An unofficial fan community dedicated to discussion and news about Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Hello everyone!
This post is for pre, live, and post discussion of episode 110, "No Small Parts." The episode will premiere in the US and Canada on October 8th, 2020.
Please share general impressions about the episode in this comment section. If you want to discuss specific details, you can create new posts on the sub.
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As always, have a blast and go (rarely) boldly!
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So with April 5th coming up, who else is planning on making a salmon?
Already told my family, salmon for that Monday. They looked at me like I was strange.
This may sound weird to some people, but I think it's a better Star Trek show than any of the modern ones. It's episodic and procedural, so it's easy to enjoy in bite sized chunks. It doesn't suffer from the Netflix "we actually wish we were making a movie, so we only wrote one story, and are going to agonisingly drag it out over way too many episodes" syndrome.
It's written by people that really know their stuff. It subverts lots of Star Trek tropes, and has quite a few delightful Easter eggs. The light hearted side of Trek is front and centre (which I think has always been one of the best bits of Trek).
Honestly, I wish all of the modern Trek shows could be more like this one.
The episode towards the end of the season where they turn the show into a "movie" is pure freaking genius. The sheer amount of jokes and Easter eggs in that one is astounding.
I can't wait for season 2. The biggest criticism I have is that the season is way too short.
I realized how much more memorable episodic storytelling is. I enjoy going back to certain episodes. With the new serialized formats, I don't feel like watching a full season. All the episodes blend in and miss out on character development. I would rank new trek: 1. Lower Decks 2. Discover 3. Picard I would have never guessed that one!
Hopefully the current style of painfully spreading a story over an entire season is just a fad that will pass.
One of the things that annoys me the most about it, is if the story is bad, then the entire season gets ruined, this leads to the writers taking less risks with the story line, and it just ends up being "safe" and boring. Back in the golden years of Trek, the writers took risks with story lines, and it didn't matter if one or two episodes were bad, because you'd get another episode with a brand new story the following week. They weren't all winners, but you can be damn sure there were some fantastic episodes.
Hopefully they'll see the light and reach a better balance for the story telling, just like Lower Decks does.
Absolutely. I really enjoyed this as a Star Trek show. A lot of the episodes would still work pretty well with a more serious tone. There's a lot of thought put into world building here. Little things like the decals on the California class ships.
I think there's something to be said for how television as a medium has moved on, and we do have continuing stories, but there's a lot to be said for this more old fashioned type of storytelling.
And it's obvious that the creators know and love the series. The signatures at the end of the movie episode, the 3 armed alien species who'd be familiar to fans of the animated series, and all the other references and easter eggs really makes it a show for fans.
indeed, I could honestly feel like Mike McMahan made this series with love and not to mention I liked how it did take some tropes of Star Trek and riffed on them by actually exploring the ramifications like how in Temporal Edicts parodies the whole "How long will it take to get this done" with the concept of Buffer Time and that by removing it, it causes people to become overtly stressed, Badgey being a riff on all of the Holodeck gone horribly wrong and is trying to kill us plots, Much Ado about Boimler being an homage to the various accidents that occur to Star Fleet personnel, Veritas riffing on how there are a lot of trial based episodes of Trek, Crisis Point poking fun at how a lot of Trek movies go, and No Small Parts being a really solid deconstruction that just because an enemy may be rather dumb, that doesn't mean you can just write them off.
So... They just killed of the entire crew for what?
I have two problems:
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Despite working together for forever Boiler and Mariner still don't know a lot of stuff about each other and
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What was that change in tone? They literally just killed of an entire crew they made the effort to save for earlier. Similar with the guys they were on the academy with this is simply against what the show established before hand.
And now Boiler is officer on another ship? So we won't get another season?
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We've been told by the EPs that Boimler will be on Titan for the start of season two and that we will be seeing more of Riker.
where are those EPs?
Interviews with Mike McMahan are available through several of the Star Trek specialty media sites and boards.
Holy Shit, what a great show. Can't believe how bad people were shitting on this thing. I'm hooked.
Yes, I was surprised at how cute it is, how much heart it has. Loved it even though I was sceptical at first.
