Review for Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season Four

Introduction

Talk about rage inducing. It may have been a mistaken click that got me subscribed to Amazon Prime for a couple of weeks, but it was long enough for me to discover the streaming generation of Star Trek shows, and most fun among them, the Lower Decks animated series. It was enough to get me pouncing on the UK Blu-ray releases to that point. A subsequent mistaken click got me a couple more weeks of free Prime where I got to watch Season 3 of Lower Decks, and also discover Strange New Worlds. And this time, I was ready to buy these shows as soon as they were solicited. And then Paramount went and ‘cancelled’ the UK Blu-ray release of Lower Decks Season 3, opting for DVD only. I wound up importing the Blu-ray from the US, for twice what I would have paid locally. A year on, and I was ready to buy Season 4, sight unseen, and once again, I imported it a couple of months ago. And in the months it has sat on my to-watch pile, UK Paramount finally got on the case, and in short order released Season 3 and Season 4 of Lower Decks on Blu-ray. I’m so annoyed at this, that I’ll import Season 5 when it finally comes out, just to spite Paramount UK.


Lower Decks follows the adventures of the USS Cerritos, focusing on the lower ranked crew, Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, Sam Rutherford, and D’Vana Tendi, who do the important drudge work of Starfleet while those higher up the command chain get all the credit and the glory.

In this fourth season, there’s a new recruit to the Lower Decks, T’Lyn, who got thrown out of the Vulcan space service for excessive use of intuition at the end of Season Three. And someone is attacking ships all over the galaxy.

10 episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 are presented across two Blu-ray discs from Paramount CBS. The commentaries and episode specific extras are listed with the episodes.


Disc 1
1. Twovix
The USS Voyager has been restored as a museum piece for display to the public. It’s the Cerritos’ mission to transport it to Earth, but the Voyager has been restored a little too authentically for comfort. But macrophage viruses, Borg nanoprobes, and transporter accidents are the least of Boimler’s problems... He’s up for promotion.

* Audio Commentary with Jack Quaid (Boimler), creator Mike McMahan, and producer Brad Winters

2. I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee
Rutherford is so desperate to be promoted alongside his Lower Deck crewmates that Tendi’s worried about him. Boimler’s excited to actually get into crew quarters, and Mariner’s desperate to get demoted back to Ensign. That doesn’t bode well for her next away mission.


3. In the Cradle of Vexilon
It’s rare that Starfleet encounters one of those planetary computers that aren’t evil and megalomaniacal. Vexilon is one of the nicest computers you could hope to meet, but it needs maintenance, and Captain Freeman is in over her head. Meanwhile Boimler is stressing out, commanding his first away mission.

4. Something Borrowed, Something Green
Tendi never makes much of her nefarious Orion heritage, but she has no choice when her sister D’Erika gets married, and Starfleet decides it would be diplomatic if Tendi takes Mariner and T’Lyn on shore leave to attend the wedding. Meanwhile, Boimler and Rutherford deal with their roommate issues through the medium of Mark Twain.

* Audio Commentary with Tawny Newsome (Mariner), Noel Wells (Tendi), and Gabrielle Ruiz (T’Lyn)


5. Empathalogical Fallacies
Picard had enough stress hosting one Betazoid diplomat from time to time on the Enterprise, but there are three travelling home on the Cerritos, and these women are three middle-aged party girls. T’Lyn’s serenity is disturbed by the Cerritos turning into one big party ship, but then the crew start acting very strangely.

Disc 2
6. Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place
Ferenginar has applied to join the Federation, and Captain Freeman joins Admiral Vassery to conduct the initial negotiations with Grand Nagus Rom and his wife Leeta. Meanwhile Boimler and the others have a mission to update the Federation guide books to the planet.

