Star Trek #1622: Those Old Scientists

CAPTAIN'S LOG: The crossover with Lower Decks.

WHY WE LIKE IT: It's so crazy it just might work.

WHY WE DON'T: Lower stakes.

REVIEW: This nutty crossover between Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds named after LD's reasoning for making references to "TOS" was the episode I was most excited about, and though the adventure side of things falls a bit flat, the humor works surprisingly well, or maybe not that surprising - the SNW crew plays its share of comedy. Having Boimler and then Mariner show up in live action (through time travel, though that wasn't the only option) isn't that crazy. What is rather mad is that we start in Lower Decks' cartoon world - it's really a Lower Decks episode - until they travel back 120 years. Boimler in fact remains the main character of the episode. An Orion drink provides the justification for the Enterprise crew to eventually look like cartoons themselves, which seems to suggest people on the Cerritos are always a bit sloshed (that tracks). And they redid the show's opening in the animated style, with that giant space slug sucking at the Enterprise's teat, no less. Masterful.

One of the weird things about having cartoon stars in live action is that it requires a different kind of performance, but Jack Quaid certainly nails it. We hear Boimler's voice throughout. Mariner's character is more extreme, and Tawny Newsome makes her a lot more animated (if you'll pardon the expression) than she is on Lower Decks. It's a fuller comedy performance, but made me lose the Becket Mariner I knew from the other show. More voice variation and so on. And for the purposes of this story, she's regressed to the Becket who doesn't ever want to show she'll do something for a friend (like ask for the time portal mission because Boimler would love to be on it), or admit she loved going to the Starfleet Museum or is a fan of this era as much as Boimler is. Rutherford and Tendi don't cross over, sadly, but Tendi at least plays a role, having a great-grandmother aboard an Orion ship that creates problems for the crew, so her existence is in peril if history is changed. Jerry O'Connell makes a quick appearance in the cartoon world as Ransom, calling Number One the hottest First Officer in Starfleet, which is a double joke, seeing as 1) Jonathan Frakes directed the episode and 2) O'Connell is real-life married to Rebecca Romjin. Much of the comedy is of the Lower Decks brand, making references to Trek lore, and of course, bungling assignments. The Boimler-Mariner patter is very quick so I caught some jokes only on the second go (ironically, the one about how the Enterprise crew speak so slowly). ONE joke makes no sense, so I have to call it out, and it's Pike telling Boimler he doesn't look over a hundred, which would only work if he'd come from the PAST. No one caught that?

But this is all in the service of exploring hero worship, which the young ensigns of the Cerritos indulge in a lot (to the absurd extreme of blurting out future bombs all the time - in no way should Boimler have been given the run of the ship), but eventually finds the SNW crew doing the same about Archer's Enterprise. The point is that all these shows (and I'm not ready to say Lower Decks excepted) feature Starfleet's most legendary officers. It's reason we watch these tales - their "logs - rather than the USS Hood's or Deep Space K-7's. While Boimler freaks out at Spock being a "laughing Vulcan" (thereby indicating to he and Chapel that it's "just a phase"), Mariner gets to fangirl on Uhura who she incorrectly pegged as someone with work-life balance. Uhura's workaholic subplot from the previous episode continues, and one day she'll get there and start singing on the P.A. system, I'm sure. Boimler joined Starfleet because of Una's "Through hardship, the stars" quote, a revelation that plays as quite sweet. And he's the super-fan who can make Pike look at his life differently and allow his crew to throw a birthday party for him, or for THEM, really. So the episode has heart too.

And it's only the super-fan who knows all the minutiae that can sort things out and make it so they can return to the future. The idea that a piece of the NX-01 is in this Enterprise (and therefore that there's a piece of this Enterprise in the -A and so on) is new, but it works. In this case, it also has the rare element required to power up the portal. It's the reverse of that famous William Shatner SNL sketch, isn't it? But while on the surface the stakes are high - you could erase your whole future, or be trapped in the past, or force a colony to move because you traded all that grain away to the Orions, the final resolution is kind of a wet petard. Perhaps they should have played up the Orion's outrage at being called a pirate more than they did so that when he makes a deal to let the Orion science vessel take credit for the discovery, "That's all I ever wanted" is better motivated. As is, the situation is defused too easily. Also note that Boimler was always part of history for any of this to happen. Trek has no set rule for these things - sometimes history is fixed, sometimes it's all butterfly effects - but I always find this particular set-up the most satisfying.

SECONDARY WATCHING: They almost make you want to rewatch Enterprise. Almost.

LESSON: There's nothing nuTrek won't do.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: A much better change of pace episode that the previous season's The Elysian Kingdom. Those Old Scientists boldly states that it's all one big shared universe and has fun with its premise.