Lower Decks S5E8: Upper Decks
We’ve talked a lot this season about which characters are getting more or less of the show’s focus because in the final season of a prematurely-cancelled show, it feels like time is precious. Sidelining Boimler to spend more time with Mariner is a worthwhile tradeoff because, well, Mariner’s great. She’s become one of the most fully-realized characters in all of Trek, while Boims is funny and relatable, but pretty one-note.
So, in theory, an episode that focuses on the show’s winning supporting cast is a great idea. But two episodes from the finale, it feels like stealing precious time with the characters we care more about.
Our main foursome only appear in the first and last minute of the episode, to lampshade the episode’s premise — that everything exciting that happens on the ship involves the same four or five low-ranking officers who, “seem to be the main characters,” while the bridge crew mostly does paperwork.
So we get a series of vignettes about the bridge crew. Captain Freeman spends her day attending crew events — a sousaphone recital, an alien “fertility event” that includes lots of tentacles, and a one-man show. It underscores that a lot of Freeman’s job is boring and she’s as patient with it as she can be… but it’s also kind of boring, and again, two episodes from the finale isn’t the best time to test the audience’s patience.
The other vignettes are a bit better, but not much. Shax’s wartime PTSD takes the form of visions of both himself and enemy soldiers he has to fight in his head. Ransom has to calm down bickering ensigns, and manages to be obnoxious enough to give them a common enemy. Billups is gleeful about a near-catastrophe in engineering because it means he gets to fix more stuff. Doctor T’ana responds to criticism that she doesn’t prescribe enough pain meds by demonstrating her insanely high pain tolerance.
Not to mention, there are aliens infiltrating the ship and a herd of “space cows” to tie the storylines together. There are a few laughs, but none of it amounts to much. Past iterations of Trek have been able to turn a minor character like Barclay or Garak into the main character for an episode to great effect, but this just feels like a bunch of C stories thrown together. It doesn’t tell us anything new about these characters, it just gives them each, one last chance to do their respective thing before the show wraps.
In a 26-episode season, (or a ten-season show,) it’d make for a perfectly pleasant filler episode. This close to the end, it feels like a wasted opportunity, when we could have put Boimler or Rutherford in the lead for the first time this season, or just spent more time letting our central foursome bounce off of each other, instead of having the bridge crew run through small stories largely isolated from each other.
Two episodes left, and it doesn’t feel like enough time to say goodbye, especially after a lightweight half-hour like this one.
Stray tachyons:
• At least we get one good bit of desert-dry humor from T’Lyn. “I have made a joke at your expense. Boom.”
Meta description: Decks sidelines the main characters to spend some time with the supporting cast, but it feels like filler this close to the finale.
