Burnham with a Beer -- Lower Decks brings some much needed lightness back to Star Trek

Initial reaction to Episode 1 ("Second Contact") of Star Trek: Lower Decks (LD)?

I liked it. It was a fun half-hour of television and an interesting combination of Star Trek and modern-day animated entertainment.

No, it wasn't great Star Trek. No, it wasn't brilliant or ground-breaking or even surprising, to be honest.

But it was fun. And it brings a different view of the Star Trek universe from what we normally see, the view from below.

Tawny Newsome's Ensign Mariner comes across as an interesting adaptation of Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham from Discovery -- Burnham with a beer in her hand, is how I came to think of her. Clearly capable and intelligent, Mariner is brash and funny and takes no crap, doing what she believes is right no matter the Starfleet Regulations that stand in her way.

Ensign Boimler, voiced by Jack Quaid, is so far the typical straight man; Burnham without the beer or the ability. He's Riker at the start of his career, maybe, but without the attempts at boyish charm. He is Star Fleet, against whom the other characters are highlighted.

It's nice to see an Orion woman, the freshly-assigned Ensign Tendi (Noel Wells), being permitted in the Star Trek universe to break free of the stereotypical (and highly offensive) "slave girl" role that was created way back in the TOS first pilot and, for some reason, reproduced several times in later series. Even in this first episode, you can feel the tension as Boimler and, to a lesser extent, Newsome try to take Tendi under their wings.

But the highlight of "Second Contact" is the very entertaining "first contact" between Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) and Ensign Barnes (Jessica McKenna), a first date that becomes a charming running joke as the crew of the good ship Cerritos battles a virus that turns their colleagues into flesh-eating zombies.

For all of its fun, LD is not without depth. There is some serious Trek commentary going on here, mostly directed at the bridge-crew focus of earlier Star Trek series:

• The high-profile starship that made the much more celebrated first-contact with the planet completely missed the existence of an indigenous virus that could pose a significant threat to the crew of future visiting Star Fleet ships;
• The arrogant First Officer of the Cerritos, Commander Ransom (voiced by Jerry O'Connell), ignored all protocols after having been bitten by an unknown insect on the planet and his buddy the doctor failed to follow up as the two classic Trek senior male officers focused instead on their social lives and their own glory ;
• The significant contributions of the junior crew to saving the ship from the zombie-virus are completely ignored by the Captain as she records her log, giving official recognition to the efforts of her senior officers to deal with the virus, despite the fact that it was the negligence of her senior officers that created the problem in the first place.

There are enough episodes in earlier Star Trek vehicles where carelessness on the part of a senior officer leads to all sorts of peril; Commander Ransom, a frat boy in uniform, would fit well with numerous senior officers of the past, like Kirk, Riker, Paris, Archer, et al; and the crew from the lower decks is rarely recognized for their contribution or their sacrifice in Star Trek lore. 

The animation is excellent (while still retaining a "cartoonish" feel) and the writers obviously know their Trek: Mariner's spiel at the end of "Second Contact" contains a plethora of ST references, from just about every era of the franchise, many of them so obscure as to be recognisable only to the most committed among us.

No, Star Trek: Lower Decks is not art -- but after the over-bearing weight and seriousness of recent iterations, like the second and third instalments of the JJ Abrams reboot films, Star Trek: Picard and, to an even greater extent, Star Trek: Discovery, LD is a welcome breath of fresh air and fun in the Star Trek Universe.

Star Trek: Picard, Episode 10: Appalling ending to a great series

I don’t think I have ever been more disappointed in a television event than I am with the final two episodes of Star Trek: Picard (STP). I have been clear in my admiration of this most recent iteration of the Star Trek franchise, of its plots and pacing, its strong writing and acting, its philosophy.

The last two episodes toss all of that out of the window. This finale is a terrible episode, poorly paced, poorly presented that is only saved by Alison Pill’s performance as the increasingly entertaining but inexplicable Dr Agnes Jurati. But more on that in another post.

I want you to think, long and hard, about what you saw at the end of the finale, of the image that the STP creative team presented to you of what the first season of this show built toward and what it sees as the right structure of its society:

An old white man, for whom everyone has sacrificed, in the centre, two other males from racialised communities somewhat centred but supporting him, surrounded by four female characters, diverse in their presentation, in completely subordinate roles.

