Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 5x05 - "Starbase 80?!"

[Avro Arrow]

Thanks for posting this image. I completely missed that joke while watching the episode: the uniforms they're selling are from officers who were killed, and they've got a few of the red, blues and yellows up front... and then a whole huge pile of extra redshirts just thrown in the back!

I think the only thing I really liked was the "Whale" scene, and the "You have Whales" line because it reminded me a lot of Jankam's line "Even the Whales are Evil" from Prodigy.

I actually watched that Prodigy episode immediately before tonight's Lower Decks episode!

 

[HotRod]

If it was so old that its crew were still using ENT uniforms, I’m surprised it had such a high number. One would think it should have been named Starbase 2 or something.

Could have been renamed at some point in the past. We know they have the ability to move large space stations. For all we know, the station might be one of the earliest Starbases and used to be much closer to the core Federation worlds.

Come to think of it, the station does remind me of this painting from Picard's quarters, which I've always thought of as a painting of an early Starbase.

 

[Paul755]

Fun little one-off episode. Felt like a mix between the pilot and S2 premiere on board the collectors ship.

 

[Uhura's Song]

Of all the ST stuff that deserved to be made fun of, I am glad the decon chamber finally made it. Deservedly so.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Of all the ST stuff that deserved to be made fun of, I am glad the decon chamber finally made it. Deservedly so.

A point of honor.

 

[StarTrek1701]

Dropping the ball in the last season. Not a good look.

 

[NCC-73515]

Thanks for posting this image. I completely missed that joke while watching the episode: the uniforms they're selling are from officers who were killed, and they've got a few of the red, blues and yellows up front... and then a whole huge pile of extra redshirts just thrown in the back!

And a Rubicon III guy's "clothes" who probably jumped into the wrong box of flowers

 

[The Wormhole]

And just why were Cassia and Gene wearing ENT uniforms anyway? Nobody even mentioned anything about that.

No one ever seems to notice whenever anyone's wearing a different uniform style. Take Voyager Message in a Bottle for example, the Doctor tells the Romulans he's the Prometheus's EMH and they believe him despite the fact he's wearing an outdated uniform, and despite the fact they're both in front of a dead officer wearing the current uniform when he says it. Or more recently, the Disco episode about the time bug, Michael and Rayner spend a couple minutes watching Disco's bridge crew, who were wearing the S1 uniforms, but it wasn't until someone addressed Saru as "Commander Saru" that caused Michael to gasp and say "we're in the past." Or later in that same episode, the S1 version of the crew somehow notice Michael has Captain's insignia, but not that she's wearing a uniform they shouldn't recognize. Except Linus, who says she looks good in red.

 

[Tuskin38]

Dropping the ball in the last season. Not a good look.

Hardly. This was one of the best of the season so far, and hardly close to the worst of the series.

Also they didn't know it *was* the final season when they made it.

 

[Dukhat]

No one ever seems to notice whenever anyone's wearing a different uniform style. Take Voyager Message in a Bottle for example, the Doctor tells the Romulans he's the Prometheus's EMH and they believe him despite the fact he's wearing an outdated uniform, and despite the fact they're both in front of a dead officer wearing the current uniform when he says it. Or more recently, the Disco episode about the time bug, Michael and Rayner spend a couple minutes watching Disco's bridge crew, who were wearing the S1 uniforms, but it wasn't until someone addressed Saru as "Commander Saru" that caused Michael to gasp and say "we're in the past." Or later in that same episode, the S1 version of the crew somehow notice Michael has Captain's insignia, but not that she's wearing a uniform they shouldn't recognize. Except Linus, who says she looks good in red.

That’s all fine and good, but those uniforms were 230 years out of date. To have Kassie and Gene wear them and not acknowledge them in any way just seemed odd to me, especially since they were the only two SB80 personnel who wore them. The interiors of SB80 were based on the TOS era. At the least, if they wanted to carry the ‘old worn-out starbase’ joke further, they should have had them wear old-worn-out TOS uniforms to match their surroundings, not ENT uniforms that looked brand-new, unless they were both into cosplay, which didn’t seem to be what they were going for. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be this anal about a cartoon, but that aspect of the episode really just didn’t make much sense to me.

