It has been a long road, getting from there to here, but we are finally at the season finale for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2,
but how did it round off the season and does it live up to our expectations?
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
In the season two finale, the U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked to aid an Obena-class starship on a first contact mission.
The episode was written by showrunner Mike McMahan and directed by Jason Zurek.
And when the showrunner is writing the episode, you know it’ll not only tie together some of the plot threads that have been shown in this season, but also tease us for what is to come.
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We return to what is probably Douglas Station from Season 1, if not another starbase-type federation space station,
here the Cerritos is helping on a mission with the USS Archimedes, a very beautiful Obena Class starship, an upgrade to the excelsior class and named after art director of Lower Decks Nollan Obena.
This ship is captained by Captain Sonya Gomez!
Yes Lycia Naff is back reprising her role from Star Trek: The Next Generation as a full blown captain!
She even mentions to an embarrassed ensign during the episode that she has done much worse to much more important people, like spilling hot cocoa on Captain Picard.
Admiral Freeman is also finally in person in this episode, assigning Captain Gomez and Freeman to this first contact mission, and congratulates his wife for getting a promotion to a new ship!
Though it seems more like a transfer to a better ship than a promotion in rank.
Mariner overhears this and in classic mariner fashion, tries to sabotage her mom's opportunity to get off the Cerritos due to her own feelings of abandonment.
This is pretty consistent with Mariner as a character, doing the same to boimler in a previous episode by getting him taken off a mission,
but it is good that this episode does show her growing from that, opening up to other people, including Jennifer the Andorian!
They make such a cute couple by the end of this episode, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.
I have to say, the rest of the senior officers getting upset at hearing Freeman getting transferred is typical,
Shaxs in particular, but when Billups snapped, that was a sight to see! I do not want to get on Billups bad side, he now scares me more than Shaxs...
Talking about Transfers, Tendi, in a quite convoluted way, thinks she is being transferred off the ship, and hides from Dr. T’ana.
I didn’t care much for this subplot, it felt contrived to add some drama for Tendi, but it gave her some nice moments with Rutherford.
And talking about Rutherford, he starts to get error messages on his implant due to memory issues.
He is storing multiple backups of his memories with Tendi, because he doesn’t want to lose them like last year at the end of Season 1.
However he gets a nice moment with Billups who tells him “if you can’t keep making new memories, it doesn’t matter”, and that is so sweet.
It is also interesting about the backing up memories, as that is similar to the cybernetically enhanced Airiam from Discovery,
, who had to back up her memory remotely, due to the limitations of 22nd century technology.
So it seems like in the time since then, Cybernetic implants can hold more onboard memory, though it begs the question, why doesn’t Rutherford then back up the memories in the ship's computer?
An interesting thing to note is that Rutherford’s weird memories that he seems to have forgotten,
is that some obscured people are putting something weird in his implant. I am sure this is setting up some kind of plot thread for Season 3, and it is really cool.
Personally i am betting it might be something to do with Section 31, now that could be interesting.
In the first contact system, the LAAP system, the star emits an unpredicted flare, which detonates a planetoid in the system which sends out a cloud of energy which disables the Archimedes.
This is probably the third Excelsior class starship attacked by a thread of energy, from the Nexus attacking the Enterprise B, and the shockwave of the destruction of Praxis hitting the USS Excelsior.
We all remember Sulu dropping his cup of tea...
(Jack - You're including that Troy, i am speaking directly to you in the camera!)
The archimedes is disabled, and sent hurtling towards the planet where they are meant to make first contact,
which definitely wouldn’t be a good first impression.
The Cerritos can’t make it through the [Technobabble] field, and we do get a scene of Captain Freeman trying to make the trip in her captain’s yacht,
which is really cool we get to see the Captain’s Yacht, but before she does Rutherford proposes a solution, of stripping the entire outer hull plating
of the ship off to make it through the radiolytic isotopes.
I have to say that the plan being thought up by Rutherford is amazing and just goes to show us how great he is as an engineer, but also this plan is a really novel idea that feels like trek,
but is probably a first in trek history to fully strip the hull.
It is even more trek by the idea of opening up and stripping that outer layer relevant to the personal issues that Beckett is going through!
A deep level!
The whole crew is assigned to strip the hull plating, which is an extremely cool scene. Seeing a ship with its outer layer done is cool, but also kinda creepy.
And to get the finally hull panel off of the ship… our lower deckers… GO TO CETACEAN OPS! We finally get to see Cetacean ops,
something that has been hinted at in blueprints of the Enterprise D, and in Season 1 of Lower Decks.
But finally we see some dolphins in starfleet uniforms that help in the navigation of the ship.
Boimler has to dive down to unlock the final hull panel, so the ship can go through the field and save the Archimedes!
Our lower deckers get put in danger, as Mariner is sent flying out of the ship, but is saved by Jennifer the Andorian.
I wasn’t expecting much from Jennifer, and just to be a minor background character.
But she has actually had a lot this season, and I love how Lower Decks is giving even these minor characters space to become characters.
Boimler passes out, but is saved by the dolphins, one of which is called Matt… Which definitely isn’t a name I expected a dolphin to have.
So with both of our lower deckers saved from peril, the Cerritos finally make it through the cloud and save the Archimedes just in time.
This was an amazing scene and to see the Cerritos get its moment to shine in this season finale,
comparing that with the Cerritos needing saving in Season 1s finale is great.
They say the ship is one of the most important characters in a Star Trek show, and that is very much the case in Lower Decks. In two seasons the USS Cerritos has established itself as a core ship, right up there with the Defiant, Voyager and Enterprise.
And just like the Cerritos being the leading lady, so too is Captain Carol Freeman, as she does first contact with the Laapirians instead of Sonya Gomez,
truly showing that she is capable of being captain of a ship with more responsibilities than just second contact.
The thing that Tendi had been scared of, was actually her being put into the science officer program as she is simply too good to stay stuck in Sickbay.
She’s going to be the next Mr Spock, and I just love that Tendi is the one getting essentially promoted this time, compared to Boimler in the last season.
Also going into some character development, we get some between Mariner and Jennifer.
I absolutely love this interaction, as yeah it makes sense for Mariner to push people away she likes, and it's hard for her to let down her shields, but she admits to Jennifer that she likes her, and Jennifer apologises for also being a Jerk towards Mariner.
I know so many fans latched onto Jennifer as a character, from the fact she is an andorian called Jennifer,
to her being a jerk to one of our main characters. So I definitely wonder how fan reaction will be to this couple, it’ll be interesting to see where the writers as well go with these two!
A small fleet of ships appears to help the damaged Archimedes, and with them is a really cool updated Nova class starship.
This Nova class starship has starfleet command on-board, which Freeman believes has come to offer her, her promotion, which she decides to decline due to coming to the realisation that the Cerritos is her ship and where she wants to be.
Well too bad for Captain Freeman, as apparently Starfleet Command believes she is responsible for essentially destroying Pakled Planet.