S02.E10: First First Contact

[starri]

Quote

In the season two finale, the USS Cerritos is tasked to aid another starship on a first contact mission.

 

[starri]

On the one hand, leaving on a cliffhanger is fine Star Trek tradition.  On the other hand...GRRRRRRRR.

I am really, REALLY impressed that they got Lycia Naff back as Gomez.  Her telling her ensign to relax, relating her story about freaking out in front of Picard was awesome.  As was Lower Decks bringing in another small bit of the novels into canon, since she was a captain there as well.  Also, the horny whales in Cetacean Ops....

A wonderful episode to end a wonderful season.

[Chaos Theory]

Well that took a turn and fast.

Great way to continue the mystery with the Pakleds and rogue Klingon.   Now someone is framing Captain Freeman.   

I am actually curious about what Rutherford saw in his memory.  That could turn into a fun mystery.

Loved watching the ship coming together,  Cerritos Strong!  But the formal dance contest is being postponed.  

Edited October 15, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[marinw]

Great episode. But Freeman has a lot if alibis and witnesses. What did I miss?

I find an Andorian named Jennifer halarious 

I loved all the technological stuff and how it was done without too much technobable. And the dolphin crewmems!

Edited October 15, 2021 by marinw

[marinw]

LD has been criticized for relying too much on references to past Treks. Other than Captian Gomez that is kept to a minimum his episode (there were a couple) letting LD be it's own thing. Removing the outer hull is a first.

Note that there are no references to Discovery becuase that ship was erased from the records or something. Great internal consistency there.

 

 

[starri]

I don't know when this show evolved from something that I found amusing to something that I truly loved.  Cerritos Strong!

19 minutes ago, marinw said:

I find that an Andorian named Jennifer halarious 

What's amazing to me is that her last name, Sh'reyan may also be pulling from the novels.  Somewhere along the way, the writers of the novels decided that Andorians have four genders, zhen, shen, chan, and thaan.  The first two are roughly female, the latter two male.  And they append their family names with the first two letters of the gender (zh', sh', ch' and th').  So Jennifer would be a shen.  When there was no new Trek being produced, the books were able to build out this incredibly rich universe because they didn't have to worry about being contradicted, and now that new things are coming, I'm glad that they're honoring bits of what was created.

[marinw]

So how many standard years between "Q Who" and this episode if Riker became Captian of the Titan at the end of "Nemesis"? Gomez's rise through the ranks must have been rapid.

[DrScottie]

2 hours ago, marinw said:

So how many standard years between "Q Who" and this episode if Riker became Captian of the Titan at the end of "Nemesis"? Gomez's rise through the ranks must have been rapid.

Nemesis is set in 2379. The second season of Lower Decks is set in 2381.  The second season of STTNG was in 2365. It's been 16 years. Besides, Commander Riker had opportunities to get his own command well before the Titan and didn't take them: The Aries, the Melbourne (which was for the best given what happened to her at Wolf 359), possibly Voyager also if Q was right about that in "Death Wish"

[Zaffy]

Best current Star Trek show. I never expected to care for the crew of an animated series..
On the other hand I don't give a dime about the crew of Discovery.
This is the difference between good and abysmal writing.

[marinw]

51 minutes ago, Zaffy said:

Best current Star Trek show.

This. I love it more than ST: Picard, which is a surprise. The finale was EPIC. Great ainimation from Titmouse.

[vibeology]

How do they cram so much goodness into such a little package? This episode had so many great subplots along with the very cool mission. Removing the outer hull is such a brilliant idea that would be so hard/expensive to do in live action but perfect for animation. I love this show so much and I don't want to wait for more!

[marinw]

Nice article: https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-lower-decks-mike-mcmahan-breaks-down-season-1847858312

[marinw]

So now they have to put all the hull plates back. It looks like they just floated off into space

Edited October 16, 2021 by marinw

[starri]

I don't know if any other season of any Trek series has pulled off what they did here.  I know it was only ten episodes, and some where better than others, but there wasn't a stinker in the bunch.

I loved that when T'Ana went against her regular nature and decided to hug Tendi back, she started purring.  I think it's great that Tendi gets to move on to bigger things, but I'm going to miss their dynamic.

[starri]

More in the love category:  Star Trek's current science advisor is Dr. Erin MacDonald, an LA-based astrophysicist who's a huge Trekkie and even says that Janeway was her inspiration to become a scientist.  If you listen VERY closely when everyone yells at Kayshon for suggesting they warp to the Archimedes, you can hear Shaxs bellow "DR ERIN SAYS WE CAN'T DO THAT!"

She excitedly posted on Twitter that she's canon now.  What a dream.

