Review Text
Following the bad press in "Trusted Sources," Captain Freeman is admonished by Starfleet Command and informed the entire California-class starship contingent will be replaced with a line of Texas-class autonomous drones that are the brainchild of Admiral Les Buenamigo (whose cutesy name should be considered an ironic warning). As an attempt to head off this decision and prove her crew's value, Freeman challenges Buenamigo to a "second-contact race," where she intends to complete a series of missions with her flesh-and-blood crew before his lead automated starship, the Aledo, can do the same.
With its callbacks to TOS's "The Ultimate Computer" (what could possibly go wrong here?), "The Stars at Night" revisits the idea of automation replacing human work — evergreen relevance as AI continues to move in on many industries — and throws in a rogue admiral for good measure. Buenamigo stacked the deck against Freeman in "Trusted Sources" to set her up for failure, all the better to make his case for rolling out his autonomous ships. This also ties into (and ties up) another major plot mystery: It turns out the cover-up for Rutherford's secret project, injury, and memory wipe was orchestrated by Buenamigo as a part of this experimental AI, which Rutherford discovers are contaminated with corrupted code. So, of course, the AIs go Evil Rogue, as they are prone to do.
As an action show, this might be the best-executed of its type on Lower Decks, with fast-paced sequences and elevated stakes (for this series). Lots of stuff gets blowed up real good. This is mostly played straight, with minimal comedy, although the show knowingly points out the trope of the Rogue Admiral. Buenamigo is, naturally, the first to be killed by his own creation run amok. If the plot plays out perhaps exactly as expected, it's at least spirited about it.
Meanwhile, the B-story follows Mariner as she lives it up as Indiana Jones, retrieving valuable artifacts she and Aberdeen give (not sell) to museums. She has questions, though, like: How do they finance this gig? (Turns out Picard is a primary booster.) And does she really want this life, where she's doing everything for herself and not something larger or more important? When word gets out that rogue AI starships are running amok, Mariner recruits all the California-class ships to come to the Cerritos' rescue. There's something reassuring about all the scrappy underdogs saving the day after Starfleet's dumb admirals make such a mess of things.
On the downside, this episode makes only the most perfunctory attempt to deal with Mariner's journey of self-discovery and her return to Starfleet, which happen under extreme plot circumstances that offer very little room for character reflection. Mariner's all-too-easy forgiveness of her mother is even more glossed over, providing a minimum of useful dialogue. And after this, there's no longer going to be an excuse for Mariner to be a slacker or her mother to constantly question her motives. The writers are going to have to move on.
"The Stars at Night" is a solidly entertaining Lower Decks season finale with no shortage of fun, but it's one that could've been more substantial had the character core not been largely buried by the action plot. Also, after waiting all season, T'Lyn finally makes her Cerritos debut after the writers' implied promise from when she was banished to Starfleet in "wej Duj" (prompting the question of why they felt the need to wait; like a lot of things, I feel like this series bides its time more than it should given the limited number of episodes). And in the post-credits tag, Badgey gets sucked up by a green tractor beam that sounds a lot like the Borg's. Just imagine where that could go.
Previous episode: Trusted Sources
Next episode: Twovix
Like this site? Support it by buying Jammer a coffee.
24 comments on this post
Galadriel
It might have been a little bit shallow and predictable, and full of fan service (“Get the fuck out of my sick bay!”, “Dunsel”), but it was also incredibly satisfying to see all the Cali underdogs team up and blow up the Aledo (“Today, we faced impossible odds, but together, we kicked impossible ass”). Also, I much appreciate internal continuity: All the various California class ships that we have seen over the three seasons reappear, including the Alhambra (the one with the doppelgängers from 1x08). And finally, T’Lyn is back, really at the twelfth hour.
I am also happy that Petra was not up to some nefarious business, but is still Starfleet at heart. Also, for the first time after ENT, the Xindi were mentioned. The Indiana Jones sequence was also fun, although I would have appreciated an appropriate musical cue.
Mariner’s character arc has now come full circle. I can barely remember the person she was in 1x01, when she slit open Boimler’s leg in the first seconds of the show. That progress feels very well earned, and it was depicted realistically with ups and downs, small successes and relapses and all. Having recently been traumatized by “The Rings of Power”, I cheer at the way how it was done here.
On the downside, I found the destruction at the station more than sightly disturbing. That must have been a huge number of civilian casualties, and I feel really bad about that. Adm. Buenamigo (first introduced in the season opener) is probably the most evil admiral we have ever seen in prime timeline Trek and definitely not a Good Friend.
