of 'DS9,' 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise,' best remembered for playing the incredible Martok. It's early days on the series so it's not a strong complaint that we haven't had anyone like this so far, especially as more and more would come in subsequent seasons, but it does make you question why someone of his calibre hadn't been used before in the Kurtzman era! As early as Season 1 of 'DSC' they brought in Clint Howard for a cameo, but other than recasting pre-existing characters like Pike and Spock, they were very slow in bringing back old faces and names to Trek. Maybe it was partly a desire to tread their own ground, create their own lore at first, as 'DSC' seemed mostly quite removed from all past Trek (in spite of occasional references or use of concepts), but gradually more and more have been added. Still not to the extent I'd like, but 'LD' at least was at the forefront of bringing famous (to the fanatics), names back. It's a shame Hertzler was wasted on a mere minor guest role as a new alien that only has a few lines, though his gravelly, scratchy growl was perfectly suited (note the Drookmani Captain has a bandage over his left eye, just as Martok's was scarred). And now I know he will return occasionally it's not so bad that he only had a tiny role here, but I still haven't reached anywhere near peak Hertzler in current Trek!

It was nice to go to Bajor, even if it was merely a holoprogram, and I like that we learn something new about Rutherford, that one of his hobbies is coding holoprograms, leading him to create virtual tutor Badgey, although there's obviously still a lot to find out about all the characters. They've slowly dripped bits and pieces into episodes regarding our main characters, but as I said before, there isn't a lot of time to explore them in detail, even though the main cast consists practically of only four - while the others do appear in the titles, it's the lower decks that are the main focus, and that continues to work well at least in giving us stories, while parodying Trek tropes, which are closer to the kind of storytelling of old Trek. And there's room to have fun with lore, such as their distrust of Delta Shift, Mariner finding it creepy that they do 'our jobs while we sleep,' a rivalry that had been seen on 'DS9' when Rom joined a team, and possibly on 'TNG,' too. I liked that they had a teaser this time, and especially that it was entirely innocent and had no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the episode: Boimler makes the sound of the Enterprise-D's warp engines to calm himself, so Rutherford does Voyager's and everyone joins in with how they think the engines sound, while Ransom (for some reason patrolling the lower decks), comes upon them and assumes they've been taken over or something like that, tackling Boimler to the floor. That's the kind of innocent fun with Trek lore that I want to see, so it could have been there to counterbalance the cynicism and nastiness to come, or to give it greater contrast.

I really, really could have done without Badgey, but they seem to love making objectionable, violent and disgusting creatures on this series (in just the previous episode we had someone apparently human bursting out of their skin and turning into a hideous monster that eats someone, for example). They can never recreate that atmosphere and style (sinking into a warm bath), of 'TNG' by shock tactics and horror, not unless they're taking 'Conspiracy' as their genesis (or 'Genesis' as their genesis!), which was admittedly a great episode, but not something to base your view of 'TNG' on, coming well before the style had settled down to become what we all know and love. But then, while they focus on 'TNG' on the whole, they want to include all Trek, and other Treks were a little edgier (you see it in certain episodes of 'DS9,' and 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise'), but something that came to mind while watching this one was a specific moment in 'DS9' - in 'Sons of Mogh' Worf stabs his brother through the heart with a knife, but you don't see the actual penetration, while a few (relatively speaking), years later, we have a cartoon series which is more than happy to show someone being bloodily stabbed. It demonstrates a different sensibility, and one I don't like. Until and unless that changes or is at least toned down, it remains hard for me to fully accept a series which in some ways would show itself to be the closest to old Trek of any so far.

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