A Farewell To Farms

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (A Farewell To Farms)

Each season they like to do an episode that breaks the format, in other words something completely different, opening titles over a more thoughtful version of the theme music, an alien point of view, that sort of thing. That can work, but for every 'wej Duj' there's 'A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,' whose stench is hard to remove. Fortunately this falls more in the former category as a fairly enjoyable stab at Klingon culture, but it's also another episode where I feel the series isn't quite working as it should be, and as I know it can. There are some fun, minor wisecracks about Trek lore, there is some exploration of Klingon culture or subculture, and it is nice to continue the story of Ma'ah, the Klingon we first met in 'wej Duj,' and who's had an arc weaving here and there through the series ever since. I like that kind of continuity, it's missing from most of modern Trek where even the main characters don't get much of the kind of development Trek used to be so good at. Even with all that it does leave a sense of... not wasting time, that would be too harsh, but treading water a little, the season's 'main' arc (which at the moment gets as little exposure as Boimler's beard-growing 'subplot,' which does at least show in more than mere face follicles as he tries to embrace pain and the way of the warrior like his more confident and successful alternate universe counterpart), of mysterious 'space holes' as Ma'ah succinctly describes them, is really just thrown in at the end as a reminder of the growing instances of these anomalies.

Not that I'm saying they're doing badly by not focusing episodes on the arc, and I do quite like that they introduced it into this episode which at first seems as if it would have nothing to do with anything else, Mariner's pretext for being in the area good enough. The real focus is on Ma'ah and the dejected life he's leading having disgraced the family honour from his crew mutinying (I don't quite believe his brother, Malor, when he says the whole family being shamed was 'hilarious,' but maybe he was being ironic, or perhaps he really is as lacking in Klingon ways as his slovenly appearance and motivation by money suggests - what is he, a Ferengi?!), reduced to working on a farm on Qo'noS, surely a most lowly occupation among a warrior race. We do get an idea of what life outside the warrior caste might be like, and by extension the kind of life Martok may have had before he rose to prominence - the Chancellor of the Empire gets a couple of mentions here, once as Boimler thinks the bar is where he took on some opponents, while Ma'ah corrects him that it took place in the Ketha Lowlands, and then at the end when Ma'ah takes to his duty as Captain of a rust-bucket, saying proudly that this is the kind of ship Martok started out on, so they're definitely trying to draw parallels, and who knows, maybe Ma'ah is destined to lead the Empire as well!

In the old days (in other words, a few short years ago, maybe four!), we could have speculated on whether Ma'ah may indeed be Chancellor by the time of 'Picard,' and perhaps we'll see him in live action? Or maybe there'll be some reference to him somewhere else in current Trek, but while it's possible he could be remembered a millennium hence (in 'Starfleet Academy'), we no longer get that impression of an unfolding Trek universe that we were clinging onto amongst all the dross produced in the last decade, even possibilities seem dead at this point. Martok's absence is a bit of a gaping hole, which is strange since this series has made use of both J.G. Hertzler and even Martok, but also true to this series is that they gave us a 'cartoon' version of Martok (I don't mean animated, the whole series is in that format, but in that it wasn't the real one, just a mock-up Martok), so it is a shame not to finally see him sitting on some throne somewhere overseeing the High Council. But then this story doesn't deal with anything so high and mighty, merely the 'Oversight Council' which apparently oversees the fleet, a bit like a Klingon version of Starfleet, and of course it's run by a big, burly bully without honour, in keeping with the general trend of Klingons to worship honour while yet somehow the majority of them are cowardly and conniving.

Mary Chieffo's role as K'Elarra was a nice bone to throw at us (and her), after she was unceremoniously dumped out of 'DSC' when it zipped into the future, as she seemed like one of those potential recurring characters that would continue, and was at least more interesting than the bland, undeveloped Bridge crew I could barely remember the names of for most of that series. For one thing, while I dislike 'DSC' a lot and put so much of the problems and mistakes of modern Trek at its door, like it or loathe it, it is part of the lore (any future Trek producers: feel free to alter the ridiculous canon from that series at every opportunity to somehow smooth over the bumps!), and I appreciate when there's some connection to other series', even the worst ones. In this case it's not a connection to lore, merely bringing back an actress, which is fine, but it's telling that even though I knew she was going to be in an episode this season I'd forgotten it was this one, and this character as I didn't recognise her voice (checking back I find she wasn't even the character I thought she was, actually the woman in the bar!). When I heard she was going to be in it I naturally assumed she was going to be the character she'd played before and somehow L'Rell would appear, either as a very elderly Klingon, or in holographic form, flashback, or one of the numerous other sci-fi ways they can always use to bring back someone. As it is it's merely a minor role.

The other role, whom I thought was played by Chieffo, was actually Enaj ('Jane' backwards?), which I'm not even sure fits with Klingon culture where women aren't allowed to serve on the High Council and whose rights are curtailed in leading their House, etc. Nowadays I'm sure some would decry this as Trek not living up to its themes of equality and betraying itself, but then they'd be forgetting 'diversity' - not all cultures are going to be the same, and while the Federation would be happy to have females in positions of power, the Klingons aren't (or weren't - L'Rell's position itself was a reversal of what we knew of Klingon canon, but like most things, 'DSC' mostly just ruined any Trek concepts it toyed with). Leaving aside all that, after all the lore-meisters would no doubt say it wasn't ever stated in canon they couldn't serve on this Oversight Council, mainly because I don't think we'd ever heard of it before, even though it's not in keeping with the spirit of Klingon culture, but leaving it aside, it's only a tiny role anyway. We get to see more of the race's culture in the farming operations (once again it's important to note how Replicators can't recreate the 'liveliness' of Klingon dishes and foods, which is why farms would exist at all when they can simply turn energy into edible matter), its music (can we call that 'Thrash lute-playing,' etc, Klingon folk music?), we learn of another animal species on the planet called a 'Brush Devil' which must be huge judging by the bones with which Malor decorates their transport ship (though apparently Targs can grow to the size of a small elephant if Bargh's pet is anything to go by), and connecting to our time, they can expect Ferengi calling to scam them on their Communicators just like junk mail or phone scams now, since that's an excuse Ma'ah uses not to talk to Mariner.

There was some beautiful imagery in the opening titles with dawn or dusk shots of Ma'ah's farm (and as ever the Cerritos looks superb on Blu-ray, the little we see of it), but my favourite moment was a brief establishing shot of the Oversight Council Chambers where a couple of hover-bikes have an altercation and one shouts "Experience bIj!" and the other replies "You experience bIj!" a deep-cut if ever there was one that even I, a decades-long viewer and ponderer on Trek lore, would never have known about if not for a podcast about this interactive video board game from the 90s - the ridiculousness of the situation, its brevity and the obscurity of the Trekference all combine to craft a perfect moment of humour. I can't really say the episode was particularly funny in the main - they did get that formalised way of speaking Klingons always had, epitomised by Ma'ah, but then they undercut it with his brother who has none of the ways of Klingons about him in dress, speech or attitude (Malor played by Sam Witwer, a genre veteran of such things as 'Battlestar Galactica' and 'Smallville,' whom had played a Xindi Sloth on 'Enterprise' and has dual roles here since he's also Legnog the honoured taster in Migleemo's story). I wonder if they meant to make the brothers look like Matt and Jeff Hardy, the famous wrestlers, or it's a coincidence? Ma'ah is the most Klingon of Klingons, very much a Worf type, though one who has lost his sense of direction and purpose thanks to previous events, so it's nice he succeeds, that's the Trek way: showing a problem and having characters work through it to inspire and impress. Also something too often lost in grim and miserable dystopian approaches seen in so much of modern Trek - that's one reason why this series works and feels more like good Trek.