Makes 3½ stars for me.
Colin Lindsly
What I found disturbing is that I correctly surmised that the Cerritos had been set up in the last episode. I am truly becoming cynical about people and what they do.
Karl Zimmerman
That was predictable, but very effective.
Lower Decks tends to end seasons with bigger-scale, more high-octane action outings, and it certainly did not disappoint here. The tone was largely serious, even dark (far more death here than ever seen in the series before), which very much worked to its benefit. What surprised me regarding this episode was how emotionally poignant the episode's final act was. The assembly of a flotilla of Cali-class ships was the perfect reinforcement of a core theme of the show...the magic of friendship. Mariner's return, even Shax's ejection of the warp core, which was somehow both funny and bittersweet. I legit got weepy eyed at the end of the episode, which means mission accomplished.
At the same time, so many references to plot arc elements going back to the beginning of the series, from the aforementioned ejection of the warp core, to Badgey, to Rutherford's implant, to all of the different Cali-class crews we got to see, to finally getting T'Lyn back on the show. Mariner's character arc has in a certain sense concluded. Honestly I kind of feel like this episode was written as a finale to the entire series before they knew they would get a season 4, because it serves as a perfectly acceptable summation of the ethos of the entire series.
I am giving it four stars, because it did everything I ask for an episode of TV to do - keep me entertained and make me feel for the characters. There really wasn't any "subversion of expectations" but I think this is really overrated, and it's much better for drama to follow a predictable arc.
modulum
Tempted to say this is the first true 4-star Lower Decks episode. Damn.
AMA
Echo the sentiments of @Karl Zimmerman, as well as those of @Galadriel with regard to the death and destruction in the episode. The latter is a bit difficult to square given the general tenor of the series. Nevertheless, the episode was fantastic.
And a Captain Picard-sponsored archaeology team? Sign me up.
C.T Phipps
All of my thoughts:
1:] I'd argue that Buenamigo may be the most evil Admiral of them all since Cartwright. I’d argue that Admiral Kennelly, Admiral Pressman, and Admiral Satie have all been exceeded by Admiral Buenamigo. Pressman for example has a lot of people who agree with his belief that the Romulan Treaty and cloaking devices was a mistake (including the DS9 writers). However, Buenamigo straight up was willing to commit MASS MURDER (of Starfleet personnel no less) to get his drone project through.
2:] I don’t think there’s any surprise that Starfleet would be more willing to do automated Star Fleet vessels. Data, The Doctor, and even the EMH Mark II have all demonstrated that AI has gotten a bad rap and that they should possibly be reevaluated. I’d argue the Texas-class and Peanut Hamper may have gone a long way to Starfleet regaining its wariness of AI.
3:] Speaking of Picard tie-ins, if not for the fact that Badgey is all the evil you need, I’d wonder if the Zhat Vash had sabotaged the Texas project. After all, they have had people infiltrating Star Trek for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain future “Vulcan” Admiral was on Buenamigo’s staff.
4:] Starfleet’s disdain for the California-class seems excessive and I’m wondering if there’s another story here because the Admirals seemed pretty eager to scrap an entire line of ships in exchange for the automated support class.
5:] While shipping is not the primary part of reviews, I think Jennifer’s look followed by Mariner walking right past her was something that spoke volumes. It also pretty much cements that their ship is dead and done rather than something they intend to revisit.
6:] I also like the fact that Mariner chooses to come back to Starfleet of her own accord. It's now something we understand that she has made a commitment of her own accord to.
7:] It seems like Admiral Freeman was bumrushed by the Admiral gathering and I wouldn’t be surprised if “Project: Flyby” had been expected to fail spectacularly and followed up by the Texas project succeeding well before there was ever an official hearing for it. There’s been a lot of foreshadowing in previous episodes that at least someone in Starfleet or possibly several someones hate the California class and want it gotten rid of (perhaps because they are weak, mass-produced, ill-prestigious vessels). Even Captain Gomez basically says that California class crews aren’t wanted on other vessels or they should be broken up.
8:] I wouldn’t be surprised if future Expanded Universe people go with the idea the Cali-class was created for the Dominion War as prefabricated mass-produced junk for Starfleet and something that they are embarrassed by. “We couldn’t produce a bunch of Intrepid-class like we wanted and now we’re stuck with these things!”
They are the Corellian Corvettes of Trek.
