Star Trek: Lower Decks Went Experimental as Hell, With Mixed Results

Today’s Star Trek: Lower Decks asks its shocking lead character if it’s price making an attempt to do one thing out of your consolation zone, even should you fail. At least not like its shocking lead character, Lower Decks is significantly better having tried, even when not the whole lot fairly labored out.

That shocking lead in “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption” is none aside from Peanut Hamper, the Exocomp science ensign who appeared in Lower Decks’ first season finale. There, the singular gag—recapped at first of the episode, helpfully—was that Peanut Hamper, regardless of being completely suited to assist her new associates aboard the Cerritos of their dire battle with the Pakleds, was an absolute jerk, and beamed herself away to go away them to determine it out themselves. What we study in a surprisingly muted opening credit sequence—the primary of many experiments Lower Decks goes for this week—was in actual fact simply the particles within the aftermath of the battle between the Pakleds and Starfleet, and the beginning of a complete new journey for the little sentient pc that turns into the main focus of this episode’s plot.

This is a giant swing, and never only for the truth that that is the primary Lower Decks episode with virtually virtually a completely new forged—the crew of the Cerritos doesn’t are available in till two thirds of the way in which by means of, and even then the main focus largely stays on Peanut Hamper and the tribal, avian-humanoid inhabitants of the planet Areolus that Peanut crash-lands on after her makes an attempt to cease floating in house. But it’s much less of a giant swing as a result of unfamiliar perspective and introducing a complete new world (which is dealt with fairly properly, for humor and artistic functions, taking time to discover an alien Star Trek society that, whereas tropey, is fleshed out deftly within the episode’s runtime), and extra about one other easy truth: Peanut Hamper sucks.

That’s the gag, actually, and in Lower Decks’ first season finale, her brief look being just about about the truth that she’s a horrible person-slash-computer works as a result of that’s simply it. Peanut Hamper reveals she sucks, after which she’s gone, and that’s humorous! But asking us to sit down with a personality who existed to be so explicitly unlikeable for a complete episode from their perspective—a perspective that, for essentially the most half, nonetheless sucks, and we’ll get to that—is a extremely robust ask. And Lower Decks comes so shut to creating it work.

Over the course of the episode, as Peanut Hamper spends extra time with the Areore, we start to get a basic reversal on a Star Trek hallmark—a Starfleet officer (or form of ex-Starfleet) enmeshing themselves inside a “primitive” tradition and, when their dismissal is challenged, coming to simply accept that tradition’s viewpoint and develop into a greater particular person. The attention-grabbing concept of getting such a very irascible—and really intentionally un-Starfleet—“hero” thrust into this trope shortly provides option to what appears to be an earnest retelling of that trope, and whereas not completely new, it will’ve not less than given Peanut Hamper depth being her unique existence as a singular, unlikable gag.

But then “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption” reveals that its twist is, in actual fact, a twist on a twist: the redemption of the title just isn’t real. As Peanut Hamper seemingly saves the Areore and her previous allies on the Cerritos when the planet is attacked by scavengers, it’s revealed that she truly orchestrated your complete occasion so Starfleet wouldn’t arrest her for desertion. The Arerore’s society is actually and metaphorically torn aside by the battle, Peanut Hamper is only a horrible little Exocomp, and he or she will get thrown right into a vault on the Daystrom institute with different asshole computer systems, together with beloved Star Trek recurring visitor star Jeffrey Combs, teasing a workforce up between Peanut and his evil AI Agimus from season two someplace down the road.

That finish result’s fairly enjoyable, however it additionally implies that your complete episode you’ve simply watched boils right down to “hey, this character you thought sucked? Well, maybe they don’t. Oh, hahaha: they do!” While it’s technically an prolonged joke to play in your viewers befitting a comedy collection like Lower Decks, as an episode of tv, in a present that’s confirmed it may be actually good at character growth in unlikely methods, it simply looks like a joke that’s slightly extra intellectually merciless than it’s a compelling gag. In a season that has been decidedly up and down in its method to character over comedy too, it doesn’t assist however really feel like an experimental leap for the collection that’s simply not daring sufficient to work, so it retreats to the consolation and safety of a “Gotcha!” gag.

And but, I can’t assist however reward Lower Decks for making an attempt, not like its completely unlikeable “hero” this episode. Even if this long-winded path to establishing Peanut Hamper as a possible risk down the road didn’t actually pan out all too properly, it’s a really Starfleet factor, in actual fact, to try to do good and fail—as a substitute of not making an attempt in any respect.

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