Star Trek: Lower Decks’ third season has opened in a humorous means. Not “ha-ha” humorous, though there’s nonetheless loads of that available. Instead, it’s of a extra peculiar type—the inescapable feeling that, irrespective of how good the gags stay, the present is not sure what steps ahead it needs to take with its most important characters.

In truth, the maybe fittingly named “Room for Growth” appears like a little bit of a step again, in a season up to now that has felt like a partial reset for the established order of Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford—who have been on their strategy to rising past a little bit of their Lower Decker standing over the course of their arcs in seasons one and two. The present additionally feels prefer it’s pondering the query of simply the place precisely they need to be of their journeys to evolve as Starfleet officers proper now. A couple of weeks in the past, it felt like Boimler and Mariner have been beginning to be taught from one another after this reset, after which final week, the present veered sharply to reassure us that really our heroes are nonetheless cool and effectively cherished for every part they’ve gotten to do. Now, this week, there’s a good stranger lesson on the finish of the day: our heroes are literally type of jerks?

Let’s step again a bit first. “Room for Growth” splits the group throughout the A and B plots as soon as extra. After an homage to the TNG episode “Masks” places the engineering division, Rutherford included, into overdrive, a responsible Captain Freeman whisks them away to a spa ship for necessary R&R. Taking the chance of the captain’s absence within the A plot in the meantime, Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner hatch a plan to subvert a ship-wide lottery for higher high quality rooms on the higher decks in a race in opposition to time in opposition to their arch-nemeses in Delta shift.

The A-plot is the place “Room for Growth” feels prefer it hits a snag that it’s saved hitting this season. As enjoyable as it’s to see Bomiler, Mariner, and Tendi worm their means by means of rarely-seen components of the Cerritos to try to beat Delta Shift at their very own sport, there’s an underlying meanness to the entire endeavor that feels off for the trio. It turns into much less about wanting a greater residing area for one another on the ship, and extra about simply denying Delta shift—who’re likewise Lower Deckers—the pleasure, till the seeming “twist” of the story is that each teams get caught in a upkeep shaft alongside the way in which, forcing them to sit down down, really discuss to one another, and discover out simply how alike they are surely. It’s a studying second that lets our heroes perceive that they aren’t the one ensigns on the ship—and that for all our focus on them, there are others in conditions as shitty as theirs coping with all this Star Trek weirdness too.

Or it will be, if not for the precise twist to be a twist in flip—the minute they’ll get out the upkeep shaft, the Delta Shifters race off to go away Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner behind, their understanding gone instantly. They suck, and our heroes suck as a result of they’ll solely consider getting revenge (and solely resolve to not sport the lottery of their favor once they do beat Delta Shift to the console they should override, as a result of they suppose successful a single room will break up their friendship and make the Deltas depressing). And when it seems the Deltas win the lottery and resolve to share the brand new, bigger room they’ve acquired collectively, Mariner, Bomiler, Tendi, and now the returned Rutherford on the climax of the episode get to be bitter collectively that, blinded by their pettiness, they didn’t consider such an apparent thought both.

It simply feels unusual, a bizarre mishmash of some shades of recognition—our trio solely makes it so far as they do because of Boimler embracing the boldness he aspired to a couple weeks in the past—and but additionally regression, that these model of the characters we’re seeing may’ve leapt out of one in all season one’s earliest episodes, not proper now in any case they’ve been by means of and ostensibly grown into. It’s made even stranger, actually, by how a lot better the “minor” aspect of issues in “Room for Growth” really nails this concept. While Boimler, Mariner, and Tendi are gallavanting by means of the Cerritos, on the spa retreat an exhausted Captain Freeman finds herself quickly spiralling as she makes an attempt to get her engineers to only sit down and loosen up for just a few hours, just for them to endlessly discover methods to subvert her needs and work away at issues they’ll repair and tweak across the station. In the top, it drives her to a burnout state, prompting the saddened engineering crew to come back collectively and scratch-build a leisure sales space for her—and to be sincere together with her that, whereas her coronary heart was in the proper place giving them necessary leisure, she wasn’t listening to what they really wanted and wished to do to alleviate their stress.

It’s principally the identical plot as the principle thrust of the episode, simply really executed in a means that makes it really feel like these characters have been having tales for 2 seasons earlier than this and have grown past their comedic archetypes on the present. Freeman actually cares for her crew, however was making an attempt to make a sq. piece slot in a spherical gap out of delight and in displaying that compassion. Her engineers love their jobs to a maybe harmful quantity, and are prepared to go the additional mile to indicate her simply what they should preserve doing what they love doing. When every get together is sincere with one another, they arrive to a greater, happier understanding of one another.

It’s such an odd factor to see this episode come to that type of realization and each concurrently nail it and utterly whiff it in its opposing narrative threads. But it’s maybe becoming for a season that has gotten out on such an uncharacteristically uneven begin for an in any other case extremely assured present like Lower Decks. Unsure of what it needs to say about its characters between one joke and the subsequent, the one factor we will hope is that there’s sufficient glimmer of what makes the present work nonetheless there week to week—and that quickly sufficient it’ll be sufficient to get this season again on monitor.

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