Lower Decks Season 4

[m4a2000]

Episode three brings more T'lyndi which if I had to be honest is nice, but I figured she'd be more proactive and just help Bomiler instead of just staying on the sidelines for most of the episode. Technically he doesn't outrank her even if he is in command of the mission.

Mariner: You have been around the block enough times and act like a yo-yo going up and down ranks. She should have known it was hazing. Hazing is not new to Star Trek... Just look at Worf in Generations. Seeing the trio try to stop their payback was fun.

And if this isn't a plus one: A not evil AI! Woot! I mean Freeman didn't help things, leave the work to the engineers and don't micro like Janeway, but it was great to not have another evil AI to the list. We all know we're getting one later this season, cough Badge cough, so yeah.

[stryke]

I think I might be one of the most kindly disposed to Lower Decks on this forum, so when I say there was a moment this week that was waaaaay too dumb, even for me, that's really saying something.

Thankfully that was just part of the B plot, and the A plot was frequently laugh out loud great.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

What moment was too dumb for you?

[hammerofglass]

Was it the captain going along with the Mark Twain plan without asking any questions?

[m4a2000]

The Mark Twain part hurt the most.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Somebody made an interesting post about how Tendi is an unreliable narrator about certain aspects of Orion culture https://www.tumblr.com/mai-komagata/729 ... arrator-in

[hammerofglass]

Isn't the whole joke that Tendi is a blatantly unreliable narrator for every aspect of her culture?

[stryke]

Was it the captain going along with the Mark Twain plan without asking any questions?

Spot on, the cut to the two captains in Twain get up was just such a WTF it was too much for me.

[clearspira]

I think ''Something Borrowed, Something Green'' could have been great (and yeah, you won't hear me say that often) if they had followed the Futurama model of the ''snu, snu, Amazon women episode'' which is absolutely hilarious in the way it sends up the whole concept of sexism and of matriarchy. Fry and Zap and sexist pigs, Leela and Amy are sexist pigs, Kif is adorable, the Amazon women are infinitely quotable. And its run by a female AI which would be something straight out of TOS.

Futurama in general is quite good at this. One later episode called Neutopia had all of the crewmembers first lose their sex and then swap sex. Again, it was very funny. It played on stereotypes and sexism in a funny way. Everyone is a pig and everyone gets at least some comeuppance.

But LD ''SBSG'' isn't smart. Its actually quite lazy. As Bernd over on Ex Astris Scientia notes, ''Women are in charge everywhere on Orion. They are tough and aggressive, whereas all men without exception are sexual objects, suckers for pheromones or just dumb.'' That's boring. There is nothing funny or imaginative about the way Orion is presented to us. And worse is that there is a joke that genuinely made me laugh and that was the idea that the whole pheromones thing was made up to preserve Captain Archer's reputation. I can see Chuck coming up with that one.

And yeah, the Mark Twain bit was shit. Although i'm not really going to blame this one on LD too hard because the Mark Twain bit on TNG was shit as well. Sorry, a lot of you love that episode, but I refuse to believe that one of the giants of Western literature and noted intellectual was a cross between Colonel Sanders and Groucho Marx.

[CharlesPhipps]

And yeah, the Mark Twain bit was shit. Although i'm not really going to blame this one on LD too hard because the Mark Twain bit on TNG was shit as well. Sorry, a lot of you love that episode, but I refuse to believe that one of the giants of Western literature and noted intellectual was a cross between Colonel Sanders and Groucho Marx.

To be fair, Twain and Groucho were two of the great humorists of their time and some of the all time great insult hurlers.

I just believe Twain would have ripped the Federation a new one in such a way even Picard would have been quivering in a little ball somewhere.