It's not universal, however, there are still reasons why I wouldn't call this a good episode: as is so often the case on the series they continually annoy with the casual, contemporary speech, bleeped-out swearing and general lack of things making sense - somehow, joining together as four people means the 30,000 volts of electricity coursing through them will be 'equally spread'? I don't think that's how it works - anyone touching anyone else would be fried, and while the message of combining to defeat the task was Trekky, the scientific silliness doesn't work. In the same way, Captain Freeman claiming Starfleet lighting aboard its starships has been scientifically attuned to suit all living beings was unlikely at best, since with so many different races aboard there's no way they could anticipate everyone's exact needs and be able to match it. It's like if she claimed the temperature was designed to suit everyone, while Cardassians like it hot and Bajorans like it cool (or whatever). Of course she could have been making up stories to defend her ship against such objectionable guests, but then that makes her look weak if she feels the need to lie to counter people she dislikes. The worst thing was visual with Malor's burly Klingon chest quite visible yet not having the exoskeletal ridges we'd seen before (most famously on another brother: Kurn), something I'm sure I've complained about before on this series. The fact that even this series just won't be 100% pure Trek remains my irritation with it.

The B-story of Migleemo being visited by famous food critics of his race was a nice way to explore his culture since he's largely an unknown even five seasons in. I wasn't even aware his people were called the Klowahkans, for example, I'm not sure it had ever been mentioned before, but that's another example of this series at least trying to be Trek: you have a member of a 'new' species we've never encountered before and over time you explore them little by little, the cultures part of the interest instead of all aliens sounding and behaving like humans which happens far too often in modern Trek (another area where 'LD' tends to do a little better, for all its faults). This series is skewed comedically so the other races tend to be over the top, such as Dr. T'Ana looking exactly like a moth-eaten cat rather than the more noble example of M'Ress from 'TAS,' Shaxs as a very extreme version of a Bajoran who also has very tender feelings, Tendi as an example of an Orion (even in a bit role here her culture is nicely integrated: assassin skills mean she's expert at chopping veg!), and Migleemo who appears to be a humanoid budgie, so it's usually feather jokes or birdseed, the kind of simple, obvious humour that can work because we're immediately in on it, having the same conception of birds or whatever they can play on, but which used to come from our accumulated knowledge of Trek's worlds and races, something which encouraged the audience to invest in the more they saw, in turn giving them an insider perspective, too often lost in modern Trek as it tried so hard to appeal to casual viewers who'd never become the collectors and avid followers of a devoted fanbase (but I could go on for hours about the wrongheaded approach to most genre attempts to appeal instead of having a vision and believing its high quality and uniqueness would ensure viewership).

Migleemo's story is basic, he's feeling like an outsider to his own, partly due to his lack of certainty about his chosen path, and partly down to the visiting dignitaries' snobbery, which seems to be a trait of his kind, though he's always been different - again, a great Trek trope that the outsiders in a group tend to get drawn to Starfleet where their uniqueness will be added to the rich pot of stew (so they do have more in common with the Borg than we think - both want biological and technological distinctiveness to be added to their own, only in the Federation's case it's so they can excel, while in the Borg's it's about falling into faceless line). Migleemo's just a nice guy whom they've used quite nicely over the course of the series, often representing positivity, so we're automatically on his side against these unpleasant visitors, and it's a treat to go to his homeworld (or nestworld as the caption has it for Klowahka), and of course his insight and training in psychology comes into play to earn the respect of these tasters who were only really covering up their own defects - there's a deft connection between the two stories when Boimler reads that these tasters had given the Cerritos' Replicators two stars (ironically what I'm giving this episode, but it's not because I've lost my sense of taste regarding Trek, quite the opposite!), not strictly necessary, but appreciated - I always loved it when the various subplots matched up or paralleled in some way, and since this is only a 27-minute production it's about all they could do in the time they had to wrap up.

I'll say it again: this isn't a bad episode, one of the better ones so far this season I'd say, which a few years ago I'd be celebrating just for not being bad as I found it hard to like the series in Season 1, but I've seen a lot better. I don't need it to be funny, and I like the Trekferences that are done well (Malor thinking he's dying and claims he sees Kahless, the original one - there was a whole 'TNG' episode about there being a clone version created to further Klingon religious beliefs, and I couldn't quite hear his last line, but it sounded something like not the one who did impressions, so a reference back to 'TOS' and the Excalbian recreation?), but I've never really thought much of the wackiness - Mariner striding in and throwing out swearwords, Boimler screaming or being thrown about, that kind of thing. I like the characters, but I like them when they're being serious. Boimler's line about loving Klingon bureaucratic minutiae works, as does the various rituals they use to challenge Ma'ah's position or that are used against them. It doesn't make much sense that someone could conscript someone of high rank, like Bargh, but the idea of Klingons reeling out obscure precedents like legal traps is amusing since they're usually so dismissive of words and documents, but is also so true to their conflicted culture. The way they get out of their difficulty at the end wasn't so clever, nor was the gory killing of Bargh - true as it is to their ways we didn't need to see so much blood (pink as it was!), and while you can see they're just following the logical trope that Klingon problems = solved by killing, it does remind us the series didn't have pretensions much beyond replaying tropes and making us point and chuckle when they could do good, original stuff when they wanted to.

Credit must go to Jon Curry for being one of the most Klingon Klingons since 'DS9' (enjoyed his literal understanding of Mariner's invented human custom of 'unreturned favours' and how she'd be fed to a bear if she didn't follow through, to which his reply is it's better she trains to fight the bear - very Klingon!), and this wouldn't be his final appearance in the series. Colton Dunn as Bargh was also good, and he'd previously voiced Dorg in 'wej Duj' (Dorg and Bargh... are they secretly sending us the message that he was a... Borg?). Some of the main cast who didn't appear got to voice other characters, as is often the case, and I do believe it's sensible they don't feel the need to show every main cast member every episode just for the sake of it, and they also tend to reuse a lot of voice artists, so this time Jess Harnell reprised K'orin, the Klingon General from 'Envoys' and old friend of Mariner, and played a couple of other characters, too (and had done so before in that previous episode), and I already mentioned Trek guests Mary Chieffo and Sam Witwer. We just haven't had any big Trek characters returning yet this season, though that, too, would be remedied. At least the title was a literary reference this time rather than a strictly pop culture one (though I still think they could come up with better and more Trek-centric ones).

**

The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel)

Going from some of the best episodes of not just 'DS9,' but Trek itself (the seven-episode station occupation serial), to... this... I know modern Trek wanted to be all things to all people, all flavours, etc, it does stick out how vastly dissimilar Trek made in this century, or at least this past decade, has been. And I know which I prefer. So while we can have absolute classic stories of great character and writing from all those years back, we also have this current stuff, or fluff, a bit like going from playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild' to some squarely average game, as I also did earlier in the year - whatever comes after is not going to hold up. But even if you take 'DS9' out of the equation this is not one of the starring instalments of the series. I have zero interest in the soapy Mariner subplot about her trials with Jennifer (it even irks me that an Andorian would be called Jennifer), although at least this story writes that character out of the series for good. And it's true that if you remove that C-plot from the episode there's some passable interplay in the other two subplots, but they're also pretty slight.

I think one thing that irritates, and has done throughout this era of Trek from the first season of 'DSC' where they had to mention The Beatles, to countless other examples, is their insistence in ingratiating themselves with whomever they assume is the audience these days by referencing pop culture rather than just Trek culture. The title itself is a play on the film(s), 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,' and I suppose you could draw some kind of parallel with the AWOL Admiral being an old man, and it does take place on an interstellar cruise ship which is basically a holiday resort, but otherwise it seems designed to make people point at the title with some kind of joyful recognition, and little else, whereas for me it takes me out of it. The bigger reference is obviously 'Apocalypse Now' (and perhaps if we're generous, 'Heart of Darkness,' the story it was based on - with a side order of 'The Blob'). It's not a film (or story), I love, so it doesn't win any points for that. I didn't think it quite made sense, either, since why would an Admiral have a ship in order to go and milk 'space whales' in the first place, that's not what Admirals do. Checking back on the line it could be inferred he was talking about earlier in his career when he was a Captain, but then why wait until he'd become Admiral to rebel? I also always find it such a typically modern attitude to Starfleet duty and life in general when a character complains of boredom. It's a state of mind, while Trek's supposed to be inspirational, full of the kind of exploration and joy of discovery that made it seem so optimistic and adventurous and why the best of the best applied in the first place!

