S01.E07: Much Ado About Boimler

[KimberStormer]

Quote

Mariner tries to impress her best friend from Starfleet Academy who is now a visiting Captain. Boimler is sent to a Starfleet medical ship after a transporter accident puts him “out of phase.”

 

[KimberStormer]

I was so happy to see Boimler and Tendi going off together in the Farm ship, and then they barely interacted 😞  I guess it's better than nothing.  Absolutely no idea why the episode title, though.  There was not, in fact, much ado about Boimler.  Overall that whole plot seemed to be pretty weak because it depended on that captain not communicating for no reason at all.

As for the Mariner plot: hmm.  hmmm.  hmmmm.  I feel like this time the "Mariner's too good at everything" criticism kind of really does land.  Even though she's got a friend who's somehow a captain already and just as much of a hypercompetent badass.  I simply didn't understand the conflict.  I think in this case it was the writers not communicating for no reason at all: why not make it explicit that Mariner is fucking up on purpose?  What did we gain from holding us in a state of wondering why she's being so doofy, awkward and accident-prone?  What were we supposed to think was happening?  It wasn't funny, because it made no sense.  When we've seen her self-sabotage on purpose to avoid responsibility (or whatever it is she's avoiding? that also makes no sense to me?  It made sense she wants to avoid the crushingly lame TNG officer's life, but not to be mad at her friend for having her Vulcan subordinate report to her?) and she does it just by being her smug self, not by pretending (to the audience!) to be nervous and self-conscious Boimler-style.  And it still makes no sense to me: she was acting like YOU'VE CHANGED, MAN, IT USED TO BE ABOUT THE MUSIC to her friend who seemed totally normal and cool as a captain, just not a total ass like Mariner.  I can't be on her side here, and I think that's a failing in a main character, personally.

I don't know, I found this episode baffling and frustrating.  It's hard to put into words.

[ottoDbusdriver]

This was ...... just ....... tedious.   Oh look, yet another starship is destroyed. 

It's like the writers just Googled 'star trek' and mindlessly packed in as many references to much better Star Trek shows into this episode.

Really, Jellico gets a reference because they basically ripped off the plot of the ST:TNG 2-part episode 'Chain of Command' for the bridge crew.

What was the point of Tendi's dog exactly ?  Whatever it was, it wasn't funny.


 

[jah1986]

I don't think I laughed once during this episode, which is disappointing.  I liked Mariner's captain friend.  I don't get what is going on with Mariner and am finding more and more difficult to like the character. She's just being a jerk to EVERYONE because she needs to "find herself"? She's trying to figure out what she wants to do?!? What? Is there some big traumatic thing that happened that I missed that she needs to recover from? Because if she's just disillusioned with Starfleet, she should resign and get on with her life.

Did not get the whole dog thing either, or even the Farm. Least favorite episode this season.

[Chyromaniac]

I wouldn’t say this episode was unenjoyable.  For example, I really liked the send-up of the secret mission from Chain of Command, and the... I guess I can call them freaks? on the farm ship were fun bizarre characters.  And Boimler Immediately selling out the rest of the freaks was perfect.  I even appreciated the weirdness of Tendi and dog.
 

However, like other posters, I don’t get what they were trying to do with Mariner this week.  It really felt like they were setting up an interesting premise- what happens when this otherwise confident and strong-willed person has to contend with a friend who has become much more successful since the academy?  Does her sudden confusion and nervousness suggest that maybe deep down she’s afraid of taking on responsibility for a crew/mission?  If so, why?

Nah- turns out she’s just faking it!  She was willing to screw up on the “safe” jobs (and make her friend look bad) to avoid being considered for another promotion for whatever reason.  Because as soon as there was real danger, she flipped into “action hero” mode.  So far we’ve had overbearing parents, tedious meetings/functions, and now “finding herself“ as reasons why Mariner wants to stay Lower Decks.  And while a character having multiple or conflicting motivations is realistic, I don’t know if that’s what I’m looking for from this comedy cartoon.

[Chicago Redshirt]

I don't think it's that mysterious or complicated as to what's going on with Mariner. From Day 1, she has said that she likes being Lower Decks because the officers in the higher ranks are obsessed with advancement and glory-seeking, because the lower decks are where the action is, and because she doesn't want to have to follow meaningless red tape like she would have to as a higher ranking officer.

Along comes her Academy classmate and friend. She clearly is looking to recruit Mariner, promoting her to first officer for the mission over numerous people in the Cerritos' chain of command. Mariner sees the writing on the wall and tanks the mission to poison the possibility of Ramsey recruiting her for a more prominent post. She explicitly says so in the face of an actual emergency.

Should she have put her big girl pants on and told Ramsey she's not interested? Sure. 

But for whatever reason, that's not who Mariner is.

