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Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 1x06 - "Terminal Provocations"

Rate the episode...

  • 10 - Excellent!

    Votes: 9 8.7%
  • 9

    Votes: 23 22.1%
  • 8

    Votes: 24 23.1%
  • 7

    Votes: 22 21.2%
  • 6

    Votes: 15 14.4%
  • 5

    Votes: 7 6.7%
  • 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3

    Votes: 3 2.9%
  • 2

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • 1 - A total wreck!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    104
Is that controversial? I always felt Riker was a lot more military-minded and Picard more mentoring.

Picard was generally depicted as someone who did not want to reveal his feelings, who was uptight, who kept a certain distance from his crew and so on. In I think it was "Allegiances" where he was kidnapped and replaced by a doppelganger, part of what gave it away was the doppelganger came to 10-Forward and led people in a drinking song. Of all the crew, I'd say only Beverly and Guinan were his actual friends. By which I mean, we saw or heard of him socializing ith them off-duty and not related to any official role or ship's function. And that he would confide in them or vice versa. Picard notably disliked children and wantd them kept away from him.

By contrast, Riker hung out in 10-Forward, invited folks over for poker, was friends with not just the senior staff, but went out of his way to try to get to know newcomers. It also seems to me that Riker self-consciously became an easy-going guy in response to his hard-charging admiral dad.

Given his more relaxed nature as a person, it seems hard for me to envision that his management style would be more uptight than Picard's.
 
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Interesting that "narratives should make sense" is a controversial statement that people have no problem openly disagreeing with.

Different things are going to make sense (or not) to different people. For instance, you have said it doesn't make sense that Mariner knows about Troi's clothing habits. I disagree.

For me, it didn't make sense early on that Rutherford tried changing divisions so he could keep a "date" with Tendi when all he had to do was reschedule or apologize. That didn't bother a lot of people I talked to about the episode.

Even on those things where people might agree it doesn't make sense, there's room for disagreement on how much that matters. For some, the nonsensical thing might only matter if it's the premise as opposed to a minor part of the plot. For some, the nonsensical thing might not matter at all because it's a comedy cartoon and as such there should be more leeway than a serious live-action show.
 
The show's narrative sympathy towards Star Trek fans is established by the empathetic way it depicts characters like Rutherford and Tandi. They are excited and happy to be aboard a Starfleet vessel, and that excitement is always depicted in a positive, sympathetic fashion. The narrative is saying, "Yep. We get it. We would be just as happy and excited."

The show's willingness to essentially say, "But we do get overly fixated in silly things sometimes, don't we?" comes from things like, Boimler and the others getting fixated on exactly what kind of engine noise the ships make, or the overly-detailed recollections of the lives of Starfleet officers that happen to have been the main characters of Star Trek TV shows.



Because we already have Mariner.



I don't think you're really paying attention if you think that. Mariner is competent but self-destructive; Boimler is booksmart but needs experience; Rutherford has an unhealthy need to control everything around her; Tendi has an unhealthy desire for everyone to like her. They've all got entirely different personalities and problems to work through.
You are, of course, right on the mark for all of these points. Some things I’ve noticed and others not until you mentioned them, particularly the gentle barbs at the fandom about technical arguments over things like warp core sounds. My concern is that the fandom rarely has a sense of humor about itself. The show runners are threading a potentially very thin line here and may find themselves accidentally alienating the more fragile members of that rather vast subculture if they push it a little too far in that direction.
 
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Interesting that "narratives should make sense" is a controversial statement that people have no problem openly disagreeing with.

Upon reflection with an open mind, you will likely find that different people have different ideas about what "makes sense."

Personally, I would gently suggest to you that narratives make a lot more sense when you let go of the assumption what a character claims to care about is what they actually care about. To make a comparison that's relatively far removed from the particularities of Star Trek: Lower Decks: The 1997 film Chasing Amy is a film that makes no sense if you assume the surface-level presentations the characters make towards each other are truthful. If, on the other hand, you infer what the film wants you to infer -- that each and every one of the main characters is lying both to others and to themselves about their true motivations -- then the film makes perfect sense. This is doubly true when a given character is being presented from another character's POV instead of from his or her own POV.

Just something to bear in mind the next time you ponder why a character in a 20-minute cartoon seemed different at the end than he did at the beginning.
 
