Lower Decks S5E5: Starbase 80?!

Television is largely built around the reset button, animated TV doubly so. Bob’s Burgers always teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, but it can never fully succeed or fail without fundamentally changing the show. Characters don’t generally grow or change, and at worst become so locked into a few character traits they descend into self-parody (a process Simpsons fans call “Flanderization”).

So while ending Lower Decks after five seasons is a shame, it lets the show do something a long-running series like Futurama never attempted — letting the characters grow. There’s a very real sense our foursome won’t be scrubbing holodecks forever; their time as junior officers is a singular moment on their journey, and that journey’s going to progress when they themselves do.

Last year’s terrific episode “The Inner Fight” broke down Beckett Mariner and exposed her fears, trauma, and the motivations behind her recklessness and defiance. But then it did what few TV series would dare — it let her move on. The Mariner we’ve seen over the past few episodes isn’t the cynical, daring fuckup of the early seasons. She’s re-embraced optimism and re-discovered the joys in exploration, to the point where, as this episode opens, she’s more excited about wading through alien algae (it’s bioluminescent!) than Boimler or even Tendi. 

Mariner’s moved on from her past. But her past isn’t quite ready to move on from her.

The Cerritos break down in open space, and the nearest friendly port is Starbase 80. A running gag throughout the series, 80 is the broken-down, dysfunctional, alien-lice-infested Starbase where incompetent officers get sent as punishment (including, at one point, Mariner). Captain Freeman tries to reassure her daughter that it won’t be that bad, and that they’ll make a brief stop for repairs and be quickly on their way.

The station’s crew includes overly-chipper diplomat Kassia (Nicole Byer), frequently-napping Gene (Stephen Root), an alien knife gang who were given half the station as the result of a diplomatic snafu… and some shadowy figures with green glowing eyes. The crew keep brushing aside Mariner’s insistence that the station is cursed, but it’s harder and harder to ignore that she might be right, especially when Rutherford goes into a trance, and their calls back to the Cerritos are met with incoherent moaning.

So we get a horror movie parody that’s equal parts creepy and silly, and firmly rooted in the show’s themes. Like Mariner herself, Starbase 80 looks like a hot mess on the surface. But once it works through its issues, it’s got real potential.

Stray tachyons:
• The crumbling starbase’s outmoded technology is an excuse for lots of Easter eggs, including the Original Series’ bosun whistle, the uniforms from Star Trek: Enterprise, and, for some wonderful reason, a cement stairwell with exposed pipes and fire extinguishers.

• One more bit of growth for Mariner — the early seasons had she and Boimler pretty well-balanced as co-leads, but ever since “The Inner Fight,” it’s really been her show. That’s in no way a criticism — both on and off camera, Tawny Newsome (who voices Mariner, is a writer on the forthcoming Starfleet Academy, and is co-creating a future Trek comedy series with Justin Simien) has increasingly become the heart of Star Trek, bringing Lower Decks‘ mixture of irreverence and sincere love of the franchise to this generation’s Trek.