As I post this Season 3 follow up to my Season 1 and 2 Stranger New Worlds post, I want to take a moment to make no one noticed I forgot to do the same for Season 5 of Lower Decks. No one noticed right, thought so. Anyway, this one has been out for a bit and I only just got around to catching up. FWIW, I am actually, very slowly also working on finishing TOS. One day, maybe, I will have covered all of Star Trek.
I had heard a lot of negative press about how Season 3 was not as good before watching it. I also knew at some point there was a thing where everyone becomes Vulcans, because they really pushed that in the promotion period before the season dropped. Surprisingly, that episode was like, episode 7 or 8. Way late in the season. I thought the season was pretty good overall, the previously mentioned Vulcan episode being the lowest point and the season arc plot was a little, iffy.
Anyway, on to a bit deeper discussion, which will include spoilers.
When we last left the crew, they had been in the middle of a battle with The Gorn, just picked up Scotty, and the away team.had gotten kidnapped by The Gorn along with a bunch of colonists. They seemed to be really setting up for a whole Gorn War season. Which ended up not really being the case. Probably for the best, in The Original Series, the Gorn was a one off alien that the Federation didn’t know a lot about. It would be a little weird if they had an entire war before that 1v1 duel between Kirk and the Gorn captain.
Not that SNW isn’t already full of “weird history” for TOS. Like Nurse Chapel dating Spock. Except she is not dating him.anymore, she is with Dr Korby now. Speaking of Korby, he is a new regular character this season. There are quite a few. Ortegas gets a brother who is filming a documentary on the federation, M’Benga gets Ensign Gamble as a nurse since Chapel has been away banging working under Korby. Kirk (both of them) shows up a lot more this season as well. Plus, Pike recruits a new 3 armed bartender lady, who never shows up again after he asks if she would like to join the Enterprise.
But back to the episode, the away team manages to get free of their prison inside the Gorn ship while The Enterprise works to pursuit and rescue them. They end up doing some sort of energy resonating thing with the shields involving these two suns, which mostly seems like an excuse to get some flashy poster shots, and the Gorn disappear into a sort of hibernating state.
Its all very flashy and a bit hand wavey, because its not real clear where exactly the gorn went. Its sort of presented like they pass between these suns and warp to a secret area, except apace, doesn’t really work that way, you could certainly go around the suns and go the same direction.
Anyway, the core purpose here is to set up some season long conflicts. Ortegas is almost killed during the escape, which leads to a lot of trauma for her. Captain Batel, is infected by the gorn offspring, which they managed to slow down but can’t stop.
Episode 2 is a standard throw away type episode, other than it brings in Korby, Gamble, Beto Ortegas and the 3 armed bartender lady (who does not return, despite implications that she would). Korby and Chapel return to the Enterprise much to Spock’s dismay, until, suddenly everything is changed and now Spock is marrying Chapel. Only Korby seems to realize something is off. He manages to free Spock from the ruse by creating a strong emotional response, but they can’t break anyone else free.
You see, they are being manipulated by a very Q like entity, specifically Trelane, who was in an episode of The Original Series. At the wedding, Spock manages to free Christine by reciting the same poem Korby recited to her previously. Its a pretty neat little twist and helps sort of deal the idea that she loves Korby and not Spock.
Lastly we get a nice little nod to fan speculation about Trelane being a Q. Like in the original show, Trelane’s “parent” shows up and scolds him. In this case, the parent is voiced by John de Lancia, who was Q on the TNG era Star Treks.
Episode 3 continues the Captain Batel plot. They need a special plant to try to stave off the Gorn infection. Pike and M’Benga have to head down to a planet that is basically in a No Fly zone with the Klingons. I am a bit torn on if this is a good episode or not. I like the Klingon plot, resolving a previous plot involving M’Benga. There are also zombies on the planet, and personally, I find zombies dumb and boring. They also don’t really add anything to the plot at all, there are other mechanisms they could have used to create the urgency of the Klingon confrontation plot.
The Fourth Episode was another one off plot, but it was pretty good. The Enterprise is testing out a new tech for ships, The Holodeck. La’an is tasked with putting it to the test while the Enterprise is observing a collapsing star or something. The holodeck malfunctions and locks itself to the Enterprise computer, causing a bit of a crisis for the crew and the star thing. Meanwhile La’an and Spock are trapped inside the holodeck trying to solve a 1960s murder mystery, and the safety protocols have become disabled.
It feels very very classic TNG. Which is not surprising since its a goofy malfunctioning holodeck episode. There is a good fun twist to the mystery as well. Its probably worth mentioning that one of the subplots this season is a growing relationship between Spock and La’an.
Anyway, its also fun watching the crew take on the goofy rolls of the murder mystery characters. I particularly enjoyed Pike as the weird Gene Roddenberry stand in. The murder mystery was centered around the cast of a fake “Totally not Star Trek” TV show.
Episode 5 sets up for the season finale, and continues the Batel plot a bit. Korby and the away team are exploring some ancient ruins and they stumble upon something much more complex. It turns out its a sort of multi dimensional prison and its housing a great evil. Poor Gamble gets hit very earlt, blasting out his eyes, which is a little rough, and returned to the ship. The rest of the away team gets trapped inside and have to solve some puzzles to escape. M’Benga basically discovers that Gamble is dead, Gamble kind of goes feral and starts attacking people. Batel shows up and the presence of Gamble triggers something inside her and they fight a bit before they manage to trap Gamble using the transporter.
