A Few Badgeys More

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (A Few Badgeys More)

A mathematically acceptable redemption: when I first began watching this current era of Trek there was so much wrong with it, and there still is, but at least to begin with I usually found a single episode to like each season. With 'DSC' it was 'The Vulcan Hello' in Season 1 and 'The Sound of Thunder' in Season 2. With 'Picard' it was 'Broken Pieces' in Season 1. In the case of 'SNW' it was the Season 1 finale, 'A Quality of Mercy.' Even 'Prodigy' Season 1 had its standout with 'Mindwalk.' Yet 'Lower Decks' didn't win me over during its Season 1 with not a single, solitary episode I could fully say I liked. But while rewatching all those other seasons almost always led me to revise my rating downwards (excepting 'A Quality of Mercy' - it was a remake of a 'TOS' episode, no wonder it feels so Trekky!), with Season 2 of 'LD' I came to find multiple episodes that stood out for me, including the finale which I rate as the best thing modern Trek has produced! Seasons 2 and 3 of the series really won me over with multiple quality episodes, a huge step up after all the other disappointments (which have been many: 'Picard' and 'SNW' Seasons 2 scraping the bottom of the boredom barrel). Unfortunately, things seemed to have taken a step backward for 'LD' with Season 4, as I've mentioned before, but one episode surprised me, and in a good way. You might even say in a 'Goodgey' way...

For all the fun and positive qualities of this series it still has its many detriments (not least the horrendously casual contemporary dialogue - even in this episode, Mariner, the worst offender, calls grapplers 'sick'! I mean really, no 'Enterprise' Trekference, but they can use such silly language? Ugh!), none more than the ugly villain characters they'd developed as recurring troubles for our Cerritos crew - in Peanut Hamper we had a nasty, selfish anti-Starfleet officer who made a mockery of the service and all good Exocomps everywhere, and in Badgey we were given a sort of Lore figure, angry and sadistic, desperate to cause as much pain and torture as possible, neither of which had an ounce of sympathy about them (and I prefer a villain who can be simultaneously evil and sympathetic). Whenever they were brought back it was the same thing, over the top disgusting evil, no redeeming qualities, nothing to show they were anything more than monsters - in short, extremely two-dimensional beings that were a stain on the goodness of 'LD.' I don't lump Agimus in with them because he did have the redeeming feature of being deliciously honeyed in his duplicity and scheming, he actually was amusing, in line with the humorous nature of this approach to Trek, and of course he was played by The Great Jeffrey Combs (sadly, the Drookmani Captain wasn't played by JG Hertzler to match the two Niners up, but they wouldn't have had any scenes together anyway), a striking return to Trek after all these years (though we're left awaiting his live action return - but if there's any chance this 'Star Trek: United' project gets made with Scott Bakula as President Archer can we really expect them to leave out Combs?).

I knew these characters would return (well, maybe not Agimus since he was locked away with all the other megalomaniacal robots), and I wasn't looking forward to it. You may suggest my positive reaction to this episode was merely due to low expectations going into it, but this is the second time of viewing and it still works, mercifully! It's like they decided to undo all the wrongs they'd committed (well, not all, but the three nefarious characters especially created for evil villainy), and redeem all three of these series villains at once, in one big hug of love. And what's more: it worked! To begin with it seemed to be same old same old, typical Badgey, taking control of the Drookmani Captain like he's a Borg assimilating his victim, surviving only as the program in Rutherford's lost cybernetics eyepiece. He's just as mean and sadistic as ever and I wasn't looking forward to it. Typical they'd throw in both Peanut Hamper and Agimus at the same time, overdosing on evil, but while the two stories (PH and Aggy are partners in crime, while Badgey splits off into other versions of himself), are separate, just like in the good old days of Trek A- and B-stories in a single episode, they both reflect the realisation of redemption for all concerned and that was quite a weighty package of pleasantness that I was simply not expecting. Not only that, it's done mostly with the series' own lore rather than tons of Trekferences thrown in - there are some, but you can tell it's the story that matters most, and the characters, they really can tell a good story without resorting to mere nostalgia.

It's also one of the cleanest episodes with no gore, very little bad language or anything else offensive, again as if they decided now was the time to pull back on some of the series' trademark missteps and go (almost) full Trek on us. Not only that, they also manage to tie in the ongoing mystery ship arc and develop it further so Boimler realises from Agimus' drone recordings that this danger to the Quadrant isn't actually destroying ships, but storing them. I must admit I did assume Badgey was going to be behind it all, so it was a relief to find that wasn't the case, and actually his scenes (almost) all take place within the confines of the dull-looking Drookmani scavenger ship where he's become lord and master - at first I assumed only the Captain could see him since he's the one wearing the eyepiece (a bit like the Vorta Viewscreen aboard Dominion vessels where only they could see outside the ship, keeping their minion Jem'Hadar soldiers in the dark and blindly following orders), but later Badgey himself explains he's rigged scavenged holo-projectors all over the ship (surely that would have been his weakness - just take out the projectors!), so I liked that they bothered to explain it. Something else I really loved was seeing actual, proper Exocomps like we saw on 'TNG'! You know, the ones that communicate with beeps and bloops, not sarcastic backchat as in Peanut Hamper when she ends up going to work for her Father on the research station at Tyrus VIIA from 'TNG' where we first met them ('The Quality of Life'). It was just lovely to see Exocomps doing what they're supposed to do instead of the post-Trekern 'aren't we clever and funny' version.