* Audio Commentary with Noel Wells, Eugene Cordero (Rutherford), Chase Masterson (Leeta), and Mike McMahan


7. A Few Badgeys More
It’s trouble for the Cerritos when they are sent to investigate one of the ongoing ship attacks, and run into a salvage ship that has found Rutherford’s rogue AI, Badgey, and Badgey’s looking for revenge. Meanwhile Boimler and Tendi are going to Daystrom to check on Peanut Hamper’s rehab, and question Agimus about the ship attacks.

8. Caves
The problem with being promoted to Lieutenant (j.g) is that the Lower Deckers rarely go on missions together anymore. So when all four show up in the transporter together the excitement is palpable. And short-lived, when they learn it’s a cave exploration mission. Caves are boring, and dangerous, and this one is no exception.


9. The Inner Fight
Until now, the mysterious ship attacks were aimed at non-Federation ships alone, but it seems that tactics have switched, and former Starfleet personnel are being targeted. The Cerritos’ mission is to find and protect one Nick Locarno. But not Mariner, who’s being so reckless she’s been assigned a boring mission elsewhere.

* Audio Commentary with Dawnn Lewis (Captain Freeman), Tawny Newsome and Mike McMahan

10. Old Friends, New Planets
The villain of the piece has been revealed, recruiting lower deckers from all over the galaxy to stand against authoritarian repression, and armed with a second hand Genesis Device, they may have a chance to pull it off. And now they’ve come knocking on Mariner’s door, to recruit Starfleet’s most notorious rebel.

* Audio Commentary with Robert Duncan McNeill (Nick Locarno) and Mike McMahan

Picture

Lower Decks gets a 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, which is clear, sharp, and colourful, with excellent detail, bringing the animation across smoothly and without issue. There isn’t even the spectre of digital banding to worry about, that I see on many anime Blu-rays. The character design is somewhat generic for US adult comedy animations. It has its own style to be sure, but it still conforms to an overall stereotype that I have been seeing since the year Simpsons. Where the show really does impress is the world design, really embodying that 24th Century Star Trek era where The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager reside. Costumes, ‘sets and locations’ and the technology will all be comfortably familiar if you’ve grown up with those aforementioned shows.

Sound

Lower Decks offers a DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English track and a DD 5.1 German track with optional SDH English and German subtitles. I had no issues with the audio; the surround bringing the action and music across well, and with animation, the absence of mumbly actors is a godsend, with the dialogue clear and audible throughout. I find that US animation of this nature shares a common ‘voice’, fast paced delivery and familiar cadences across the medium, and in that way Lower Decks has a degree of comfort to it. The music takes a cue from the Berman era that inspired the show’s 24th Century look, and the orchestral feel really suits the show well, establishing it firmly as Trek with the opening credits (The TNG font doesn’t hurt either).

Extras

You get 2 discs on each inner face of a thin BD Amaray style case. The inner sleeve has artwork and an episode and extras listing. The discs boot to animated menus where you get a Play All option, an episode listing, and audio and subtitle options.

The extras presented separately on Disc 2 are as follows...

Lower Decktionary: Setting Up Season 4 (8:33)
Old Friends (28:45)

Conclusion

If you would have said to me a few years ago, that an animated series would be one of my favourite Star Trek shows, I would have responded with a dumbfounded look. After all, I have seen bits of the original Animated Series from the seventies, and it’s not the most dynamic of creations. I by far preferred reading the novelisations of that show to actually watching it. And a Star Trek comedy? But here I am, four seasons in, and I truly believe that Lower Decks might just be the best Star Trek being made right now, up there with Strange New Worlds. Naturally I’d say that, given that there was a Strange New Worlds – Lower Decks crossover episode in the most recent season, an episode which takes place just prior to this fourth season if you’re a continuity hound. But Season 4 of Lower Decks is the best yet, building on all that has come before, and a love letter to Star Trek, and more importantly, to Star Trek fandom.


