This review contains spoilers for “Lower Decks” seasons 1 and 2
Trekkies were in for a treat on Thursday with the arrival of the season 2 premiere of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.” The show continues to go where no man has gone before as creator Mike McMahan, former “Rick and Morty” writer and producer, intertwines this adult animation with science fiction, comedy and sleek references to the entire “Star Trek” universe, setting up for yet another season that’s definitely worth watching.
If you haven’t seen the first season yet, I’d recommend watching that before diving into the second one. While there’s not a huge connection in plotlines between the seasons, there are some things that won’t make sense if you don’t have the background context for the show.
The season premiere, more than any episode we’ve seen in the past, puts a spotlight on first officer Jack Ransom (voiced by Jerry O'Connell). Ransom, in a nutshell, is a ditzy, arrogant gym rat that somehow remains loveable. The focus on him specifically was without a doubt the best draw of the episode, as Ransom’s character is full of comedic opportunities that weren’t showcased enough in the first season.
While Capt. Carol Freeman (voiced by Dawnn Lewis) and Ensign Beckett Mariner (voiced by Tawny Newsome) attempt to work on their dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship, Ransom gets much less attention from the captain, giving him incentive to immediately turn evil when he’s hit with a ray of “strange energies” that give him god-like powers. If that seems like a shockingly quick plot progression, then you’re starting to understand what “Lower Decks” is like.
With these powers, Ransom’s head gets bigger and bigger — no, not in a self-obsessed, know-it-all kind of way; it literally gets so big that it detaches from his body and floats up into space so he can attack the crew’s ship. A combination of Ransom’s hurt ego and stupidity makes you love the laughable character, even after he turns an entire village into his personal gym and its people into replicas of himself that can’t stop working out.
“It’s easy to become a god,” Ransom said while weightlifting trees pulled from the ground. “The trick is staying a god.”
The smaller plotline of this episode follows the big cliff-hanger from last season where cyborg Samanthan Rutherford (voiced by Eugene Cordero) lost his memory. In this follow-up, we watch as D’Vana Tendi (voiced by Noël Wells) fears that Rutherford is growing distant from their friendship and tries out crazy, unsafe medical experiments on Rutherford to make sure they’re still best friends.
These two are my favorite pair of characters from last season and I’m glad to see that their eccentric friendship is surviving this season. There are hints of romance between the two but I hope that we keep this a non-romantic relationship and avoid falling into the trope that opposite-sex best friends must date.
My only major disappointment in the episode was the lack of Brad Boimler’s (voiced by Jack Quaid) presence. As one of the main characters from last season, I grew attached to his awkward personality and kiss-up work ethic. His lack of a role in this episode makes way for a bigger question that last season produced after the character was promoted to a new starship: how will the writers intertwine two completely separate storylines without jumping back and forth between ships every episode?
If we’re following typical “Star Trek” style, I wouldn’t be surprised if one ship is the A-plot and the other is the B-plot, and we do indeed jump back and forth between the two without any obvious connection for a while, with maybe a tie-in near the end of the season. However, I fear this would just make the show choppy and predictable, which hasn’t been the case so far, so hopefully the writers have some better inspiration than the predictable plot I’ve laid out here.
Even though we don’t see the non-holographic Boimler until the very end of the episode (although the holographic version of Boimler that we see at the start of the episode does hilariously reference Jean-Luc Picard’s famous Orwellian-esque light torture scene from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), we do get to see him with Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), who the writers seem to be making into a jazz-obsessed, action-crazed captain. This is spot-on for what I’d expect of Riker as a captain, and I look forward to more of his loud personality in the future, hopefully along with his wife Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) as well.
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Of course, the episode is also full of easter eggs that reference other “Star Trek” shows and movies. This is one of my favorite parts about this show and truly appeals to hard-core Trekkies. But what I love about “Star Trek” is that you don’t need to understand the references to enjoy the show, highlighting the inclusive nature that “Star Trek” has always promoted.
Whether you’re a Trekkie or not, if you like slightly inappropriate comedy and meaningful relationships, then “Lower Decks” is the show for you. This season 2 premiere sets up what I anticipate is going to be a full season that was worth the wait.
Megan Gleason is the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @fabflutist2716