This is a social structure that STP and its creative team apparently believes is the proper way of the future.

All of the earlier episodes that placed strong, intelligent women in central roles, that presented equity and equality among the races, that suggested that the pre-eminence of the cis-gender straight white human male needed to be dismantled, have been undermined by this final image.

This diverse, equitable world was out of joint, STP’s final episode seems to say, and it was up to Jean Luc Picard to put it right.

STP is a show about sacrifice. And, in the end, everyone was required to sacrifice themselves… for Jean Luc Picard first, and for the human-led Federation second.

At the heart of the show’s story arc is the question of the fate/empowerment of a new race of beings: the Synths. STP’s final episode presents this theme starkly right at the outset through this exchange between Picard (the human) and Soji (the Synth):

Soji: “You choose if we live; you choose if we die. You choose. We have no choice. The organics have never given us one.”

Picard: “To say that you have no choice is a failure of imagination. Please, don’t let the Romulans turn you into the monsters they fear… The beings you are attempting to summon, they will be your salvation but they will be our annihilation.”

Picard’s first comment is remarkably offensive. He is basically saying, “We have enslaved you; we have oppressed you. But the fault lies with you – you are failing to use your imagination to make our complete power over you seem acceptable.”

And his argument that Soji should sacrifice the Synths’ one opportunity to throw off their oppression, to take control of their own fate, so that they can avoid becoming “monsters” confirms the oppressor’s right to determine what makes a “monster”. The Romulans and Federation are not “monsters” for seeking to ban and eventually eliminate the Synth race; the Synths are, however, “monsters” if they use the power they have been given to throw off the oppression they have dealt with at the hands of the organics.

Picard fought for Data’s rights as a new life form in “Measure of a Man”; he now argues that Data’s progeny must submit themselves to the exact same control and oppression that he once resisted on behalf of his officer.

The idea that “lesser races/lesser beings” must continually sacrifice themselves for the privileged (usually straight white males) is a common theme in literature, television and films. It is sad to see it replicated here, in a television series that grows out of an original series that, for all of its flaws, presented a hope for true equity and equality.

Much has been written about how STP is a metaphor for our current times – one act of terror causes the people with power and privilege to focus on further oppressing and even annihilating the race they see as being responsible. STP was argued to be presenting a better way. But in the end STP’s better way is for the oppressed to place themselves deliberately back under the power of the oppressors, to trust them to use their power kindly

After everything she and her race have gone through, with the power in her hands to change the future for her people, Soji changes her mind and agrees to throw the Synths back into the power of the Federation. She does it, apparently, because she trusts Picard and recognises his willingness to sacrifice himself for her people.

And here is what Picard says that finally sways her:

“Show them how profoundly wrong they are about you. You are not the enemy. You are not the Destroyer. If that doesn’t convince them, then they will have to answer to the Federation. We trust you to make the right choice. I trust you, Soji. I know you. I believe in you. And that’s why I saved your lives so that you could save ours in return. That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here. To save each other.”

But what kind of sacrifice is Picard making here? He is already dying. Actively dying, in fact, at the moment of his great “sacrifice”.

And how has he “saved” their lives? He has bought them a little bit of time, I guess, enough time perhaps that the painfully slow, ridiculously silly advanced Synth life-form snake thingee can finally make its way through the portal to lay waste to the organics (it was a full five minutes between the beacon being activated and the snake thingee finally starting to pass through the portal!).

And let’s talk about the very organic-centric, value-laden words Picard uses in his little speech:

·      “You are not the enemy”: the Romulans and Federation made the Synths the enemy;

·      “You are not the Destroyer”: The Destroyer of what? Of oppression? Of a corrupt power structure? Of the organics’ belief that they are entitled to rule the galaxy? We are permitted to subjugate and destroy you but you are evil if you try to throw off our oppression?

·      “the right choice”: the determination of what is “right” in this context appears to lie with the organics. The “right” choice is any choice that permits the organics to maintain power and that continues the subjugation of the Synths.

·      “We’re here to save each other”: this only applies when the organics are at risk; when no such risk existed, then the Synths could be subjugated, murdered even.

