‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ is Back With Twice the Cerritos (Literally)
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for its fifth and final season with “Dos Cerritos” and “Shades of Green”. Thank goodness.
We are back. It’s been a year since the departure of Tendi, arguably one of the biggest things to happen on Lower Decks. And the question remains: how much does the show change without Tendi? Maybe a bigger question is how much will this show change in its final 10 episodes? After all, while miracles do happen (and there’s hope for an LD movie), this is where our Lower Deckers’ trek through the stars ends.
What’s nice about Lower Decks is that it excels at the classic Trek formula of dealing with a thing without directly dealing with it. Because, yes, we are all understandably curious where things go and how things change. The show answers a lot of the philosophical with its first, two new episodes this year, “Dos Cerritos” and “Shades of Green”.
Let’s circle the wagons real quick and then dig into what’s really going on under the hood of these stories.
To Boldly Recap “Dos Cerritos” and “Shades of Green”
“In Dos Cerritos”, the Cerritos gets pulled through a rift into an alternate dimension where it encounters another Cerritos. On the Cerridos, Mariner is captain, Boimler, has a beard, and Rutherford is full robot to avoid feelings over losing Tendi. In the process of sending our Cerritos home we discover that Captain Becky Freeman is a miserable, corporal-punishing hard ass. She tries to replace Mariner so she can go back to being a loose canon but it doesn’t work.
Meanwhile, Tendi continues being a pirate who doesn’t kill people—which is against the rules, apparently! her sister D’Erica sends Tendi on a mission to rescue an old Orion plague ship where Tendi and her crew run afoul of some Blue Orions! Tendi gets the ship and learns her crew aren’t murders either, but they accidentally start a war with the Blue Orions.
“Shades of Green” focuses mostly on Tendi’s family. In order to rectify the whole war thing, they and the Blue Orions must race with sailing space vessels. Winner takes all, loser is poor. Tendi tries to control the situation when she find out D’Erica is pregnant. This results in Tendi accidentally causing no one to win so that her family is poor anyway.
Thankfully, the Cerritos just “freed” a planet of their capitalist system and gives all that wealth to D’Erica. And Tendi’s back on the Cerritos! Hooray!
Star Trek: Lower Decks Doing More With Less
The recaps make it sound like not a lot happens in these two Star Trek: Lower Decks episode. On the contrary, there’s a ton of legwork done in both building character and answering some of those “what does the future hold” questions.
For instance, “Dos Cerritos” makes it clear that Mariner can be captain and Boimler can be confident. And while we see consequences for Mariner, it’s more a reminder that Mariner can lead without being miserable. As lessons go, that’s kind of the biggest one Mariner needs to learn. And she’s learned it in episode one. That leaves nine more for her to grow in other ways.
And on the topic of leadership, we now know Tendi is an effective leader, too! Leave it to Star Trek: Lower Decks to help Tendi realize her dream of being a girl boss when she’s away from Starfleet.
Of course we get all of that with a few bread crumbs for stories to come. Boimler’s beardly Cerridos double: why is he so confident and what is on that computer pad? And why is Carol Freeman trapped at Starbase 80? Things to ponder! Speaking of which…
On The Subject of Star Trek and Post Scarcity
So there’s this idea that comes up every so often in Star Trek about the homogenization of the Federation. Races like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and Ferengi all have this attitude that the Federation is nice, but…
The most interesting part of “Shades of Green” is the part that gets the least play. The Cerritos goes to this new Federation World to install replicators—and to get rid of capitalism. And the subplot is that the wealthy don’t want capitalism to go away. They kidnap ensigns, they arm their robots, and then they run away into the hills like cowards!
Obviously this is very funny. And the idea of wicked billionaires becoming slaves to their own anxiety while the rest of us prosper is very cathartic. But it does raise an interesting question: what if tomorrow there was no poverty or hunger? How fast would our world change? And to what extent do those in power right now work to prevent that eventuality?
There’s a whole Star Trek show to be made out of that concept. Star Trek: Lower Decks is not that show, though. And that’s probably the only mild disappointment throughout these first two episodes.
Welcome back, Lower Decks, you were sorely missed.