Okay, so the Admiral's point was he didn't get to do exciting missions, but it all reminded me of that stupid scene in 'Beyond' where 'Kirk' (or the modern facsimile of a character called Kirk), suggests every day blends together in space and is basically saying the same thing: it's a boring day job most of the time. Indulgent rubbish for the younger generation who expect to be stimulated at all times rather than putting their own minds to it. They could have pulled it back a bit by connecting with the trope of Admirals being behind a desk and emphasising that side, which can be valid (again, just having seen Sisko restricted to desk work with Admiral Ross and his yearning to go back into the field with his crew as opposed to the greater number of lives his decisions are having on the war effort is just one example of how much more complexity there was in that series), and we've seen so many of the rank behave badly that it's ripe ground for exploration, even on the surface-level jokey style of this series. I did quite enjoy the three 'bros,' Ransom, Billups and Boimler on a mission together, it's the kind of thing Trek would do as a series progressed, pairing up some characters you don't necessarily see together all that much. The gag about Billups wanting to be called 'Gilbert,' while Ransom says he should have a more 'normal' alias like Zandy, was fun, as was Boimler's reference to being a canary (from Manhaver's concern Ransom treats his subordinates cavalierly and experimentally, like sending the canary into the coal mine in case of poisonous gas or lack of oxygen), which was also used well, Billups assuming it's because it's hard to think of an animal that skis! (Later hilarious when Boimler pleads he's not the canary and they agree with him even though they haven't a clue what he's talking about).

They can always come up with the kind of lines you'd never find elsewhere in Trek (like one of the Admiral's acolytes who voices the fact they can't get hold of Boimler who'd rubbed suncream all over himself: "It's like trying to grab a string bean"), but it's also nice to see Boimler's perceived deficiencies (being skinny and hyper-prepared), as useful in certain situations, though the joke about them wanting him along for the undercover operation because he's good at crawling through ducts seems more like a 'Mission: Impossible' joke, even if Trek characters were forever crawling through such spaces. Ransom claiming Boimler's a capable, prepared officer to an unhealthy degree is too true, but the fact Boimler's so delighted he noticed says everything about the character! Just a shame he's looking so scruffy with his 'arc' of growing the alternate dimension Boimler's beard at an early stage. The true arc of the season is of course the inter-dimensional fissures, so I did enjoy the connection to the Nanites' story here, which made that more palatable - otherwise it didn't make sense that these computer creatures would dash around in a glob, sucking up everything, but you just put it down to the typical zaniness of the series and try not to take it too seriously.

At least there was some kind of rationale for it with this alternate dimension Intrepid-class starship from a microscopic reality, trapped within the glob and trying to get enough energy to create a portal back home. Obviously they're doing a lot of 'Voyager' callbacks with the ship trying to get home and saying it's been a 'month of Hell' (rather than the temporal year of Hell Voyager was trapped in), and it neatly tied up the other story with the Admiral's new mission to focus on getting this ship home (even if he should be court-martialled in reality!). 'Evolution,' the 'TNG' episode that introduced Nanites, wasn't one of the best (especially as a season opener - people often forget that the season the series found its footing and became good, began with such a dreary episode!), and Nanites certainly weren't required again, but it's exactly the kind of one-episode wonder concept 'LD' likes to toy with, so no surprises there.

In case anyone watching was concerned 'LD' only Trekferences the old series' (other than poking fun at the ridiculousness of such things as 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films), they do throw in Boimler's mention of the Gormagander as an example of a 'space whale' (though he follows it up with a Trekference to 'those Galaxy's child things' - a bit too on the nose, as we've seen before when Mariner's mentioned actual episode titles, though at least you can rationalise it as either the official, or casual, designation given to the creatures in 'Galaxy's Child'), and he's clearly thinking of it joyfully, so 'LD' doesn't actually hate 'DSC' (how could they, it provided so much for the series to laugh at!). The big Trekference of the piece was finally showing us what Gallamites look like after all that talk from Jadzia in 'DS9' about Captain Boday and his transparent skull - I wasn't too impressed with the design. I know it's only a gag, but if you're going to show something that had existed only in the imagination of fans for decades you need to put some serious thought into it. I feel they should have considered how Michael Westmore might have achieved the look in makeup and prosthetics - I know it's only my imaginings, but I always felt they'd have quite long, skeletal, humanoid faces, but with pretty much entirely transparent heads, while here they were just grey, Clayface shark monsters with a little brain dome on top. But that's the thing, it's never going to satisfy everyone which makes you wonder if it was a good idea to even try, especially as it was merely a throwaway visual gag.

Fun to see the Kreetassens from 'Enterprise' again, though you'd have to wonder how they would even end up on a facility that contained other races when by this time they'd know every other race has no problem eating in public. The joke worked in 'Enterprise' because neither the Kreetassens nor humans had ever heard of the other, or met before, so such extreme cultural offence would be natural. Not so two hundred years later, you would think... While I'm nitpicking, I didn't understand Krog's admission he was a big fan when addressing T'Lyn's work. Did he mean Vulcans in general since he's taken on some of their philosophy? Otherwise it's a little hard to believe (even in an episode about a giant Nanite cluster barrelling around a resort, I like things to make sense!). I do find myself hearing the other actors when they do voices for guest characters, such as Marcus Henderson who returned as his usual Jet Manhaver, but also played Krog, or Dawnn Lewis as the Kreetassen woman - granted there's not a lot of Captain Freeman in the episode, so maybe that's why they give people a little something extra to do? I think on the whole the episode was rather disappointing, like they're not really using the little time they have left very well, and I come away feeling they're on a downward curve this final season.

**

Shades of Green

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (Shades of Green)

Whoops. The kind of episode that makes me think maybe it's actually a good thing that Trek is no longer in production any more if this is the kind of extreme ideological stuff and weak plotting they were knocking out... It seems identifying the title with the weakest episode of 'TNG' may have been portentous! Where to start, then? I actually didn't have much to think about during this story, it just seemed to have so little of interest. Start with the good, I suppose: T'Lyn trying to keep Rutherford occupied since she's noticed he hasn't been himself since Tendi left. She may be the best character the series produced, and I've said it before, certainly the best Vulcan in modern Trek (not a high bar, admittedly, but she does a creditable job of being a believable example of the logical race, unlike most aliens who never seem that alien - case in point the Tellarite, Gorm, who doesn't argue incessantly!). I enjoyed the little tribute to Data standing and staring into space while waiting for Picard to go to sleep, in this case T'Lyn waiting patiently for Rutherford to finish his work - although... would that be an efficient use of her time, surely she could have done some work on a PADD or something? The fact I'm starting to nitpick shows I was at least invested in this C-plot of the episode, though I can't say as much for the A- and B-plots.

I can understand the writers poking fun at the ridiculousness of Trek's 'post-scarcity' future, since it's never made any sense, or why would there be wars for resources or control of areas? (For that matter, aren't gold and jewels all obsolete anyway since they can be replicated, that's why Latinum was precious: because it can't be! So why would Orions want this junk?). I always go back to Picard's mumbled, 'holier-than-thou' speech about how the Federation doesn't need money any more, or use it (and the fun 'DS9' ribbing of the concept when Jake wants to buy his Dad an antique baseball card, but doesn't have any money because he's an 'evolved' human of the 24th Century - 'if you don't need money,' says Nog, 'then you don't need my money!'). It demonstrated why it's best not to think too deeply into how Trek's universe works, details modern Trek has mistakenly shown too much of (not just regarding money, but even basic domestic details like people cleaning their teeth, the kind of thing it would be better to leave to the imagination, but lack of imagination is one of this era's defining characteristics!). The reality is there is still a cost to everything, and that's energy, and while we can say they have technology that enables vast amounts of energy to be released (warp, Phasers, etc), something doesn't come from nothing. If they were seriously pointing out how terrible capitalism is then I don't think they'd have had the questionable act at the end where Freeman hands over all the planet's wealth to the family of her crewmember! Nepotism? It comes across as if they 'conned' a planet out of its wealth with Replicators and then ditched their economy. All of which was a bit uncomfortable in today's polarised political climate.