 

[The Wormhole]

That’s all fine and good, but those uniforms were 230 years out of date. To have Kassie and Gene wear them and not acknowledge them in any way just seemed odd to me, especially since they were the only two SB80 personnel who wore them. The interiors of SB80 were based on the TOS era. At the least, if they wanted to carry the ‘old worn-out starbase’ joke further, they should have had them wear old-worn-out TOS uniforms to match their surroundings, not ENT uniforms that looked brand-new, unless they were both into cosplay, which didn’t seem to be what they were going for. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be this anal about a cartoon, but that aspect of the episode really just didn’t make much sense to me.

Or you could just assume they got them from the dead officer's uniform store. Sure, we see mostly 2250s+ uniforms there, but that doesn't mean there couldn't have been earlier uniforms there at some point. Indeed, given Gene was also wearing a TOS movie era engineer's vest, the SB80 crew seems to be mixing and matching from different eras for their wardrobe anyway.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

A derelict ship with the entire crew dead/missing could have had closets full of spare uniforms, at least one per crew member.

 

[Dukhat]

Or you could just assume they got them from the dead officer's uniform store. Sure, we see mostly 2250s+ uniforms there, but that doesn't mean there couldn't have been earlier uniforms there at some point. Indeed, given Gene was also wearing a TOS movie era engineer's vest, the SB80 crew seems to be mixing and matching from different eras for their wardrobe anyway.

Sure, that’s fine, although they looked far too new for 230 year old uniforms. But my point was rather that it didn’t make sense to me to have them wear those specific uniforms and have no one acknowledge them in any way, especially since this episode went crazy overboard with the memberberry callouts.

 

[Commander Troi]

A fun episode. Loved Gene being everywhere. Got a kick out of it being an anaphasic entity.

 

[jackoverfull]

It was ok but by far the weakest of this so far excellent season. The highlight was the 23rd century aesthetics, my biggest complaint was that mariner didn’t seem to know actually much at all of the station. Plot was very generic.

6.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The episode was alright I thought, but it hasn't done anything to change my feeling that this season hasn't been shining as brightly as previous years. Also Starfleet really needs to assign a proper engineer to that place, as it seemed like any random officer from the Cerritos could do a better job of fixing it up.

The Cerritos is a Engineering Ship, so they probably have a over-abundance of engineers or engineer sub-majored officers.

Why doesn't it have replicators onboard, or any kind of molecular production facilities that would be at least 23rd century standard so the crew onboard can actually maintain and fix it themselves (which you know... would be expected for a starbase of ANY kind to have)?

They're probably all broken or busted. And they lack the engineering staff to fix it.

I mean, I can understand the starbase relying here and there for some stuff, but there's really no reason for the station to be in the state it is.

If all the engineering staff transfers off base to somewhere better, where the backlog for work load isn't as high, I can see how things get this bad.

Though I'm glad the Cerritos crew helped do some maintenance service. I was hoping for them to have full blown cleanup crews on the station's exterior and interior - or at least, using automated bots for that

The Bots are either broken, or delivery of them went somewhere else more "Urgent" or "higher priority".

And you know there's a new crisis every week somewhere around UFP territory, so they keep on getting neglected.

 

[Gepard]

It's still not firing on all cylinders and I keep thinking I'm the problem.

Nah, this season really is weaker than usual.

Granted, there is the bias of this being the final season so expectations are high, but there's real foundational problems w/ characterization in the episodes so far.

• Freeman and to a lesser extend Boimler comparing themselves to their alt selves is weak motivation. With Boimler it kind of fits but he's gotten so little focus so far it's mostly relegated to gags. Freeman makes zero sense. She's never been the kind of low-self-esteem person to care about something like this, and she has zero actual knowledge of what her alt-self is doing at Starbase 80. Falls totally flat.
• Tendi spending the first two episodes w/ the Orions was a total waste. It told us nothing we didn't already know about her character and just ate up valuable screen time on cliché plots and weak ideas.
• Mariner's stories are all kinds of off this season. They haven't figured out how to handle her character growth well. It's not believable in the premiere that a couple percentage point difference in her life would make her an abusive captain. Then, the way they handled her relationship w/ Jennifer maybe would have made sense right after they "broke up" in season 3, but it's too awkward, too late now. And this week's episode is written like she's never even been to Starbase 80, despite how often she yelled "Cursed!" She doesn't know anything about the station or the people there, and is shocked to learn they're chill slackers. Seasons 1 - 3 Mariner would have thrived in the version of Starbase 80 we were shown here.

