Lower Decks S5E2: Shades of Green

One common lament among Star Trek fans is that the current era of shows has 10 episode seasons, vs the 26 of the broadcast TV era. Besides just having less TV to watch, a 10-episode series has to make every episode count, and there isn’t as much room for silly throwaway episodes where the crew play around on the holodeck, or Dr. Crusher fucks a ghost who lives in a candle. (Real Next Generation episode!)

I don’t miss the throwaway episodes — they always felt like poorly-written filler designed to pad out those 26-episode seasons. But now I have the opposite problem with Lower Decks. We’re coming off such a terrific run of episodes at the end of last season and the premiere of this one, that a straightforward fun adventure without any surprising depth feels like a let-down.

The previous episode delved into who these characters are at heart, as Tendi wrestled with her fearsome pirate upbringing and her essential optimism and sweetness, and Mariner and Boimler saw more confident versions of themselves, for better or worse. We pick up those threads directly this week, but “Shades of Green” doesn’t have much to add to the conversation.

Last week, Tendi and her sister D’Erika out-heisted their bumbling rivals the Blue Orions, and we ended the episode with the Blues declaring war on their family. This week, the Orion Queen hauls both families into arbitration, because attacking and stealing from each other isn’t bringing any loot into the pirate economy — they should both be stealing from outsiders, not each other.

To settle things, they have a solar sail race, with the winning team taking all of the losers’ wealth. The real drama is that, while snooping through D’Erika’s diary, Tendi learns her sister is pregnant and hasn’t told her. So Tendi leaps into overprotective mode, which is not ideal for a cutthroat high-stakes pirate race. And of course, she can’t let her sister know she knows her secret. It’s the tired old TV trope of a whole episode that could have been avoided with a one-minute conversation. It ends with a reaffirmation of the sisters’ bond, and a few reversals of fortune leading to a too-convenient resolution that ties into the B story.

And the B story feels even slighter than the A. Mariner and Boimler beam down to a planet that’s only recently joined the Federation, and is abandoning money, in keeping with Trek‘s post-scarcity ethos. Boimler, trying to emulate the more confident version of himself he met last week, is bossing around the new ensigns and generally running a tight ship. Mariner, trying not to emulate the hardass version of herself she met last week, encourages him to relax and give his trainees a break. So they take a break and immediately get kidnapped. 

There’s a hint of a fun reversal here, as Mariner’s the responsible one who wants to report the kidnapping to their superiors, and Boimler is disobedient and wants a cover-up. But it’s not that big a reversal — Boims has always been panicky about looking like a screw-up, and behind her rebelliousness, Mariner always puts solving the week’s problem first.

And the kidnapping problem gets solved with very little fuss, mostly because there isn’t a lot of time for this story, so it doesn’t add a whole lot. None of this is bad. Certainly not ghost-candle bad. We still get some solid jokes and a few sweet moments between the characters. But with eight episodes left in the series, you want Decks to make every one count. Maybe it’s enough to just enjoy hanging out with these characters while we can.

Stray tachyons:

• The Blue Orions are bumbling villains with, as was noted last week, dumb-looking uniforms. We get that Decks is set on one of the least important ships in the fleet, and therefore deliberately low-stakes, but giving the show’s villains a bit more menace wouldn’t hurt.

Trek has always extolled the virtues of a post-scarcity, money-less society while being incredibly vague on how all of that actually works. This episode is no exception, as this week’s aliens seem to be dismantling their banking system and burning big piles of money over one wild weekend without much fuss coming from such an abrupt transition. And (spoiler), the kidnappers want to stick to the old ways, but it’s never clear what their plan actually is. Between that story and the piracy, there was probably some satirical point to be made about capitalism and greed, but the episode wasn’t interested in going in that direction.

• There’s also a C story with Rutherford and T’Lyn. She wants to help him repair a shuttle he’s been working on, her Vulcan efficiency gets the job done quickly.  Rutherford was taking his time so he and Tendi could work on it together when she came back. It’s largely a reminder that Rutherford and Tendi’s sweet, weirdly chaste romance is still simmering, and that T’Lyn has a heart under all that logic.

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