Old Friends, New Planets

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Old Friends, New Planets)

A few problems, a few disappointments, but on second viewing I really rather enjoyed this season finale, it was a worthy cap for the fourth year, right down to the mysteriously upbeat and exciting end credits music that suggests Tendi has some Big Plan now that she's been recalled to Orion by her sister, it recalled what works about Trek. Yes, as often is the case it is riffing on past Trek, most clearly 'Star Trek II,' the perennial favourite of riffs, with a Genesis Device (or 'GD,' as Mariner abbreviates her imaginary First Officer, like she's Tom Hanks in 'Castaway'), an old-style Bridge for Mum's former ship, the USS Passaro, and a beautiful lingering shot of the forming of new life in the blackness of space after the GD's detonation, not to mention recreating actual shots from the nebula battle when Mariner and Nicholas Locarno face off in an ion storm. I think I originally came to it with certain expectations, such as there being more to the addition of Sito Jaxa and Wesley Crusher (he's becoming almost ubiquitous in this late stage of new Trek, what with this, a recurring role on 'Prodigy,' and his brief cameo appearance in 'Picard' Season 2 - who'd have thought!), than there is in reality, with only the one scene set on the grounds of Starfleet Academy thirteen years ago (was that Boothby in the background?), to show Mariner was a contemporary (well, she was a first year Cadet, a bit behind the others), and looked up to Locarno and his Nova Squadron gang.

What was special about that scene, other than bringing together three characters once again voiced by their original actors, with Robert Duncan McNeill as Locarno, Wil Wheaton as Wesley and Shannon Fill as Sito (there's even a little interview with her on the Blu-ray, which was nice), was actually getting to see Joshua Albert, the lad killed in the illegal flight manoeuvre, so that added to the canon. It was also lovely to see the old Starfleet Academy as it was always portrayed in the 90s Treks, 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' just one more familiar element that makes 'LD' ring true, at least visually. I was fairly comfortable they didn't overdo it with the flashback scene, either, as while it might have been nice to have more scenes (much like Riker back in 'The Pegasus' during 'These Are The Voyages...'), they had to fit it into the existing 'The First Duty,' and doing much more than what they showed might well have upturned the balance of it all. As it was, a nice little moment that neatly tied in this obsession Locarno has with inexperienced young officers looking up to him and allowing him to lead them. I hadn't remembered this aspect of the story at all, that the whole point was the lower deckers of each race's ships were in collusion with Locarno and had enabled him to take them over. I'm not sure it really adds up in the sense that we see lots of ships in this 'Nova Fleet' (again, I'd not thought of the connection before, but the symbol Locarno uses would appear to be the Starburst manoeuvre that caused all his troubles in the first place!), yet we saw each ship destroyed when it encountered his mysterious vessel across the season, unless it was meant to fool watchers into thinking that, and actually it was prepared debris.

My one big problem with the story is no redemption for Locarno (and that he doesn't survive to meet his 'twin,' Tom Paris - enjoyed the exchange between Rutherford and Boimler about how they look alike, with Boimler refusing to see it!), an outright villain whose only apparent motivation was to refuse to learn from his past mistakes and instead multiply them into an even greater magnitude, to create a force more powerful than Starfleet or any other power... by having a Genesis Device... which is actually Ferengi in origin, so that must mean anyone can make them? And the fleet is all held together by... his magnetic personality? That idea worked in 'TNG' because it was from the perspective of one young Ensign, Wesley learning to tell the truth through conflicted loyalties, but it's much more difficult to accept Locarno, especially in this slightly mad stage, of having the influence to corrupt all these other races. I suppose his appeal was in the idea of an alliance where everyone was equal, but how would that work, how would anything be decided? As we saw, it simply didn't, the others quickly taking umbrage when they see it as him ordering them into the storm after Mariner, and it all breaks down from there. But it's always best to keep in mind that this series is about taking the tropes or oddities of Trek to new extremes - it happened, that's all you can say.

If the overarching plot of the season didn't live up to its early mystery (and I was mostly more relieved it didn't turn out to be a plot from either Badgey or Peanut Hamper!), I found this finale to be better as an episode in its own right. Mariner gets to be the action heroine she shines as, while the other characters support their Captain - it's too big a story for it to be about individual little plots for our four main characters, and if you look at most old Trek finales you'd find it was the same: they tended to reserve the last episode for big, dramatic sweeps and less time for character scenes. Instead, the characters are more supporting to Captain Freeman as she 'goes rogue' (again?!). I think perhaps it would have been better to make it much more about stopping Locarno than rescuing her daughter, since that's the professional Starfleet way, but if she could also accomplish the secondary goal then she would. There's lots to like, and what works at least as well as the Trekferences (which were relatively sparse compared to some episodes - young Mariner mentions being excited to learn about The Preservers and The Xindi, Boimler throws in the Maquis when Locarno's claiming his is the first 'unaligned' fleet in the Alpha Quadrant, but that's about it, unless the cylindrical corridors with conduits running along the sides aboard Locarno's station, were a deliberate visual reference to similar ones in 'Voyager'), are the 'Deckferences.' Okay, I just coined that one, but I mean the references to this series' lore itself: like Rutherford's beef with Livik who got promoted before him (then demoted so Rutherford could have the pip, ridiculously!), or them hashing out their differences in the Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens holoprogram!