It's always important to remember the series is primarily a comedy, and while it's 'supposed' to make sense in the world of Trek, and be considered canonical, they are going to be wacky at times. Frequent times. The real story, in any case, is Boimler trying to be a fun boss, never a sensible idea in the first place since authority needs to have some distance to enable it to function properly and enforce discipline. Not that discipline is high on the agenda of modern Trek where everyone does what they want and argues with their superiors as a matter of course, but generally 'LD' has been better at such things than the others, one reason I suspect it feels more like Trek than they do, and is so liked by many in consequence. With Boimler's four-hair moustache and the new 'Bointers' to give advice (the inspiration being Lefler's Laws from 'TNG,' but in this case he clearly got the idea from his alternate rather than her), Boimler's arc this season of trying to emulate his alternate self is rather transparent, and therefore somewhat pointless since you can see where that storyline would lead: just be yourself. I have to say I found his and Mariner's roles rather lacklustre, didn't really go anywhere (other than to a fancy hall in a posh house that looks like it was out of 'The Matrix Reloaded,' though perhaps it was merely a generic posh hall, since no martial arts take place, in slow motion or otherwise). No, nothing really to comment on, it was just the pair of them tracking down his lost Away Team.

The A-story is Tendi's messing up of her entire family's position in the Orion Syndicate (I suppose you could see loose parallels with Worf's discommendation, but if that was intended it wasn't very well executed). The war between her family and the blue 'Oree-ons' has meant less profits, or something, so they pull the old space race challenge out of the back pocket of discarded sci-fi concepts. It's never a good idea and suggests a series rather running out of them, even with the solar sailing ships that gives it a more piratical feel. Add to that the culture is incessantly and simplistically feministic (green Tendi girls good, blue 'Oree-on' men bad), and it quickly becomes tiresome, the two sisters competing with each other or Tendi trying to protect D'Erica since she's read her Personal Log and discovered her pregnancy. I also don't buy the Orions would have a Queen (Sabor, voiced by Debra Wilson, Captain Cusak in 'DS9,' her second and final role in modern Trek here), since the whole point was that the true situation of women being the dominant force was meant to be a closely guarded secret. The best we can suggest is they don't allow outsiders on their planet, but in an age of recording devices and easy broadcasting from anyone it's hard to see how the secret would stay secret. It's also all too girly with choice lines like D'Erica telling her sister at the end that she doesn't want her girl growing up to see her doing anything other than what her heart tells her. Ick. This is where Trek had come to, though to be fair 'DSC' started it all in that direction right from the beginning and 'LD' has still been far more realistic than the other recent series'.

It's rather rich of a mega-franchise that requires payment to watch nowadays to be pointing out the 'evil' of the system in which it's made, Trek being a product manufactured in order to make money! It's hard to take any satire about profit or the extremes of capitalism seriously in such a setting, but there's always been a tug-of-war between 'art' and 'profitability.' Still, some people do genuinely watch Trek believing this world will one day come to reality, but unfortunately that's meant modern Trek had to dumb characters down, and in keeping with the modern ideals of 'being yourself,' even if that encourages selfishness, focus on oneself, and lack of care towards anyone else, made them more like 'us,' to the extent people from old Treks that went back in time and found people to be so different to them, could now go to their fellow Trek series' and find the same thing: modern Trek characters are us now! (With the exception of the odd superhero character like Burnham who could almost do no wrong, and even when she did, escaped real punishment and was soon shown to be righter than right!). When an episode only leads me down the rabbit hole of denigrating its stablemates I know it hasn't succeeded, and while I wouldn't say it's on a par with the worst Treks of recent years, it is one of those episodes that shows up the weaknesses in the modern crowd. Not least the excessive swearing I noticed again! And the fact Tendi just turns up back in Starfleet as if you can waltz in and out however and whenever you feel like it (rather than the real world reason of having her leaving be a cliffhanger ending). But the real issue was barely seeing any of the supporting cast at all (even if some of them do voice other characters instead). The blazzard squawking was amusing. As was seeing Goodgey poking his head up in the Cargo Bay. Yep, that's all I've got.

**

Dos Cerritos

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (Dos Cerritos)

The final season of yet another Trek series begins already, but that seems to be the way with streamers, ten episodes a season and done in five seasons or less, a far cry from the depth and latitude afforded to the old 'factory' production of the 90s. It was meant to be a new Golden Era with all these different Treks, at one point five series' appearing in a single year, I think, but the quality just wasn't there, so in reality this Golden Era was much more factory-like than the so-called classic period which was bashing out greats on a regular basis. But there was one shining example in all the new Trek sludge... well, maybe a lightly glinting example, anyway, and that was this 'Lower Decks,' a series that had its ups and downs, for which we can be grateful there were ups at all since most were almost entirely downs, but as with this opener, even the stories I couldn't say were particularly outstanding had plenty of little pleasures to savour and if there was one bright spot of this era, this was it (and with the recent suggestion of a potential spinoff film from creator Mike McMahan, perhaps the days of 'LD' aren't quite over just yet?). To recap: I disliked Season 1 apart from the finale, which showed promise, grudgingly purchased Season 2 and was more than pleasantly surprised to find it the best modern season of Trek with a finale that was the single best episode of the Kurtzman Era, followed by a pretty good third season, a slightly disappointing fourth (with the caveat of a strong and Trekky resolution to all three of its homegrown villains), and so, while I was onboard for more 'LD' by this point, I also didn't have high expectations for the final season.

First impressions are the slickness (and sharpness of this beautiful Blu-ray edition - for all its faults, the series looks the best with its clean and gleaming Starfleet style), followed by remembering how much out of place swearing and inappropriate laxness there is! After watching 'Voyager' the last few months it takes some getting used to return to the low standards of modernity, but in fairness most of it comes from Mariner herself rather than being spread around, and somehow the casual or contemporary speech never bothered me quite as much in animation and with the fast-paced style of this series - it's not that I can overlook it, but I've got used to it much more and come to at least like the characters, something I can't say for any of the other casts of recent times! I'd forgotten what the overarching storyline was for the season until they mention the rift in space and then it all came flooding back. It's very lightly introduced here, no indication we'll be dealing with this sort of thing season-long. They'd done Cerritos doubles before on the series, but only the comedic way of other California-class ships (or ship, I can't remember which), having almost identical crews with slight differences (like a male version of Freeman or a Boimler that looks like a fly) - what am I saying? It's all comedic! But in this case it was played a little more seriously in that it's the old trope of them meeting an alternate reality version of their ship and selves, a time-honoured tradition in Trek that I felt missed a lot of opportunities to examine humorously in this episode.

They could hardly have Other T'Lyn with a beard! And we do get bearded Boimler (which also becomes a bit of a recurring theme for the season), an entirely cybernetic Otherford, Captain Becky (so is her full name Rebecca Mariner Freeman? Either way I actually largely preferred this professional version as it showed what she could be, minus the extreme discipline!), King Billups (why is he still serving on a starship - to avoid his regal duties?), but Freeman ended up at Starbase 80 (something else to be revisited later), and Tendi left to become a pirate, devastating Otherford and turning him inwards to become our Rutherford's warning. Some nice little character work going on and after an absence it is nice to get back to these people. I just don't think the story had that much going for it - very slight. Surprisingly, Tendi isn't back with the crew at end of episode as she refuses to leave her responsibilities behind when the blue 'Oree-ons' declare war against the greens (not environmentalists, the Orions!). The series has always shown a great love and affection for 'The Animated Series' of the 1970s, and this was up there with the return of the Kzinti to Trek. They really were ridiculous (even more than green aliens usually are), but their overconfident stupidity was somewhat endearing - they came across much like Pakleds so it would be interesting to go back to 'TAS' and see if they were potentially the seeds of inspiration for the least intelligent race in Trek (to the extent they were used for one 'TNG' episode, then only ever seen as background until 'LD' - even the great 'DS9' didn't see fit to expand upon them, a service they made to so many of the 'TNG' aliens).

