Boimler and Mariner from Lower Decks just crossed over in live action to Strange New Worlds and the episode was amazing.

The Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks crossover was pretty great. If you haven't seen it online yet, then you should be aware that I'm gonna talk about it in this post. So, this is your one and only "Spoiler Warning."

In the episode called "These Old Scientists," Boimler (played by Jack Quaid and my favorite character in Lower Decks) gets sent a century or so into the past by a time-travel device. Shenanigans ensue, as he arrives right in front of Pike and Spock (who are his heroes), and they (then) take him back to the Enterprise to try and find a solution to send him back to the future. A little while later, their solution doesn't pan out as the time travel device also spits out Mariner (also from Lower Decks).

I can say without any doubt that I want more of this. I hope that Lower Decks crosses over with Strange New Worlds in a future season as it was so much fun. But here are a few random thoughts I had after viewing the episode and having a little time to think about what I saw:

1) The moment when Nurse Chapel realized that her relationship with Spock doesn't even make it to a historical footnote was genuinely touching. "History needs him to be the exact opposite of what you need him to be in a relationship" would have been very difficult to hear.

2) The scene where Ortegas and Uhura idolized Mayweather and Hoshi from Enterprise (the Star Trek series that a lot of people didn't like) was a lot of fun. It just took the Lower Deckers being present for it to come out. There's nothing quite like being validated to make things come to the surface (which I suppose is why we need to prevent this kind of validation around negative things like white supremacy).

3) The episode also sets up characters from Lower Decks and from Strange New Worlds to experience future growth. Pike was given a nudge to make the most of his remaining time to forge bonds. Number One received affirmation that she is the ideal of Starfleet in the wake of her trials. Uhura realized work/life balance helps both and collaboration leads to unexpected results. And as for Boimler and Mariner, I feel like in meeting their heroes, they appreciated their own timeline so much more.

4) I loved a lot of the fan service that the show received from historical episodes of Trek. For example, Boimler yells out "Q" only to be corrected by Mariner that in this time period the crew hasn't met Q, but there's going to be a whole "Trelane" thing (if I remember correctly, the role of Trelane was played by Liberace). 

5) They changed the intro so that it was animated, and it had a smiling Koala and what looked like a space worm from the Lower Decks intro attached to the Enterprise's nacelle.

6) And can we all just take a moment to note how great the Cerritos uniforms look in live action? They are definitely one of the best-looking Starfleet uniforms, and they did a great job translating the animation design into a workable uniform costume.

7) I want Pelia to star on Lower Decks. Her alien's long life should allow it to be easily slipped in without too much trouble.

8) Boimler really does have blue hair. I always thought maybe it was blue/black, but nope. It's blue.