Absolutely loved watching this show. So cool to see something so different come out of the ST universe.
Also, and maybe it’s just me hoping against hope, but damn the last episode felt like a “back door pilot” to the show I have always wanted but never got - “Star Trek: Titan.” Since that’s never happening thanks to Father Time, an animated spinoff featuring Riker and Troi would be pretty badass. Even if it’s more comedy-ish than serious-ish.
Jonathan Frakes has been wishful hinting in his interviews.
TAS was basically a way of extending TOS and doing shit that they couldn't do live action, I'd be way down for a similar show for Riker et all.
Okay so, I didn’t want to pay to watch CBS just to watch Lower Decks. I waited for The Stand to come out and Lower Decks is by far my favorite over the stand. There’s the big Rick and Morty + Gravity Falls feeling crossover.
I mean Badgy is so Bill Cipher. 😉
I know I'm late to this discussion, but am I the only one that didn't realize until episode 9 that it was supposed to be a secret that Mariner was the captain's daughter. I guess in retrospect it makes sense, and I recall thinking early on that it felt like that was an elephant in the room that nobody had been talking about, but was it just me or did they not really do a good job of setting that up?
It’s surprisingly subtle as it’s never expressly stated. When Ransom says to Capt. Freeman that he doesn’t know why she didn’t kick Beckett of the ship is a strong implication that nobody knows the secret. If the 2nd highest officer doesn’t know, who does?
They made the Luna Class, a fan design, canon! Congrats to Sean Tourageau are in order, i guess.
I haven't seen anyone talk about the music in this episode. I love the little cues here and there. For example - around 16:30, the music reminds me of Star Trek 2 just before Kirk sends the code to disable the Reliant's shield. Loved it.
The series as a whole has some of the best TREK series music since they fired Ron Jones on TNG.
Give me more, I need a Tribble episode, more Q, mirror universe, borgs
“I was just on the holodeck with the first Enterprise. You know, Archer and those guys? What a story. Those guys had a long road getting from there to here.”
I died. I had to pause the show I was laughing so much.
This was amazing
Those Old Scientists
It's so ridiculous I love it
Hahahah freaking hell same here...i am really liking the show. The other joke that got me a few episodes back was the greatest star fleet officer of all time. Miles O'Brain!
The shit that guy went through, he deserves it
Just watched the finale again for the 2nd time.
I am NOT caught up on Post Nemesis books, but I have read 3 or 4 of the first Titan Books.
We all know the books are Not Canon.
I LOVE that they made the Titan Canon. Why did they do that? Make something Canon from the books?
Do you think they will do that with Picard, Discovery or the next lower decks or the upcoming Prodigy?
Do you think DS9 will have been Destroyed (as in the later DS9 Books?)
(Tho I think they rebuilt it)
Titan was mentioned in in the movies
Yeah but the ship design and what not wasn't shown or mentioned. And I just find it interesting they took what was shown in the books and turned it into Canon
There was a big competition to design the Titan/Luna class. The Luna class appears to be related to the Sovereign in the way that the Nebula class was related to the Galaxy, so it fits with the design aesthetic of the era and would be an appropriate design for CBS to canonize.
I believe the titan was mentioned at the end of Nemesis, but it was never shown on screen until now. In that sense, the existence of the Titan as Riker's command has always been canon. So unfortunately no, I don't think the books are canon.
Star Trek Online had a Titan class or some variant thereof.
The Titan was mentioned at the beginning of NEM during Picard's wedding toast as well.
The series was so much better than I expected, but the rikers signature warp call is absolutely hilarious and brilliant and so spot on.
I hope that becomes cannon
See that's where I'm torn with this show. I think it's awesome, but I don't REALLY think riker would lose the respect of his crew for the sake of a jokey signature warp call. Maybe, hes not picard after all, maybe he would run a much more relaxed ship. Maybe it's just an every now and then when hes in a good mood kind of joke and he goes with "engage" the rest of the time.
I can believe that he uses give me warp all the time, that seems unique enough but still sensible.
I love how Captain Freeman knew exactly what to do compared to the Solvang's captain. She's great and so is her daughter.
