Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x09 "The Inner Fight"
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x09 "The Inner Fight"
Logline
Who knows? They never released one.
Edit: They finally released one - how novel to release the actual episode first!
Captain Freeman assigns the Lower Deckers an overly safe mission to try and keep a self-destructive Mariner out of danger.
Written by: It's a secret (it was Mike McMahan)
Directed by: We're not tellin' (it was Brandon Williams)
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This episode was okay, I guess? It feels very strange to be sitting on one half of an obvious two parter from this show, and recent Trek shows have left me with an instinctive suspicion of mystery-related plots. This is a good writing team so I have hopes they'll carry this rather bizare setup into a satisfying resolution that actually makes sense, but I'm much more nervous than I usually am.
To play it all out: why the heck is Nick Locarno flying around in a little ship capable of disabling the systems on larger warships, transporting(?) the ships and crews to some planet while leaving wreckage behind? If this turns out to be another figurative Kelpian dilithium tantrum I'm not going to be pleased.
I like what they were trying to do with Mariner in this episode, but for whatever reason it didn't land quite right with me. Her whole pivot into even-more-than-normal overtly reckless behavior three episodes after the supposed precipitating event felt very abrupt, and the scene where she talks it over and appears to resolve her issues with Ma'ah felt rushed, almost forced. The Sito Jaxa makes reasonable sense as a backstory component, but I found it distracting and it does add to the "small universe" syndrome that expanding IPs risk falling into. Further, the "your dead friend wouldn't want you to have emotional problems" bit is a cliche that rarely lands with me, and this time was no different: these aren't problems that people can typically resolve simply by recognizing that their emotional reactions are irrational, so being won over with a rational argument isn't very convincing. It speaks well of Mariner and Rodenberry's future humans that this worked, I guess, but it does make it less relatable.
Maybe I'll be sold more easily on rewatch. We'll see.
The B-plot with Freeman and her deception was decent, although as noted elsewhere Rutherford's presence feels oddly tacked on. I guess they wanted an engineer around, just in case?
The Jaxa connection does give us a better shot at nailing down Mariner's actual age, which was presumably somewhere between 17 and 22 (and likely on the later end of that range) at the time of the Nova Squadron incident in 2368. That puts her in her early- to mid-thirties, and lines up well with her service record. We can also confirm that Mariner was not a young child aboard the Enterprise-D, which launched when she was in her mid to late teens.
To play it all out: why the heck is Nick Locarno flying around in a little ship capable of disabling the systems on larger warships, transporting(?) the ships and crews to some planet while leaving wreckage behind?
He's not. He's making deals with the lower deckers of those ships to make it look like his ship can do all that. They say in the episode that the lower deckers of the kidnapped crews are disabling the shields and weapons. Then he makes off with the crews and some of their technology for reasons yet unknown, abandoning the command staff on planet Knife Rain to fend for themselves.
Oh, man, I totally missed this when I watched the episode...I remember bumping a little when I heard the line "I was betrayed by my crew," but just being confused instead of grasping the implications. The whole thing makes way more sense now. Thank you for spelling it out for me!
I'm so glad StarTrek.website is here for this kind of thing--it made my life better today!
Her whole pivot into even-more-than-normal overtly reckless behavior three episodes after the supposed precipitating event felt very abrupt, and the scene where she talks it over and appears to resolve her issues with Ma’ah felt rushed, almost forced.
Agreed. It's tricky injecting serious notes into an all-out sitcom and I'm not sure it worked as well this episode as it might have.
The Sito Jaxa makes reasonable sense as a backstory component, but I found it distracting and it does add to the “small universe” syndrome that expanding IPs risk falling into
Again, agreed. Lower Decks has as much (more even) blatant fan service as Picard season 3, although because it is a comedy I find it more forgivable and less grating than I did in the other show. That said, "Lower Decks" is my favourite TNG episode, so appreciated the Sito Jaxa callback for that reason (and it was a nice way of connecting this series and the episode it was named after). As long as they're not foreshadowing her return. That would be very very bad. They thought about bringing her back on DS9 but wisely refrained. Keep your hands off Sito Jaxa's corpse McMahan!!
Lower Decks has as much (more even) blatant fan service as Picard season 3, although because it is a comedy I find it more forgivable and less grating than I did in the other show.
Agree with your agreement here. If I unloaded my feelings about all the fanboy moments in Terry's Picard, it would actually be unpleasant to read...so I won't. How about I just say that you're super right about Sito Jaxa, too. I thought the connection to that episode was very sweet, and really enjoyed hearing Mariner talk about how much the Dominion War sucked, too. It made sense to me that she'd be more comfortable getting that out with a stranger than her friends, at least when I think about the guys I was in the Navy with.
Lower Decks, the TNG episode was an amazing episode. I almost cried at the end - it was so sad and poetic as well and I agree that reviving her now would undo the beauty and weight of the TNG episode.