Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 1x09 - "Crisis Point"

Freeman hit Mariner's combadge, so I think they just beamed up the person who's combadge was activated.

 

I can understand why the main directive was made, the idea is not to interfere and let each people develop by themselves, it is an anti-imperialist idea, which is good.

but it can also be interpreted as "Fuck it! They don't have warp they can continue in the shit we don't care!" which makes it seem elitist! If you have warp, you are someone worthy of our help, otherwise you do not deserve everything that happens to you because you are a civilization inferior to us, the superior space beings!

 

Loved every minute of it. 10/10 and I'm going to be absolutely crushed once this season is over.

 

Someone mentioned that the electricity between the nacels was apparently a reference to a scraped idea from TMP.

Not just pre-warp cultures, remember the Federation sat back and let the Cardassians enslave the Bajorans for decades.

 

Yeah, but this episode explicitly addresses both the issues here (I hope you have seen the episode). She gets away with crap because she is a great officer who just happens to have a problem with authority and living up to expectations. Why is still not resolved, though Mariner is more aware of it now. She hasn't been kicked out of Starfleet yet, though she has been demoted (at least) twice, and we learn here that Freeman is protecting Mariner as well as she can by trying to push her to be a better officer. Maybe Freeman or Admiral Dad have also protected her in other ways in the past as part of her developing into the officer she can be. In Lower Decks Starfleet seems to be very supportive of people needing to work out who they are: witness Rutherford's division changing, that one guy ascending, etc. It all fits into Picard's "we work to better ourselves and humanity" if it requires Starfleet to be more flexible and forgiving that would be the case in a modern day exploratory/military organization.

Yeah, what Hartzilla2007 said. The Prime Directive prevents interference in any alien culture - though how far this goes is up to whoever is "not" intervening. It prevents Starfleet from both interfering in Klingon internal matters as much as any random culture we meet week to week. A subpart of the Directive prevents any contact with pre-warp civilizations as until that point any contact is deemed to be too intrusive/disruptive. Once they have warp, they are going to meet everyone eventually, so it is ok to reach out - but you still cannot interfere. The prohibition isn't elitest, it's to prevent interference in another culture because even in the best of cases Starfleet doesn't have enough information or "investment" to give appropriate inputs.

 

Not yet mentioned: Saru is an enslaved intelligent food animal.

 

Only in the Mirror Universe. There's no evidence the Ba'ul actually eat Kelpiens.

 

This is probably my first time posting about Star Trek here since Enterprise ended but this one has got to be one of my favourite episodes of the show, if not favourite episodes of Trek. I was just happy the whole time it was on, and I already loved the last two episodes.

 

So do we all agree Badgie and Vindicta must escape the holodeck?

Well Saru seemed to think it was happening.

 

Nope, sorry, I just double checked it and the captain definitely tapped her own badge, not Mariner's.

 

I have no doubts that her parents have kept her from leaving for exactly this reason. Starfleet doesn't just kick people no matter what kind of trouble they cause.

I mean, Kirk stole Federation property, broke someone out of Federation custody, sabotaged another vessel, disobeyed a direct order, violated quarantine, killed foreign soldiers under a flag of truce, and destroyed a starship. Starfleet puts up with a lot of stuff.

 

You get away with a demotion to the post you actually wanted when you save the whole damn planet

 

Only in Starfleet.

 

I'm tired but at the same time am too tired to get off of the damn computer chair to go to bed. Why am I typing this? Because I want to type a post but don't feel like really typing a full-on post, so I'll cut-and-paste what I told my brother earlier in the day. Here it comes, fast and furious. Some of these, all of these actually, are Real Time Reactions.

Cutting and Pasting...

Watching this now! I love TWOK-style credits and now they're looking over the Cerritos like in TMP. This is great! It's Lower Decks does the Trek Movies.

Now they're doing the JJ Thing.

Mariner vaporized Boimler! She should scream "Animal!"

I'm up to the Cerritos crashing. I was waiting for that. And the phaser fights were straight out of Nemesis.

Great episode so far! Now I know why you wanted to call me about it.

Got to the end with the signatures. Great parody of the movies!

One of my favorite parts was when the Engineer was tearing up looking at the Cerritos in dry dock.

Then Mariner coming back to life out of the tube and DaVinci having none of it.

 

The last scene reminded me of Buffy, from the Dracula episode.

 

Tawny Newsome's voice as Vindicta was perfection.

 

I gave the episode a 7. After most of the first season, I guess I'm used to more light-hearted fare. However, I found Mariner's actions on the holodeck extremely amoral and violent (even if we're speaking of simulations of fictional people). Her behavior was deeply disturbing and not at all funny. Her breakthrough at the end was fine, even if it was overly pat.

The references to Star Trek's cinematic adventures were somewhat humorous, but it also felt like they were killing time to a certain extent (did we really need two fake credit sequences in a 27-minute episode that _already_ features two real credit sequences?). Sure, I know these lengthy sequences — including the beauty shots — were part of the joke, but it killed the pacing for me.

I'm not ready to completely pan the episode, but it certainly wasn't a grand slam in my book.

 

People's mileage will vary, but I don't think that her actions from a moral standpoint are significantly different from people (including myself) having murdered millions of people, aliens and whatnot in video games like the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises, Call of Duty, Halo, etc.

 

Did you take giddy glee over it, especially killing recreations of people you actually know and work with every day and YOUR OWN MOTHER?!