This discussion and review contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3, episode 9, “Reliable Sources”.
It was interesting to watch Lower decks slowly builds its internal continuity over its first three seasons. Indeed, “Trusted Sources” often seems to be about how the series has gradually but systematically built its own internal mythology, with recurring characters and long-running arcs.
Lower decks is obviously heavily and specifically indebted to The next generationwith showrunner Mike McMahan engaging with the franchise for the first time via a Twitter account offering wacky ideas for a hypothetical eighth season. More broadly, as a show set on a spaceship engaged in a series of weekly episodic missions, Lower decks feels like an extension of the dominant 1990s shape star trekwhich started from The next generation in Traveler and even the first two seasons of Company.
Of course, these shows weren’t entirely without continuity. Some long-form characters and story arcs happened in the background, such as the Klingon Empire’s internal politics on The next generation or the evolution of the relationship between Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) on Traveler. However, on the whole, the episodes of these shows were largely self-contained, often for the frustration of writers like Ronald D. Moore.
Lower decks hasn’t really developed a sense of external continuity. It’s hard to get an idea of what star trek universe actually looks like this gap between the end of the Dominion War at the end of Deep Space Nine and the Starfleet isolationist brought into picard. There’s no idea what the Romulan Empire looks like after Star Trek: Nemesis. Is Cardassia occupied by the Federation? Apart from the clues in “wej dujwe don’t know what’s going on within the Klingon Empire.
While this lack of specificity was a problem when the series attempted to delve into the aftermath of the Dominion War in “Listen to everything, trust nothinghe forgets how much Lower decks managed to build a fairly coherent and convincing internal continuity. The show’s episodes are mostly self-contained and accessible to casual audiences, but there’s also a strong sense that the events of these seemingly isolated adventures can escalate and build.
This manifests itself in various ways. To take a small example, Lower decks delves into low-key recurring jokes that slowly build over time. In “Based“, it is established that the family of Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) operates a raisin vineyard, in which the grapes are dried to make them raisins. However, the show implies that he could in fact be a raisin With his purple hair, it’s ironic that Boimler himself is frequently dehydrated in episodes like “Me, Excretus” and “Crisis Point 2: Paradox.”
In particular, the third season repeatedly returned to the absurdity of the “wellness-based” cultures that arose in the early seasons of The next generationin episodes like “Justice” Where “Haven.” Lower decks visit such cultures in “The least dangerous game” and “room for growth.” As such, it’s a clever punchline in “Trusted Sources” when it’s revealed that Ornara, another one planet from a first episode of The next generationhas evolved in a culture “based on well-being”.
However, these are not just jokes. Character arcs take place over long periods of time. “A mathematically perfect redemptiontook over the spell of guest character Peanut Hamper (Kether Donohue) a season and a half after his only previous appearance in “No small parts.” Vice Admiral Buenamigo (Carlos Alazraqui) became a recurring guest star during the season. Showrunner Mike McMahan has promised that the character of T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) from “wej Duj” will be back to the show.
Indeed, the third season of Lower decks got a little more confident about it. The fifth episode of the season, “reflectionsset up two plot points clearly designed to boomerang later in the season. Petra Aberdeen (Georgia King) returns at the end of “Trusted Sources”, offering the payoff to her setup. It seems more than likely that the mystery surrounding the lost memories of Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) will come into play either in the finale or in the fourth season.
In some respects, “reliable sources” are on this evolving sense of continuity. Obviously, the episode’s climax finds FNN reporter Victoria Nuzé (Alison Becker) weaponizing continuity against Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis). Nuzé attacks Freeman citing the events of previous episodes as “Strange energies,” “Kayshon, eyes open,” “An Embarrassment of Dooplers“, “Room for growth” and “Listen to everything, trust nothing”. There is even a reference to Appearance of Q (John de Lancie).
“Trusted Sources” is also about continuity in a broader sense. It opens with Freeman proudly announcing that Starfleet has approved his “Project Swing-by” proposal, an extension of the “second contact” brief that would see Starfleet verify the companies they had already contacted. Essentially, it’s about building continuity in Starfleet’s relationship with these cultures. The Cerritos‘ first mission is Ornara, the planet of the beginning The next generation episode”Symbiosis.”