Chrome
I would unabashedly call this the best finale produced for Star Trek since the 1990s. It hits notes from "The Ultimate Computer", sure, but also takes a cue from "The Best of Both Worlds" with The Cerritos taking the Enterprises' place of prepping up a crew and then an armada to take down a technological foe.
Jammer has a point that Mariner's career choice could have been weightier (as was Riker's during TBOBW) yet the episode trades that for more focus on Captain Freeman who, let's be honest, needed a huge redemption here to make up for the black eye she got last week. Freeman's attempt to take what looked like a failure in Tendi's research-inspired delay and turn that into a strength shows the human (or should I say organic) power of judgement that machines lack.
Finally, I loved how Buenamigo shed some light on why admirals turn out like him. He's under a ton of pressure to stay relevant among other competing officers which is something I'd wager many managers and executives at top firms in our world can relate to. I was thinking the same as C.T Phipps, who pointed out Cartwright. TOS had no shortage of crazy admirals — who were admittedly fun to watch.
"[...]In the post-credits tag, Badgey gets sucked up by a green tractor beam that sounds a lot like the Borg's. Just imagine where that could go."
Hah, maybe the reason The Borg become defunct by the time Picard takes places is because Badgey gets his way…
4 stars
Trek fan
Agreed with Jammer on this one. Three stars instead of four because it’s derivative of the superior Ultimate Computer; did anyone doubt the outcome? But this is very fluidly written and paced; it ties up all the loose character ends from the end of the previous season and this one in a satisfying way. It’s also fun without being irritating with overdone humor fails like LD can sometimes get. Looking forward to more of this series.
Episodenull
@Chrome: I had a similar thought, that it would be funny if the cube pulling Badgey in becomes the Artifact from Picard season 1. Did we ever find out how that cube went defunct? My recollection of that season is so blurry...
Latex Zebra
To me, a 4 star episode needs to be one you want to watch again... I've just finished this and would happily watch it again right now.
Loved this. Had the usual LD jokey vibe but also something else, that felt like proper Star Trek. Will watch this again tomorrow and will watch it again after that. 4 stars for me. Best episode yet.
C.T Phipps
Yeah, Jammer, I think this deserved another half-star.
Mariner returning so quickly is a feature not a minus.
PM
Not only 4/4 and one of the best Lower Decks episodes ever but quite possibly one of the 50 greatest Star Trek episodes. WOW!!
Tim C
Solidly enjoyable and well-executed, although the show *still* can't consistently ascend to the height of great comedy.
At the end of season 2, Lower Decks felt like a show that had found its footing and would only get better. If all the episodes weren't firing on all cylinders, then they all at least managed to get some chuckles out of me and have their own spin on a Trek trope, which was a solid improvement on season 1. It felt like the only way forward was up.
I'm not quite as happy with how season 3 turned out. There were a couple of episodes that landed with all the humour of a suicide jump, and there were wasted storytelling opportunities all over the shop (especially notable in the DS9 crossover episode). It's still a fun show that I enjoy, but I'm starting to think that might be as good as it ever gets, which is a shame. Animated sci-fi comedy has so much potential.
Looking forward to season 4! I hope it proves me wrong.
Walding
Overall a great episode. A good example that being predictable must not be necessarily bad if you just play it straight.
And cudos to C.T Phipps for pointing out Data and the EMH as positive examples of AI. I was thinking of the M5 and all the other rogue computers, asking myself wether the admirals would ever learn, but the picture is indeed more complex. I think it would have been nice if that had been in the show, Captain Freemen reminding the admirals of M5, some admiral mentioning Data.
Like Jammer I would have preferred a bit more on the character side of things. E.g. we only get a short look at Jennifer when Mariner returns and no interaction between them. I suppose there wasn't enough time and anything more serious then quick "all is forgiven and forgotten" (which I wouldn't want) would not have fitted the mood at the end of the episode. IMHO the show would really benefit from having a few extra minutes of runtime per episode.
Concerning evil admirals: IIRC the only other primeline admiral ordering a Federation vessel to be destroyed and it s crew killed to prevent being exposed is Admiral Leyton from DS9s "Homefront". That is where I see Buenamigo as well.
Shannon
Great season finale! I agree they could have gone into more exposition of Mariner's journey, but that would have been a little too dramatic for a series that is much more on the lighter side of Trek. The action sequences were awesome, and as Jammer said, it's nice to see the underdog workhorses of the fleet save the day while the Titans of the fleet were off on all the "important" missions... Looking forward to where the writers take these characters... 3.5 Stars!
