Lower Decks S5E6: Of Gods and Angles

In the cold open, the Cerritos has to broker peace between floating alien orbs and floating alien cubes. We’re also introduced to Olly, an eager but not-terribly competent ensign. She disobeys orders and breaks everything she touches… so Mariner, someone with a very similar record as an ensign, is naturally interested. Captain Freeman is ready to throw Olly off the ship rather than risk her screwing up the tense orb-cube situation, but Mariner offers to take the young troublemaker under her wing.

Mariner’s even more interested in Olly when she finds out the ensign is a descendent of Zeus—the same one Captain Kirk met in “Who Mourns for Adonais,” one of a group of advanced aliens who posed as Gods on ancient Earth. (As always, Decks doesn’t shy away from the sillier parts of Trek history — we’re still hoping for Abraham Lincoln to come back before the series wraps.) 

So while Mariner babysits Olly, the duo gets assigned to further babysit the child of one of the glowing cube diplomats. But when they get to Quadrulon’s quarters, the room has been trashed, and there’s a vaguely square splotch against the wall. No one’s all that familiar with what a glowing cube’s dead body looks like, but it seems to be murder.

With Freeman too busy with the orbs and cubes to investigate and not wanting security poking around and upsetting the diplomats, it falls onto Mariner and Olly to investigate. Naturally, mayhem ensues, lessons are learned, and things work out in the end. While the mystery has a too-predictable ending, it’s still a fun ride. We get a lot of orb/cube absurdity, and a nice chance for Mariner to play slightly-more-mature mentor to a character who isn’t exactly a younger Mariner, but is in the ballpark.

As we noted last week, Lower Decks has pretty firmly become the Beckett Mariner show in its final season. While that comes at the expense of the rest of the ensemble, Mariner’s the character with the most depth and has shown the most growth, giving us a solid string of episodes thus far. While we’re still upset the show is ending, Mariner’s gradual transformation from rebellious nihilist to earnest role model makes for a terrific arc for the series.

Stray tachyons:

• “You wish you had curves like this, you pointy freak!”

• Boimler is still obsessed with the more confident alternate-universe self he met in the season premiere. That version of Boims was friends with the alternate Dr. T’ana, so our Boims gets it into his head to try and befriend the prickly cat alien. Predictably, Boimler’s annoying, T’ana gets fed up with him, and Rutherford and Tendi try and fail to reign him in because they don’t have anything else to do in this episode. (Jack Quaid and Eugene Cordero do at least voice some of the cubes, but after the early season’s focus on Tendi, Noël Wells has been criminally underused.) 

• “You two can investigate the missing cube, but don’t make a scene!” “We… might not.”