[KimberStormer]

Yes that is what happened but it still doesn't make much sense to me.  It makes sense to me she can't tell her mom "I don't want a promotion", because moms don't listen to that kind of thing; but this was her friend.  Take a page from Nancy Reagan and just say no, Mariner.  One might say "well she doesn't want to hurt her friend's feelings" but a) it's Mariner who doesn't give a shit about anyone's feelings and b) this strategy undermined her friend in a way that was much worse.  It is also out of character how she went about it: when she deliberately fucks up to avoid promotion in the past she lets everyone know just how superior she is to the whole thing but this time, instead of that, she acts all nervous and awkward -- the only explanation is that for some reason the writers wanted us, the audience, to think she was actually nervous and awkward, only to pull the rug out.  It doesn't make sense on a character level, only on a "ha ha we got you TWIST ENDING" bad writing level.  Plus the worst example yet of ACTUALLY SHE IS AMAZING AT EVERYTHING WHAT AN INCREDIBLE PERSON and to top it all off this insulting justification of "she wants to fiiiiiiiiind herself" which feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card because it's the kind of thing you're not supposed to question.  Aw, she's not a total ass, she just doesn't know who she is!  #relatable!  Time to post some of my favorite motivational memes about how everyone goes at their own pace!

I say this alot but if you want to find yourself, dude, take a gap year like a normal insufferable 20-year-old and get out of Starfleet.  There are plenty of adventures you can have out there in this great galaxy that don't involve pseudo-military discipline and the horrible necessity of....having your subordinate regularly check in with you in an emergency situation?  (She was like "you used to do what you want, now you have to check in with [Vulcan] every five minutes?!?" and like, dude, no, the Vulcan has to check in with her. [Friend Captain]'s in charge, she does do what she wants.)

5 hours ago, jah1986 said:

Is there some big traumatic thing that happened that I missed that she needs to recover from? Because if she's just disillusioned with Starfleet, she should resign and get on with her life.

This is my fear, tbh, after this episode.  I don't know if the writers intended it but everyone is always saying "how the hell old is Mariner anyway?" at the end of every single episode.  Every one.  And it's starting to make me feel like it's on purpose and they're making a weirdly unstated mystery grow of what the heck is the deal with her and it's going to turn out to be some dumb shit like Dominion War PTSD that will be incredibly annoying to me in a comic cartoon.  Because it's just yet another (out of the five or six already given, as @Chyromaniac notes) reason for this Hypercompetent Badass to be such a pain in the ass and an even more unimpeachable unquestionable justification so nobody is allowed to complain about it and if you do you're, like, attacking people in real life.

[tessaray]

I understand self-sabotage to avoid dealing with other, unspecified issues. 🙂 Beckett's normal coping mechanism of hiding behind a bad attitude and screwing up on purpose is more problematic when it's a successful friend that she actually likes, so I get the weirdness.  But I agree with other comments, that they need to resolve this because it's freaking annoying at this point. 

I'm always up for a good transporter accident story but the resolution of this one was just embarrassingly lame.  

 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, KimberStormer said:

Yes that is what happened but it still doesn't make much sense to me.  It makes sense to me she can't tell her mom "I don't want a promotion", because moms don't listen to that kind of thing; but this was her friend.  Take a page from Nancy Reagan and just say no, Mariner.  One might say "well she doesn't want to hurt her friend's feelings" but a) it's Mariner who doesn't give a shit about anyone's feelings and b) this strategy undermined her friend in a way that was much worse.  It is also out of character how she went about it: when she deliberately fucks up to avoid promotion in the past she lets everyone know just how superior she is to the whole thing but this time, instead of that, she acts all nervous and awkward -- the only explanation is that for some reason the writers wanted us, the audience, to think she was actually nervous and awkward, only to pull the rug out.  It doesn't make sense on a character level, only on a "ha ha we got you TWIST ENDING" bad writing level.  Plus the worst example yet of ACTUALLY SHE IS AMAZING AT EVERYTHING WHAT AN INCREDIBLE PERSON and to top it all off this insulting justification of "she wants to fiiiiiiiiind herself" which feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card because it's the kind of thing you're not supposed to question.  Aw, she's not a total ass, she just doesn't know who she is!  #relatable!  Time to post some of my favorite motivational memes about how everyone goes at their own pace!

I say this alot but if you want to find yourself, dude, take a gap year like a normal insufferable 20-year-old and get out of Starfleet.  There are plenty of adventures you can have out there in this great galaxy that don't involve pseudo-military discipline and the horrible necessity of....having your subordinate regularly check in with you in an emergency situation?  (She was like "you used to do what you want, now you have to check in with [Vulcan] every five minutes?!?" and like, dude, no, the Vulcan has to check in with her. [Friend Captain]'s in charge, she does do what she wants.)