Tendi shines through as the most Starfleet of all, constantly restraining her bloodthirsty crew from killing, secretly healing a casualty and generally striving to impart Starfleet values to a very un-Starfleet situation, but not looking like she was striving to impart Starfleet values to a very un-Starfleet situation! If you were drawing morals from the story, her emphasis on non-lethality and not being forced into extremes of enmity by others, wasn't a bad take-home. And we learn her crew secretly wish they weren't pirates anyway - they want to bake or dance (I thought she was going to break out in the famous 'Animal Woman' dance of 'The Cage'), or teach, all typically feminine practices, which was a nice way to show that even Orion women are 'human' at heart and are drawn to the things modern society considers stereotypical and 'beneath' them, which was a nice twist. Tendi's own sister, D'Erica, holding her in hock, sums up her sibling's true desires quite effectively, even couched as a teasing insult ("You miss debating the ethics of goop"), but Tendi earns respect for staying to deal with the 'Oree-ons' who call Tendi's tactics 'un-piratical' for using laughing gas to capture this old and rare Orion medical ship that may have been used to cure The Great Plague.

We know so little (probably nothing, actually), about Orion history, so any little detail concerning them is of interest, though modern Trek is so bad at world-building and the development of species that even if it was in full production rather than ground to a halt and limping to a closure with the final seasons of 'SNW' and 'Academy' I doubt they'd ever have expanded upon anything mentioned here. There are of course the usual little Trekferences put in for the fun of it, such as Captain Becky's swagger stick (or riding crop, here - hadn't we seen a similar callback to 'Star Trek III' before on the series?), or her statement that 'no interpersonal conflict is allowed on my ship,' a dig at the Roddenberry edict that has gradually been lost through such casual and loose interpretations of Trek in recent times, but which 'LD' excels at calling attention to. You could say they call attention to the Kelvin Universe again since they have Becky's crew standing at attention whenever she walks past, something we saw on the USS Kelvin (and one aspect I actually rather liked, amazingly!), and it made sense that this alternate Cerritos considered their existence as in the Prime Universe (another concept introduced, or at least named, in 'Star Trek XI'). It was very in keeping with this series that Freeman views their closing of these rifts as the kind of 'second tier' job the Cerritos is used to carrying out, describing them as fixing 'space-time potholes.' She has a way with words, but a shame she demeans her ship as a matter of course...

The big thing for Boimler is meeting his alternate who is much more like Riker - confident, an achiever, even wearing the same beard (it looked good!), while our self-doubting fellow is pushed out of a magazine feature on the top 30 under 30 officers in Starfleet - the greater insult being not only is he not in the top 30, he's not even in the honourable mentions below, pushed out by a ten-year old Naomi Wildman (I can believe it). This Official Starfleet Magazine, 'Fleet,' as it was called, was quite obviously a pastiche or tribute to the Titan mag made in England for almost thirty years, right down to the layout of the cover. Too sad that after finally getting as close as it could to appearing in Trek, the magazine itself ended just the year after this was made (2025), but I'm sure they wouldn't have been aware that was about to happen when they were making this episode. It was my constant companion during the height of Trek's greatness, through the declining years and the fallow period, and survived to see almost all the new Treks debut, so it was nice to see it acknowledged in some way. And in the same way we get other tributes with the 'LD' logo now sporting ghost trails behind it, duplicating the effect used for Season 5 of 'TNG' - and of course they add more to the major battle in the opening credits, now joined by the green hand of 'TOS,' the Tholian web and to cap it all, when you think it can't get any more extreme, V'Ger shows up to twang its presence. Even the use of a Palor Toff-like character (not Kivas Fajo - he's the name I always remember, but it was Toff who had the metal band woven in and out of his face. Hilarious when he cries it's 'prescription' when one of Tendi's women tries to rip it out!). But did they break canon when one of his Hupyrian servants speaks? It was speaking to him, but I thought they never uttered a word in front of anyone else due to a vow of silence?

Although there were some good morals on display, I also had to question Rutherford's tampering with Otherford to program him to want to make friends. That seems a bit presumptuous to force a change in someone like that, especially as it was to benefit Rutherford! It's only a brief moment and it was for his own good, but it stood out as a kind of un-Trekky thing to do that sometimes betrays that these modern writers don't always stick as close to Trek's manner of doing things in the good times. If nothing else it shows a disadvantage to being cybernetic if you can be so easily manipulated, and of course I'm making more of it than was meant since Rutherford saw he could do some good by interfering, but still, it would have been better if he could have used his charm or logic or something other than a direct adjustment to his program to help him make a change, though time was limited, I grant. Just a little nitpick, too: I don't see Hupyrians being bested by Orions in a fight. There's a reason the Grand Nagus used them as personal bodyguards - they were big and tough. I know, it's silly trying to maintain some semblance of Trek reality in something that's little more than a half hour comedy, but that's one of the tugs of war within the series that they want to be true to Trek, and are, in so many ways compared to the live action productions, so you want them to stay true in every aspect, so when they aren't, it can stick out. Otherwise it was a fine start to the season, nothing special, but that's also the point of 'LD': to be short, individual stories that can delve into any aspect of Trek, the way Trek used to be, allowing for the broad gamut of choice from week to week. But why is Gabrielle Ruiz (T'Lyn), still not in the opening credits, she steals the show? The slight twitch around the line of the mouth was like all-out merriment for a Vulcan!

**

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.

***

The Inner Fight

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (The Inner Fight)

Likeable story, good twists, too much swearing, some fun little humour jolts - about what you'd expect for the average episode of this series. Throw in a special cameo at the very end, like Spock in the last scene of 'Unification I,' and it's a well-rounded package. On the downside, however, is the reveal of the season-long arc as Nicholas Locarno is shown to be piloting the mysterious attacker ship that's been nobbling vessels from various races over the course of the episodes, and while we're still in the dark about motive or means, I remember being rather disappointed by the whole angle. For one thing, it's a sad thing to find Locarno never learned from his mistakes, and much like Raffi in 'Picard,' has become a failure and given in to baser instincts. That's not apparent in this episode so I won't go into it this time, but we know he left Starfleet and became a pilot for hire, so that's not the usual story of redemption we'd hope and expect from Trek (well, used to, anyway). But this isn't really Locarno's story, it's Mariner's as we finally discover the secret of her rebellious nature and what prompted it all - only talking to a Klingon warrior whom she thinks will either shortly kill her, or be killed by her, as soon as the 'glass storm' of sheer knife shards raining down (love to know how they explain that scientifically...), is over. So she uncharacteristically opens up, and fortunately Ma'ah (Jon Curry in his third appearance in the role, along with a few other characters that have previously appeared), is a wise warrior and a careful listener to be able to bring her inner fight out into the open.

It rings so true that a Klingon would recognise someone with a divided inner nature and I'm sure he does a far better job than Migleemo would have, often portrayed as a fluffy idiot. I wasn't quite sure why Mariner had suddenly started acting more recklessly (shades of B'Elanna Torres in 'Extreme Risk' responding to news of the Maquis being wiped out by the Jem'Hadar - in fact it's not a million miles away from that story since Sito was Bajoran, killed by Cardassians, we believe, in one of the kind of incidents which created the Maquis in the first place), unless it was being reminded of Locarno in a recent episode which brought her memories of the Nova Squadron incident flooding back. Her bitterness over Sito dying on a mission wasn't entirely believable, but at least it gives us some depth to the character she was lacking and that we've seen added to her friends over time with Rutherford's rough pre-implant years and Tendi's shame and guilt over her Orion heritage. And it was possibly the most serious and heartfelt scene the series has done, as far as I can remember, since this is meant to be a comedy and they don't go out of their way to work towards character motivation and the kind of Trekky development we used to expect. But whether it fits or not, it was a fine scene and Mariner becomes something much more than a carefree rebel, even leading her to what could be the first genuinely rousing speech of modern Trek - many have tried (Burnham, Picard, etc), but none have rung true, while Mariner's exhortation to all these disparate races to work together to escape the hostile planet was in no way forced and entirely fitting and organic to events.

