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“All hands, brace for weird!” — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “The New Next Generation”
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Star Trek: Lower Decks
“All hands, brace for weird!” — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “The New Next Generation”
This is, without a doubt, the best series finale Star Trek has done.
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
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Published on December 19, 2024
Credit: Paramount+
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Credit: Paramount+
Star Trek has a mostly terrible history with series finales. The first two weren’t really “series finales” the way we think of them, but still, both “Turnabout Intruder” and “The Counter-Clock Incident” are pretty dang terrible and ended the original and animated series, respectively, on sour notes. While TNG had a decent finale, at least—“All Good Things…” despite its mostly nonsensical plot, was a fitting final episode for the series—its immediate spinoffs all ended poorly. DS9’s “What You Leave Behind,” Voyager’s “Endgame,” and Enterprise’s “These are the Voyages…” all ranged from deeply flawed to painfully awful.
The two finales for the Secret Hideout shows on Paramount+ that have ended were a bit better. Picard’s “The Last Generation” was fan service in search of a sensible plot that it never actually found, but that fit in with the entire rest of that show’s self-indulgent third season. Discovery’s “Life, Itself” was a good season finale that had to modulate into a series finale unexpectedly.
And now we have “The New Next Generation,” and ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. This is, without a doubt, the best series finale Star Trek has done.
The storyline picks up nicely from last week’s setup, as Boimler receives the message from his transporter twin. Initially he freaks out (as was feared), but he eventually calms down, and he and Mariner bring it to Freeman, who immediately contacts Starfleet Command. (Boimler and Mariner and surprised at how readily Freeman agrees and by how much Freeman trusts them. “Great captaining!” Boimler exclaims.)
They’re sending the Enterprise also for backup, but the Cerritos needs to be the ones to stop it, as there’s a connection between the Boimlers. This seems like a very weak reason to do it (they couldn’t just go with the “you’re the only ship in the sector” standby?), especially since the alleged “connection” between the Boimlers never comes up again.
(I was disappointed that the Enterprise never actually made it, especially since at this point in the timeline Worf should be in charge, but I guess they blew the guest star budget last week…)
Complicating matters: the Klingons. A fleet under the command of Captain Relga has encountered the rift. It destroyed one ship and changed the occupants of another into Discovery-style Klingons. We find out eventually that the rift is surrounded by a Schrödinger field, which can transform matter into an equivalent from another quantum reality. Starfleet has a shield modulation that is supposed to protect the ship, but Billups discovers that it doesn’t interact well with the hull alloys. Which means the people will be safe, but the ship itself may not be…
The complication is that Relga wants revenge on Maah for killing her brothers. She attacks Maah and Malor’s wine-delivery-truck spaceship, wanting to frame them for destroying the ship that was wiped out by the rift. Maah wants to fight, of course, but Malor prefers to run away rather than die, piloting the ship to the Cerritos to beg for asylum.
This is a complication they don’t need. Freeman tries to do the right thing by granting the brothers asylum, but Relga is in between her and saving the universe. On top of that, they get a communiqué from Admiral Freeman, ordering his wife to turn the “murderers” over to Relga. But then Malor goes missing…
Freeman throws up her hands and buggers off, chased by Relga’s fleet. In an attempt to act like a proper ally, Freeman shares the shield modifications with Relga, which proves to be a tactical error, as they do better in the Schrödinger field, as just their ships are transformed, not the people. While one ship is turned into an old sailing ship—resulting in all hands being lost to the vacuum of space—most of the changes to the Klingon ship aren’t even noticeable since they’ve kept the same basic ships design forever.
Credit: Paramount+
Meanwhile, the Cerritos keeps changing. It becomes, at various points, a Freedom-class ship, a Miranda-class, a Sovereign-class, and a Mirror Universe Terran Empire California-class, as well as several others.
In the end, though, it reverts to Cali-class, which gives Rutherford the opportunity to rejigger the engines so they draw energy directly from the rift to get more power. It also splits the ship in two, and it takes T’Lyn and Tendi working together (“SCIENCE BESTIES!”) to rejoin them.
Olly is able to use her god-like powers to zap Relga’s shields, which makes her crew vulnerable to the Schrödinger field, and they all turn into proto-Klingons who wipe each other out.
In the end, they make it to the rift, but the technobabble beam Starfleet said would close it doesn’t close it.