I notice that they really enjoy Mexican food over on the Cerritos. I've seen Tendi eating tacos, and taco salad, now nachos and carnitas. I started to wonder if the Cerritos was really a Texas class ship. But they don't have any brisket and chicken fried steak.

What is a chu chu dance? I need to know more.

I hope we see more of the Trill helmswoman.
 
A 6 for me.

had some funny bit, but IDK I'm so over the malfunctioning holodeck with killer AI trope that the whole 'Badgey' B story fell 100% flat.

I do like that they inferred Captain Riker is a real dick. A newly transferred ensign makes one little mistake and is immediately 'fired'. Guess we know deep down how Will Riker really feels about 'Reginald Barkley' like crewmen when Picard ain't calling the shots. :rommie:
 
I seriously thought you were talking about Badgey for a minute before I realized you were talking about Fletcher. This observation holds true for both guest antagonists this week!
Well, it seemed to me that Badgey may have received personality characteristics from Fletcher, when Fletcher hooked himself up to the computer.
 
Just saw it, brilliant episode!

Yes, it’s built on well known trek tropes, but I think it is for the better. And loved to see clippy make a comeback!

Starfleet should really redesign holodeck’s safety protocols from scratch: it can’t go awry all the time like this.

Also give better security training to their cadets: if someone is assaulted on the ship by an unknown party the first thing you must do is call security, even if it may get you in trouble.

Nice they refer to the Titan, hope to see it one day.
 
A 6 for me.

had some funny bit, but IDK I'm so over the malfunctioning holodeck with killer AI trope that the whole 'Badgey' B story fell 100% flat.

I do like that they inferred Captain Riker is a real dick. A newly transferred ensign makes one little mistake and is immediately 'fired'. Guess we know deep down how Will Riker really feels about 'Reginald Barkley' like crewmen when Picard ain't calling the shots. :rommie:
I thought Badgey was the best part but thats mostly because he reminded me of Mr.D.N.A.
 
This is exactly my point. Many people may know a little about famous military people from our own history, whether Washington, Grant, Pershing, Eisenhower, Patton, heck even Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf.

But how many of the members of those figures' senior staff do we know about? How many of those people can even people with above average education actually name? Other than Alexander Hamilton, I'm guessing zero.

Funnily enough, Patton was a protege of Pershing. And Eisenhower served directly under Pershing as well (and also under MacArthur).
 
This is exactly my point. Many people may know a little about famous military people from our own history, whether Washington, Grant, Pershing, Eisenhower, Patton, heck even Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf.

But how many of the members of those figures' senior staff do we know about? How many of those people can even people with above average education actually name? Other than Alexander Hamilton, I'm guessing zero.

Archer, Kirk, Sulu, Picard, Sisko....these are names that will definitely find their place in history books. But Crusher, LaForge, Troi, Scott, McCoy, Dax? Nope.

There's plenty of canonical evidence to support the fact that supporting Trek characters, especially supporting ones, are not, in fact, treated like celebrities or royalty in universe.

No one seems to recognize or had heart of Scotty in "Relics", though Picard expresses interest in hearing his insights about the "events" of his time. Not even his actual accomplishments, just things that happened while he was alive.

Bashir doesn't recognize Data on sight in "Birthright", but has heard of him, as the only "synthetic lifeform" in Starfleet is obviously going to be something most people have at least heard of. But he's not so famous that Bashir instantly knows who he is. Guess he was never on the cover of Space Vogue.

In "Defiant", Dax and Kira aren't exactly fan girl squealing about Riker being aboard the station. Dax doesn't say, "OMG, you met Riker! WOW, he's famous!" She just smiles and says, "Oh, I met Riker once last year." Big whoop.

No one seems interested or even aware that Admiral McCoy is touring the Ent-D in "Farpoint."

Sisko and Dax DO geek out about Kirk on "Tribble-ations", but because he's the actual captain. Sisko struggles to remember who McCoy is/was. It tracks that Sisko, who clearly idolizes the old Enterprise, would be familiar with the names of Kirk's crew, but he hardly reacts to McCoy's presence with anything other than a shrug.

Other members of the crew notably mistake Kirk for someone else in the bar scene, not even knowing what he looks like.
Its just a cartoon made for a bit of light fun so get over it
 
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