Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x03 - "We'll Always Have Tom Paris"

Well, that was as much fun as last week. I enjoyed all te plotlines.

"Command staff always comes back fro the dead!" Heh.

Plus, DS9 shoutouts!

 

This includes no films, "The Menagerie" as one episode and the remaining two-parters as two separate entries. (And "The Cage.")


(OC should be PIC... this is what happens when I type too fast.)

 

This case is a parody of reset buttons.

 

Series premieres and finales were never double length episodes split into 2. After a cliffhanger finale, the next seasons premiere wasn't even written yet (most of the time) and filmed months apart (after the hiatus). So, in their original format, they were two separate episodes. The only episodes (in TNG) that might have been written at the same time and filmed as one was something like "Chains of Command", an intra-season two-parter.

 

This was fun to watch, but was also a little too much inside baseball. I loved the joke about coming back from the dead. And I'm glad their pairing off the characters in different combinations.

Overall, a middle of the road LD episode, which still makes it good Trek!

 

"It's always Christmas in the Nexus" made me snort. The rest didn't. But that's just me in 2021. I like the different concepts in the episode playing out with each character. It was kinda fun.

We comin for you Doctor Who.

 

Soooo... now they have two chiefs of security?

 

Was the being brought back to life by the Borg a reference to how Captain Kirk was brought back to life in the Shatnerverse novel The Return? If so, could this mean that Kirk alive in the LDS era?

 

I liked this episode a great deal. Probably a tie with last week, but way, way better than the season premier.

The highlight by far was the A plot with Mariner and Tendi. What really made the episode work for me is that Tendi is finally treated as a real person with some depth, and not a cheerful joke conveyance. I actually loved that the episode lampshaded not only how little Mariner actually knew about Tendi, but how little we knew about her as well. Both of them also got complete, coherent character arcs over the course of the episode, with their relationship breaking down and reforging into something much stronger than what was there before. Which is why the comments regarding the "reset button" confuse me.

As for the remainder of the episode, it was fine. Rutherford's misadventures trying to find out why Shax came back from the dead was amusing enough. I was a bit let down by Boimler's plot with Tom Paris - mainly because Paris as a character was more or less irrelevant to the episode - with only Boimler's obsession with Paris actually being meaningful. Still, the strength of the A plot - which was IMHO one of the best LDS has done yet - was enough to overlook pretty humdrum use of the rest of the characters.

 

It was more likely a reference to Voyager, where Seven brought Neelix back from the dead.

 

Good point, you're probably right. I hate it when I get my hopes up, though.

 

I think it's more likely they are counting both episodes of "The Menagerie" and not counting "The Cage" at all, since despite airing on tv in the 1980s, it isn't really an episode. In fact it's more like one of the movies, a stand alone story without a series.

 

I count "The Menagerie(TOS)" as two separate episodes and thus the entirety of TOS as 80.

 

Man, my favourite of the season, so far.

Everything landed, for me. The Mariner and Tendi storyline was great, as a way to let us find out more about them. Mariner served on DS9, back when Sisko was commanding officer? F’n awesome (and explains how she’s referred to her friendship with Worf, throughout season one).

Boimler’s stuff was fun, and the Kazon reference tickled me. I’m happy with how Paris was used, given he’s likely going to spend most time with senior officers, meaning we wouldn’t see him too much given we follow those on the lower decks.

On that note, the return of Shax is brilliant. Don’t get me wrong, at first I was slightly put off, but the more minutes that passed, the more I realised how brilliant a use of the shows premise that it was.

How many times have we seen the whole crew be led to believe that a main character has died? Many. And, how many times has the main character returned? Also many. The idea that no one would go to the effort of explaining that to lower ranked officers feels entirely believable, and whoever thought that up in the writers room is a genius.

 

Agreed wholeheartedly.

 

I did like they seemed to be making some references to the novels.

 

There's also the VOY episode where Harry's crewmate and friend dies and she's later brought back to life in an alien body, rejoining the crew.