Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 3x01 - "Grounded"

[firehawk12]

This was just sublime. I didn't expect them to go all in on the First Contact references. lol
Also didn't expect a Morgan Bateson reference either, because I just assumed that they'd need to pay Grammer likeness rights to use him.

As a way of playing with all the tropes - particularly Starfleet being an incompetent bureaucracy that you can't trust - I appreciated that things just worked out because they should. There's no Admiral Satie being racist or having a grudge just to provide unnecessary complications to the main character... Freeman was innocent and of course she was cleared, because that's supposed to happen.

 

[Lord Garth]

I haven't seen this episode. But I'm guessing this isn't the one where they visit DS9?

 

[dupersuper]

And the crystalline entity has joined the intro battle

I hope this show goes 15 seasons and they just keep adding stuff to that part of the introduction until you can barely tell what's happening.

I wonder why all these women were overtly hitting on Boimler: perhaps being a Starfeet officer is considered very sexy in the 24th century?
Also unusual Mariner’s lack of reaction, but she was probably too focused on her mother’s situation to notice.

More like too focused on her mother's situation to comment on it; she had enough reaction shots to show she was...perplexed.

this episode also confirmed that Boimler dyes his hair, but the log was cut off conveniently before he revealed his natural hair colour.

Darn: I was really hoping that he was Catullan.

I haven't seen this episode. But I'm guessing this isn't the one where they visit DS9?

Nope, not yet.

 

[jackoverfull]

She has ranked up before. She even comments in this episode "what are you going to do, demote and transfer me again?" This would imply she has held higher rank at some point prior to serving on the Cerritos.

she was twice a Lieutenant demoted to ensign.

His family owns the vineyard, they were probably hoping to get in on the family business.

”business” is a difficult word in the 24th century, though.
By the way, I loved that Boimler is showed as hiper-competent in the vineyard as well.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Being a comedy has nothing to do with it. Michael Burnham is a Mary Sue as well.

And do you really think her parents covering for her will make her stop her antics in the future? No.

I know exactly what a Mary Sue is, thank you.




...And despite all that, I liked the episode.

Oh for the love of Kirk

 

[Michael]

@everyone: Let's cut the Mary Sue crap and focus on talking about the episode.

@Dukhat, you've made your opinion clear and I understand you said you wanted to move on from it in this thread. However, I'm going to ask you to refrain from bringing up this borderline sexist term in the future at all. Just mentioning it is like throwing a bomb into a thread, and we can't have that here every time you feel like bringing it up.

 

[Dukhat]

I said I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. I made that very clear several times. I’m not the one who kept bringing it up afterwards. And for the record, I don’t consider it a ‘sexist’ term and do not appreciate the implication that I was being sexist.

 

[Starkers]

8/10 really enjoyable and great to have it back. Loved all the FC references and the reveal that of course Captain Freeman was exonerated off camera was perfect, this is Lower Decks after all

Could have been funnier I guess, but as others have said, it's not like the opening episodes of seasons 1 and 2 were anywhere near the best episodes of their respective seasons.

Boimler sniffing the Captain's chair is just plain wrong though!

 

[Argosy]

7/10 Kinda interesting to see how things were resolved without some Kirk style breaking of the rules, but handwaving away the S2 cliffhanger ending with a minute of intense exposition felt anticlimatic. When the description of the things that happened off screen sound more interesting than what happened on screen I think that's a problem.

I love the dynamic between the main four and that in itself is a joy to watch, which certainly saved the episode for me.

 

[Santa of Five]

Hooray, Lower Decks is back.

That was a pretty good return, an 8 out of 10. The First Contact references really made my day, with a cameo from James Cromwell being the icing on the cake. I want to ride the Pheonix!

It's a shame that the cliffhanger was resolved quite easily, though hearing about Starfleet's investigation still made me smile, seeing Tuvok, and even Morgan Bateson, and learning that sometimes, Starfleet does get things right.

Boiimler's face when he was drinking Ketrecel White-Hot Sauce really made me giggle.

I've always love seeing the Easter Eggs in each episode, which is one of the things I've missed about LD.

 

[Sakonna]

As I sat down to watch this, I was sooooo excited that Streaming Trek was finally offering that most classic of Trek experiences -- the long-awaited resolution of a season finale cliffhanger! I had such a rush of warm flashbacks to sitting down to watch "Time's Arrow, Part II", "Descent, Part II", "Basics, Part II"...

The fact that "Grounded" was very slightly disappointing feels strangely appropriate -- they were pretty much always slightly disappointing in the old days too.

Loved it! I agree that it was one of the weaker LD's overall, but the standards of this show are so consistently high that even a weaker installment is still fantastic.

In terms of COMPLAINTS...

Didn't like Boimler's logs. Too gross.

And Tuvok showing up for a forced mindmeld repelled me, given that forced mindmelds are generally presented as rapes. Like, here's a quick short of a beloved legacy character, depicted mid-rape... ick. I'm surprised to see how many are favorably highlighting this cameo, which felt for me like a quick driveby to trash the character without even giving him a line.

