Lower Decks S5E9: Fissure Quest

Bradward Boimler’s beard has finally come in, but he’s still feeling inadequate compared to the other versions of himself we’ve met. He’s still fixated on the alternate-universe Boims from the season premiere, but he also remembers Will Boimler, his transporter clone from season 2. Boimler believes Will to be dead, but he in fact faked his death to work for black-ops division Section 31. So, for the first time since that happened, we see Will in action. He’s now a captain, commanding a Defiant-class ship on a secret rescue mission. Our Boimler would definitely be jealous if he knew.

Will’s bridge crew is a who’s who of alternate-reality versions of beloved past Trek characters. T’Pau from Enterprise, Kurzon Dax (Jadzia from Deep Space Nine‘s previous host), simple tailor-turned-doctor Elim Garak, and his husband, holographic Julian Bashir. On a rescue mission they find Harry Kim, Voyager‘s long-suffering ensign. While our Boims would be geeking out over meeting him, Will Boimler’s less than enthused. Most of his crew are Harry Kims from various timelines and alternate dimensions. (One of them even got promoted to lieutenant! Only one of them.)

So while Will Boimler is living a life Brad can only envy, he isn’t enjoying it at all. He misses exploring the galaxy, instead of just patching up holes in the fabric of space-time and collecting Harry Kims. Apparently no matter which reality he’s in, Boims is never happy.

Alternate dimensions have been a fixation this season, and we’ve gotten a few casual mentions of the Cerritos having to close an inordinate number of dimensional rifts. Turns out, that was all foreshadowing. A mysterious ship has been travelling between dimensions, punching holes between realities as they go. And just as Will’s ship closes up yet another rifts, a shuttle barrels through it carrying another alternate version of a beloved character: Mariner.

Far from our fearless troublemaker, alt-Mariner is a meek engineer, who got sucked into a rift while trying to scan it. Having done so, she now knows how to track the multiverse ship. Naturally, that ship is also piloted by a familiar face (at least to hardcore fans), but rather than spoil the story, we’ll just say that this episode does everything Lower Decks does well — takes an intriguing sci-fi premise that would be tough to do justice to in live action, and turns it into a meditation on friendship, roads not taken, the value of exploration, and how, in any circumstances, we are who we are. While also subverting expectations of who the villain behind this is, and giving us a cliffhanger leading into next week.

All of that builds up to what promises to be a terrific finale, which makes it even harder to understand why this show isn’t getting another season.

Stray tachyons:
• Despite going all-in on alternate versions of fan faves, Decks also lampshades the gag (and takes what feels like a direct shot at the MCU), by having a frustrated Will point out that they only seem to meet versions of already-well-known characters. “That’s all the multiverse is — just lazy, derivative remixes!”

• Despite being an identical duplicate of Brad Boimler, who’s struggled to grow a beard all season, Will has some manly stubble.

• All of the guest characters are voiced by their original actors — Jolene Blalock, Andrew Robinson, Alexander Siddig, Garrett Wang, and the captain of the dimensional ship. They’re all terrific, and it’s a particular joy to hear Siddig and Robinson bicker and flirt again.

• Apart from a quick moment in the intro, Tendi and Rutherford were entirely absent from this one, although they’ll almost certainly return in part two. In this instance, it’s not the worst thing — the episode had too much going on already to try and shoehorn in a Tendi-Rutherford side story. Working in all four leads has been a struggle this season, but the stories have mostly been strong enough that it’s hard to criticize. We still got our Eugene Cordero fix this month from Man On the Inside.