Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 1x07 - "Much Ado About Boimler"

[Ometiklan]

For... reasons? Mariner needs counseling. ASAP.

Yeah, she could use some counseling for her "rank up" issues, but as another poster already said, the episode gave clear justification for her actions even if we don't yet know the reason for her issues.

TNG trousers definitely had pockets...I remember Riker putting phasers there in several occasions

I don't remember a single instance in TOS or any TNG-era show where they have pockets. The Cage has the away jackets and belts; belts also in TOS occasionally (I think), and Enterprise had pockets. The Kelvin Timeline had jackets (presumably with pockets). I think the closest TNG comes to it was the type 1 "diplomatic" phaser could be hidden inside the waistband for stealthy reasons. No one in TNG had pockets.

Whatever the rationale, the final result it's the same: she disappointed and lied to a friend who trusted her. In universe, this makes her at least a hypocrite, considering all the times she lectured us on the meaning of friendship. Out universe, I don't really know what's the point made by the writers: you can make fun of people who have faith in you if you're cool enough?

And she never apologized for her behavior: it's perfectly clear from the episode that she is convinced she was right!

I don't remember any lectures about friendship. In last week's episode there was a very short speech about what it means to be Starfleet and not putting people (except Boimler) in danger, but no lectures.
And as others have said, Ramsey and Mariner patched their issue up on screen. Mariner confessing to her issues and just saying "I need some time to work on my issues" was close enough of an apology for me and apparently for her friend.

Can we all agree that if it weren't for the space monster's intervention, Mariner would have lost the respect and friendship of a person who once held her in high regard?

And yes, I know, Mariner is a fictional character and if the writers decided that their friendship would remain intact even after she killed all of Ramsey's officers with a phaser then that would be it. But I'm talking about what a plausible consequence of her actions would be.

No, I don't agree. As another poster put it, without a life-endangering mission, it is likely that her friend would have confronted her about her behavior at some other time and come to the same resolution.

Yep, people in an unknown situation had to pay attention to the actions of a buffoon. As far as they knew, the crew members were all dead, but Mariner thought it was the right time to do the "Oh look I don't know how to use these boots!" shtick.

Really?

Nope. Everyone assumed it was a relatively minor "emergency" situation. There was no apparent distress (no damage, no distress call) outside of a power outage. They all, correctly, assumed the crew was ok and just hold up waiting for rescue. Ramsey even joked about it.

See, this is where my comments come from. Everyone ELSE did something wrong, not Mariner. I mean, everyone slipped up just by presumably behaving the way the normally have with no problems in the past. But, Mariner intentionally messing up and forgetting equipment? Perfectly fine and not deserving of criticism.

This is where my "bestest ever!" Stance comes from because even when she intentionally screws things up people are okay with it.

No, what others are saying is that multiple people contributed to the situation. Mariner left the tricorders behind, but there was no life threatening situation. They had other equipment and contact with the ship on a super-routine mission. Also, even though Mariner didn't perform to the best of her ability at the beginning of the away mission to rescue the other crew, she did nothing more harmful that a momentary "prank" that did not impact the mission in the slightest. Her actions in all of the situations never really impacted anyone else, only others' perceptions of her ability. Other characters equally had small failings in the last mission: not sending a distress signal or any kind of warning, making the assumption there was no major distress for the crew, etc. You can't just point out the one humorous "mistake" by Mariner and say she endangered the mission, when there were contributing factors by other characters around her that did more to risk the mission. No one here is perfect, and many characters are to blame for small pieces, but they all performed to their abilities and saved the day. Casting Mariner as a dangerous screwup or as a perfect "Mary Sue" are equally incorrect conclusions and are both fairly rarely done with total, honest sincerity.

 

[Tosk]

I don't remember a single instance in TOS or any TNG-era show where they have pockets.

That's because they didn't. Any time a crew member on TNG needed to carry something like a phaser or tricorder, they would have specially built pouches attached.

 

[NCC-73515]

Is that a phaser in your pocket....oh wait, you don't have any pockets.

Did your type 1 just turn into a type 2?

 

[Sarcastic Vulcan Salute]

Well usually in these comedies the character
a) apologies for what s/he did.
or
b) had an excellent reason to do what s/he did
and usually
c) understand that what s/he did was wrong.

Nothing of that happens in the episode.

I think that statement is not true in a lot of comedies and/or for a lot of characters in them. Even in 30 years of the Simpsons, Bart has generally not apologized for his bad boy actions, understood why he was wrong to take them or had an excellent reason to do what he did. Homer has never apologized for choking Bart (although he has for other mistakes, particularly to Marge), Mr. Burns has never apologized for being Mr Burns.