While traveling to Ornara, Freeman and Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) experienced the events of “Symbiosis,” which was a brutal parable about drug addiction in which Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) found himself torn between two planets caught in a cycle of dependence. Ransom reads the report. “Picard cut communication between the planets and…uh…let’s see…oh, then he left,” he read. “Yeah, that’s… hoo… that’s how it went.”
There’s something troubling about the idea that Starfleet simply never bothered to check on Ornara and her neighbor Brekka after Picard made such a drastic decision with such profound implications. “Seriously?” Freeman sighs. “So now it’s up to us to check on an entire planet that Picard left cold turkey?” Freeman is typically self-absorbed, but she’s right. The episodic nature of The next generation allowed the show to avoid complicated consequences.
This is not a new or radical idea, even in the larger context star trek franchise. During its second season, as it began to experiment with long serialization, Deep Space Nine build episode”crossingaround a similar postulate. In this episode, Kira (Nana Visitor) and Bashir (Alexander Siddig) find themselves visiting the Mirror Universe decades after Kirk (William Shatner) triggered the collapse of the Terran Empire in “Mirror Mirror.” The results weren’t pretty.
While the Mirror Universe episodes of Deep Space Nine are something of a mixed bag, “Crossover” is a true masterpiece. It’s an episode that’s a scathing critique of the limits of rigid episodic storytelling when it comes to exploring the consequences of character choices, as well as a critique of casual interventionism by those with no interest in the outcome. Sure, Deep Space Nine could do it because he was willing to engage and challenge the underlying assumptions of star trek.
Lower decks is far too reverential to mount such an invigorating critique of Picard and the Enterprise. When Freeman teleports to Ornara, she discovers that the planet is in the “right place”. Nuzé suggests that Freeman’s attempt to find a worthy candidate for “Project Swing-by” is “a dud”. The inhabitants have built a paradise. “Picard was absolutely right,” says local magistrate B’Nir (TBD), as if speaking of a stern parent. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us.”
To give ‘reliable sources’ credit, there are not-too-subtle implications that Picard was not entirely correct in how he did what he did, even if the episode can’t articulate them directly. “We were a bit out of sorts for the first ten/fourteen years, but we got it!” B’Nir explains, pointing to a mural that depicts the planet’s nightmarish descent into anarchy and violence. Throughout the scene, this mural is framed to focus on that decade Ornara spent in her “wrong place.”
In fact, it looks like Ornara still bears scars from that trauma. The sound of the name “B’Nir” suggests a “veneer” or facade. He jokes about how the planet has replaced one addiction with another. The planet also (understandably) wants nothing to do with Starfleet. He rejects Freeman’s offer of assistance. “Yeah, we’re good,” he replies. “Starfleet has done enough for Ornara. There really is no need for this visit. He feels almost passive-aggressive.
That said, “Trusted Sources” ultimately suggests that “Project Swing-by” has some merit. The crew stops at Brekka, the nearby “push planet”. In a nice touch, Brekka is lively in shades of purple and populated by palm trees. This underlines the sense in which Brekka is a product of the late 1980s. It is designed as if it were a planet based around miami vice. On Brekka, the crew discovers a problem: the Breen have occupied the planet.
The choice of Breen is interesting, because it refers to this feeling of increasing continuity. The Breen began as what writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe described as “some sort of running joke” on The next generation in episodes like “Hero Worship” and “The loss.” However, quite accidentally and over time, they became major players in the home stretch of Deep Space Nine. The Breen are the perfect example of how continuity gradually builds over the seasons. star trek.
It seems deliberate, as if Lower decks asserts its own internal continuity. “Trusted Sources” finds the Cerritos subjected to external scrutiny, with an exposé on FNN calling it “Starfleet’s Shame”. This looks like a meta comment on the subset of fandom that doesn’t consider Lower decks be real star trek” because it’s silly or because it’s animated. Nuzé might quote angry message boards when she uses terms like “chaotic”, “irresponsible” and “idiot”.
“Trusted Sources” is obviously gearing up for the Lower decks season finale, but it’s also a definitely endearing piece of star trek. Three seasons in, Lower decks built his own corner of star trek universe, and it’s just enjoying being able to play in it.