The thing is that it doesn’t quite feel that way at first, despite the banger of an opening episode; twenty-five minutes of distilled Voyager references, even if the only guest star is the Starship Voyager herself. It becomes clear that the show is going to be more thoughtful and reflective in this fourth season, focusing more on character development than ever before. That’s established at the end of the first episode, when most of the lower deckers get promoted to Lieutenant j.g. This means moving out of the corridor bunks, and getting assigned to cabins. The dynamic between the four friends begins to change, even with a new friend, the Vulcan transfer officer T’Lyn thrown into the mix.


She’s an interesting addition, as she serves as an outsider perspective on the mayhem. Previously, the lower deckers themselves would have been the outside perspective, but now they have been promoted, they’ve got more responsibilities, and tend to be more involved in missions, although the us-versus-them hierarchy still persists. The first four episodes following the opener actually feel a little run-of-the-mill for Lower Decks, more of the same of the shows that we have gotten in the previous seasons, and not exactly pushing the envelope. It feels as if the show has found a happy groove, a comfort zone. References abound as usual, nods to Trek past. So a menagerie ship, an (not exactly) insane planetary computer, and an alien wedding that gets out of hand are all the kind of tropes that Star Trek has indulged in before. It’s just that aside from the opening Voyager episode, the affection for Treks past feels toned down.


Previous seasons have distributed such episodes more evenly, but Season 4 saves its strongest Trek love for the second half of the run, with the visit to the Ferengi homeworld, the first in the season to bring back legacy characters, as we meet Grand Nagus Rom and his wife Leeta, Max Grodenchik and Chase Masterson reprising their characters from Deep Space Nine. Then A Few Badgey’s More revisits not one, but three AI villains from previous seasons of Lower Decks to great effect. The ultimate geek love letter to Trek is Caves. Paramount Stage 16 was known as Planet Hell for the production of Star Trek the Next Generation, and occasional episodes of Voyager and Enterprise. There were lots of episodes where the crew wound up in a cave, and quite understandably these caves all looked surprisingly similar. The Lower Decks episode leans heavily into that, and it’s a whole lot of fun.


The series really concludes with the final two episodes, which brings the story that has been developing in the background of the first eight episodes to the forefront, revealing the big, bad villain of the piece, and the nefarious plan that is about to unfold. These two episodes, especially the final episode are as close as Lower Decks will get to being a feature film without actually becoming a feature film; even more so than the holodeck movie parodies of earlier seasons. It’s a big story, full of epic moments, and heavily referencing The Wrath of Khan for its final action sequence. It’s ironic that Star Trek has been reheating The Wrath of Khan regularly for the movies, many of them featuring vengeful villains with superweapons. Yet it’s Lower Decks, which explicitly references the film through plot, visuals, and especially the music, that I’ve enjoyed the most. It’s an epic finale, and the best that Lower Decks has delivered to date.


As mentioned, the character development is strong in this fourth season, what with the promotions, and the characters having to find their new places on the ship. There’s an interesting thing with Tendi and her family; Lower Decks is the Star Trek show that has developed the Orions most effectively in all of Trek. But what really grabs me is what we learn about Beckett Mariner. Throughout all four seasons, we’ve been presented with this rogue team player, a woman who acts impulsively and unconventionally to achieve Starfleet’s mission goals, and who has a history of self-sabotage. Whenever she’s been promoted beyond the rank of Ensign, she’ll pull an act of petty disobedience, guaranteed to get her demoted again. Only now, the command crew of the Cerritos have seen through this, and simply refuse to demote her, despite her antics. This only serves to frustrate her more and more as the season unfolds, and she becomes increasingly reckless. It all comes to a head in the penultimate episode, and we finally learn the reason behind all of this. The story slows right down, and we take a beat to see into this character’s psyche, and it’s the most emotionally affecting the show has been to this point.


This has become a pleasant habit. I enjoy the hell out of another Star Trek Lower Decks release. Apparently Season 5 will be the final season of Lower Decks. I hope that it can go out with a bang. And I hope the UK will get a timely release on Blu-ray.