The creative team has Soji buy Picard’s organic-centric, oppression-continuing bullshit on behalf of her entire race (why do none of the other Synths intervene? They are hyper-intelligent, independent thinking, autonomous beings yet they simply permit a newly-arrived Synth to make all the decisions on behalf of their race).

And yet Soji was given two clear examples, in the five minutes that precede that pivotal decision, that the humans from the Federation have not changed, that they still believe they have the right to “choose if we live… choose if we die”.

First, Soong finds evidence that Sutra (the leader of the Synths) killed another Synth. He conducts no investigation, holds no trial, gives Sutra no chance to contest the evidence or defend herself, and kills her in front of the entire tribe of Synths. He executes her. An organic executes a Synth with no hearing in front of all of the other Synths and no one says “boo”.

Second, that grenade that Rios tossed? That Rios attempted to set off at the base of the beacon, in the middle of the entire Synth community? Based on the explosion we witness in the sky, would it not have killed everyone in the area of the beacon? If not by the mere force of its explosion but with the additional carnage caused by flying shrapnel from the beacon itself? Does not a group of organics (Soong, Raffi, Rios, Narek and Elnor) decide that it has the right to choose if the Synths in the area live or die? And make that decision in front of the Synths they are careless about killing?

Despite this, and despite the history, Soji chooses (on behalf of her entire race) to give up the only chance the Synths have to escape the yoke of oppression and place herself at the mercy of the Federation.

Based on the sacrifice and a few words of a dying cis-gender straight white human male who has a history of lying and of failure.

And this is what the STP creative team is presenting to us as the right and proper path for the future of the galaxy. Where is Gene Roddenberry when we really need him?

Star Trek Picard, Episode 9: Philosophical Depth, Deep Plot Holes

In the three-film TOS series, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home, Star Trek wrestled with the philosophical axiom that suggests that “the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one”.

First, Spock, the one, sacrifices his life to save his shipmates, the many, from certain death; then, in a dramatic but apparently illogical turn, Spock’s shipmates (the many) are prepared to sacrifice their lives and their careers to save Spock (the one).

Now, in Episode 9: “Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 1”, Star Trek: Picard (STP) returns to the similar ground but with much higher stakes and a racial issue at the core of the conversation.

When Soji asks Picard, in an eerie scene filled with quiet tension, about the logic of sacrifice, if it is acceptable to kill some to save others, Picard says, quite logically, “I think it depends if you’re the person holding the knife”.

In the conflict between the organics and the Synths, until now it has always been the organics holding the knife. The Romulans, through the Zhat Vash, have refused to permit artificial intelligence and synthetic life even to begin to exist in their society. The Federation, meanwhile, was content to develop AI and then synthetic life as long as such life served the organics but struggled with the idea of permitting the synths to escape the bonds of ownership and servitude: if I’m not mistaken, the issue was first discussed In TOS’s “I, Mudd”, in which Kirk and his crew defeat the efforts of a group of robots to begin to exert their independence; it has been taken up over and over again throughout the franchise, up to the development of Data and his kin and the emergence of the Borg as the principal enemy.

In STP, the knife moves squarely into the hands of the Synths. We learn that the Admonition is, in fact, a warning to the Synths and an offer – by an alliance of synthetic life living beyond the galaxy – to step in and save synthetic life in this galaxy as it develops and evolves.

They may be small in number on Coppelius but they have a massive big sister waiting in the wings and they aren’t going to let themselves be bullied any more.

It’s a thrilling concept and one that I hope to goodness doesn’t end in the Synths on Coppelius agreeing to give back the knife, to place themselves at the mercy of Picard and the organics. I’m sick and tired of stories where anyone who is "different" (not white, not male, not straight, etc.) sacrifices themself for the power group (see Black Panther…)

Despite its interesting philosophical undercurrents and a couple of great moments, however, I don’t think “Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 1” is a great episode. In fact, after that “Rag” embarrassment, I think it’s the worst so far.

We can only hope the next and final episode will be significantly better and will address some challenging questions.

Is this the culmination of Picard’s fall? His hubris bringing about his end?

Is this finally the moment when one of the many superior species our Federation friends have encountered (like the Organians, the Metrones, the Q) will say, “enough already”, and wipe organic humanoids for once and for all out of the galaxy?