 

[Captain Fine]

The exterior of Starbase 80 looked TNG era, but the interior looked TOS era, and the uniforms were ENT era. Those anachronisms really bugged me tbh even though some people seem to like it.

If the interior is going to look TOS, make the outside look TOS too, or if the exterior looks TNG, make the inside look TNG era. And the uniforms worn should be whatever the current Starbase uniforms are. The uniforms bugged me the most.

I just noticed that the El-Aurian, Kassia Nox, is voiced by Nicole Byer (from Nailed It!). She could certainly play a live action version of her character.

The doctor, Harrison Horseberry, is played by Laim McIntyre, who was in Spartacus. Definitely wouldn't mind him in a live action show either!

Engineer Jakobowski (sic, should really be Jakubowski if it's supposed to be a Polish surname) was played by Stephen Root, and I could see him play the character, although a bit older than I'd expect for an engineer. But it is Starbase 80. I recognize him, looking through his filmography he's been in True Blood, Brooklyn 99, Book of Boba Fett, The Man in the High Castle, Veep, Fringe, etc, so no wonder I recognize him.

It would really be something if the live action Star Trek workplace comedy that is being worked on takes place Starbase 80. Would it explain the catchy "SB80" tag they were using in the show. Star Trek: Starbase 80. Or would we call it S80 to make it 3 characters lol

 

[Avro Arrow]

That’s all fine and good, but those uniforms were 230 years out of date. To have Kassie and Gene wear them and not acknowledge them in any way just seemed odd to me, especially since they were the only two SB80 personnel who wore them. The interiors of SB80 were based on the TOS era. At the least, if they wanted to carry the ‘old worn-out starbase’ joke further, they should have had them wear old-worn-out TOS uniforms to match their surroundings, not ENT uniforms that looked brand-new, unless they were both into cosplay, which didn’t seem to be what they were going for.

I rewatched the episode tonight, and I don't think that those are necessarily supposed to be the ENT uniforms in-universe. Sure, they are definitely designed to evoke the ENT uniforms and light up the nostalgia centres of our brains. But they seem to just be a blue version of the standard SB80 uniform. If you look at the collar detail, it looks identical to the other SB80 uniform collars, and nothing like the ENT uniforms collars.

There seems to be three colour variants we see in the episode: blue, yellow and green. The main differences with the blue versions are that they don't wear a belt with them, they are missing the big leg pocket, and they have the divisional colour piping on them, in a style meant to definitely evoke the ENT uniforms (and in universe were probably supposed to have been inspired by those uniforms as well). But other than that, the design of the jumpsuits seem to be the same, regardless of colour. Of course, they made the similarity to the ENT uniforms even stronger by going with the anachronistic ENT and TOS era division colours.

I don't know what the three uniform colours would signify, but we only saw the blue version on the diplomatic liaison (and station commander?), the chief engineer (sans rank pips), and the chief medical officer (who wore a tng-era medical smock over it, so we couldn't see the detail like the division colour and possible rank pips). So the blue ones are possibly for senior officers, or division heads?

my biggest complaint was that mariner didn’t seem to know actually much at all of the station.

And this week's episode is written like she's never even been to Starbase 80, despite how often she yelled "Cursed!" She doesn't know anything about the station or the people there, and is shocked to learn they're chill slackers.

Mariner actually seemed to know a fair bit about the station itself. The people, I would agree with, but if you consider the circumstances around her transfer there, it's not surprising that she didn't really put in the effort to get to know anyone.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The exterior of Starbase 80 looked TNG era, but the interior looked TOS era, and the uniforms were ENT era. Those anachronisms really bugged me tbh even though some people seem to like it.

Looked TOS movie era to me



Fits in with spacedock and Regula One's design language.