It's lovely to see all these familiar Trek races, especially the lesser used ones of recent years (or decades!), such as Cardassians and Bynars, and was like the 'Voyager' episode 'Flesh and Blood' in which a gang of holographic representations of Alpha Quadrant races are on a planet together, only this time it's in the flesh... and blood. Purple blood, when it comes to the Klingons. Not quite sure why they did the old 'Star Trek VI' trick of having that colour since I think every time since then (unless it's been on this series, perhaps), Klingon blood was shown to be red and it's been put down to the 'atmosphere' or something along those lines to suggest why the pink or purple colour came about. In real terms it was so the film could get a 'PG' rating, but I always liked the idea that Klingons had this garish blood running through their veins in the same way Vulcans and Romulans have green and Bolians and Andorians have blue - it fits. I didn't appreciate Ma'ah burying his face in the Bird-of-Prey Captain's blood, but that was the worst culprit of the episode and we don't actually see anything gory happen, it's all off screen (same with the Tremble-lizards and the 'Jurassic Park' theme of the teaser which really only served to demonstrate Mariner's reckless state of mind at this time).

It's questionable why a BOP would be shooting down a clearly marked Federation shuttle since the Klingons are allies, and I also found it strange Ma'ah says Mariner won the Dominion War since it was his people who played a decisive role, especially towards the end when Klingon ships were the only ones invulnerable to the Breen shield-sapping weapon and carried the major heft of the fighting for some time. But he clearly wasn't around for the war since he wishes he'd had the chance to fight Jem'Hadar, although I suppose he could mean that literally, in personal combat, but even then it would be odd for him to suggest the Federation won the war - it'd be more in keeping with Klingon bravado and bragging to claim credit, just one more sign I think that the writers aren't necessarily keeping up with the nuances of the history they're adding to, unless I'm forgetting something about him (was he too young, it was only a few short years before?). The BOP could have been a rogue ship, I suppose. Still, it was a rather risky tactic to bait it into swooping down and blasting the installation (which looked like the forest antenna building in 'Return of The Jedi,' perhaps intentionally), since it could just as easily have dove down without stopping, though I do love the visuals and sense of weight and speed when we see it drop through the clouds, a truly beautiful classic design that never gets old. It was all so the temporary alliance of aliens could jump onto the hull and somehow squeeze inside, an unlikely solution to their predicament!

The B-story gives Captain Freeman a chance to show she's not as dimwitted as she sometimes appears, cunningly making a show of her apparent stupidity at going down to a planet which resents Starfleet and stumbling around ineffectually, while Billups goes down as a bounty hunter to get the information on Locarno's whereabout, using the planet's bias against them, clever psychology. Because there are certain people that need to be brought back to Earth. Because of... the threat... from the mysterious ship? Yes, perhaps best to hand wave the motivation for the whole story away and just enjoy the joke that of the four Trek celebrities they mention, Seven of Nine, Beverly Crusher, Thomas Riker (confirming he survived a Cardassian prison camp in the Dominion War), and Nick Locarno, it's the unloved Locarno whom the Cerritos gets tasked with tracking down! As Tendi, asks: "Who?" The other gag I particularly enjoyed was the Balok's puppet creature so famous for being the last, glaring image in the end credits of 'TOS' for many episodes, one of those iconic faces that have endured for almost sixty years, like the Gorn and the 'green woman.' Well, we get all those in this episode (although the Gorn may not have been a Gorn, difficult to tell with those included for background colour), especially the green women. The joke is that Freeman assumes the short, ugly creature is a puppet until she finds out otherwise! Okay, it's only a simple subversion of expectation, but out of the blue like that it worked nicely.

They go to Mudds, which you'd assume has some connection to Harry Mudd, or else why bother, though there's no update on his legacy. I enjoyed Ransom telling the story of an example of Mariner's recent strange behaviour when she jumped out of a shuttle to fight a Borg only to find it was just a pile of junk - we didn't need to see it, it's easily imagined and all the more humorous for it! Then there's Rutherford discovering his Starfleet trousers have pockets when he never realised, a joke about how the actors always wanted pockets but never could have them (apparently, with the Cerritos' uniform at least, they were always there!). Even Mariner using the two-handed hammer punch when fighting her Klingon opponent was lovely to behold and it sounded like she was grunting Kirk's name with each strike! I also loved the attention to detail on the 'venom suits' at the scientific outpost, which looked like a cross between the environmental suits of 'TOS' and the sleek, 'modern' version first seen in 'First Contact' - it could also be seen as a comment on how there's a uniform for every occasion in modern Trek. Ma'ah was very true in his way of demeaning Federation antics as a desire 'to solve puzzles and mysteries,' something he may not be impressed with, but which Mariner's friend, Sito, gave her life in protection of. It sums up the different cultures well, while also jabbing home the point, which is exactly the Trekky way of doing things in the old days, and something I miss in the new stuff. Having Mariner and Sito Jaxa be friends ties up the whole series in a neat circle since it was obviously inspired by the episode of the same name, 'Lower Decks,' in 'TNG,' so if they weren't making any more it suggests a nice way for the series to wrap up, directly connecting with a character from that inspiration, and as the next episode would prove, even giving us flashbacks to that time. Some of the decisions may seem a little odd, and I may not have loved the conclusion to the arc, but I can still appreciate it for what it was, and look forward to the final season, too.

**

Caves

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Caves)

We've got one of those 'mixed' episodes where they have some fun, but it's somewhat undermined by the series' excesses in the language, gore and inappropriate humour stakes, otherwise it had the potential to have been another good one. As it is, it does at least improve on being a one-note joke: caves are seen in Trek a lot so Mariner comments on how she feels like she's been in this cave a hundred times, and it's like a third of their missions are in caves and so on and so forth. Caves were obviously a big part of Trek, mainly in the 80s and 90s (and even into the 2000s), when the famous 'Planet Hell' set was built for 'TNG' and continued to be revamped and reused for 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' so it's only fitting that this key piece of Trekness got its own episode, this being a comedic approach to Trek tropes. It's always fun when they bring in familiar elements like this and it had become something of a joke for regular viewers (in retrospect, not particularly in the moment), but at the same time they often did an excellent job disguising the set in various ways: altering the floor to be sandy or adding plants; making use of the upper level more; creating different lighting effects; smoke; constraint breeds creativity and as it was mostly the same people working in production they brought a steady stream of innovation to money-saving production budgets - 'Enterprise' took it even further with more elaborate sets, but there's something quite reassuring and comforting about beaming down to yet another cave, and after all, Trek being practically a series of stage plays, the setting itself could often be mere extraneous detail (see 'Spectre of The Gun' for the ultimate in that idea - it may not be a cave, but the point stands!).

It helps that we get all four of our characters alone together as if to prove they can still do those kinds of stories, and while it's a bit funny they'd all be assigned to this specific mission and no one else, who's to say it wouldn't happen? There are plenty of other things to level that criticism at... Take Steve Levy, the Cerritos' resident conspiracy theorist who always comes up with the wackiest ideas about what's 'really' going on. I find it hard to believe that anyone in Starfleet would be that suspicious or disbelieving, but then I think of people like Lieutenant Reg Barclay, the poster child for Starfleet officers that don't measure up to the social standards you'd expect, but make up for it with their skills in other areas. Levy isn't in the same bracket of characters like Raffi or Rios from 'Picard,' he's more in that Barclay vein so I was glad we at least got to know a little more about him, key being that he's a maths genius, that's why they put up with his 'crackpot with dangerous beliefs' persona. Obviously it's meant to be an amusing comment on the many who are taken in by internet misinformation, he even admits he goes on forums and makes stuff up, but I just feel like the world Roddenberry created wouldn't suffer from the same problems we do of having a surfeit of information and uncertainty. The difference is that we know we can't necessarily trust the organisations who have power in our lives, be they governments or corporations, but greater knowledge hasn't made people more intelligent, it's merely confused.