Its all basically a set up for events to come. I enjoyed the puzzle aspects, which felt very Star Trek. The overall season plot is still a bit meh.
The follow up was another one off, and oh man was it good. The USS Farragut, Jim Kirk’s ship, is attacked by a giant unknown ship. The Enterprise comes to the rescue, before literally being swallowed by the giant ship and kidnapped. This leads to all of the TOS characters, Spock, Uhura, Chapel, and Scotty, stuck on the Farragut, under acting Captain Kirk, to use the crippled Farragut to try to rescue the Enterprise. Its a fun little nod to things to come in the future.
The episode also has this neat little twist. Kirk ends up destroying the alien ship, killing its several thousand crew. He feels really shitty about it. Its made worse when they discover that the ship was full of humans. Basically, before the Earth had warp capability, a large group of humans left Earth on a sort of generational ship. They ended up turning into savage scavengers. Pike reassures Kirk he made the right choice, the enemy was hostile and never tried to contact them, even after knowing the Enterprise/Farragut were also human vessels. Its a good classic Star Trek morality twist.
Episode 7 is another good and bad episode with a good Star Trek plot but awful execution. Its pretty mich in the same boat as the zombie episode in this regard. The Enterprise has to escort this space fish thing, but it turns out the creature is being exploited and knows it and essentially wants to end itself. Its another good Trek style plot. The problem is, its framed as a goofy take documentary. I kind of hate this episode trope, like how I dislike zombies. It just ruins the overall mood, its weird, everyone acts a little weird like its “behind the scenes”.
The follow up is the Vulcan Episode. Its essentially the “goofy episode” of the season. In order to help a planet, 4 of the crew use the DNS serum stuff Spock used to become human, to become Vulcans. Then they get stuck that way. I have heard complaints that the episode was bad because it was racist against Vulcans. But in general, its also just, kind of bad, in general. Its less that they become.Vulcans, they all just become assholes. Vulcan Uhura mind meld brain washes her boyfriend Beto. Pike, just, Anson Mount does NOT work as a Vulcan at all. I like him as Pike a lot, but he just feels like a weird robot as a Vulcan. Vulcan Chapel just becomes this weird bitchy obsessive person and Vulcan La’an is more like a Klingon or Romulan than a Vulcan, and becomes obsessed with starting a war.
Its just… all very terrible. It takes a special type of actor to properly pull off a Vulcan, none of them really feel like it at all except maybe Uhura.
Episode 9 gives us another TOS throwback and resolves Ortegas’s PTSD at almost being killed by the Gorn. Its honestly, probably the best episode of the season. It probably helps that Ortegas is my favorite character of the show, and she does not get enough development in general.
While exploring a sort of nebula thing, Ortegas and her shuttle is pulled through a wormhole that appeared out of nowhere. She ends up stramded on a very hellish world.in an unknown area. Meanwhile the Enterprise has to race against time to rescue her before the Wormhole collapses. Star Trek veterans will remeber that the only real stable worm hole was the one from Deep Space 9, and it was special. Otherwise, they basically come and go.
Turns out, Ortegas was not alone, she encounters an injured Gorn. After some hesitation, and the fact that the Gorn kept rescuing her, she accepts that they must work together if they are to have any hope of rescue. Which they manage, until it all goes south because the rescue team shows up, short on time, and La’an, who hates the Gorn more than anyone ends up killing Ortegas’s friend. At the last minute before beam out, Ortegas is met by a strange entity, a member of the Metron Spiecies.
This is notable as the Metrons were responsible for Kirk having to fight the Gorn Captain during the original show. Its a nice nod to that. Why the Metrons are so obsessed with pitting humans against Gorn, who knows, but there they are again.
Lastly the Season finale. Gamble returns as the evil entity, and Wynonna Earp, sorry, Captain Batel is apparently the conduit for good, and must make the ultimate sacrifice to stop the Evil. It wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t super great. And it felt a lot like Wynonna Earp, who was also played by Melanie Scorfano, in a Star Trek setting.
Honestly, I just kind of hate that so much of the plot of the season was devoted to someone who is effectively a secondary character. She is tied to Pike as his love interest, but it just felt like a bit of a waste, and it got essentially 3-4 episodes out of ten devoted to it. Two of which were not real great. The whole finale felt a little convoluted and the explanation of why she was the whole Entity of Good or whatever she was supposed to be felt super weak. Basically, because they exposed her to blood from Number One, and the plant thing and her human parts and the Gorn infection, she was some sort of, puzzled together entity? There are hundreds of alien races in this series, I am.pretty sure it would take more than elements from 3 or 4 of them to produce an anti evil golem.
Anyway, wrapping up, I am looking forward to what is next. As I understand, Sulu and McCoy have been cast, which will round out our core TOS crew. Chekov didn’t start showing up until like Season 2 of TOS, so he is unlikely to be a thing in this series. Supposedly the plan after so many seasons is to basically do Star Trek Year One, before the original series, with Kirk as Captain.
