No Small Parts

They saved the best till the last. I have found Lower Decks to be wildly uneven.

The final episode of the first series just worked in many different levels.

Mariner has been revealed as the Captain's daughter. The crew are now trying to curry favour.

Meanwhile a race called the Packleds that the Federation regarded as being rather silly. They are not worthy of much attention but the Packleds have destroyed a newly built Starship.

It is for the Cerritos to answer a distress call but their enemy is more than a match. Mariner's unorthodox thinking comes up with an idea of a virus.

The crew also get help from a next generation.

Some genuinely funny moments, some clever parody and even some fan service. This was fun.

Best episode of the series so far. I am a big fan of the show and have been since the first episode. I am confused as to why it was rated so horribly from the start. It's not like any other Star Trek, nor is it supposed to be. It's more of a parody of Star Trek, and there's nothing wrong with that. We have Discovery, Picard, and a handful of new ones coming if you want something that more resembles "real" Star Trek.

I am not sure how anyone going into this thought it would be anything like "real" Star Trek. It's an adult/young adult animated series. It's in the Star Trek universe, it incorporates some known characters, and it has the same alien races. That's about it, and I like it that way. It's fun, lighthearted(although this episode was a bit more serious than normal), and easy to watch. Go watch reruns of TNG if you need "real" Star Trek that bad. We all know most of you putting this show down hated Discovery and Picard too.

/rant over

I can imagine that Lower Decks would be an acquired taste to some, distatestful to others. The show can come across as a bit crass.

This episode shows characters at their worst and at their best, somehow managing to compress the relatively banal comedy of the lower decks crew and comic foil of the bridge officer's apparent cluelessness to unpack it all later.

Qapla' !!!

I liked Lower Decks before this episode, but now I LOVE IT.

Can we get another show about the Titan? Please? Pretty please?

With adult animation now firmly in it's boom period, it was only a matter of time before someone adapted "Star Trek" for a similar show. "Lower Decks" is that show, one which though I felt was alright, fell a bit short of some of it's contemporaries.

On board the USS Cerritos, a Starfleet vessel primarily concerned with maintaining diplomatic relations with pre-existing Federation members, the crew of the lower decks attempt to balance the drudgery of keeping the ship working with the occasional moments of alien based nonsense that come their way. Two such, Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) attempt to maintain a friendship despite the latter's timid nature and love for the rules, and the formers wild, freewheeling, scattershot approach.

I don't think this show is going to win you back to "Star Trek" if you feel disenfranchised with the changes that "Discovery" and "Picard" have made to the traditional Star Trek tone. Again, there is swearing here and violence. It feels, to me, like "Rick and Morty"-Lite - not quite willing to go as far or as deep as that show, but still wanting to head for that ballpark. It's not surprising really, when you consider that the driving creative force is Mike McMahan, who worked as writer and producer on both "Rick and Morty" and "Solar Opposites".

Though it improved along the run, so much so that the finale is actually really good, my overall feeling was that it was alright, but not amazing. It wants to have its cake and eat it too, a little bit, in focusing on the ensigns work rather than the bridge crew as it's core idea - but then the bridge crew themselves become increasingly important characters as the show runs on. I know this would be a much harder idea to write, but I think I'd have preferred if they were below decks on the Enterprise, during the "Next Generation" run, and their stories ran parallel to the established events of that show. Not in like a one-for-one comparison, but with the major beats acting like a B story to whatever they were doing. So what does "Q" showing up and transporting people about do to them, or the death of Tasha Yar.

As I said, it's pretty good. Settling into itself a bit more as the season runs on, which hopefully looks good for the second season. We'll see.