Having Steve Levy as a joke we can laugh at is a bit unkind, in keeping with modern Trek's more cynical attitude, but at least Rutherford and he do bond to some extent thanks to, well, Levy actually being right for once! Is this meant to placate the conspiracy-lovers in the audience or merely to turn the tables on expectations (it's clear even he didn't expect to be correct when predicting those wily old shapeshifting Vendorians from 'TAS' are behind it all with their 'morality test'!), either way I'm not entirely sure what the writing was trying to say - Boimler himself confesses he's not sure what lesson he's supposed to learn from it all: not to yell at Levy so much? I'd have preferred a more concrete idea of compassion for those with easily led minds instead of this impression of having a whipping boy upon which to show how much superior 'we' are who go merrily along accepting whatever we're told has been proved, but even in Trek we've seen numerous people in power who've been untrustworthy or have had nefarious agendas and even the very Federation itself is secretly supported by an underground society that is the stuff of conspiracies in Section 31. I suppose the answer to all this is that the so-called 'perfect' world Roddenberry reinforced for his 24th Century in 'TNG' had already been torn down long ago, undermined even within the series that spawned it, and Utopia once again crashes and burns because it's the impossible dream. The important thing is that there's some kind of understanding between Rutherford and Levy, and not to either entirely denigrate and leave room for questions is the more Trekky way.

Oddly enough, the least unpleasant flashback story of the four was actually the one featuring Dr. T'Ana when she and Rutherford were stuck in a cave where he gave birth to a cave baby. How many Trek connections can you spot here? It's a bit like 'The Passenger' from 'DS9' where a criminal passed on his consciousness to Bashir when dying, only this time the dying alien woman's touch creates a clone baby within him and he becomes a man who has to give birth (as in Trip in 'Unexpected' on 'Enterprise'). A relief they didn't actually show Rutherford being cut open with the laser scalpel and it soon becomes about T'Ana softening to this bouncing cave-baby and even to Rutherford, having complained she hates both babies and Engineers! There's even a surprising lack of swearing from her. No, they save most of that and the gore for Mariner's story when she recalls being stuck in a cave with Delta Shift, the gang with chips on their shoulders because they feel like they work on a different ship always doing nights and barely seeing anyone. I would've thought there must be some shift rotation and these wouldn't be permanently assigned to night duty, I'm sure we saw examples of some of our main characters sometimes working at night, like Harry Kim being in charge on the Bridge. The sci-fi side of it wasn't the issue - it's one of those chroniton fields as we'd seen in 'Timescape' where Picard reaches out for fruit and his hand withers, only here 'LD' has to take it beyond the bounds of good taste so that Mariner and her team are cracking up as their bones age too much for their weight, or even worse, one of them loses his already damaged leg.

I don't find that kind of humour funny, the 'gross-out' style of comedy just doesn't sit well with the optimistic tone that was Trek's hallmark, one of the reasons it simply doesn't feel very Trekky nowadays. And again we have yet another Starfleet officer displaying a bad attitude when Mariner's order is defied - it does get rather tiresome that such things are so common in modern Trek, and while I'll give this particular series credit for following the trend less fully, it still has its problems that prevent it from ever completely being the thing it's trying to ape, while yet often doing so well in many areas. I was expecting Tendi's story about being trapped in the Turbolift for hours post-rage virus on her first day aboard the Cerritos in the very first episode, a story she keeps trying to tell and is repeatedly interrupted or shot down, to be the key to their escape, so I'm glad that expectation was avoided as it seemed so obvious. Instead they put a nice little bow on proceedings by letting us see that this cave with the sentient moss (which speaks in the voice of one of those booming entities from 'TOS' - I didn't realise Jerry O'Connell (Ransom) was both the moss and a Vendorian in this, he doesn't often do other characters), is actually another Vendorian test and it was they that blocked communications (another trope of cave storytelling, as Mariner points out early on, rocks always beat centuries of technological progress - true!).

Adding to the lowered tone we have wee jokes and once again we see our people doing something to excess: namely drinking (hence the wee jokes when they're trapped in the Turbolift...), but I did at least appreciate they mentioned they thought they were imbibing Synthehol, which as we know from our 24th Century lore, is able to simulate the intoxication effects without the side effects, allowing a much higher level of control where people can snap out of the fug if they choose, except Mariner being Mariner she switched it for real alcohol. She says the catchphrase "Cerritos strong!" but I thought that came about in response to the Pakled encounters which would have occurred later in Season 1? Maybe they put it in deliberately for people like me to notice and speculate about? I'm starting to become Steve Levy! Maybe there wasn't all that much to the story and I'm not sure you could even say they really delved (delved!), into the cave trope sack all that deeply when you consider how many episodes there have been with people trapped in caves, let alone ones where they simply visited a cave (out of interest: how many are there, someone must have worked it out by now?), but it ends happily and has a nice reinforcement of their friendship.

The story isn't riddled with needless Trekferences, yet they manage to squeeze in their fair share (like Boimler's list of Levy's silly theories: Wolf 359 wasn't planned, Q exists, Picard isn't a hologram, Voyager's EMH is...), the delightful angular grey backpacks with the black straps so common in 90s Trek, Mariner saying Levy believes they're all trapped in the evil Mirror Universe, the Vendorians admitting they had nothing to do with the Klingon civil war, Rutherford says there are no natural stairways or hidden passageways from secret societies, even the grey alien lady's body disintegrating was reminiscent of Changelings when they die and desiccate, and even the Grafflax reminded me of the kind of overgrown predatory CGI creatures from the Kelvin Timeline films. Phasers get a new use as T'Ana vaporises the baby's poop bag, but can Tricorders really be used to translate and speak in an alien language? I'd have thought you'd need to tie it into the Combadge, but Rutherford didn't seem to do that. I also hate wheeled vehicles in Trek, they make no sense, just use a forcefield! I will say that sometimes reusing the voices of main cast members was a little jarring, with the lead Vendorian sounding exactly like Captain Freeman, and maybe they overuse Fred Tatasciore on this series - granted, most of the other characters didn't appear, so maybe they needed to save some money, but at least try and sound different! I'll give Fred credit where it's due: I never realised he was Levy and this was his third appearance after 'No Small Parts' and 'Trusted Sources,' I like that they bring back members of the crew: Asif (Asif Ali), was also on his third episode (Ali also doing the Grafflax' Tricorder voice), as was Karavitus (Artemis Pebdani), they've gone long enough they can refer back to characters and episodes and it's normal because so much time has passed now.

**

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...

***

Parth Ferengi's Heart Place

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Parth Ferengi's Heart Place)

Not a bad episode, but at the same time one of the bigger disappointments of the season, and now that I've seen it a second time I've come to realise why: we never get to see Rom and Leeta. Oh, I know we get both of them here with the original actors voicing their characters after a quarter of a century (leaving aside Chase Masterson's reprising Leeta for 'Star Trek Online,' which doesn't count in Trek continuity), something I'd really looked forward to. Not as much as the visit to DS9 last season, but the changing of the guard on Ferenginar with Rom becoming Grand Nagus and planning to radically change their way of life was just one of so many aspects of late-24th Century life in the Alpha Quadrant that 'DS9' left us wondering about and which 'Voyager' never satisfied, nor did 'Nemesis,' and as the final 24th Century-set productions there were many questions like this that made the time period ripe for exploration and continuation. Sadly, 'Picard' let us down greatly on that score, even its final season didn't go into detail on the state of the various races and planets, and even then it was decades later so we'd missed that immediate aftermath of the next few years, one reason 'LD' is pleasantly situated: to explore what things are like at this time.

We can debate how successfully or not they've done that - like all modern Treks they've tended to shy away from the political details and culture building as if with so many different time periods being produced at once they're shy of stepping on anyone's toes and contradicting what other series' are doing, a major stumbling block and good reason not to have so many different people working on so many different productions. But they have at least given us occasional updates and glimpses of the familiar, only this one was only partially successful. I said we didn't get to see Rom and Leeta, and I meant we don't see anything other than their public personas as negotiators for entry into the Federation. That they're trying to fleece our heroes, or at least try them out and see how much they can get away with at least shows that Rom's new Ferenginar isn't too far from the old and that he hasn't lost his yen for profit, although, actually, he never made a very good Ferengi - that was the point of putting him in power at the end of 'DS9,' so he could lead a gentler, fairer empire, as envisioned by his own Moogie, and with Leeta as his right hand (she's given the title 'First Clerk'), you'd think his reforms would have changed things much more radically than they seemed to have done. Instead he comes across as a bit of simpleminded buffoon, though that was always (well, almost always), an act on 'DS9' to disguise the fact he was actually pretty cunning in his own way when it came to what he really cared about.