Are we finally experiencing a Star Trek reality where female-identifying characters are actually and truly equal or perhaps in ascendance?

Alison Pill continues to wow with her performance as Agnes Jurati. That scene where Sutra approaches Jurati to perform the Vulcan mind meld and force the human scientist to relive the horrors of the Admonition is remarkable – in the space of perhaps five seconds, Pill manages to convince us, with her wide eyes, her trembling lip, her frozen visage, that she is about to experience hell for the second time.

There are a number of other fantastic moments in this episode as well:

·      The sight of the Borg Relic emerging from the transwarp corridor;

·      The quick conversation about the morality of simply letting Narek die in his apparently disabled ship, which foreshadows Soji’s growing uncertainty and the greater philosophical questions to come;

·      The sudden appearance of a brash Seven of Nine in the wreckage of the Cube;

·      The attack of the flowers and the dialogue that goes with it: “I want to say like a giant flower.” “They hit us with a flower?” “It looked like an orchid.” “What is it?” “I’m pretty sure we just call them orchids”;

·      Sutra’s explanation of natural evolution: “Organic life evolves, yearns for perfection. And that yearning leads to synthetics.” Followed by fear;

·      That final shot of the massive Romulan Fleet; and

·      The neat Star Trek touches: the red alert sounds on LaSirena, the appearance of an old-style medical tricorder; the single purr of a tribble on the soundtrack when Raffi gets the imagination repair gadget; and the appearance of Spot 2, in honour of Data’s cat from TNG.

But so many plot holes come gaping through in this episode, both specific to it and more general to the entire series, that I had a hard time focusing.

When Narek emerges from the Transwarp Conduit, Picard demands to know how he traced them to Coppelius. Soji says, “He must have extrapolated from our last known course and position.” Yeah, no. La Sirena shook Narek from her tail when Jurati expunged the tracker from her body, before they arrived at Nepenthe to meet up with Picard. Narek was not even able to follow them to Nepenthe. After Nepenthe, La Sirena set course for Deep Space 12, then changed abruptly to head toward the Transwarp Conduit. There is no way Narek could extrapolate from those course changes and end up back on their tail.

Since this is nonsensical, someone should have challenged it. And suspected either that Jurati still had some part of the tracker in her or that she or someone else on the ship was updating the Romulans on their movements.

When Soji takes over La Sirena and points her in the direction of the Transwarp Conduit, intelligence mastermind Raffi has never heard of the Borg Transwarp Network. Yet, a short time later, minor league private pilot Rios shows himself to be intimately familiar with the Network to the extent that he can challenge Soji about the folly of entering the Conduit without setting up a structural integrity field and a chroniton field (see below for my commentary on how ridiculous this is, considering Star Trek history).

The creative team (writers in particular) continually forget or ignore the remarkable powers of the synthetic life forms on Coppelius in order to find easy ways to move the plot forward:

·      La Sirena’s crew discusses how they should proceed after crash landing: go to the crashed Cube to look for survivors or head to the settlement to warn the synthetic community of the approaching Romulan fleet. Time seems to be the issue. But Soji, as a Synth, can move much faster than the others – she could and should cover the ground to the settlement on her own in mere minutes;

·      Synths’ hearing is so acute they can hear the changes in the functioning of the bodies of life forms around them. When Sutra speaks her nefarious plan to Narek, then, wouldn’t the rest of the Synths in the settlement hear her and perhaps intervene to stop her from committing the murder of a Synth and setting Narek free?

·      How is it that not a single Synth took off in pursuit of Narek? With their remarkable hearing and superior speed, they should have been able to catch him quickly; and

·      How is that a Synth can be killed simply by shoving a piece of jewelry into her eye?

And then there is the Jurati issue. Picard has known her for, what, two months or so? Rios even less? During that time, she has murdered a former colleague and lover in cold blood, proven to have a tracker from the Zhat Vash in her body, displayed signs of significant distress caused by The Admonition, and yet Rios is so madly in love with her and Picard feels such strong loyalty to her that they keep her around and permit, in the end, her to remain with the Synths? I love the Jurati character but this fealty to her is beyond the limits of reasonable suspension of disbelief.

