Guys, I’ve had an epiphany. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t and it hit me like a truck.
Lower Decks is upper tier Star Trek. Easily.
I love Discovery, I love Picard, I love Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation, Classic Trek, and heck… even Enterprise… but I don’t think that I’ve ever anticipated an episode of those series as much as I’ve anticipated episodes of Lower Decks. It is, quite simply, top tier trek.
Episodes like, “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” are what seal it for me… well, that and in a season and a half, Lower Decks has yet to air a single episode that is below average. Heck, I don’t even think that they’ve stooped to average. Everything Lower Decks has put on the air has been gold.
This lastest episode, as I was saying, is a celebration of the silliness that Lower Decks embraces. The comedy is multiple jokes per minute and all of them land with a greater than average success rate, the premise would be laughed out of the writers’ room of any live action Star Trek series and yet here, it is embraced and given a loving kiss on the forehead and playful slap on the butt.
The Ceritos is tasked with escorting a Doopler diplomat to a conference, but they must walk on eggshells around the guy because if he becomes the slightest bit distressed, he will duplicate… sort of like a neurotic tribble with low self-esteem issues. Of course… he becomes distressed.
Meanwhile, Boimler and Mariner get the idea to crash a party on a starbase as Tendi and Rutherford attempt to complete a model of the ship that they started before Rutherford lost most of his memories last season.
…and it’s magnificent. It’s funny, it’s action packed, it’s loaded with gags and Easter eggs, and best of all, it’s got a ton of heart to it. The ending scene in the bar, to me, shows the entire crew as a family showing genuine love toward each other in a way we haven’t seen before and the emotional impact of the final shot is peak Star Trek.
Guys… Lower Decks is one of the best Star Trek series of all time.
Who would have thunk it?
Jason Gaston 