Lower Decks season four had a lot of fan service to earlier versions of Trek.

As with every episode of Star Trek's Lower Decks, season four had a lot of callbacks to a lot of previous material in the bigger Star Trek universe. By now, most people who watch and follow "Trek" know about the crossover episode in which Mariner and Boimler went to Strange New Worlds season 2 for some time-travel shenanigans and one of the best episodes to date of that series. So, I'm not really going to talk about that. Instead, we meet Nick Locarno who was scorned by Starfleet for not following their rules and getting a fellow student killed (I believe this was in a Next Generation episode with Wesley Crusher in it). At the time, Cadet Locarno convinced the surviving team members to provide false testimony, etc. and it was all kind of brought down by Picard.

Another thing that we got this season was a portable version of the Genesis device. It certainly had a comical introduction (as the series is comedic), but the Genesis device is (and always should be) serious business. Fans of the movies should remember that it created a planet at the end of Wrath of Khan (movie that came out in the 80's), and even at the young age in which I saw it, the Genesis device struck me as the most powerful weapon I'd seen in that universe (invention of Dr. Carol Marcus). I still think that today. I always wondered what would have happened if a Borg armada was targeted by the Genesis device (for example). But I don't think it was supposed to be viewed as a weapon, even though that's exactly what its potential is. Of course, it doesn't end well for Locarno who ends up dying as the Genesis device explodes on him (while trying to disarm it) which quickly forms a planet in the nebula his ship was floating in. This is also very similar to how Wrath of Khan ended.

There was also a lot of growth this season. Our scrappy ensigns are now Lieutenants Junior Grade, and they have new quarters. Tendi is going off on her own adventure via a bargain she made with her sister on Orion. And Mariner has learned a lot about the kind of person she wants to be. I hope that in the next season, Rutherford and Tendi get a bit more time, because they could use some development regarding their characters. but overall I'm pleased with how the show is going.

There are some great jokes made by the Lower Decks crew regarding Locarno. In the original live-action episode of Next Generation, I believe that Locarno was played by a very young Robert Duncan McNeil. Robert was later cast as Tom Paris in Voyager. So they make fun of this by saying how much Locarno looks like Tom Paris and even say "Their faces are exactly the same" in one scene. That made me laugh. 

The animation this season was also really great. The team at Titmouse are doing great work with the digital rig animation techniques, and this show has some of Trek's best looking space battles. Additionally, the fight between Mariner and the Klingon looked awesome. In many ways, it felt like there was a blend of "real" graphics with traditional animation, and it kinda just felt like a Trek TV show or movie...not like an animated cartoon.

There's also good news already that Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds have both been renewed for an additional season. Anyone else love this season and notice things that maybe I didn't? Please share your comments below.

This Friday, I'll talk about The Witcher season 3.

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.

Lower Decks is back with season 3 and Bradford Boimler is my favorite character.

With the launch of season 3 of Lower Decks on Paramount +, I think my favorite character is Bradford Boimler. Voiced by Jack Quaid who plays Hughie Campbell in Amazon's The Boys, the character of Boimler takes himself very seriously while everyone else does not. That's kind of his running gag, and it does seem to work. He also has a lot of the "Sheldon Cooper" obliviousness which maybe is an homage to Big Bang Theory which in its long run had many of its own homages to Star Trek. It may just be that geek culture in general is one big bathtub and everything just sloshes around in it constantly. So, if you are a geek, then you see all parts of the tub equally, and they all affect what you like equally.

Thus far in season 3 we learn a little more of Boimler than we did in previous seasons. The first thing that surprised me was the sight gag of "Picard at the Vineyard" before the Boimler reveal (meaning it was Boimler at his own vineyard and not Jean-Luc). I had no idea that Boimler had that kind of money in his family. But it could be that it was just meant to be another gag. And then, it was funny to see Boimler being ogled as a sex object by all the people at the vineyard (mostly women) who were literally throwing themselves at him. But in Sheldon Cooper style, he had no idea what was going on and gave them instructions quite literally whenever they would complain about "getting stains on their shirt," etc. I don't know why that kind of humor lands with me, but it does. So yeah, I laughed out loud multiple times.