Kuebel
I did like this episode very much - but:
Why do they need Mariner to fetch the other California class ships? Wouldn't Starfleet send everything they've got after the AI drones? And why where they in the vicinity and no other ships?
C.T Phipps
[[Why do they need Mariner to fetch the other California class ships? Wouldn't Starfleet send everything they've got after the AI drones? And why where they in the vicinity and no other ships?]]
I speculated on the TOR sites that the California class vessels were already on their way to Douglas Station due to being recalled. They'd been planning to decommission them all rather rapidly after all.
grey cat
Somehow despite being a cartoon and a comedy LD manages to capture the spirit of Star Trek much than DSC or PIC (SNW does it pretty well so far for me - mostly).
I thoroughly enjoyed this and have enjoyed most of the season too.
A very solid 3.5 star finale.
Nic
I really did not care for the plot. It was fine right up until the moment they discovered the Aledo hadn’t properly scanned for life signs, and in my mind, that’s where it should have ended (low-key humor and low stakes is what this show does best).
Then it went downhill with the crazy/unhinged Admiral and the worn AI-takes-over scenario, despite the somewhat clever connection with Rutherford’s implant. It might have worked if they’d exploited the satire/parody angle, but instead they seemed to want us to take it seriously, which I could not. I groaned when all the California-class ships showed up. Were they the only class of ships in the area?
On the other hand, this episode has some of my favorite jokes of the series thus far, including:
-“I want to see Commander Data-level work, people. Those isolinear chips better be a blur!” (an obscure reference I think only people who have seen TNG multiple times would get)
-Ransom showing people how to do the “Riker maneuver”.
Rusty Bat'leth
^ "that’s where it should have ended"
Nah, a simplistic feel-good ending like that isn't worthy of a season finale, especially after those plot threads were woven together like that in previous episodes. Unless you were thinking of maybe the Breen incursion being more relevant (I hope that's something they follow up on in season 4, basically an entire planet's population is dead/missing.)
C. T Phipps' idea as to how basically the entire class was able to show up so easily actually makes a lot of sense, though if it weren't a TV show and thus relying on dramatic tension it'd have been much more realistic for them to trickle in erratically rather than appear all at once.
Daniel
I enjoyed the episode from start to end, it got better and better. Loved it not just as an episode of Lower Decks, but as an episode of Star Trek. Everything came together, all the right notes were hit. Got me misty-eyed.
Straight 4 Stars.
Nu'Bhie
I don't know what it is about this show but it is the second time I have shed a few less-than-manly tears viewing it (the arrival of Mariner and the entire Cali-Class fleet). I thought it was a wonderful payoff. I see lots of you guys calling it predictable- I say that's because you know what a good story is. Sometimes subverting expectations is like playing a bad note in a music piece. Sure the right note would have been predictable. And better.
Smith
I get it that this isn't a serious show...but a number of technical issues really bothered me. How were the Texas class ships able to fire phasers at warp? If relativity doesn't apply, shouldn't Trek ships be able hack around the warp 10 barrier? Just launch a shuttle from a ship going warp 9 also at warp 9...then does the shuttle go warp 18?
Then it doesn't makes sense that the Texas class ships had much better shields/phasers. The point of AI was to improve decisions making and efficiency. If the Federation had better shields/weapons, wouldn't they put these on other ships?
Then why would only California class ships respond to the distress call? Where were other ships? Why did they only respond to Mariner and not Starfleet? Also space is huge...how did they get there so fast? If ships could travel this fast, Voyager would have been home in no time. I actually like the California class scene and hearing all those ships named after those cheesy California city names, but I think it could have been better done. Maybe we establish in the plot that the CA ships rendezvoused at the starbase in prep to be decommissioned...that would have made more sense.
Lastly, it was interesting to see the new vulcan character. Rutherford and Tendi are bad boring characters that need to be replaced. Tendi acts like a whiny human not an alien, and Rutherford is a cyborg in appearance only. Spock and Data were good characters because they not only didn't look like humans but they didn't act like them (that's what being alien is all about). My vote would be to add a gorn lower decks characater that isn't very good. He communicates in grunts that apparently everybody else understands and moves very slow. I wouldn't mind bringing peanut hamper back as a reprogrammed exobot but as a lower decks character as well.
Jordyn
The reason they had the wait so long to introduce T'Lyn is because by the time Wej Duj aired, season 3 had already been completely written and was mostly finished animation. Mike McMahan has said the production team weren't expecting T'Lyn to be such as popular and well-received as she was, and until wej Duj aired had no plans to bring her back onto the show.
Submit a comment