The seventh episode of Lower Decks’ second season continues what seems to be a time-honoured tradition of questionable parenting in Star Trek. Apparently, even in the supposed “perfect future”, we can’t escape bad parents.
Granted, Andy Billups’ mother Queen Paolana is not the worst of the Trek parents ever presented. She seems to be more a helicopter parent than genuinely threatening or evil. But there is something off-putting about the way she ignores Billups’ bodily autonomy and her comment about her royal guards being trained to skip foreplay just feels a bit icky. Obviously, we don’t know much about the way the Hesperian society views sex and bodily autonomy, perhaps their culture has different norms. After all, Billups seems more annoyed at his mother’s antics than feeling threatened by them. But viewing it through the lens of a 21st Century woman whose bodily autonomy often gets controlled by politicians wielding power they shouldn’t have, this whole thing can be a rather sensitive topic.
But even amid all this, I do appreciate one thing. When Billups is about to engage in the royal copulation to lose his virginity and become King, he is there with both male and female Hysperians, signalling rather clearly that this culture is not simply another heteronormative society.
And in general, the Hysperians are a very interesting group of people. The concept of them being descendants of Ren Faire types and mixing technology with magical fantasy lingo and aesthetic is incredibly clever and fun. This feels like several stories you’d find from The Original Series, but with a better explanation and more deliberate execution. It also allows us insight into Billups as a character. The brilliant engineer has always been a great background addition to the cast of Lower Decks but finding out his royal lineage and his culture promptly elevates the depth of his character and how we view his position on the Cerritos. There is always something cool in a story about a person defying the wishes and expectations of their elders and society to be who they want to be because it speaks to all of us yearning to be who we want rather than what people want for us.
In Billups’ story, we get someone we want to root for, we want Billups to succeed in keeping his virginity and remain the Cerritos’ engineer because it’s what makes him happy. And I think it’s also important that Billups desiring to remain a virgin is not mocked by anyone on the ship, it’s firmly shown that everyone is on Billups’ side and that his mother is wrong. This clear demarcation is what I think makes this story ultimately fun to watch without me feeling uncomfortable at certain jokes. Because the show and its characters respect Billups even if his mother and his society might not.
Our meeting with the Hysperians also afford Rutherford and Tendi some growth in their respective stories. Tendi encourages Rutherford to go out of his comfort zone and try something new and different, which is a good thing ultimately as Rutherford really got to enjoy himself on the Hesperian ship and was ultimately able to help save the day for Billups. But for Tendi, it’s stirred up what seems to be buried concerns about Rutherford’s safety. This shows us that despite Tendi brushing off what was a traumatic experience with nearly losing Rutherford last season, this is going to be an issue for her going forward. And I think that’s a good character detail because usually Star Trek characters brush off traumatic experiences and we never deal with them despite characters repeatedly being in danger. So, having Tendi become more and more worried about Rutherford’s tendency to almost dying all the time could build up some interesting drama and tension.
While most of our Cerritos’ crew is dealing with the antics of the Hysperians, Boimler and Mariner are given the job of escorting a super evil sentient computer called AGIMUS to the Daystrom Institute. But what could have been another typical trapped-on-a-planet-with-evil-computer storey turns into more of a personal drama when Boimler and Mariner end up having to confront issues they have with each other. And this is something that I always applaud Lower Decks for doing. They use Star Trek tropes but elevate them and subvert them in clever ways that also gives us character development at the same time. AGIMUS is really utilized in this story to further show us Boimler’s growth and Mariner’s flaws.
Mariner is afraid of people using her and leaving her, this causes her to undermine others to keep them in her orbit so that they can’t leave her. This is an understandable flaw that makes sense to her character. It’s why the issue of Boimler leaving to go to the Titan is still a thorn in her side that she can’t get over. Because Boimler is growing, he is exercising more of his independence and street smarts, and Mariner is terrified that she will once again be left behind, so if it means going to Ransom to effectively sabotage Boimler’s career to keep him near her, she will. And while the end of this episode doesn’t necessarily put consequences on Mariner for her actions, I like to think that Lower Decks won’t leave this stone unturned, and something will happen down the line for Mariner to have to deal with these very bad actions that she should not get away with. And maybe this will lead to some character growth on her part as well.
Character growth aside, this story is just really fun and dynamic, especially thanks to the addition of the ever-amazing Jeffrey Combs as the voice of the evil computer AGIMUS who keeps wanting to be plugged in and tries to manipulate Boimler and Mariner against each other. Boimler eventually outsmarts this evil computer, and they get off the planet, but I will always laugh at any mention of black liquorice from now on. And don’t think I didn’t catch the CBS all-seeing-eye logo on one of those evil supercomputers that they got locked up at Daystrom, who knew both CBS and Alex Kurtzman are surviving to the 24th Century! They’re both canon!
From the brilliant concept of the Hesperian culture (seriously I need one of those signal blocking lutes!) to everyone in the future with simple names seemingly just hiding surprisingly longer and stranger first names (Bradward, Samanthan, and now Andarithio, I wonder what Jennifer the Andorian is hiding) to Daystron seems to just have a whole block for desktops gone wrong, Lower Decks once again delivers great character expansion while having the utmost fun playing on Trek tropes like a fiddle.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably be saying it repeatedly in the future, I genuinely don’t know how they keep being able to tell such amazingly deep character stories so efficiently in under 25 minutes. It is truly a talent!
