The fourth season of Lower Decks it was a great lesson in preparation from the pointless third season finale, which felt like it was setting up a really bright new future that just happened to be where the series was going. So imagine our surprise—and that of the group A journey‘s fandom—when we heard that the fifth season would be the last for the animated show. The good news, at least, is that the series is bowing out with a lot of the renewed energy it got last season. But it also does so by reminding us of an important lesson for any Starfleet officer: change is strengthened by remembering its fundamentals.
The first five episodes of Lower Decks‘ The 10 episodes of the fifth season see Lieutenants Junior Grade Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Boimler (Jack Quaid), Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) all managing their lives in the second-lowest Starfleet task force . ladder with aplomb. With the trust that was placed on all of them last season, it seems that the show has come so far that these characters still feel familiar with the types of fun they can have in the game. Star Trek galaxy, while also feeling that they have matured in ways that set the stage for them to become the next generation of some of Starfleet’s finest.
It’s a delicate balance the show strikes very well—Boimler and Mariner still have an electric, goofy chemistry, but they also now see and understand when to loosen up and when to be role models for the ensigns they now find themselves under. T’Lyn’s cold Vulcan exterior warms up a bit as she relaxes with her friends, and Rutherford, reacts slightly to the surprising choice made by her best friend Tendi (Noël Wells) to leave Starfleet and join his Orion family crime group in Orion. at the end of last season, he threw himself into an unhealthy work-life balance. They are still the same characters, naturally, but they feel more mature in the way they behave, and more importantly when they admit they messed up or have something they still need to work on.
That theme is heard throughout the first five episodes, which take the USS Cerritos in a series of disparate, misguided adventures as they undertake intense missions to clear the “space pits,” a mission that is both. Star Trek and it’s not the most beautiful thing in the world. It allows the show to riff on a lot of goodies Star Trek ideas, such as seeing the result of society joining the Federation and entering a post-scarcity, capitalist existence, to classics like parallel universes and the dangers of alien gray goo. It also allows Lower Decks widen its corners Star Trek fiction, finding characters and places previously touched upon and expanding on them in new and emerging ways.
There isn’t a strong season arc humming in the background this time around like there was in season four and the mystery of the disappearing ships—the dungeons are as close as they come, and that’s played with a light hand like an excuse Cerritos traveling from one end of the galaxy to the other. Instead, all the episodes are connected thematically with an important lesson for our growing heroes: that no matter how far they get in the four seasons of the show, it will always be important for each of them to open up and listen to each other. others, and share their doubts and concerns not only with each other as friends, but with fellow officers.
This is a concept that the series has touched on before, and especially considering the power dynamics that exist in the communication gap between senior and junior officers aboard a starship. But revisiting this time Lower Decks‘ a journey, in which its characters have made clear signs of growth and maturity, works very well. It doesn’t feel like the series is rehashing thematic ideas; instead, it reminds us and its heroes alike that there are lessons they will always relearn as their careers progress, and that relearning them is as important to becoming the leaders they want to be as it is to innovate and take action. new commitments. It’s a reference to a show that once went on a similar journey of learning and relearning, growing its own sense of being human Star Trek show (while maintaining its willingness to poke fun at itself and the franchise) and grows in confidence as it goes on.
Not everything works in this relearning process in the early parts of the season. Lower Decks she’s still eager to set up a big change in her status at the end of the season, only to reverse it at the beginning of the next, so it’s not a spoiler to say—especially since we’ve seen her in the trailers. the Starfleet uniform again—that Tendi’s time with her sister and Orion’s factional politics are addressed early in the season without meaningful consequences. It’s always annoying for the series at this point, but at least here it feels relatively harmless: Tendi still has a part to play in the thematic lessons applied to her friends back in Starfleet even before she reunites with them, so. it’s not like you’re particularly missing out.
But again, that’s a sign of how far Star Trek: The Lower Decks it has met its lifespan. In many ways, it’s still a fun, funny riff A journey that we fell in love when we first started, but we have grown and matured since then, that although we are very weak, we still try to say something honest and sincere, not only in this atmosphere that we love to be a part of, but the characters have developed during their work. If the latter part of the season can pay off in these lessons in maturity, Lower Decks he goes out with courage, and with a record any Starfleet officer would be proud of.
Star Trek: The Lower Decks‘ The fifth and final season will begin streaming in two episodes on Paramount+ next Thursday, October 26.
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