This is my fear, tbh, after this episode.  I don't know if the writers intended it but everyone is always saying "how the hell old is Mariner anyway?" at the end of every single episode.  Every one.  And it's starting to make me feel like it's on purpose and they're making a weirdly unstated mystery grow of what the heck is the deal with her and it's going to turn out to be some dumb shit like Dominion War PTSD that will be incredibly annoying to me in a comic cartoon.  Because it's just yet another (out of the five or six already given, as @Chyromaniac notes) reason for this Hypercompetent Badass to be such a pain in the ass and an even more unimpeachable unquestionable justification so nobody is allowed to complain about it and if you do you're, like, attacking people in real life.

I'm not sure where you get that Mariner doesn't give a shit about other people's feelings. Even Boimler who she has been pretty rude to overall, and she's brash, but even with Boimler, she clearly cares about him and wants to support him, even if it's in her own messed  up way. That's why she wanted to be his mentor. That's why she arranged for the fake Ferengi ugging so that he could feel emboldened, stay in Starfleet and have laughs at her expense. 

The strategy didn't undermine her friend at all, really. Ramsey's crew might have been like, "Ugh, why was Ramsey talking up this loser for?" and if it had worked, Ramsey would have just been, "Sorry, she used to be a badass but clearly something happened." Despite Mariner's tanking, the mission was being accomplished.

I don't see how it is out of character to act awkward and incompetent. She did it before when she pretended she didn't know what race her Ferengi buddy was. In the same episode she claimed that she and Boimler wanted to lick General K'orin's boots like the Federation dogs that they were. It seems like she will play whatever role she needs to try to accomplish a goal. Sometimes, that means making no secret about what she's doing, like when she was mocking the admiral for calling them sense-OARS rather than sense-urs in order to get demoted. Sometimes, that might mean being sneaky.

Mariner's said it over and over again. She likes the cool things about Starfleet like exploring, helping people, space mysteries. She doesn't like the following mindless rules or the ambitious weasels. In remaining an ensign, she has found a sweet spot where she gets everything she wants and nothing she doesn't. Why should she leave Starfleet or take a gap year?

[KimberStormer]

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Why should she leave Starfleet or take a gap year?

So she doesn't have to follow mindless rules or deal with ambitious weasels, which she has had to do in every single episode so far.  Her strategy is not working.  And clearly never could work, and only a moron would think it could, and Mariner's clearly not a moron.

I disagree with just about everything you said, but it's clearly a matter of interpretation!  I see it my way: she was not, for example, the slightest bit "nervous and awkward" about the Ferengi.  It is true she was doing it to cheer Boimler up, but only after the Mariner Straight Talk (clearly her preferred manner of communication) was not working.  Anyway, I was just reaching for an explanation for why she wouldn't tell her friend "I'm good where I am, thanks for the offer but I don't want a promotion" (something that even a 'normal' Starfleet officer like Riker could frequently do) and that's the only thing I could come up with, but even that, as I say, doesn't work.  If she's willing to sabotage her mom's career in service of mocking a complete stranger for his pronunciation, I don't think she would hesitate to tell her friend she doesn't want a promotion.  If she's so confident that she likes Starfleet and what she's doing in it, why shouldn't she just say so?

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, KimberStormer said:

So she doesn't have to follow mindless rules or deal with ambitious weasels, which she has had to do in every single episode so far.  Her strategy is not working.  And clearly never could work, and only a moron would think it could, and Mariner's clearly not a moron.

I disagree with just about everything you said, but it's clearly a matter of interpretation!  I see it my way: she was not, for example, the slightest bit "nervous and awkward" about the Ferengi.  It is true she was doing it to cheer Boimler up, but only after the Mariner Straight Talk (clearly her preferred manner of communication) was not working.  Anyway, I was just reaching for an explanation for why she wouldn't tell her friend "I'm good where I am, thanks for the offer but I don't want a promotion" (something that even a 'normal' Starfleet officer like Riker could frequently do) and that's the only thing I could come up with, but even that, as I say, doesn't work.  If she's willing to sabotage her mom's career in service of mocking a complete stranger for his pronunciation, I don't think she would hesitate to tell her friend she doesn't want a promotion.  If she's so confident that she likes Starfleet and what she's doing in it, why shouldn't she just say so?

There are mindless rules and ambituous weasels everywhere. She clearly has decided that she is willing to make the tradeoff of dealing with the number of weasels and rules as an ensign to get the cool things in Starfleet.

She hasn't really had to follow mindless rules or deal with ambitious weasels doing ambitious weasel things. I'm not counting Boimler, he is a different level/type of ambitious weasel than what irks Mariner. He actually enjoys his job for the sake of doing the job and likes rules for the sake of rules. He is not chasing a place in history) in most episodes. 