I also hadn't realized that Boimler's hair was actually purple. I guess in the animation, I assumed it was kind of a blue black thing. I've seen people use black and then blue to explain highlights in it. But I hadn't given it much thought. And then Boimler said he dyes his hair purple. So, that explains it. But now I'm wondering why he dyes his hair purple.

The season three opener also had the lower decks crew playing a kind of Star Trek version of Dungeons & Dragons. So of course I liked that. The "DM" in this case (who is the one that runs the game) was the Klingon Martok from Deep Space Nine days. He said a line that reminded me of my friend Joseph, who runs some ridiculous games where he has encounters that just end badly for players and that don't make a lot of sense rules-wise. This is actually common in the D&D community, because a lot of people who run games don't really know how to run them. It can be hard to get a mastery of encounters, and much of the time, DM's just want to kill player characters probably because they've convinced themselves that by doing so, people will take them seriously. It's kind of how George R.R. Martin has an oversized influence on fiction by being one of the first authors to really "kill his darlings." A lot of people just don't like to do that, so you end up having these laughable critiques like, "Galadriel has plot armor. Nothing can happen to her even though they are trying to make this seem dangerous."

Anyway, so the line that Martok says in season 3, episode 1 of Lower Decks happens when Brad Boimler declares that his character is going to do a thing, and then he rolls a twenty-sided dice. It comes up a "1" which is a critical failure in just about every scenario. The Martok character laughs and says loudly, "The Klingon warrior rips your arm off and beats you to death with it. It is a death WITHOUT honor, because technically you died by your own hand." It's a quote that stuck in my brain, and by which I've teased my friend Joseph with several times now. When I did it the first time, it was at his game that he runs at the local game shop, and his players all agreed, "Yeah, that's Joseph."

The season opener also had a holographic James Cromwell making his inaugural warp flight from Bozeman, Montana in it. This was featured in the movie First Contact, which came out sooo long ago. Man, does time fly. Anyway, in the Star Trek universe, civilian space flights actually take off from a theme park in Bozeman, Montana. I couldn't help but think that someday this is probably going to happen somewhere on the planet. Only it won't be a holo James Cromwell doing the piloting. It will be a holo Elon Musk. And this sadly means that I'm living in the screwed over Mirror Universe, as if that wasn't apparent already.

This last week's Lower Decks had Tom Paris and it featured him on a commemorative plate from the Voy days.

I got caught up on the Star Trek cartoon that is on Paramount+ called Lower Decks this weekend. It's always thoroughly entertaining, weird, and funny. I love the characters (and some of them remind me of real life people I know), and I'd have to say that the people working on Lower Decks definitely have a passion for the franchise that is quite different in flavor from Discovery and Picard (disclosure: Picard is my least favorite of the new Star Trek offerings).

If you haven't watched Lower Decks and you are a Trek fan, you might want to give it a try, especially if you are a Rick and Morty fan. Most of the "Nu Trek" shows really do take themselves very seriously. In the era of Next Generation Trek, I think DS9 was probably the most serious, but even DS9 lightened the load with episodes like Take Me Out to the Holosuite or any of the Ferengi episodes. That being said, there is nothing serious about Lower Decks. It is one big gag real LOL'ing all the way by screaming old jokes.

In last week's episode, we got a guest appearance from Tom Paris, who was the hot shot pilot on Voyager, and he got voiced by Robert Duncan McNeil (which I love). Tom was probably my second favorite cast member next to Seven in the Voyager show (although pretty much all of the characters were great). I also loved how Boimler referred to Voyager as just "Voy." Bless these nerds for canonizing the way fans refer to the Trek shows. The commemorative plate that Boimler carried with him to get signed was excellent too, as it reminds me of all the Trek memorabilia that's been put out by the Hamilton Collection over the years. Sometimes Trek is at its best when it takes the time to really poke fun at itself, and its fanbase. And this seems to be entirely the thought behind this refreshing Star Trek series.