We’re beaming into another brand new Episode of Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2,
Spoilers ahead as we jump into our weekly review, you have been warned!
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
Episode 6 is titled “The Spy Humongous” and features our Lower Decks crew working on “anomaly consolidation day” onboard the USS Cerritos.
Meanwhile, Captain Janeway.. I mean Captain Freeman is dealing with peace attempts on the Pakled Home World aka Pakled Planet.
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Once again we’re greeted with a new Star Trek Lower Decks Episode.
I can safely say that Episode six was really entertaining,
but not super exciting like other episodes we’ve seen in Season two so far, either way though, I’m glad to say that I found it really fun to watch.
Let’s talk some more about the actual plot of this episode.
The USS Cerritos is sent to deal with the Pakleds,
a species introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation and reintroduced as the antagonists in the Lower Decks Season One Final.
I have to say, I absolutely love how Lower Decks is making use of the Pakleds as this constant villain, or should I rather say general annoyance in the show.
While the series of Lower Decks has unique stories each episode, compared to the serialized writing of other recent Star Trek series,
it’s still cool and interesting to carry the Pakled threat over and use it as a constant story component.
Dare i say it’s almost back to classic Trek writing, which is a refreshing term for some to hear.
I think the Pakled crisis is going to be an overarching story of Star Trek Lower Decks.
Series showrunner, Mike McMahahn and the writers of Lower Decks, clearly love using them and to be honest, they kinda are funny.
Even if they had some sort of politically revolutionary movement this week, I’m sure it will go back to normal next week, in a manner of speaking.
We’re treated to the running joke of the Pakleds not being able to identify any Federation starship or Captain.
Given they presume the Cerritos is once again the Enterprise,
plus they mistake Captain Freeman for Captain Janeway of the USS Voyager.
During the orbit scenes, we see the Pakled starships, which are kit bashes of other Star Trek vessels.
Looking at the pictures on screen right now, let us know what ships you think are featured in the Pakled ships.
Having a prisoner escape to the Cerritos was something I did not see happening this episode,
but of course in reality it’s a Pakled spy. I feel like this is a reference back to a specific Star Trek episode, but I can't put my finger on it.
Of course the chase parts of the episode are in fact a bluff, as the Pakled of course managed to eject himself from the ship…
out of an airlock… that he mistook for a bathroom...
The additional plot of this episode revolves around with and links with Freeman’s diplomatic mission.
In which she and Shaxs witness a revolution on the planet as we previously mentioned. How both of them manage to outsmart the Pakleds is no great surprise really.
Whether we’ll see more of the Pakleds again is a likely bet I’m personally for.
Given that Captain Freeman and Shaxs managed to outsmart the Pakleds into revealing they’re trying to Smuggle a Veruvian bomb onto earth in an attempt to deal a crippling blow to the Federation.
Thinking about it, do we have a reason for why the Pakleds are attacking Starfleet and the Federation?
We do know from this episode that they’re attacking Federation Shipping lines and trade routes. So that is something.
Our main plot for the Lower Deckers this week is Anomaly Consolidation duty,
which apparently involves running around and cleaning up all the magic and weird Trek crap that the bridge officers have picked up on their travels.
Naturally most of this stuff is extremely harmful and toxic to the Lower Decks and every time they clean something up, it backfires, causing them to find a typical Star Trek solution to fixing it,
such as apparently firing a phaser.
The interesting moment for me was the confrontation between Tendi and Mariner. As a character, Ensign Tendi is always happy and lucky, in anything she does,
which can get rather tedious to her friends, as well as the viewers apparently.
Mariners outburst explains her thrustration with Tendi’s happy attitude towards work all the time.
Something we can likely all relate to. Work is work, it can sometimes be fun, but typically is not fun and rather tedious,
especially if it's a job you’re not really interested in, such as cleaning up other people's trash… especially trash that is converting you into monsters.
Tendi finds this out first hand, when getting converted into some sort of scorpion like bug, with her then terrorizing the Cerritos Lower Decks and smashing up the cafetiera room.
I did personally like the note of her knocking out Commander Ransom and Lt Kayshon as they’re trying to search for the Pakled spy.
Introducing the wannabe Captain officers as the “Red Shirts” was a funny touch.
Of course historically in Star Trek the running joke is that the red shirts always died in The original Series.
The fact these guys refer to themselves as red shirts is kinda ironic. These officers are people we’ve seen in the background before, Ensign Jennifer and Ensign Casey.
What is fun is one of these wanna be senior officers is actually a Kzinti,
an interesting species in the Trek universe and one of our favourites here on the Trek Central channel.
The species themselves are aggressive, cat-like humanoids and natives to the Alpha Quadrant.
According to Star Trek: The Animated Series, the Kzinti had fought four wars with Human Kind prior to 2269, and managed to lose all of them…. Well done guys…
It’s cool that by 2381 a Kzinti was serving in Starfleet and onboard the USS Cerritos,
even attempting to climb the Starfleet ranks with the red shirts onboard the ship.
Now Commander Dom of the Trek Central team made a note of me mentioning this, that being the Kzinti’s posture makes him look a bit like the Kzinti Telepath,
so if any of you understand that reference, good luck.
Ensign Boimler’s make over makes him stand out, and i mean wow, It’s actually a look i could see Captain Boimler having in the future.
Part of me wants to think the idea of a Captain being ripped and built like a brick shit house is a reference to the IDW comic books where we see Captain Jean-Luc Picard ripped and leading the mirror universe forces.
The inspiring speech that Ensign Boimler gives initially starts off in typical Boimler fashion of being terrible,
but eventually turns into a really good Star Trek-esk inspiring speech. Also the transforming background into a Galaxy-class Bridge setup looks fantastic.
The funny moment being the Red Shirts doing nothing of value when the Tendi situation kicks off,
instead of actually helping, they stand there giving speeches to try and inspire the crew, until Boimler points out that they are the freaking crew,
not the captain of the vessel and actually does something rather useful.
The red shirts wanting to know all the details about Captain Riker is hilarious,
because apparently the only critical deal is that he is always cleaning his Trombone,
whether that is an enthusiasm, we’ll never know. We do know Riker is very proud of his trombone.
Eventually Ensign Casey is given the acting-captain status on the bridge of the Cerritos. But in typically Lower Decks fashion he has this for about 30 seconds before Shaxs comes over and takes over, a short little parade it seems.
Overall this was once again an enjoyable episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
The A plot worked surprisingly well, which also fits well with the B-plot of the episode.
Trying to “upgrade” Ensign Boimler to be more Captain material worked well, but also presented one of those underlying Star Trek messages of being your own person.
The message here, if we’re interpreting it correctly is, while it’s good to be inspired by those above you and around you,
you still need to forge your own path and be your own person.
Essentially the message to Boimler and the other Red Shirts is that while Janeway, Picard and Riker are all super cool Captains and senior officers, you still need to be your own unique person.
The ending scene is a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Skin of Evil” with Armus,
a being of extreme hate. Apparently prank calling him and reminding him that he is alone is a critical low blow. Armus is the being who murdered Tasha Yar in TNG.
Don’t forget that if you want to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks then you can catch it every Thursday on Paramount+ for US Viewers and CTV Sci-Fi / Crave for Canadian viewers.
If you’re International, then Amazon Prime is your best place!
That’s our weekly review of Star Trek: Lower Decks! Don’t forget to let us know your thoughts and opinions via the comment section below, because if you’re talking about Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!