Let's review:

Second Contact: Assigned to help set up a communication relay, Mariner sneaks off to give farming equipment to aliens that Starfleet red tape would allow to starve if they went through the proper channels. On getting back to the ship, she helps the senior staff fight their way back to sick bay. Afterwards, she and her lower deck friends hang at the bar, separate from the senior staff. She also picks up a buttload of contraband during shore leave. Minimal interaction with non-Boimler weasels, no stupid rules followed. 

Envoys: Mariner pilots her Klingon general buddy to a planet and ignores protocol about eating in the shuttle and drinking on duty. She lets him steal their shuttle and spends time hunting him down. She disregards a bunch of tickets the shuttle got. No stupid rules followed, no non Boimler ambitious weasels.

Temporal Edict:  Because Boimler talks about buffer time, Mariner and the rest of the crew get run ragged trying to finish all their tasks on restrictive scheduling. Mariner is part of an away team with First Officer Jack Ransom, and because another crewmate made a mistake, the away team and the Cerritos get attacked. Mariner talks back to Ransom and he stabs her in the foot so he doesn't have to argue with her about who fights Vindor. Later, he throws her in the brig for failing to follow his order to roll down her sleeves. So the first episode where she has to follow stupid rules and where she has to interact with a non-Boimler ambitious weasel.

Moist Vessel: Freeman tries to get rid of Mariner by promoting her. As a lieutenant, Mariner is forced to interact with senior staff members and their boring team-building exercises. Second time that she is forced to interact with non-Boimler ambitous weasels, but only because she was promoted. Had she been able to stay an ensign, she pretty much would not have had to deal with such types. She wasn't really forced to follow any rules per se, and certainly not as an ensign.

Cupid's Errant Arrow: Mariner suspects that Boimler's girliriend is too good to be true and goes to elaborate lengths to try to prove it. No non-Boimler ambitious weasels here, and no stupid rules raised.

Terminal Provocations: Mariner starts to talk smack to Dr. T'ana but the situation gets defused. Mariner wants to go to a concert and a co-worker agrees to cover for her and Boimler. He doesn't know how to do the job, so he causes machinery to map onto his brain patterns. Another encounter with a non-Boimler weasel if one counts T'ana, but it is relatively minimal and its origin is completely unrelated to the job or her position. No stupid rules raised. 

Much Ado About Boimler: Mariner is given a temporary promotion to first officer and pretends to be bad at her job until an emergency arises and forces her to lead. Mariner again encounters non-Boimler weasels but only because of her promotion. There are no stupid rules that she has to deal with.

So far, then, the show generally coincides with Mariner's assertion that If you stay an ensign, you can avoid the ambitious gloryhounds who worry about their place in the history books, and you don't have to worry about the stupid-type of rules. The main times her strategy has failed is when she was promoted. Otherwise, she gets to have her regular margaritas, Remulon sister concerts, reunions with blood-brothers, time on the Holodeck, oh and seeing cool aliens, handing out beatdowns to those who need it and saving and helping people.

Of course she wasn't the slightest bit nervous about the Ferengi. She set that situation up and played to be dumb. She obviously knew it wasn't a Bolian.

By the same token, she was not the least bit nervous and awkward in the mission in this episode. It was another setup by her to avoid being recruited by Ramsey. 

By the same token, she didn't want to lick K'orin's boots. She just said that because she thought that it would get what she wanted faster than telling the truth.

It's not uncommon for the same person to relate to different people in different ways. Mariner does not treat Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi all the same, for example. Mariner has, according to Freeman, a tendency to undermine Freeman to the point where she seriously thinks Mariner stays up all night trying to embarass her. Where Mariner is fine rebelling against Freeman and being up in her face, it's not unreasonable that she has a different relationship with a buddy from her Academy days. While she's giving Mommy sarcastic Vulcan salutes and mouthing off in front of her, she may not feel as easy about doing something similar with Ramsey.

She is confident she likes Starfleet overall and has said so on multiple occasions. But she has also said that she doesn't like people scrambling for promotions and glory on multiple occasions. In this episode, she does so again. "Fine, but I don't love that everyone's always screaming at me to rank up and take charge. Why can't I just be a super great ensign?"

I can relate to where Mariner is coming from, because in the real world there is definitely pressure both financial, peer, societal and other to keep seeking advancement. There are some who don't want to get on the management track and who would rather stay front-line employees. It is reasonable to me that Mariner might feel similar pressures except for the financial category. And those pressures might lead her to fail to do something that makes common sense to you and me: just say "no, thank you."

Edited September 19, 2020 by Chicago Redshirt

[KimberStormer]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Mariner sneaks off to give farming equipment to aliens that Starfleet red tape would allow to starve if they went through the proper channels.

