Comedy is subjective.
What DON’T you like about the show?
- Thread starter Nenya
- Start date
The show is canon according to TPTB. So it is part of the general Trek universe.
There is a Peanut Hamper out there floating in the Star Trek universe version of the cosmos.
And a giant Spock.
Fifty foot Spock clone on the Phylosian homeworld, Lucifer is out there floating around, the tiny colony from "The Terratin Incident", the universe where time runs backwards from "The Counter-Clock Incident". There's nothing in Lower Decks that is anymore crazy than the stuff from TAS, and honestly, live-action Trek.
Peanut Hamper made put my finger on one of the other flaws of the show.
2/3 of the characters gave the same personality. They all talk in the same beat and tone and same bubblycasual attitude.
The tone is good at maintaining a comedic air to even the dramatic parts but it also makes it seem there’s no real personal differences between most the supporting characters except their physical differences.
If you use the “Different historians with different perspectives writing about the same fictional history” approach it’s not hard to slide Lower Decks into serious Star Trek canon. Just say, this particular historian embellishes toward the light and entertaining. Just like the TNG “Historian” embellishes toward the idealistic.
2/3 of the characters gave the same personality. They all talk in the same beat and tone and same bubblycasual attitude.
The tone is good at maintaining a comedic air to even the dramatic parts but it also makes it seem there’s no real personal differences between most the supporting characters except their physical differences.
If you use the “Different historians with different perspectives writing about the same fictional history” approach it’s not hard to slide Lower Decks into serious Star Trek canon. Just say, this particular historian embellishes toward the light and entertaining. Just like the TNG “Historian” embellishes toward the idealistic.
Or, it's just like most military personnel I know-they retell stories with great embellishments.
A bad review is often a function of the difference between the story the audience wants to see and the story the author wants to tell.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is at its core a non-Realist/Naturalist situation comedy with heavy use of cinematic subjectivity. A certain element of Star Trek fandom can only accept Realist/Naturalist action-dramas with cinematic objectivity and will react negatively to anything that violates that formula.
Fortunately, Star Trek seems to have grown to a point where it can expand beyond traditional formulas and experiment creatively.
I’d argue there are some aspects of Lower Decks that are ‘Kidding seriously’. The theme of Starfleet fixing problems then leaving them alone till they get bad again feels like a serious critique of the franchise.
Starfleet as portrayed in the show is fundamentally reactive, not proactive. And there’s elements of that in Disco and Picard too. The prime directive gets invoked as a way to say “Not our problem”, and people end up suffering until it spills over into Starfleet‘s front lawn.
Starfleet as portrayed in the show is fundamentally reactive, not proactive. And there’s elements of that in Disco and Picard too. The prime directive gets invoked as a way to say “Not our problem”, and people end up suffering until it spills over into Starfleet‘s front lawn.
That's pretty much how the franchise has presented Starfleet, especially TNG.
They don’t question it much. They portray the PD as a high ideal that’s morally questionable to go against even to prevent extinctions and Dear Doctor even enshrines that as the initial purpose. Voyager in Scorpion shows the ship impulsively siding with the aggressors in the 8472 conflict, even shows the disastrous consequences in Hope and Fear, and lets them off for it without saying they did anything wrong even after we get proof 8472 are open to reason.
As the viewers we see that pattern but it was never really called out as a defect of Starfleet.
Starfleet and the Federation have a lot of flaws which rarely got called out before, and one refreshing aspect of the CBSAA shows is that they are acknowledging those flaws and working them into the shows storylines. These shows feel like they were written by others who saw the truth in Eddington's speech comparing the Federation to the Borg.
Exactly. And, while painful, there is an optimism to go "Hey, we're flawed but we can be better."
I mean, it's in line with Kirk's line of "We're not going to kill... … today!"
And Picard's "If we're going to be damned let us be damned for who we are." Well, guess what Picard, humans are still pretty flawed, even in the magical age of the 24th century.
Mariner is the biggest reason why I don't like this show. She is obnoxious, and her nepotism keeps her out of trouble when she should've been thrown out on her butt several times over for the stunts she pulled. granted her mommy is keeping her out of trouble but still some people earned their way into Starfleet, makes me wonder if Freeman didn't pull some strings to get Mariner into Starfleet.
Probably. though, the loses in the Dominion War probably impacted need too.
Everyone keeps saying things like "Mariner shouldn't have lasted in Starfleet acting the way she did" but come on. Both her parents are Starfleet officers, her mother a Captain and her father an Admiral.
If she ever did land herself in any kind of serious trouble, there's plenty of avenues to keep her protected from repurcussions.
She's friends with influential officers like Riker.
What don't I like about the show?
That the season only had 10 episodes, I could have easily gone for twice that amount.
Also now that I've seen how good Lower Decks can be, it basically ruined DISC for me. Can't go back to that after LD.
That the season only had 10 episodes, I could have easily gone for twice that amount.
Also now that I've seen how good Lower Decks can be, it basically ruined DISC for me. Can't go back to that after LD.
We found out from her Captain friend that Mariner was an excellent student at the Academy. Whatever happened was after she was commissioned. Probably after her first promotion to LT.
It’s a fun little show, but I can’t say I enjoyed it the same way a lot of you seem to. To me, there’s nothing really of consequence to be excited about. I watch, I enjoy, it’s done. I don’t think there’s much to talk about...so it doesn’t get up to the levels of the other series I get passionate about.
I admittedly like live action better than animation, in almost any genre...so that is a bias for sure. But, these just strike me as cute little stories that poke meta-fun at Star Trek, and they don’t have a lot of value for me beyond that.
And, I love them as that...but not as a series I’d seriously consider In the running as a favorite of mine.
I admittedly like live action better than animation, in almost any genre...so that is a bias for sure. But, these just strike me as cute little stories that poke meta-fun at Star Trek, and they don’t have a lot of value for me beyond that.
And, I love them as that...but not as a series I’d seriously consider In the running as a favorite of mine.
I slept through the last 3 or 4 episodes and watched them hours later. First time since DS9 S1 that I didn't see a new episode or movie as it came out. But that could have something to do with odd schedules and being generally tired. It's still strange that I missed new Trek and only remembered hours later 
perhaps whatever happened is related to the incident that got her demoted
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