Not to mention the Romulan Fleet itself. 218 ships, brought together in rapid order, to support a secret order that few Romulans even know exists. Where were these 218 ships 20 years ago when the Romulan homeworld and the entire Romulan population were about to be destroyed? How is it that Picard takes all the blame for the failure to evacuate the Romulan people when it seems like he was the only one who actually tried, when the massive Romulan fleet seems to have sat by without helping? And now they come together to go to a planet to murder a small colony of Synths that has shown absolutely no aggressive tendencies to date and has no planetary defences? And once the Romulans found out, as they do in the last scene of Episode 9, that the planet is helpless, wouldn’t, oh I don’t know, about 215 of the ships go back to their other duties since three Romulan vessels should be enough to pulverise Coppelius?

Speaking of which, let’s talk about Coppelius itself. We are told that Bruce Maddox fled to Coppelius twenty years ago after the Mars attack. He set up his research and was apparently joined by Soong. We know that the incident with the ibn Majid took place some years ago – they may have said exactly how long ago but I don’t remember it so my best estimate is a decade. Maddox and Soong had, within 10 years of arriving at Coppelius, built a Synth community of sufficient size and complexity that they were able to send out a small ship to make first contact with a Star Fleet vessel.

We also know, that around three years ago, Maddox created Soji and Dahj and sent them out to seek positions within the organic humanoid society – one at the Daystrom Institution, the other on the Borg Relic – on some secret mission that we have yet to understand.

What I’m wondering is: wouldn’t the settlement on Coppelius be larger and further advanced than it is shown in this episode of STP? Wouldn’t the Synths have developed significant planetary defences, knowing that the Romulans were actively seeking to wipe them out and the Federation was no ally either? Wouldn’t they at least have built a couple of ships and about a million more orchids to defend themselves? Wouldn’t they have developed a more structured form of government, perhaps even a robot-driven industrial capacity to build stuff for them? If Synths don’t need to sleep or eat (perhaps they do), wouldn’t the 300 or so of them have accomplished much more than is shown?

This episode feels sloppy to me. It takes too many short cuts and asks us to accept too many flaws (character and plot). It feels like they realised they have only two shows left and suddenly had to rush to cram things in. While the first eight episodes of Star Trek Picard were generally well plotted and beautifully paced, with characters and their relationships developing in organic (pardon the pun) ways, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 1” proves disappointingly disjointed, its emotional moments forced and its plot developments often non-sensical.

We can only hope that Part 2 makes up for these weaknesses and helps STP Season 1 go out on a high note.

If you’ve made it all this way through my turgid prose, thank you. You will be forgiven for not continuing to read my pedantic exploration of the following Star Trek related problems I found in this episode and in the series as a whole:

·      The Borg Transwarp Network:

o   Is described in the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager as a vast network of “corridors”, joined together by six “hubs” scattered across the universe, with corridor exits all over the place;

o   Is entered and traversed by Voyager, in that same episode, without requiring the emission of any special particles and with no significant turbulence;

o   Produces “graviton emissions” that are “off the chart” when a ship emerges from it, as portrayed at the end of the Voyager episode;

o   Is, in the words of Seven of Nine in that same episode of Voyager, “obliterated” by the joint efforts of Admiral Janeway and Captain Janeway;

o   Is described by Soji in STP Episode 8 as the Borg Transwarp Conduit Network, which still exists and has access points called “Nodes”;

o   Requires the generation of a structural integrity field and a chroniton field to enter and traverse without being damaged by “gravimetric sheer”, according to Captain Rios in STP Episode 8; and

o   Permits others, like Seven, to open other Transwarp Conduits apparently whereever they need them.

·      Particles, Particles, Particles:

o   Rios says a “chroniton field” is required to enter and travel through a Borg Transwarp Conduit;

o   In the film Star Trek: First Contact, it is established that the emission of chronometic particles permit travel through time, not through the Borg Transwarp Network;

o   In that final episode of Voyager, it is established that tachyon particles must be emitted to travel through time, contradicting First Contact;

o   But no particular particles are required to enter and travel through a Borg Transwarp Corridor in that Voyager Episode; and

o   Exiting a Transwarp Corridor is established in that Voyager episode to produce enormous amounts of gravimetric energy.