[Starchild]

I like this show but I still find Marriner super annoying. The preferential treatment she gets from her captain mother is bald-faced nepotism and how is it allowed to continue? How are there not complaints from others about the blatant favouritism? When Freeman called for her senior staff to go to the ready room to speak in private, why was an ensign going with them? She's not senior staff, but no one batted an eye at her going anyway. Gah!

You can't tell me the main reason Marriner didn't want her mom to leave was because she'd be replaced by a captain who would not put up with Marriner's shit at all. Marriner would be forced to either shape up, or resign.

I imagine my reaction is coloured by my own experience of people who have done less work than me, socialized with the boss and got better opportunities, but am I really the only person irked by this? Sigh, it continues to rankle me as I watch a show I enjoy otherwise. /rant

[Linderhill]

9 hours ago, Starchild said:

I like this show but I still find Marriner super annoying. The preferential treatment she gets from her captain mother is bald-faced nepotism and how is it allowed to continue? How are there not complaints from others about the blatant favouritism? When Freeman called for her senior staff to go to the ready room to speak in private, why was an ensign going with them? She's not senior staff, but no one batted an eye at her going anyway. Gah!

You can't tell me the main reason Marriner didn't want her mom to leave was because she'd be replaced by a captain who would not put up with Marriner's shit at all. Marriner would be forced to either shape up, or resign.

I imagine my reaction is coloured by my own experience of people who have done less work than me, socialized with the boss and got better opportunities, but am I really the only person irked by this? Sigh, it continues to rankle me as I watch a show I enjoy otherwise. /rant

no, you aren't the only one.  Mariner is one of the reasons I have trouble enjoying this show.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 10/22/2021 at 1:12 PM, Starchild said:

I like this show but I still find Marriner super annoying. The preferential treatment she gets from her captain mother is bald-faced nepotism and how is it allowed to continue? How are there not complaints from others about the blatant favouritism? When Freeman called for her senior staff to go to the ready room to speak in private, why was an ensign going with them? She's not senior staff, but no one batted an eye at her going anyway. Gah!

You can't tell me the main reason Marriner didn't want her mom to leave was because she'd be replaced by a captain who would not put up with Marriner's shit at all. Marriner would be forced to either shape up, or resign.

I imagine my reaction is coloured by my own experience of people who have done less work than me, socialized with the boss and got better opportunities, but am I really the only person irked by this? Sigh, it continues to rankle me as I watch a show I enjoy otherwise. /rant

OK, so what preferential treatment are we specifically talking about here? 

Mariner gets thrown in the brig quite a bit. So it's not that she doesn't get punished.

She sleeps in the same hallway as the other Cerritos ensigns.

She gets no better assignments than anyone else, as far as we've seen. 

If anything, Freeman has been unduly harsh with Mariner. Most captains don't assign someone to specifically spy on an ensign to see if she's doing wrong, or conspire to make an ensign miserable so that she will choose to transfer. But these are canon things Beckett has done with Mariner.

For the entire first season it was not general knowledge that Mariner was Freeman's daughter, so no one treated her better because of that for pretty much the entirety of that season. And while people did try to kiss up to her for that episode, that's pretty much been a non-factor since. About the only time anything came up was when Ransom became godlike and insecure in the first episode of S2. 

In way bigger ships, ensigns are often included in senior staff meetings or otherwise shown a good deal of respect/responsibility. Ex. A: Harry Kim from Voyager. Ex. B: Ensign Tilly from Discovery. Ex. C: Acting Ensign/Ensign Wesley Crusher Ex. D: Ensign Ro Laren Ex. E: Ensign Pavel Chekov.

Mariner is the opposite of the sort of people you've talked about. She has objectively done more work than a lot of ensigns and been in a higher rank. But she has been demoted for reasons that haven't been specified, as opposed to promoted undeservedly. Everything we've seen shows that she is some form of a slacker as opposed to someone who is getting any sort of career boost.

(Which is not to say that Mariner is not annoying. I just don't see how she's a beneficiary of nepotism when her mother is pretty harsh on her and often can't stand her.)

Edited October 27, 2021 by Chicago Redshirt

[starri]

Mariner:  "You guys don't know anything about my family!"

Tendi:  "WE are your family!  We will always be there for you! And right now, we're headed into a pile of crazy dangerous space debris."

[QuantumMechanic]

I ended up liking LD more than I thought I would, especially since I wasn’t a fan of TNG (loved DS9 though, but TOS will always be my first love).

One thing that has surprised me has been the quantity and quality of the references to probably the most obscure TV Trek of them all — TAS.

Is someone in the writers’ room a big TAS fan? Did they decide that since this was a Trek cartoon they were duty-bound to have lots of shoutouts to the other Trek cartoon?