Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks

Tendi just wanting to play in the sand is cute.
Boimler being completely fed up with the assignment is great - he knew exactly what he was walking into, but did it anyway (I'm glad it actually had payoff at the end).
Rutherford has finally resolved badgey, and seemingly learnt nothing.
I didn't feel like mariner had a whole lot to do in this episode, she just kind of tagged along.
- No T'Lyn again.
  
  I think they want to ease her into the cast instead of suddenly having five mains.
- Rutherford has finally resolved badgey
  I don't know about calling it resolved. Badgey is now an omnipotent being currently not interested in killing Rutherford or the Federation. It might not stay that way necessarily.
  
  By this reasoning you could say that no story is resolved until the character is dead. Anybody could always come back and cause trouble.
- Rutherford learned to value his creations unconditionally without caring what other people think of them

A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn't solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.
Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn't list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she's been in Daystrom for less than two years.
IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn't an anomaly, Rutherford's got it bad for Tendi. It's kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.
- A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn’t solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.
  One can say the same for plenty of good stories like Indiana Jones.
  
  I want to disagree with this but... you're right. Heck, in Raiders, Jones actively makes the entire situation worse before the story kind of fixes itself.

An odd number of Binars… and we find the missing pair operating a bridge console at the time of the attack.
Certainly fits the profile of the other acts of treachery followed immediately by betrayal.
I have to admit, with the revelation that the ships are all being stolen with fake debris left behind… I’m at a loss as to what the endgame is.
I seriously doubt they’re being salvaged for parts. Lower Decks has already done that with the Pakleds.
The ships don’t really fit a profile. We have the huge vertical warbird to the tiny Orion vessel. The militant Bird of Prey to the sciency Binars.
Only the Orion and Ferengi vessels could be argued as sharing a mission—with their sorting of random weapons. But even if the ship is after weapons, there are better targets.
Taking the crews prisoner seems impractical.
Really, the only things the ships all have in common is a lower decker that is vindictive and gullible enough to commit treachery. But that’s not an objective, that’s a means to an end.
- With the revelation that they are being taken, I immediately thought of Pria, from The Orville. Essentially, she was an agent from the future sent to steal The Orville for future collectors. The unidentified ship is clearly extremely powerful despite its small size, which screams time traveller to me. And they seem to be taking examples of ships from all different empires, as if for a collection.
  My other thought is that it's some party trying to turn all these empires against The Federation, as, to date, no Starfleet ships have been attacked. It's not unreasonable that their neighbors could see that as suspicious, and conclude it's an advanced Starfleet attack vessel.
  
  Is it extremely powerful though? The ship doesn’t begin its attack until after an inside job has been completed, not unlike in Star Trek: Generations.
  You do bring up an interesting point with the lack of Federation ships being attacked. Though the BIA and the Bynar ship throw half a wrench into that idea. Not technically Starfleet, but not unaffiliated either.
  My personal suspicion as to why we haven’t seen a Starfleet Vessel being attacked yet is because the Cerritos is ultimately going to be one of its victims… and that’s best saved for the finale. My second guess is that a Parliament ship will be a casualty. We saw a CGI model for the first time in the Ferengi episode, but the CGI models are typically reserved for fan service (Titan, Crystaline Entity, Voyager, DS9, Soverign Class), have a lot of use (Cerritos, Shuttles), or are engaged in combat (Bird of Prey, Sh’Val, Clumpship, Texas Class, Breen Vessel).
  Also note the CGI Bird of Prey being added to the LD intro in S2, which foreshadowed the CGI battle in 3 Ships.
  The Parliament class, to date, has not really fulfilled any of those roles—which has my attention in a conservation of detail sense.
  
  I immediately thought of Pria as well. And to McFarlane's credit, at first I was trying to remember which episode of trek that was.
- Oh no.
  It's another menagerie, isn't it?
  Edit: that or the Pakleds started hiring subcontractors.

Boimler and Tendi are rarely paired up for their A/B-plots, as well as Rutherford and Mariner. I was kind of disappointed much wasn't done with that, they were just kind of ... there and it was Boimler and Rutherford's story chiefly. Not much character interaction between the duo. That made it a bit funnier when Rutherford was like "Tendi is right" and Mariner was taking a bit of umbrage to that.
- Yeah a little bit of a shame how inconsequential the pairings wound up being, but still a fun outing. Also I enjoyed how both A & B plots dealt with AI threats with one being silly but existentially deadly, and the other AI being superficially deadly but relatively harmless.

Did anybody else feel like the plot required a bit more suspension of disbelief than usual? The federation really needs to invent antivirus technology and firewalls.
- Honestly it's really fleshing out the lore about why everyone in the galaxy is so averse to AI.
  I liked the triple parallel twist that all three AI ended up just wanting nice things instead of galactic domination. That's a rare thing in superpowerful AI stories.
- The federation really needs to invent antivirus technology and firewalls.
  That sure sounds like the Federation to me.
- It was entirely absurd, and I'm here for it.
- Antivirus and firewalls aren't as useful when you can bypass shields and either physically beam or holographically project something directly into the override circuitry. You don't need to take over the computer if you can take over the controls.

Mariner and Tendi noping out on Rutherford and Goodgey was hilarious.

Bradward 'Meat Pipe' Boimler
- Now we know why he was so popular on the raisin farm.

I hope we’re done with those robots. Jeffrey Combs is a lot of fun as the evil supercomputer but I really don’t want to see anymore major plot lines around them.
- Agreed. We don't need any more computer bad guys. Besides, Daystrom appears to be tight on evil supercomputer AI storage as it is.

Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/2610545

Are we heading toward a Crystalline Entity type situation here? It looked like Badgey was orchestrating attacks/salvage but wasn't necessarily behind the actual mystery ship.

I thought it really was one of the weaker lower decks episodes. Didn't quite care about the Ferengibepisode, but it was a nod to DS9. This one, no couldn't relate to it...

Are there any trekkie groups in Cleveland Ohio? It's been so long, I don't know where to look anymore.