It's totally whimsical and ridiculous that everything would stop so the two Engineers can find common ground in the middle of a crisis (a veiled laugh at the kind of silliness rife on 'DSC' perhaps?), yet it entirely fits with this series and crew, and we'd seen it before. Another Engineer, the Chief himself, Billups, gets to remind us of the Scottys of Starfleet and how they get riled up by any slight on their ships, rolling up his sleeves at Tendi's sister, D'Erika's assertion the Cerritos is a measly support ship! It was also great fun to have Dr. Migleemo (best line of the episode from Tendi: "Fluff your down!"), all tiny hopping bird psychologist of him, against this hulking green muscle woman (a she-hulk, you might say...), defeating her thanks to allergies! 1. I don't think there'd be allergies in the 24th Century, everyone would have overcome such things, and 2. he doesn't actually defeat her in the end since her bulk collapses on him, squashing the poor fellow, considered a win on the Orion side, but it did amuse, and was just so Migleemo to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like that! That Tendi sacrifices her Starfleet career to help her friend, was touching, offering herself up to her sister in exchange for a battleship with which to take on Locarno's fleet. My theory is Tendi won't be out of uniform for long, she'll be running the family business and then she can allow herself to come back, otherwise the final season's going to be a very different prospect! Another bump in the plot is this battleship: it does seem hard to believe the Orions would have the resources to build gigantic, powerful vessels, tougher than Starfleet's own (and we've seen how these things never work out well - just look at the giant Mirror Universe Klingon ship in 'Shattered Mirror' on 'DS9'...).

At least the bulk was its only real use, the Cerritos towing it to be a battleship battering ram. Again, not sure about the reality of a hole being 'smashed' through an energy shield for a few seconds (allowing Freeman and a dedicated team to swoop through in the Captain's Yacht!), surely the whole thing would deactivate, it's like an electrical field, you can't have bits that work and bits that don't, it's all or nothing. Not that it matters, I expect Trek has done the like before and to be honest I found all the shots of ships majestically soaring and arcing about, lancing Phasers splitting the darkness of space, bubble-shaped shields... all of it was simply beautiful and makes me long for the live action aesthetics to simply follow these well and long established visuals, it's bizarre so much Trek has kept to the 'new way' of 'DSC' for so long, I suppose for consistency, but there's a consistency that trumps the relative handful of modern live action episodes, and 'LD' shows how it could and should look. There's also a happy ending with Freeman off the hook thanks to establishing diplomatic relations with the Orions for the first time, Tendi going back to them making me think of Rom and the Ferengi - I assume more Rules of Acquisition have been added to the canon of 285 since here we get the 289th (shoot first, count profits later - although it doesn't sound like a Rom kind of saying!), Mariner accepting she's been acting badly (although I wasn't a fan of her "let's get drunk," at the end...), and even Locarno getting the newly formed planet named after him (even if that sounds a little unfair, but I did like it being mentioned it's because his genes are part of it - does this mean he could come back somehow, I wouldn't put it past them?).

We learn a little more of Orion culture with the 'barter by combat,' another pretty silly idea, but it's fun, and its silliness is the point. I like that they now have a word for using the Twain/Clemens program for ironing out disputes, calling it 'Twaining,' and I like that there are, on occasion, attempts to question questionable things, like when Mariner stole the Passaro Locarno wonders how she even got the engines online, which was a good point (she'd somehow got hold of her Mother's command codes for this old ship - handy that!). Flying a starship with a Joystick coming out of the Command Chair was ludicrous, but was obviously meant to invoke memories of Riker doing the same with the Enterprise (one of the few silly things about 'Insurrection,' the last great Trek film). There are always going to be some things it's hard to explain away, like when Freeman says the crew don't have to support her decision to go against orders - what if someone didn't wish to sacrifice their career by going along with it, would they be booted off the ship in an Escape Pod? It also irked me slightly to see an Andorian ship like we're still in the 22nd Century: Vulcans, Andorians, etc, they're all part of Starfleet, they shouldn't commonly have their own segregated ships and crews so I don't know why they keep doing things like that, it doesn't make sense unless in specific cases.

The supporting cats of characters has grown nicely so that you almost forget Billups or Migleemo aren't in the main credits as regulars, but we even see Goodgey, apparently working aboard ship, which was fun, and obviously tying Livik back in after 'I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,' which they didn't need to do. Obviously the big one is Fill as Sito since she was part of the episode 'Lower Decks' on 'TNG' that was the inspiration for this entire series, so it's nice that they acknowledged that (they just need to do a specific 'Lower Decks' tribute episode now where they bring back Alexander Enberg and the rest so they really can eat their own tail!). If anything you could complain that the genuine main cast of the credits, like Ransom, Shaxs and Dr. T'Ana, don't have all that much to do, but we get moments, as we do for Kayshon or T'Lyn (continuing her excellent Vulcanness). I will continue to reiterate that Season 4 was one of the weaker, but it still has a lot of pretty good stuff even then, and it is sad the series was cancelled with Season 5 as I'd have loved them to keep going for the simple fact that for the most part they get Trek right, and what I don't like is easier to ignore when that's happening, so I look forward to starting the final season (tonight!), and eventually writing reviews for that.

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