Exactly the stupid-rule dealing-with that made me first say she should just not be in Starfleet in the first episode.  When you have to go to such elaborate lengths to do the things you want to do, I don't call that "being an Ensign means no rules!  No parents!  SPRING BREAAAAAK!"  If this isn't dealing with stupid rules I don't know what is.  She could be Kassidy Yates and deliver them some equipment by herself without any red tape anytime she wanted.  It's a communist utopia without any money!  She does have to deal with stupid rules without being promoted, too, or have you forgot about the cum filters?  

And dealing with Boimler is dealing with an ambitious weasel.  (The only difference between him and the others is that he sucks at it, just look how he threw the "freaks" under the bus this episode.)  And getting promoted is....exactly what happens in Starfleet that nobody has to deal with who's not in Starfleet!  You know who didn't have to go to any lengths at all to avoid getting promoted out of the kitchen he loved to be in?  Sisko's dad.  Because he wasn't in Starfleet.

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Where Mariner is fine rebelling against Freeman and being up in her face, it's not unreasonable that she has a different relationship with a buddy from her Academy days.

Of course I agree, and said so in the first place; what she would do with a buddy is tell her straight-up the truth.  Unless she was embarassed...which as you say, she wasn't.  She was pretending to be as part of some weird scheme.

I can relate to Mariner too, as a certified un-ambitious person with no desire to be a manager or whatever.  I certainly don't want to be a lieutenant in the army, so we are the same there.  But my strategy to avoid that was different from Mariner's: I didn't go to West Point and then start fucking up to keep from being promoted.  Even if I had gone to West Point and decided I wasn't actually about that army life after all, I would quit.  And you know something we've learned on this very show?  That the officers on the Cerritos are incredibly understanding and supportive whenever you don't want to do something.  Rutherford went through every department and they all were totally cool with him wanting to not be in them.

In a sense what annoys me is that the "there is only Starfleet" thing would make perfect sense in a pre-DS9 show; but from DS9 we have seen a lot of non-Starfleet people living very full and exciting lives.  But we've even learned in the show itself that there is no problem with saying no to things, even in Starfleet.  It makes sense to me, as I said, that she can't say no to her mom, who won't listen to her, in the way of moms.  But it doesn't make sense when it's a close friend.

Edited September 19, 2020 by KimberStormer

[Chicago Redshirt]

5 hours ago, KimberStormer said:

Exactly the stupid-rule dealing-with that made me first say she should just not be in Starfleet in the first episode.  When you have to go to such elaborate lengths to do the things you want to do, I don't call that "being an Ensign means no rules!  No parents!  SPRING BREAAAAAK!"  If this isn't dealing with stupid rules I don't know what is.  She could be Kassidy Yates and deliver them some equipment by herself without any red tape anytime she wanted.  It's a communist utopia without any money!  She does have to deal with stupid rules without being promoted, too, or have you forgot about the cum filters?  

And dealing with Boimler is dealing with an ambitious weasel.  (The only difference between him and the others is that he sucks at it, just look how he threw the "freaks" under the bus this episode.)  And getting promoted is....exactly what happens in Starfleet that nobody has to deal with who's not in Starfleet!  You know who didn't have to go to any lengths at all to avoid getting promoted out of the kitchen he loved to be in?  Sisko's dad.  Because he wasn't in Starfleet.

Then let me clarify: there are stupid rules and ambitious weasels everywhere, both in Starfleet and out. As an ensign she is less beholden to actually follow the rules reasonable people might consider stupid than she would be as a senior officer, and possibly elsewhere. As an ensign, she is either surrounded with fewer ambitious weasels who want to etch their name in the history books, and/or their ambitious weaselry is more tolerable. 

No one is saying that being an ensign means no rules, no parents, etc. When Fletcher confronted her about her own rule-breaking, she says basically that she only breaks rules that are stupid and that keep her from doing he job. (which omits that she breaks rules that let her have fun like no Romulan whiskey, but still).

We don't fully know how "no money" truly works in the future. But I'm fairly sure that a random citizen can't show up at Jupiter Station and say, "One warp capable freighter with industrial replicators, please." And even if Mariner could (either because she has connections or something), she still wouldn't have the reach she does as a Starfleet officer. The aliens in Second Contact had only been known to the Federation for a year. There is no reasonable way to expect that someone without the Federation's resources to have even heard of them, let alone talked to them, to know their needs and figure out a way to meet them. 

