Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 1x05 - "Cupid's Errant Arrow"

as said.. Bradward needs something more to his personality, and not just a punching bag for Becky. Yes he's a stickler for rules, but he needs more.. character? He's kind of a walking cliche at the moment, even after 5 episodes

 

My point has always been the same. The idea that was "sold" to us via pre-release statements & press releases, etc., is that this is "the worst ship in the fleet" but that the show isn't actually showing that concept.

There's no contradiction at all.

I don't care at all that it doesn't jibe with pre-release hype, other than there was an adjustment period, as my expectations were different than what we were given based on how the show was sold. I had to reorient my thinking.

You've failed to alter your thinking and are instead clinging to extremely minor examples to support that original "worst ship" concept. Because there was one tiny fire while characters were making repairs? Because we're TOLD the ship is in rough shape, but don't actually see it? The show has failed to deliver on that concept basically at all.

Is the ship poorly managed? Also no. Yes, the captain is shown to be ambitious and a little petty, but most of the time, she's very competent, as she was in "Cupid's Arrow."

In "Temporal Edict", the captain overreaches and it leads to problems, but the vast majority of the time, the ship isn't falling into random chaos due to bad leadership or other issues. The senior staff is routinely shown with a baseline of competence with a few lightly silly quirks.

It's perfectly fine in the broadstrokes if the show doesn't want to be about "the worst ship in the fleet", provide it come up with other ways to be funny and/or interesting.

So far....uh, it hasn't.

 

Honestly, I would think the "worst ship in the fleet" would still be pretty solid and competent.

It's like the old joke of "what do you call someone who came in last in medical school? A doctor."

Yeah, but that guy still had to maintain a high GPA, pass all sorts of tests and be approved by qualified doctors in all of his residency training. So he may not be the greatest doctor but he still had to meet very high standards to get a license.

So, I'd say "the worst ship in the fleet" still has to have a crew it in it that passed and met all sorts of high standards. They may not be the Enterprise, but they've till got to be at some base standards.

 

I wouldn’t expect much from Pickle Trek.

 

I have a question. Not sure if it's been asked, didn't see it. I'm assuming that the Parliament-class ships will all be named for Canadian cities, but is it interesting that this isn't a Corps of Engineers ship? "Large complex engineering problems" says COE to me.

 

Probably has a detachment or five of SCE people on board separate from the regular ship's company...?

 

I didn't notice all the red in the Vancouver until the second viewing of the episode.
Though it's more of a burgundy colour.

 

I don't really care what the promos say about the Cerritos.

I care about what is said and described on screen.

What has been shown on screen is that

• there is so much wrong on the Cerritos that if one forces people to try to accomplish all their assignments precisely on a strict schedule things fall very much apart
• A character with knowledge of the Cerritos describes it as having a lot of light-years on it, as smelling like toasted marshmallows and as barely holding together.
• A couple of fires breaking out for no particular reason

Given that Starfleet is ubercompetent generally, to the extent it matters, the problems we have been shown or that have been described to us easily could make the Cerritos "the worst ship" in Starfleet.

 

Perhaps, but perhaps they had to lax those standards as part of rebuilding from the whole war thing.

Or, instead of cashiering them out they took the Janeway approach and sought to retrain them to a job suitable to their talents. Unfortunately, Freeman resents her job so it became more of a mess than intended.

 

Good! Me neither!

Actually, what was shown was that things on the Cerritos run so well that the junior officers have plenty of time to screw off and still get their work done on time. It's only when they're subjected to unnecessary pressure and aggressively unrealistic deadlines that things fall apart.

No where is it even suggested that there is "so much wrong" on the ship that doing assignments quickly causes problems. That idea doesn't even make any sense.

Literally the opposite is true - on a day to day level, everything is perfectly fine with plenty of downtime.

Lots of ships have "a lot of lightyears on them." Saying that it's "Barely holding together" isn't the same as showing it. Thus far, the show hasn't shown it.

And we're back to a tiny fire as the only true example in five episodes of the ship manifesting any kind of technical problems. And that was during a repair.

Hardly iron clad proof of anything.

There have been no problems that weren't caused by outside interference. You could say that the Enterprise was the "worst ship" because it got hit by a cosmic string, got captured by Ferengi privateers and because its officers "de-evolved" into monsters.

The show has failed to make the case that the Cerritos is anything other than a mid-level, workaday ship.

 

Once again I'm gonna say 8. I thoroughly enjoyed the episode. Loved Mariner's obsession. Loved the parasite reveal.
Loved the subplot with Tendi and Rutherford. And the stuff with he fish aliens was entertaining too.

Particularly enjoyed the reference to the Edo.
And the way they played with the cliches of the "jealous boyfriend" plot.
And unlike in DS9 were Kyra spent a whole, painful, episode trying to talk this one old guy to move from his moon...Freeman, upon finding out that the one fish guy and his wife were the only inhabitants of their moon, just told him to screw himself and went ahead with the plan.
Loved that.

 

Seemed pretty clear it was because of the whole watching a friend get eaten by a shapeshifting alien.

And frankly going through things like that plus the issues with here mother probably explain why Mariner is the way she is. Well that and probably playing things up to look as unpromotable as possible.

The Vancouver looked like it was being a stand in for a hero ship.

Plus it seemed like the problem was that command set time limits that didn't actually give them enough to do the work before they have to move to the next task.

 

Another aspect of this episode I loved was that every time we were following Boimler around, you could see, out of focus and in the background, Mariner diving through closing doors and skulking in the darkness as she investigated Barb. I found that to be quite amusing.

 

I'm thinkin' that Brad probably had a 'bone' throughout most of the episode.

 

So, this parasite had been on Boimler for a long while and didn't show up once on the transporter biofilter? Nor did it show up on an annual physical? Or a haircut?

And shouldn't more women have been attracted to and come on to Boimler during this whole time? An unusual amount of of women? An out of the ordinary amount of women?

 

Are they though? Galaxy class starships seem to have the structural strength of toilet paper.

 

Probably got it just before he and Barb hooked up, which was a month (IIRC) prior to the episode.
Biofilters work at the need of plot.

 

They clearly didn’t work in “The Naked Time”.

 

Also notably schedules made by people who actually have no idea how long tasks take.

The Biofilter is naff as we've seen with many-many previous examples.

Mariner: Yes, one did!

I personally buy that Barb wasn't attracted to Boimler because of it. I believe her when she says it was all about his personality.

 

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