I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee)

We're back in Season 1 territory with this one - no, not time travel, and not even plot-wise since both stories are about the recent promotions and whether Mariner will keep hers, and if Rutherford can earn one from Billups to level up to his friends. No, it's in tone and content that we've dropped back down to the heady depths of the debut season when it was more about quick-fire Trekferences and gory wackiness than good stories and character. I will give them the credit for still having the occasional nice moment, such as Mariner being confronted with her tendency to self-sabotage her Starfleet career, Ransom warmly saying he's going to support her at the end, or amusing little asides such as Boimler being assigned a room in the full glare of the Nacelle (and top marks for the obvious fix at the end when Rutherford comes in and turns down the light admission through the port, something that should have been done and I was asking why it wasn't!). Still, it's the 'bone-drinking monster' of the cutesy moopsy that's Season 1 all over, just like that disgusting dog creature Tendi befriended back then, Badgey's psychotic tendencies, and probably numerous other examples, it seemed too geared towards the nastiness and grossness this series has loved when in reality that's as far as you can get from the positivity and inspiration of Trek.

As I've no doubt said before in previous reviews when it comes to gore, it's not that Trek never did anything like that before (there's still nothing to compare to the infamously over-the-top end to 'Conspiracy'!), it's that it wasn't done humorously or so forensically - it's not enough that Mariner has to knock her commanding officer Ransom's teeth out to provide 'breadcrumbs' as bait to lure the moopsy back to its cell, they make sure to have the detail of blood on these teeth. It all adds up to a bloodthirstiness, a desire for grossness that doesn't sit well with Trek's ideals. If it were just the gore, that wouldn't be enough to sink the episode or prevent it from reaching its meaningful messages, but it's also excessively sweary, mainly due to Mariner deliberately acting up more than her normally contrarian personality and scorn for authority would deliver. But both of these issues are only a certain level of distaste - there isn't actually a lot of the moopsy sucking animals dry of their bones and it's really only the beaten face of Ransom that makes its mark, and most of the swearing is bleeped out, though is still very obvious and unavoidable. No, it's the third prong of shame, if I can call it that, and this may be the worst culprit for destabilising modern Trek and ruining the reality and power of the franchise in general: the depressingly negative view of humanity.

I'm not a humanist, I don't believe in a human-built Utopia, nor do I see humans morally progressing as times goes on, but rather fluctuating and regressing (especially at the moment), but I do enjoy Trek's fanciful ideals of human achievement and positive development, and therefore I always find it disconcerting and miserable when that optimistic sheen is rubbed away to reveal a cynically 'realistic' view. In this case it's that humans are the cause of all problems - specifically the pair that had been captured or mistakenly imprisoned in Narj's menagerie (why couldn't he let them out as soon as he realised his mistake, is it really that funny to see humans in a cage?), who were the ones behind freeing this moopsy to cause all the chaos so as to kill Narj and gain control of his menagerie to, seemingly, make money. Even though humans are supposedly not motivated by that in the 24th Century! I understand that there can be other humans out there that aren't Starfleet, don't live in the Federation or whatever, but modern Trek seems to love bringing such people and ideas to the fore in all their series', as if they actually prefer to deal with such things rather than live in a world where we can imagine such attitudes don't exist any more. It's not even limited to this alien station, either, with Rutherford getting into competition with a rival Ensign for a quick promotion by impressing Billups.

Competition is good and it's not like we haven't see this sort of thing before, or even interpersonal differences and difficulties, but at least have the rivals come to an understanding at the end, don't leave them enemies. It makes a mockery of actual promotion, too, with Billups just pinning the extra pip on this Livik's uniform only for Tendi to pipe up asking if Rutherford can take his formerly offered promotion for saving the Cerritos and Billups just agrees. It's ludicrous in every way - why couldn't both Livik and Rutherford be promoted? There's a sense of contempt running between the two rivals and despite the fact it's fair for Rutherford to get his promotion (and a good joke that he's previously turned down offers because he wanted to stay with his mates, even if it does suggest Starfleet's fine with people not using their skills to the full, even if we've seen such people before, not just in this series, but such as 'Good Shepherd' on 'Voyager'), stripping it from Livik was not the way to do it and we're supposed to be pleased that this other guy didn't get it because he's 'our' character's rival, so there's another low tone added to what's already gone on.