I wouldn't consider the rule that makes her have to clean out the holodeck (some variant of "Starfleet members must perform duties assigned to you") a stupid rule. It is a necessary rule to keep a ship running, inflicted in a punitive way. And again, no one said that being an ensign meant one is immune to any and all rules. It just means far less of the stupid ones, and that Mariner can often skirt her way around them in a way she couldn't if she were a lieutenant or higher,  

Boimler did not throw the freaks under the bus looking for a pat on the head, a commendation, a promotion or any personal glory. He did it because mutiny and violence are wrong and he wanted to avoid such a confrontation. (Of course, as Boimler he was not going to get a commendation, a promotion or personal glory).

If Mariner's desire was to serve delicious Cajun and creole cuisine but found the restrictions of the ship's mess too restrictive and complained about not being able to get anything but replicated shrimp, then you might have a point. But she wants to do things that Starfleet does best, and that hardly anyone (presumably) can do besides Starfleet. 

Of course I agree, and said so in the first place; what she would do with a buddy is tell her straight-up the truth.  Unless she was embarassed...which as you say, she wasn't.  She was pretending to be as part of some weird scheme.

I can relate to Mariner too, as a certified un-ambitious person with no desire to be a manager or whatever.  I certainly don't want to be a lieutenant in the army, so we are the same there.  But my strategy to avoid that was different from Mariner's: I didn't go to West Point and then start fucking up to keep from being promoted.  Even if I had gone to West Point and decided I wasn't actually about that army life after all, I would quit.  And you know something we've learned on this very show?  That the officers on the Cerritos are incredibly understanding and supportive whenever you don't want to do something.  Rutherford went through every department and they all were totally cool with him wanting to not be in them.

In a sense what annoys me is that the "there is only Starfleet" thing would make perfect sense in a pre-DS9 show; but from DS9 we have seen a lot of non-Starfleet people living very full and exciting lives.  But we've even learned in the show itself that there is no problem with saying no to things, even in Starfleet.  It makes sense to me, as I said, that she can't say no to her mom, who won't listen to her, in the way of moms.  But it doesn't make sense when it's a close friend.

She wasn't nervous or embarassed about her "inability" to do the tasks (or for that matter, being in the presence of her accomplished classmate) is what I meant.

She could have been, and probably was, embarassed about wanting to remain an ensign. Given the general pressure and expectation to promote exists, given that she specifically has been pressured, given that Ramsey's Vulcan crewmember shows barely concealed disdain for Mariner still being an ensign,, given her outburst at the end of the episode where she talks about pressure to be more than a super great ensign, it is reasonable that she might feel that.

It also is possible that she is not actually embarassed about wanting to remain an ensign but she doesn't want to have a discussion or friction with Ramsey about it.

What you or I might do if we were in a situation that was analagous to Mariner's doesn't mean it's what Mariner should or would do in her actual situation. The analogy with a West Point is imperfect, as all analogies are. West Point is probably a lot less tolerant of people breaking its rules than Starfleet seems to be, for example. And Mariner is not disenchanted with the Starfleet life. She loves it overall and has said so. But even putting that aside, I'm sure there are people who stay in the military because they believe in the institution and the goals (or just enjoy the security and the paycheck) and who do not care for and try to skirt some of the rules. There are certainly police officers who remain on the job despite not following or caring for rules (even important ones like "don't use excessive force" and "don't do illegal searches").

Shaxs and Billups were understanding about Rutherford wanting to switch departments, yes. (T'Ana explicitly washed him out of Medical because he couldn't rustle up some bedside manner, and one would think that after having fun having Rutherford blow up more children, Ransom eventually would have told him he wasn't a good match for Command.)

That is not to say that the senior officers, or more to the point, Captain Mommy, would be as understanding about Mariner wanting to be left an ensign. Two different things, and again, different people sometimes get treated differently even over the same thing.

Mariner feels that Captain Mommy won't give her breathing room and treats her like a child. And the show has backed that up at least somewhat: assigning Boimler to spy on Mariner, criticizing the kind of rock she used in Moist Vessel to chisel away at the terraforming growth, criticizing the speed at which she was making the descent. She envisions Mariner ranking up and them becoming "an unstoppable mommy-daughter team." (Of course, the show has shown that Mariner deserves little to no breathing room because she often goes out of her way to be disrespectful). Dr. T'Ana has insulted Mariner by saying that she's heard of Mariner and thinks she should go to Starbase 80 (which is apparently a huge diss).

[Ottis]

22 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I don't think it's that mysterious or complicated as to what's going on with Mariner. From Day 1, she has said that she likes being Lower Decks because the officers in the higher ranks are obsessed with advancement and glory-seeking, because the lower decks are where the action is, and because she doesn't want to have to follow meaningless red tape like she would have to as a higher ranking officer.

Along comes her Academy classmate and friend. She clearly is looking to recruit Mariner, promoting her to first officer for the mission over numerous people in the Cerritos' chain of command. Mariner sees the writing on the wall and tanks the mission to poison the possibility of Ramsey recruiting her for a more prominent post. She explicitly says so in the face of an actual emergency.

