One of the more challenging storytelling needles to thread is that of the thing that is spoken of dramatically but never seen. It can be risky to actually show the thing, because after all the buildup, you don’t want to risk disappointing the viewer by not living up to what their imagination already came up with about it.
Sometimes the best solution is to never see it, which is why, for example, the producers of Frasier never once actually put Niles Crane’s wife Maris on camera. And, to be fair, sometimes seeing it does work. Indeed, Star Trek has two excellent examples: Boothby, the Starfleet Academy groundskeeper first mentioned in TNG’s “Final Mission” and referenced a couple more times before being seen in “The First Duty,” where he was absolutely perfectly rendered by actor Ray Walston and writer Ronald D. Moore; and Quark’s cousin Gaila, first mentioned in DS9’s “Civil Defense,” and also referenced several times again before showing up, beautifully played by Josh Pais and written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, in “Business as Usual.”
Alas, Lower Decks has rolled craps with their equivalent. We’d been hearing about Starbase 80 a few times before Mariner was assigned there as a punishment in “Trusted Sources,” and it so totally didn’t work. And then, with only one season left, the producers of LD decided that they’d waste an entire episode showing us Starbase 80.
Look, I get it. This is a comedy. They want to do funny things. And I’m sure several people thought, “What would a backwater starbase really look like?” As we see here, it’s mostly just an excuse to show twenty-second- and twenty-third-century tech. They still use wall intercoms like they did on the original series! They have to cover themselves in decon gel before using the transporter just like they did on Enterprise! And the personnel still wear Enterprise-era uniforms even though those uniforms are from a completely different service for a government that doesn’t exist anymore! (The Starfleet of Enterprise was the space exploration arm of United Earth. The Starfleet of LD—and all the other Trek shows—is the military/space exploration arm of the United Federation of Planets. Starfleet personnel wearing those blue uniforms is like contemporary U.S. Army personnel wearing the uniforms of the Texas Rangers from 1846 while on duty. There is no circumstance under which it would happen.)
Plus, we’re talking about a post-scarcity society with replicators. And we know that the producers of this show are aware of that because they built an entire damn episode around that fact just a couple of weeks ago in “Shades of Green.” Targalus IX just became a Federation member world five minutes ago, and they’re already okay with Boimler confiscating a vehicle because they can always just replicate another one. And yet, somehow, Starbase 80 is unable to be upgraded to modern specifications, which, again, makes absolutely no sense.
It’s really hard for me to judge this episode, because I just find the entire premise impossible to swallow. Which is too bad, because there’s some fun stuff here. Mariner is finally starting to act like a Starfleet officer, proudly declaring at the top of the episode that she genuinely enjoyed the scientific mission to an ocean planet that they just finished. (Tendi jokingly checks to see if Mariner’s suffering an illness.) We get to see Cetacean Ops performing their actual function, as the problem of the week is catalyzed by something going wrong with navigation. And it’s always good to see Kimolu and Matt! When Boimler announces that Starbase 80 is the nearest port of call, Mariner nearly has a breakdown, as she’s suffering PTSD from being assigned there previously. Her mother isn’t much better off, as her alternate-universe counterpart in “Dos Cerritos” was assigned there, and Freeman is determined not to let even the possibility of that happen in the mainline universe.
Plus we’ve got some fabulous guest casting! The great Stephen Root voices the starbase’s chief engineer, Gene Jakobowski, who manipulates Freeman and Ransom into making repairs for him that Starfleet hasn’t gotten around to fulfilling his requests for (yet another thing I don’t buy for a nanosecond), while Nailed It! host Nicole Byer plays an el-Aurian diplomatic liaison named Kassia Nox, who serves as a chirpy tour guide whose personality is, basically, that of Nicole Byer, host of Nailed It!
There’s some technobabble stuff with a being of pure energy who got into the nav system and started possessing people by way of trying to make contact, but losing control of it, turning everyone on the Cerritos crew who uses their combadges into zombies with glowy eyes who lick the bulkheads. Eventually, our heroes figure out the problem and are able to come to an understanding with the energy being, which is, to be fair, a very Star Trek resolution to the storyline. (And the being turns out to be a young person trying very hard to impress his superiors, whom he describes as being a bunch of dicks, which is a very Lower Decks twist on that resolution.)
Nox tries to convince everyone that the joy of Starbase 80 is not that it’s a shitty assignment, but that it’s a place for people to get second chances, and I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy any of it. LD is at its best when it looks at the Trek universe through a humorous lens. It’s at its worst when it contorts and distorts the Trek universe for a giggle, and that’s what this entire episode is, alas.
Random thoughts
- Ransom really really loves the decon gel, because of course he does. Jerry O’Connell’s contented sigh as he runs the gel through his hair and says, “Oh yeah—that’s the stuff” is epic.
- This is not Root’s first appearance on Trek. He previously played a Klingon, Captain K’Vada, on TNG’s “Unification” two-parter.
- Starbase 80 has food vendors in lieu of food replicators. At one point Chad, the corn dog vendor, gets to save the day.
- Boimler now has a full mustache, though the beard is still very much a work in progress, as he gets closer and closer to looking like his alternate-universe counterpart from “Dos Cerritos.”