It’s up to Malor and Mariner to save the day. Malor was hidden by Ransom because he was suspicious of the message from Admiral Freeman (which Kayshon determines was faked by Relga), so he hid Malor to buy some time.
And in the end, Malor points out that on the farm, they can’t stop the river, but they can dam it, which gives Mariner an idea.
The rift is stabilized—but also left open. Malor saved the day, and Mariner hugs him. (“Klingons do not hug!” “Shut up!”)
The tachyon emissions mess with modern equipment, but older tech isn’t as badly affected, so they move Starbase 80 to the rift. It’ll be the coordinating point for exploration of other quantum realities through the rift—
—under the command of Freeman! Yes, she’s now in charge of Starbase 80—the very outcome she feared for her career in “Dos Cerritos”—and she’s happy about it! Ransom is promoted to captain, and he decides that he’s going to have Boimler and Mariner be provisional co-first officers in a kind of contest to see who deserves the promotion. Neither junior officer likes this idea, as it may mess with their friendship, but Ransom will not be denied.
One of LD’s biggest problems has been reconciling the need for a big finale with the fact that the California-class are not the ships that solve big problems. They at least came up with a workaround this time ’round, with the main characters going so far as to say out loud that this is not their usual gig. But they have to do it anyhow.
This finale does such a lovely job of giving everyone something to do, and also of saving the universe through cooperation and brains (always a Trek hallmark). Things are definitely different by the end. Besides Freeman’s transfer and Ransom’s promotion, Rutherford also has to sacrifice his implant in order to make the modifications to the Cerritos engines, and he decides to go full organic rather than replace the implant.
Alas, it also shows just what we’ll be missing. I want more of Tendi and T’Lyn being science besties (the contrast between the former’s nerdy enthusiasm and the latter’s deadpan is comedy gold), I want more of the maturing Mariner, I want more Boimler-Mariner shenanigans, I want more Shaxs using the warp core as a weapon, I want more T’Ana profanity—I WANT MORE, DADGUMMIT.
Mariner gives a lengthy speech at the end about how great the Cerritos is, not because the crew is perfect, ’cause they ain’t, but because they’re all good at what they do. It’s the right group of people.
And they will be missed. Sigh.
Credit: Paramount+
Random thoughts
Boimler now has a full beard, so he looks exactly like his counterpart from “Dos Cerritos.” He also destroys alt-Boimler’s padd, despite the salubrious effect it’s had on him, mostly because he wants to have Mariner’s back. (Maah mistakes something Boimler reads on the padd about Captain Becky Mariner as something happening in this reality rather than another one, so Boimler snaps the padd in two.)
T’Ana at one point invites Shaxs to the holodeck to play “Sexy Treasure Island,” to which Shaxs agrees, but only if he can be “Long John [BLEEP].” I have to say that the bleep makes that way funnier than it would’ve been if we heard what Shaxs actually said there….
We get Kimolu and Matt! It’s wholly gratuitous, but I don’t care because Kimolu and Matt are the best! Yay Kimolu and Matt! (Of course they admire how hot Maah looks…)
Ransom says that “a little bird told me” that Rutherford is the one who fixed the engines, and it turns out that it was Migleemo, who’s actually a big bird…
Ransom also needs a “go to warp” catchphrase, which all the Secret Hideout shows insist on doing for whatever reason. Ransom settles on “engage the core,” which both Boimler and Mariner try to talk him out of, as they really don’t want a catchphrase that’s also a gym-rat reference. But Ransom insists…
Early on, before discovering the rift, Relga wants to try to engage some Starfleet ships in battle. One of her officers points out the High Council has declared the Federation allies (which is an odd way of phrasing it, as the Klingons and Federation have been allies for most of the last hundred years of story time), to which Relga replies, “Fuck the High Council!” (Well, okay, the first word is bleeped, and it’s possible that it’s a Klingon curse. But that’s the gist.)
Sometime after the calendar flips to 2025, I will have a season-five overview which will also be a series overview. I will say that this show has done an impressive job of evolving from a show I barely tolerated to one I will seriously miss. But more on that after the holidays…[end-mark]
The post “All hands, brace for weird!” — <i>Star Trek: Lower Decks</i>: “The New Next Generation” appeared first on Reactor.
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