Should she have put her big girl pants on and told Ramsey she's not interested? Sure. 

But for whatever reason, that's not who Mariner is.

Exactly right, and I think I like Mariner more as a result. Not all of us aspire to be captain. She is a tad immature in how she expresses it, but I respect the fact she finds glory hounds annoying and likes a simpler existence. 
 

 

[KimberStormer]

4 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The aliens in Second Contact had only been known to the Federation for a year. There is no reasonable way to expect that someone without the Federation's resources to have even heard of them, let alone talked to them, to know their needs and figure out a way to meet them.

For heaven's sake.  Who cares?  There are millions upon millions of other people she could help all over the galaxy.  These just happen to be the ones the Cerritos was nearby.  She didn't join up to help these specific people.  She could go live that Outrageous Okona life and help people too.  There's a million things she could do.  Things that accomplish all the stuff she likes without any of the things she doesn't like.

I don't believe she loves the Starfleet life, that's the thing.  Let's see, we've established she hates stupid rules, ambitious people (even when they're cool, like her friend, she's still all "you've changed, man"), "the general pressure and expectation to promote" which you mentioned and the "barely concealed disdain" people show towards her, she "feels that Captain Mommy won't give her breathing room and treats her like a child", gets insulted by T'Ana and Ransome etc etc....she can say she loves it all she wants, but she doesn't actually.

4 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

But even putting that aside, I'm sure there are people who stay in the military because they believe in the institution and the goals (or just enjoy the security and the paycheck) and who do not care for and try to skirt some of the rules.

The military people I've known who believe in the institution specifically believe in following orders and the structure of the hierarchy and traditions, although that might just be the people I've met.  Security and paycheck don't apply here, which I think is the main reason people who don't like the rules stay.  Regardless of how the communist utopia works, we know that much at least.

4 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

That is not to say that the senior officers, or more to the point, Captain Mommy, would be as understanding about Mariner wanting to be left an ensign.

But I wasn't talking about Captain Mommy, who I have repeatedly said, obviously wouldn't understand.  I'm talking about Starfleet as an institution.  And I'm not talking about staying an Ensign, I'm talking about quitting!  I do think it's a bit more complicated to quit the military than a normal job, but it doesn't look like that's true of Starfleet.

Edited September 19, 2020 by KimberStormer

[Chicago Redshirt]

20 minutes ago, KimberStormer said:

For heaven's sake.  Who cares?  There are millions upon millions of other people she could help all over the galaxy.  These just happen to be the ones the Cerritos was nearby.  She didn't join up to help these specific people.  She could go live that Outrageous Okona life and help people too.  There's a million things she could do.  Things that accomplish all the stuff she likes without any of the things she doesn't like.

I don't believe she loves the Starfleet life, that's the thing.  Let's see, we've established she hates stupid rules, ambitious people (even when they're cool, like her friend, she's still all "you've changed, man"), "the general pressure and expectation to promote" which you mentioned and the "barely concealed disdain" people show towards her, she "feels that Captain Mommy won't give her breathing room and treats her like a child", gets insulted by T'Ana and Ransome etc etc....she can say she loves it all she wants, but she doesn't actually.

The military people I've known who believe in the institution specifically believe in following orders and the structure of the hierarchy and traditions, although that might just be the people I've met.  Security and paycheck don't apply here, which I think is the main reason people who don't like the rules stay.  Regardless of how the communist utopia works, we know that much at least.

But I wasn't talking about Captain Mommy, who I have repeatedly said, obviously wouldn't understand.  I'm talking about Starfleet as an institution, and about her best friend from the Academy, who she could just say no to, instead of this bizarre scheme.

Mariner cares. Even though there are admittedly millions of ways she can help people and see cool things even some without the things she dislikes about Starfleet, she wants to help people and do cool things in the context of being with Starfleet. She presumably joined up and stays in because Starfleet affords her opportunities to see and do things she wouldn't do otherwise. 

When Mariner says she loves being in Starfleet, and shows generally that she loves being in Starfleet, I don't know what to make of your disbelief. 

Yes, she hates a lot of things she sometimes experiences in Starfleet. But she also loves a lot of things she experiences in Starfleet.

I think it would be a rare person whose on-the-job experience is completely devoid of complaints about dumb rules and coworkers. Ask the military people you know about the dumb regs that they were supposed to follow and I'd guess you'd get an earful. I bet some of them might also say that the higher ranked officers seemed to them to mirror the very thing Mariner complains about. 