I didn't buy that Leeta had become this hard-nosed negotiator, she was always soft and uninterested in such things generally, and we never saw them together in a domestic setting where they might be discussing the talks and whether the Starfleet delegation were falling for their tricks. And obviously no mention of Nog or the wider Ferengi family, so I felt a real disconnect as if we weren't being afforded the chance to really get to know them again and hear what's been going on in their lives and how they've adapted to life in such powerful positions. It's the usual problem of putting mysteries or twists ahead of actual drama and character in modern Trek (or in general!), and I felt sad such a major opportunity was misspent like a Latinum chocolate teapot. We're left on the outside so Freeman can get her clever trick off and get the contract back on track. It's also somewhat disappointing that they didn't pull the trigger on a Ferenginar that's part of the Federation (though we see Ferengi in Starfleet in the 32nd Century of 'DSC'). Perhaps it was a sort of inside joke about the fact 'DS9' took seven years of ostensibly bringing Bajor to the point where they joined, and yet never did, but I think it just as likely they didn't want to do anything too drastic in an animated series that would affect all that came after. They've tended to shy away from any big developments and concentrated on smaller races like the Pakleds which hadn't been all that developed in the first place.

At least they got the general Ferengi culture right, whether it was the rain coming down (as it should), the garish signs and lights, the rounded, opulent architecture, it was true to the impression we'd had. Monuments to lost profit that are awarded equal status with Dominion War Memorials, Dabo and other gambling filling the library, even down to the detail of Rom having a Hupyrian servant (female!), was a nice touch, not to mention the machine that charges you to pay for the various hotel facilities! And they weren't shy about the Trekferences - not that they ever are, but despite it being mostly set on Ferenginar they squeeze in all kinds of things, like Quark's Federation Experience Bar and Grill (he's obviously got a good deal from Rom since he also has Uncle Quark's Youth Casino, too!), featuring various connections and backdrops to, mainly 'TOS,' but also 'TNG,' or Mariner's fiddling about with one of the famous self-sealing stem bolts from 'DS9.' At the same time there was a weird insistence on having Earth culture be so prevalent, whether it be the Federation Experience or the Ferengi 'biker gang' that Mariner starts a fight with when out with her old friend Quimp (from 'Envoys' in Season 1), and especially the TV shows Boimler becomes addicted to (like Neelix in 'Future's End') where all the characters wear 20th Century Earth clothing - I could understand if they were making more of a comment on human culture, but it just seemed a bit too lazy (in much the way all our characters speak in such contemporary lingo), unless... I could believe the programmed content was specially selected to most appeal to the viewer, and as Boimler is from Earth everything was chosen to hook him?

Those Ferengi are the masters of manipulation when it comes to garnering a profit, and lest we assume our Starfleet characters wouldn't have come with Latinum, Mariner even states that Starfleet will 'foot the bill' for their activities on Ferenginar. Ordinarily I'd be finding fault with such a statement, but this is the home of the Ferengi, after all, where everything costs, so it was highly probable! There are other improbables such as Starfleet assigning officers to create travel guides, since surely that would be a bit beneath the duty of a Starfleet officer. Then there was the reveal from Ransom that there are no married couples on the Cerritos. At all! That's very farfetched unless they're saying only the sad and lonely get assigned to the California-class (in which case you can also say these second-class vessels would be more likely to be responsible for low-level assignments such as travel guide duty...), or it may just be the series reflecting our current times where less and less people make that formal commitment? But still, on a ship that size and with that many crewmembers... The real reason was to give Tendi and Rutherford a situation where they have to pretend to be husband and wife while masking their true feelings that they are rather more fond of each other than they'd ordinarily like to admit, with much embarrassment ensuing (shouldn't Tendi blush green?), some of which stemmed from things becoming a little too crude and inappropriate, but in general it was a nice, sweet subplot to play around with and I wonder if it's one that will develop further.

Boimler doesn't really have a subplot, TV addiction keeping him out of play (though he does get the best gag of the piece when he laughs at the absurdity that even the crime drama he's watching has adverts within it, then we notice the picture on the wall above his head in the shape of the Paramount mountain with stars above it that suddenly twinkle!). We find out a little more about Mariner (and a little more than she wants to know about herself, it would seem!), when Quimp challenges her when she says he's changed, with the good line about change being what happens when you aren't stuck in a perpetual state of immature rebellion - if even a Ferengi can recognise the state she's in it makes you wonder! We hear she's been a Lieutenant, JG before, but was demoted after crashing an Oberth-class ship, so that must be an interesting story, pray tell? She's not at her best, drinking too much, throwing up, being rowdy, and Quimp's right, if she doesn't change she's going to be in this unregenerate state all her life and that's not really going to make for very good Trek where the point of the characters is that they solve problems, including their own, not languish in the doldrums like Raffi. It's not good to see her failing so badly, but at least it does lead to that personal understanding, even if Quimp somewhat regrets being so truthful. The downside was that she doesn't get any punishment at all, Ransom has almost nothing to say on the matter when it should have been a diplomatic incident, at best a personal one, bringing Starfleet into disrepute - she should have been given a dressing down, but it seems the makers of current Trek think all kinds of irresponsible behaviour is fine and dandy these days, discipline being a major missing piece in general (even while 'LD' is a little better at it than the others).

The idea that Ferengi are banned from arms sales is an early reminder of the kind of changes Rom was going to bring into his society, and they do at least tie the ongoing arc of various ships being attacked into the main story, but it is a little tenuous: would Rom really be 'desperate' for Federation resources because of one little ship 'disrupting' trade routes? I find it hard to believe it would make much difference, it can't be in all places at all times and it really seems to have had a very low impact across the season other than an ongoing linking threat. I also didn't feel Rom would come across so incompetent and childlike, almost a parody of what the writers think he was like, but I have to put it down to being an act on his behalf in order to hoodwink Starfleet. And it was a good twist that Freeman was able to trick them into signing with the caveat they had to bring the Klingons into the Federation, too! Although, why did Rom scrawl his name across a PADD like he's signing for a contemporary delivery rather than the usual form of a thumb scan (which I think even takes a tiny blood sample to seal the deal, if I'm not mistaken), as seen many times on 'DS9.' It's just another of those little niggles where you wonder if the writers knew their Trek all that well... And while I'm griping, I don't like modern Trek's insistence on Genesis devices being a common weapon or piece of technology. They've done it before in this series, I think, and they had one in 'Picard,' too, I just feel like the research for that was abandoned after the shocking events of the Trek films which showed its matrix was unstable and was too dangerous for its potential use as a weapon anyway.

The reference to Rom being the next 'Lonz' I thought at first was talking about Quark's action figures, but he was called Lorg Latinum I believe, so Lonz was a mystery to me, maybe that was intentional? But Moab IV was a good Trekference (made by Admiral Vassery in his third appearance after 'Moist Vessel' and 'Crisis Point' - I don't think Fred Tatasciore's Shaxs had any lines this time), though I had to look it up in the Encyclopedia since it'd been a long time since I'd last watched 'The Masterpiece Society' on 'TNG.' However you look at it, Rom and Leeta's return was always going to be the key part of the episode, and as much as it was lovely to see such important 'DS9' characters brought back it wasn't in the way I'd have preferred. Like other Trek actors reprising their roles as voice-only I felt Chase didn't sound much like Leeta at all, not that she had any Leeta lines to bring her back to it. At one time it would have been enough for me to simply have the joy of much-loved characters returning no matter whether they were used well or not, but I'm not so easily pleased these days and we've seen too many old characters abused or mischaracterised, or simply changed, even recast as they can't allow any to simply end now that Trek is more like malleable comic book fare than quality science fiction drama with a 'real' history. I suppose on balance I'm in favour of these appearances since time is running out before we'll be losing all these older actors, but please, give them something worthy of their legacy, don't merely slap an idea together for the sake of it. Not that that's likely to be much of a problem as we go from huge Trek to minuscule Trek now the wheels have fallen off the money train, and if this is the last we ever see of Rom and Leeta perhaps this will come to carry more meaning. Perhaps.

**