Seemed like a plothole to me since she somehow knew how the Solvang was destroyed even though that was impossible for her to know.
Though I suppose it could have just been intuition on what the Solvang's captain did and how it could have ended in a debris field.
She says that's probably what Dayton did.
Yeah I imagine natural instinct would be accelerate to warp and snap the cable but whoever the Pakleds stole it from likely anticipated that
That's the thing, I don’t think that is how warp works. Warp would have put every particle of the ship above light speed, so it makes sense that it would break apart if part of it was held static.
Have we seen ship try that before with physical tether?
Fair enough, the scene moves pretty fast and I've only watched it once. I guess I got the wrong impression.
I won’t say a thing about the finale- but the way it ended . . .
Are we not getting another season?! Because this is, legit, possibly the best Star Trek show to come out. Possibly ever. I love it so much and want more.
We're getting at least another season (if not more).
McMahon wants to be able to change it up. Not the same old stale "reset button" TREK we used to get.
I'm for changing the status quo, but I'm not sure how you do an ensemble comedy where your two leads don't hang out together. I suppose they made it work for a while in the Office, when Jim moved to Stamford, but I'm doubtful Boimler won't be back on the Cerritos soon.
My guess is Boimler makes some off screen faux pas and finds himself demoted/booted back to the Cerritos.
Don't forget when Trip Tucker went to the Columbia for a few episodes.
I felt the same way. But something tells me he’s going to goof up quick and get back to the Cerritos very soon into the next season. Did you see Boimler’s self-satisfied grin? Definitely a sign to me that he’s going to goof it up. No way is he going to be able to keep that going for very long, lol.
I was actually thinking we might see the rest of the crew transfer to the Titan. I feel like exposing Mariner and the Captain's relationship starts the time of how long they can work together. Whether it's because of Starfleet regulation (cant imagine it being given command of your own child (nepotism)) or because their Dynamic will change to a less entertaining one.
The only issues I could see is having Star Trek Allumni as part of the cast they might start to overshadow the Main Cast. But on the other hand it could easily connect it directly to Picard.
its been a real treat to watch all season.
I wonder why Titan is still rocking the First Contact uniform? Not complaining this is my favorite uniform.
One of the "medical mysteries" going to the "Farm" had the same uniform, and he claims to have been waiting for "months".
It does seem odd uniform rollouts are so slow, in an era when you can just digitally distribute the pattern as a replicator recipe and recycle all the old uniforms.
It's possible these are "second contact" ship uniforms, and First Contact uniforms are reserved for frontline ships?
In real life it's not uncommon for naval vessels to keep specific uniforms they were commissioned under. I like to think captains have a bit of a say in whether they switch & some might hang onto uniforms for superstition or preference.
Yeah, and this explains why Voyager keeps the uniforms they were launched with even after they re-establish contact with the Alpha Quadrant and have access to the First Contact-era uniform patterns.
That is such a specific continuity call out. Love it
Yes, I think I read further in these comments since I posted mine and it was stated in real life military commanders have a say over which uniform or the other their unit uses. So that makes sense.
Fucking uniform of the day orders.
Edit: I didn’t serve, just worked two contracts on ships on which my last the captain was a capricious fuckwad who loved messing with the regular schedule / uniform rotations.
STLD is only a year or 2 past NEMESIS. It takes time for the uniforms to change throughout the entire fleet. TNG was using the same uniforms while DS9 was using the jumpsuit design, and VOY didn't bother to change uniforms even after they re-established communications with Starfleet who were using the First Contact type.
TNG was using the same uniforms while DS9 was using the jumpsuit design
Just a quick note, DS9 and TNG had different uniforms because DS9 was a space station, and that was the standard space station uniform, while the ships had the TNG uniform. You see this when ships dock at DS9 in the early seasons. My best guess is that they streamlined into one uniform for war time to save resources, and are slowly moving away from it post-Nemesis
No, ships eventually adopted the design too. Voyager, Equinox, and even the Enterprise-D in GENERATIONS. You also see it in "guest" ships on DS9 & VOY. It wasn't a "space station" uniform.
Even in TOS there were implications that each ship had slightly different uniforms...
Riker likes it.