The point I was responding to was the notion that we know Starfleet officers are understanding about career choices. Again, we can't fairly extrapolate from Rutherford's experience that Starfleet officers would be understanding if Mariner said, "I have no desire to ever br more than an ensign." (Which to be fair, Mariner may be protesting too much and may change her mind about down the road, hence the "find myself" stuff.) There is no reason to think that any of the senior officers would react the same way to her desire to be a perpetual ensign as they did to Rutherford's desire to try different divisions. In particular, we have reason to believe Capt. Mommy would not be accepting. And she has reason to suspect -- even wrongly -- that Ramsey would not necessarily understand why she wanted to remain an ensign. It is worth noting that Ramsey doesn't say anything like, "All you had to do was tell me you didn't want a promotion, dumbass." 

[clyo22]

So Mariner's academy friend is a captain... How old is Mariner supposed to be?

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 9/20/2020 at 4:01 PM, clyo22 said:

So Mariner's academy friend is a captain... How old is Mariner supposed to be?

My guess would have been mid-to-late 20s before this episode. After this, I could see her as early-to-mid 30s.

She stated she has served on five ships. Assuming she graduated from the Academy at 21 and she averaged about two years on each, that would put her at 31. It's possible that she started at the Academy earlier than 18  (what I assume to be the average age of a first-year cadet) or graduated faster than 4 years (what I assume is the standard length of time it takes to graduate).

[Lazlo]

On 9/20/2020 at 10:01 PM, clyo22 said:

So Mariner's academy friend is a captain... How old is Mariner supposed to be?

 

Maybe 30, at least as a lower limit.

 

Kirk was a captain at 29 and Picard at 28 so Ramsey (presumably the same age as Mariner) being a captain before she's 30 would be impressive and unusual but not absurd. Mariner being 30 would also be a reasonable sort of age for Boimler (presumably early 20s) to mistake her as someone the 'same age' as him.

[Chicago Redshirt]

19 hours ago, Lazlo said:

 

Maybe 30, at least as a lower limit.

 

Kirk was a captain at 29 and Picard at 28 so Ramsey (presumably the same age as Mariner) being a captain before she's 30 would be impressive and unusual but not absurd. Mariner being 30 would also be a reasonable sort of age for Boimler (presumably early 20s) to mistake her as someone the 'same age' as him.

Mariner could have started Starfleet super early, either because she's a prodigy or because Admiral Daddy/Captain Mommy.. Canonically, Picard noted a Capt. Scott from the first season episode Conspiracy was the youngest woman in Starfleet history to make captain, so it's could be more routine to do it faster.

Indeed, from what the Internets are telling me, Riker was born in 2335 and was offered the first chance at being a captain that we know about in 2364, so at 29. 

One could think that Mariner and Ramsey are as good as young Riker, and so Ramsey could have been promoted to captain around 29 or even earlier. After all, she could have accepted a post on a less prestigious ship than whatever Riker was offered. Like being the first officer of a 1,000 crew ship is probably more prestigious than being the captain of a 100 person ship.

I would also think the losses the Federation suffered in the Domnion War left the captain ranks thin and allowed for real ambitious people to get promoted quickly. 

[Chyromaniac]

I keep thinking back to Data telling Lore that you should expect to be a LT for like, a dozen years, and how that squares with all these under 30 Captains.  If we can assume Academy grads to be 22 or so, that puts them at mid-30’s before even hitting full Commander, so maybe Captain by their 40’s?  Which, most of the non-Kirk Captains we’ve seen appear to be in that age range.  I think that’s reasonable career path- not every Captain needs to be some kind of wunderkind to be effective.

Either that, or nobody before Picard trusted Data at all, and Starfleet had him on the sloooooow path...

[Chicago Redshirt]

6 minutes ago, Chyromaniac said:

I keep thinking back to Data telling Lore that you should expect to be a LT for like, a dozen years, and how that squares with all these under 30 Captains.  If we can assume Academy grads to be 22 or so, that puts them at mid-30’s before even hitting full Commander, so maybe Captain by their 40’s?  Which, most of the non-Kirk Captains we’ve seen appear to be in that age range.  I think that’s reasonable career path- not every Captain needs to be some kind of wunderkind to be effective.

Either that, or nobody before Picard trusted Data at all, and Starfleet had him on the sloooooow path...

I think it is clear that nobody before Picard (and to some extent, including Picard) trusted Data as a commander. In Redemption II, Data had to specifically request to be asssigned to captain a ship when it was clear how thinly stretched the makeshift fleet was going to be for senior officers, and that jackhole Commander Hobson to his face requested a transfer because he thought androids could not be captains.

As far as we know, Data has never been offered his own command, and he been in Starfleet for 25+ years prior to joining the Enterprise.

[Tachi Rocinante]

On 9/17/2020 at 8:52 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

What was the point of Tendi's dog exactly ?  Whatever it was, it wasn't funny.

Homages to John Carpenter's The Thing and also Exorcist III?  That's all I got. I chuckled.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Tachi Rocinante