The Seinfeld crew probably never apologized for anything, understood what they did was wrong or had good reasons to do what they did.

In fact, when I think of comedies where it might be true that there were apologies, generally it's things like the Three's Company era where the apology is over a stupid misunderstanding. And even that sort of apology is relatively meaningless because they do the exact same sort of misunderstanding the very next episode.

Anyway, as to this Lower Decks episode, I would say it falls into c). My sense is that Mariner understands that she shouldn't have taken a dive, at least after being called out on it. No, she never says "I shouldn't have taken the dive and just told you I didn't want the promotion." But her reconciliation with Ramsey by the end pretty much inherently has to involve some fundamental understanding that she pissed off and confused her friend (as explicitly shown when they are yelling at each other during the rescue).

 

[Skipper]

Well, I have to admit there are a lot of people here more forgiving than me.

If a friend and coworker of mine, of whom I highly esteem, deliberately screwed an assignment that I had entrusted to him/her (knowing that it is perfectly within his/her possibilities) and that s/he voluntarily accepted, and in doing so s/he also ridiculeed me and made my other colleagues doubt my judgment skills (while I was still supportive of him/her) and after I found that was just an act his/her only justification was "You know, I did it because I don't want more responsabiities", well, I would be a little pissed. Like, a lot.

 

[Sarcastic Vulcan Salute]

Well, I have to admit there are a lot of people here more forgiving than me.

If a friend and coworker of mine, of whom I highly esteem, deliberately screwed an assignment that I had entrusted to him/her (knowing that it is perfectly within his/her possibilities) and that s/he voluntarily accepted, and in doing so s/he also ridiculeed me and made my other colleagues doubt my judgment skills (while I was still supportive of him/her) and after I found that was just an act his/her only justification was "You know, I did it because I don't want more responsabiities", well, I would be a little pissed. Like, a lot.

I guess it depends on the screw-ups. Mariner's screwups cost Ramsey less than five minutes of total time, if that. The effort to fix them from Ramsey was also minimal: pushing the right button to do the scan and diagnosing the issue with the filtration machine blindly and using the thing on the filtration machine that they would have (presumably) had to use anyway. And we don't know that Ramsey's crew had their opinions of Ramsey changed because of Mariner or that it couldn't be changed back.

If the screwups we're talking about had as little effect on me as they did on Ramsey, and resulted in no permanent damage to the individual jobs or my reputation or anything, I'd probably be more inclined to not care too much. I might be angry and disappointed at first but eventually I'd probably come down to the notion of "no harm, no foul."

But at the end of the day, it's less about how any one of us would have reacted to what Mariner did and more how the characters did. If Ramsey is a particularly forgiving friend, more so than you or I, so be it. It doesn't matter that if I were in Ramsey's shoes, my last act as acting captain would be to force Mariner to undergo counseling.

To me, the worst thing that Mariner did in this episode was after she dropped the pretense of being a screwup, when she asked for Rutherford to "boim" everyone out. Objectively, there was plenty of time for just the regular tried-and-true transporter process to get everyone to safety. Boiming only improves the speed of transport by like a half-second, and the time it took for Mariner to try to convince Rutherford to boim everyone, Rutherford to get to the transporter room, and then make his modifications took way longer than that. So for an actual delay in speed and no other benefit that I can think of, Mariner and Rutherford subjected everyone to an under-tested procedure that could have left them all out of phase or worse. Mariner had no way of knowing that Boimler reverted back to normal, and no way of knowing that boiming that many people might cause more problems that the original experiment didn't because of the greater number of people, the greater distance or any number of new variables. But I think it's better to just let that sort of thing go than to concern myself with it too much.

 

[Ometiklan]

...To me, the worst thing that Mariner did in this episode was after she dropped the pretense of being a screwup, when she asked for Rutherford to "boim" everyone out. Objectively, there was plenty of time for just the regular tried-and-true transporter process to get everyone to safety. Boiming only improves the speed of transport by like a half-second, and the time it took for Mariner to try to convince Rutherford to boim everyone, Rutherford to get to the transporter room, and then make his modifications took way longer than that. So for an actual delay in speed and no other benefit that I can think of, Mariner and Rutherford subjected everyone to an under-tested procedure that could have left them all out of phase or worse. Mariner had no way of knowing that Boimler reverted back to normal, and no way of knowing that boiming that many people might cause more problems that the original experiment didn't because of the greater number of people, the greater distance or any number of new variables. But I think it's better to just let that sort of thing go than to concern myself with it too much.