That's really the heart of the problem with this episode, not as much the content but the ungracious approach to how this world operates and the people that inhabit it, and one reason, as much as I like this series and have warmed to many of the characters (why couldn't we have had a rivalry with an existing character we'd got to know over time - but then it wouldn't be so funny that this sudden upstart appears and thwarts Rutherford's surprisingly taking-promotion-for-granted attitude), it can never be fully accepted by me as 'proper' Trek, good Trek, or inspiring Trek, as much as it does get the closest in the modern era. At least they seem to have got over their need to blast Trekferences at the audience every few seconds and fill stories with such things since those early episodes, so it has improved in some ways, but there are also the problems of treating canon and lore in the way they do: a silly approach. Like Boimler, an intelligent and model young crewmember not realising he could alter the ports to lose the Nacelle glare. Or having to endure living in Quarters that are somehow right between two Holodecks and the sound travels right through the walls! Do they not think Starfleet would have soundproofing to a tee on their starships? It's ignoring sense for the sake of a silly joke, and the humour really shows up the cracks in the series as being 'real' Trek. They even seem to include less obscurity than they used to, most of it is more obvious.

It is funny to hear Captain Freeman playing at being 'President of all Starfleet' in her holoprogram (the only time she has anything to do in the episode, I think), it's fun to see Boimler bring out the Spock eye shades to filter the glare, it's nice to hear Rutherford refer to those glowing red tubes as 'Tucker Tubes' for Trip in 'Enterprise' (as you'd expect technology to be referential to past greats of Starfleet in the same way Zefram Cochrane's name was used as a measurement), and I enjoyed seeing the Romulans again in the teaser as the next ship to bite the dust when encountering the mysterious sarcophagus-shaped vessel as the ongoing arc of the season. You even see the old Romulan chair from 'TNG,' although I'm not sure why they'd be torturing a Reman, other than they don't like them. Few of them seemed to have pronounced V-shaped foreheads, so I wondered if this was a connection to 'Picard' where the 'V' was so slight as to be almost missing. I do miss the more pronounced version, and I was trying to think if we'd seen the race in modern Trek other than 'Picard' and I can't remember them showing up. Their snide, scheming ways and words were all a bit too easy to parody in the same way as Klingons = violence, aggression, warriors, and I do sometimes wish we could have intelligent humour and an approach that shows wit and ingenuity more than simplistic, lowest common denominator laughs, but that shows the creatively lacking era we're living through in general these days.

Mariner's attitude towards demotion that she'll be demoted because she's earned it rather than anyone's machinations, was true to form, even if in anyone else it would be considered a disappointing self-defeating way of dealing with opposition, but that's her all over. And I did feel genuinely sad when we see the quartet of ex-Ensigns leave their lower decks bunks behind them, so I obviously do have attachment to the setup and characters. It's ridiculous that Boimler's bunk would dent so easily (both times!), and it is rather infantilising for him to refer to it as 'Denty,' even though I can identify with imbuing inanimate objects of familiarity with some sense of personality. Can we really believe Narj abides by Federation law? I don't know what their rules are towards keeping creatures in captivity, but I can't imagine it would be as accepted in the future unless for reasons of protecting endangered species, and even then you'd expect them to have large environments to live in, probably holographic so they experienced the freedom a wild animal would expect. But the least believable element of the episode (a stretch too far?), perhaps in the entire series, is that Ransom would wear the ugly feminine gym suit (with Shaxs in the other one), made famous by Troi and Crusher on 'TNG' - perhaps the most ugly 'future costume' ever devised in any Trek, and infamous in their own right, so it was amusing (although they'd already featured people wearing them at some point in the series previously).

Season 4 hasn't exactly inspired so far and would rarely reach the quality and accomplishments of its previous two seasons, which is strange when you think they must have learned what worked and what didn't by now. Usually a Trek fourth season plays to a series' strengths (even 'DSC's was mildly more interesting in general), but I'm always ready to reappraise and reassess. This remains one of the lesser examples that would sit alongside Season 1's output quite comfortably, and at this stage that's a bit of a disappointment, though it does have flashes of good stuff shining through. But I don't find myself wanting to detail every moment and detail, and there were plenty of Trekferences throughout which I could list or comment on, but I just wasn't all that engaged with it, it's fine, nothing more. And the title, clearly inspired by Harlan Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,' doesn't make any sense because they're fleeing, but they do have bones, so there's another nitpick for you!

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