Maybe I have forgotten some forced melds Tuvok performed on Voyager (in which case, I guess it would just be continuity), but none are coming to mind.

Otherwise, no complaints. That trip to Bozeman was brilliant!

 

[Michael]

I said I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. I made that very clear several times.

As I acknowledged.

I’m not the one who kept bringing it up afterwards.

Didn't say you were. In fact I remember specifically telling everyone to drop the issue.

And for the record, I don’t consider it a ‘sexist’ term and do not appreciate the implication that I was being sexist.

I believe you that you don't consider it sexist. I'm just telling you that that's how it's perceived by many. And in any case, this discussion ends here.

 

[Unionized Elf]

But she got demoted back down to Ensign.

Exactly. You previously indicated Mariner had not ranked up, but the very fact that she's been demoted proves she had ranked up at some point, otherwise she could not have been demoted.

Also, the very fact that she has been promoted means she can not be "the longest serving Ensign" as you previously asserted. For people who are demoted, their time in rank resets the moment they are demoted. Since Mariner was last seen promoted (though temporarily) in season 1, that means her time in grade as an Ensign resets at the end of that episode when she was demoted. Meaning at the moment, she has only served as an Ensign for however much time has gone by in universe since Moist Vessel. Even if you were to count the combined amount of time she spent at the rank since she graduated and subsequent promotions and demotions, I doubt the total would even add up to five years, and is probably less than that. Which is still not Starfleet's longest serving Ensign, which is a record held by both Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato, who both spent ten years as Ensigns. Or if you want to focus specifically on Federation Starfleet, then Harry Kim holds that record as seven years an Ensign.

 

[Argosy]

Maybe I have forgotten some forced melds Tuvok performed on Voyager (in which case, I guess it would just be continuity), but none are coming to mind.

It's a bit of a stretch but I was wondering whether they were referencing a Star Trek Online mission where Tuvok does a meld with the player character. You can do a lot of character customisation including height and invariably what happens during the cutscene is Tuvok ends up putting his fingers through the players eyes (or worse), someone then posts something on Reddit like 'Personal space Tuvok!' aaaand then we repeat the hilarity several months down the line. It's an obscure reference, but there seems to be an ongoing effort to link aspects of different Trek media together...so maybe?...

 

[Unionized Elf]

there seems to be an ongoing effort to link aspects of different Trek media together

There is?

 

[Sakonna]

There is?

Well, Streaming Trek does keep introducing details from old novel continuities. On SNW it even go to the point where, if a detail jumped out at me that didn't seem to track, I would think "is this another thing they lifted from some novel that came out in '82 and that's why it doesn't fit?" and I'd come here and find out that, yes, that was exactly where the incongruent element came from.

And the newly created tie-in comics and novels are much more deeply integrated into the main continuity than in previous Trek eras.

Is Beckett Mariner the one officer who has spent the longest time as an Ensign in StarFleet?

For all these years, I've been convinced there were two elderly recurring background ensigns on TNG, but I just did a Memory Alpha deep dive. I couldn't find one, and the other one turns out to actually have had Lt Commander pips, and now I've procrastinated on my real job enough and probably have to go do some work...

 

[Argosy]

There is?

Yeah ok, well they seem to be going the extra mile to tie in Trek media that wouldn't usually get a look in as far as the series are concerned. I don't remember Birth of the Federation or Bridge Commander getting a nod in Voyager or Enterprise. It seems they're taking a more holistic view of Trek media.

 

[Sakonna]

Yeah ok, well they seem to be going the extra mile to tie in Trek media that wouldn't usually get a look in as far as the series are concerned. I don't remember Birth of the Federation or Bridge Commander getting a nod in Voyager or Enterprise. It seems they're taking a more holistic view of Trek media.

I'd even go so far as to say with some of the streaming live-action seasons, the tie-in media is a necessary component for the season to work (which is a huge problem). I thought the Klingon story in season 1 Disco was mostly garbage, until the comic mini-series "The Light Of Kahless" came along to provide the backstory that made it make (more) sense.

Season 1 of Picard was an utter trainwreck, until I read two novels and a comic mini-series that completed the story.

The 32nd Century of Disco season 3 was filled with baffling inconsistencies, until Una McCormack's novel "Wonderlands" presented them coherently.

AND the character arcs of Picard season 2 played vastly better having listening to the "No Man's Land" audio drama in the lead up.

It might be the strangest feature of live-action NuTrek to me, the reliance on tie-in media not only to supplement the main story, but to make it work in the first place.

I'm so curious to see what the upcoming Lower Decks comic has to offer.

 

[Christmas Canon Spock]

Thankfully, the Star Wars prequels trained me for such a day.

 

[Unionized Elf]

For all these years, I've been convinced there were two elderly recurring background ensigns on TNG, but I just did a Memory Alpha deep dive. I couldn't find one,

Ensign Torigan, who appeared throughout TNG's fifth and sixth seasons was played by an actor who was 49 and 50 during the time.