I think the only way we are supposed to interpret that scene/decision is the writers wanting to make a joke (group phasing and the call back to "it's just cosmetic") and to tie Rutherford's small story point into the main story at the end. The claim one of Ramsey's staff (?) makes that "there is no time" for a beam out and that being fixed by using Rutherford's slightly faster transporter makes no sense, as you pointed out. They are just leaning on that and the joke that Rutherford made the process 0.5 seconds faster to justify the action at all - otherwise the normal transporter would have been just fine. I would have preferred, if they were going to tie the two story points together that they say Rutherford's intention was to allow for a "more focused transporter beam" or some other technobabble centering on improving transporter performance during interference - that would have made more sense in the scene as depicted. But in the end they were just adding another joke, and sometimes they hang those on weaker "plot justifications" and it is just fine. And I think you are right, that those are the kinds of things that we should all just let go - for the sake of a joke. It's not like shows haven't patched over plot holes before using last minute and shoddily crafted ADR lines.

 

[KimMH]

Well, I have to admit there are a lot of people here more forgiving than me.

If a friend and coworker of mine, of whom I highly esteem, deliberately screwed an assignment that I had entrusted to him/her (knowing that it is perfectly within his/her possibilities) and that s/he voluntarily accepted, and in doing so s/he also ridiculeed me and made my other colleagues doubt my judgment skills (while I was still supportive of him/her) and after I found that was just an act his/her only justification was "You know, I did it because I don't want more responsabiities", well, I would be a little pissed. Like, a lot.

I myself enjoy the flogging of dead equines but this is too stupid even for me to read any longer

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Finally got around to seeing this.

Kind of a weak episode. It looked like they were going to have Starfleet's treatment of freaks way too anti-utopian to even work as satire but at the end reeled it back in to Statistical Probabilities level.

The dog was the funniest part of the episode. Mariner's part was also kind of bleh.

Yeah, I agree it's a dick move to intentionally screw something up when it reflects on other people who put their trust in you. If someone did that to me because they didn't want more responsibility, I'd forgive them as a human and still be friends outside of work, but I wouldn't agree to collaborate with them on a project again. It would end my professional trust in them.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

OH Yes giant salamanders

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Assuming a standard 4 years at StarFleet Academy, you'd probably be 22 y/o at graduation.

It should take about 20 years to get to Captain, so you'd be ~42?

Even in the US Navy, there are minimum number of years you have to be in a rank before even being eligible to be considered for promotion.

And since StarFleet was derived off of US Naval tradition, her StarFleet Captain buddy seems at the right age.

Could that mean Mariner is probably in her 40's as a ensign?

We do know that appearance for certain Ethnicities don't correlate to their actual age.

Mariner can be just really "Young Looking" while actually being older.

Maybe this is in the Kelvin timeline. Kirk was captain after 1 mission over there

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Maybe this is in the Kelvin timeline. Kirk was captain after 1 mission over there

Some how, I really doubt it's the Kelvin Time-line.

Executive Producer & Creator "Mike McMahon" has a deep love and knowledge of "ST:TNG" and most of the Berman-Braga era along with TOS.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Some how, I really doubt it's the Kelvin Time-line.

Executive Producer & Creator "Mike McMahon" has a deep love and knowledge of "ST:TNG" and most of the Berman-Braga era along with TOS.

It was just a joke about how quickly Starfleet promoted Kelvin Kirk

 

[Charles Phipps]

Cupid's Errant Arrow was where the story started to turn around and basically where they started realizing that they weren't doing Rick and Morty or just Star Trek-inspired gags. It's not coincidentally around this time that they start dramatically dialing back Mariner's psychopathy and making Boimler less of the butt monkey and more someone who just well-intentioned if a bit of a suck up.

This is, however, one of the key episodes I think for the "fixing" of Mariner that culminates in "Crisis Point" where I feel like they realized they'd screwed up with her and they reverse course by suggesting she's not someone "cool" for her craziness but actually failing herself with her underachievement rather than just rebelling. I'm also of the mind the response to her friend is why Mariner was possibly reimagined as a bisexual character (assuming that wasn't the plan all along).

However, the real best part of the episode was the entirety of the Division 14 and its enormous piss take on Section 31. This is where Lower Decks justifies its existence as a Trek series in a way that many fans never felt other Nu Treks did. It is a joke only hardcore Trek fans will get and yet also actually works as a VERY mild social critique (specifically against conspiratorial thinking on the basis of a distrust of authority).

No, it turns out the guys trying to do vaccines and give free medical coverage are actually trying to help people. I imagine this is probably more a coincidence than a deliberate message but it works anyway. Because, of course, Section 31 IS inspired by all the X-Files/anti-government conspiracy theories that were popular in the Nineties. Possibly why the message is actually worth discussing unlike more overt and ridiculous lecturing.

The dog is just silly and fun and I want it even if it is an abomination against Q.