Agimus is as delightful as ever in his insistent, untrustworthy playing of everyone, seemingly ignorant that they know he's not to be trusted - okay, so he did fool them into allowing him to have drones 'for gardening' when they were actually for scheming (Mwahahahahaaaaaaa!), and he does use them to take over the shuttle Tendi and Boimler are using to transport him (dear little things in the shape of miniature versions of the ones from 'The Arsenal of Freedom'), but I loved Boimler's patient world-weariness when dealing with his eccentricities, never losing focus on the objective to find out Agimus' drone intel on old mystery ship. It's funny without being uproarious, as is the moment Badgey blasts through Cerritos' shields and calls it a 'boop' on the nose, and Shaxs says they can't take many more boops. It's just so 'Lower Decks,' without resorting to the low humour or utter stupidity the series can often display. Why can't all episodes be this good? Maybe it's because they don't have... Goodgey [throws arms up in the air in gay abandon]! He's a result of Badgey fighting his good 'side' ('The Enemy Within' reference, perhaps, or just the old 'Jekyll and Hyde' situation?), and splitting off into two personalities. Same with Logicey, splitting off the logic of Rutherford asking what logical gain will he get from killing the Cerritos crew (in reality he would just call it revenge, and pain for pleasure's sake), so there's another Trekky trope of an artificial intelligence being talked into confusion from its own programming - Logicey sounds just like a Vulcan, too, hooray!

Even so, there are still some things that didn't add up - would the Cerritos really have neurozine gas stored throughout the ship for someone with codes to activate and kill all the crew? And do they know the difference between 'neurozine' (used as an anaesthetic to knock out), and 'neurocine' (lethal Cardassian gas)? I'm surprised they didn't make that into a joke in itself, but they seemed to be saying it was the lethal kind, so they appear to have got mixed up... I know we've seen prefix codes dating back to 'Star Trek II,' but it's a bit of a stretch an outside force could take control of the vessel so completely, even if it is a computer program! I also found it hard to buy a Daystrom Institute as prison for errant AI, complete with Phaser Rifle-wielding guards, etc. Rather puts the organisation into the wrong perspective, no matter that we know it all stemmed from a man who created a terrible artificial intelligence back in 'The Ultimate Computer' (both this and 'Picard' have rather ruined the Institute's reality). Then the big one is the fantastical ultimate redemption for Badgey where he says if he goes to warp 9.9 he can transfer himself across all of subspace and so take over every Starfleet ship and facility. I know it's meant to be some kind of hint towards Tom Paris' infamous warp ten experiment, and I suppose it does fit with the wackiness of the series, but how would he be able to go at warp 9.9 on that bucket of Drookmani bolts? It's all a little too ridiculous that it works out exactly as he planned, though of course I loved the fact he discovers something transcendent that changes how he thinks about everything - it may not be an actual God encounter, but it could suggest that direction, which for modern Trek is about as good as you're going to get! (Plus we see DS9 as one of the examples as Badgey spreads his energy everywhere, which was a lovely little surprise out of the blue).

There really isn't all that much to say about the episode, it achieves what you want to see, resolves the stories of the three bad apples and moves the ongoing arc a little further, as well as hinting that Rutherford and Tendi's closeness continues since when Mariner suggests something Tendi would have said in the situation it inspires Rutherford to the extent she's mildly nettled for not getting the credit for bringing it up! We're given our first ever view of a Bynar ship as the next in line to be 'collected' by the recurring villain ship. I did wonder if they'd have their own ships since you'd assume they'd be part of the Federation by now, but obviously not (and even so, we know other races still sometimes use their own ships even at this stage - we see the Vulcan ship again when Badgey goes all subspace light show, which was fun, and I think it was T'Lyn's home vessel). You could say a negative is that we don't get much of the crew beyond our main four, but that's another reason this feels more like proper Trek when they wouldn't always have everyone in an episode (T'Lyn, for example, doesn't appear once), and that's all to the good as they can mix and match, pair and prune. Perhaps my only trepidation at the end of the episode (amid the downside that you have to watch all the previous weaker episodes featuring these villains to get the impact of this story), is that there's one more season to come and I don't know whether they can control themselves or if they felt the need to undo all the good they did here and bring back one or more of these ex-villains to turn them evil once again...

***