Lower Decks - Second Contact

[Sir Will]

Well... i'm bored. Its a lazy Saturday night and the Formula 1 is late today because its in Miami. And I thought ''lets watch this review. I don't watch New Trek so why not have my first dose of Lower Decks? That'll kill fifteen minutes. It can't be that bad, after all, plenty of people on this forum have been singing its praises for months now.''

And ohmygod, what in the name of all that is holy is this shite? As in, ''every fear I had about Star Trek going animated has been confirmed.'' I HOPE that Chuck is accurate when he says that it gets better because right now... I think I need to apologise to DISCO and PICARD because this steaming turd is what bad Star Trek truly looks like. I've seen Quark grow tits to fight for equality, I've seen a planet of Africans wearing genie costumes banging sticks, I've seen a lawyer wear a shower curtain, I've seen a trained diplomat threaten to maroon his crew after letting his dog piss on a holy tree, and I've even watched a show try to make out that ''the salamander'' is the end result of flying a shuttle at infinite speed. Well hold on to your butts my friends, because the 0/10 club has a new buddy, and its worse than all of them.

He specifically said why this wasn't his first review and shouldn't be yours so don't be obtuse. It gets a lot better, though it's not for everyone and if you're closed off to any kind of change then nothing will please you so don't bother.

[CharlesPhipps]

I thought it was weird Chuck actually repeated that, "Don't watch this as a standalone" multiple times.

[shikomekidomi]

Yeah, I hated this episode, too. And the second episode was better but not by enough to save the series. Then around Episode 3 it started to win me over. It's a good thing I usually give half hour shows several episodes to win me over or I might never have winded up enjoying this series as it improved, but it makes it really hard to recommend to people. I don't want to tell them to skip too far and miss too much set-up to understand what's going on.

I hadn't thought of the Rick and Morty comparison but it's a good framework. One of the quickest things in the world to kill enjoyment in a show is when it's clearly set up to indicate a character is right when they obviously aren't to the audience.

[stryke]

Yeah, I hated this episode, too. And the second episode was better but not by enough to save the series. Then around Episode 3 it started to win me over.

I'd go further and say that I thought the show was bad and I only had it on as streaming background noise as it was on Prime. That was up until Veritas and Crisis Point persuading me that maybe there was something here, and then No Small Parts came along and it's the best dang episode of Trek I've seen since Voyager season 5.

Given most Trek usually take until s3 to get good that Lower Decks managed that s1-3 quality leap in a single season is really impressive.

[CharlesPhipps]

I like all of the episodes but I watch it with the qualification, "I do not take this seriously."

[Mabus]

The thing about Rick and Morty is that it exists in its own (multi)verse where it can do literally whatever it wants, without a care. But Lower Decks exists with the baggage of OldTrek, moreso when you had episodes which dealt with know-it-all officers that ended badly. So you can't merge the two different concepts. I made the comparison a while ago that fitting a Rick and Morty like comedy in the universe of Star Trek is like making the Austin Powers series canon in the James Bond franchise, under the excuse that they're both "fiction" or "they are ridiculous". Both series work on their own, but they aren't compatible due to fundamental differences. Same here.

So while there is some improvement later on, it's difficult to remove the stench of the first episode(s), as the whole point of a pilot is to be an introductory to the characters of the series. As the old expression goes "build a thousand bridges, no one calls you a bridge builder, fuck a goat, everyone calls you goatfucker". Only Mariner seems to prefer something else...

[CharlesPhipps]

The thing about Rick and Morty is that it exists in its own (multi)verse where it can do literally whatever it wants, without a care. But Lower Decks exists with the baggage of OldTrek, moreso when you had episodes which dealt with know-it-all officers that ended badly. So you can't merge the two different concepts. I made the comparison a while ago that fitting a Rick and Morty like comedy in the universe of Star Trek is like making the Austin Powers series canon in the James Bond franchise, under the excuse that they're both "fiction" or "they are ridiculous". Both series work on their own, but they aren't compatible due to fundamental differences. Same here.

So while there is some improvement later on, it's difficult to remove the stench of the first episode(s), as the whole point of a pilot is to be an introductory to the characters of the series. As the old expression goes "build a thousand bridges, no one calls you a bridge builder, fuck a goat, everyone calls you goatfucker". Only Mariner seems to prefer something else...

To be fair, we don't speak of "Spock's Brain."

[Mabus]

The thing about Rick and Morty is that it exists in its own (multi)verse where it can do literally whatever it wants, without a care. But Lower Decks exists with the baggage of OldTrek, moreso when you had episodes which dealt with know-it-all officers that ended badly. So you can't merge the two different concepts. I made the comparison a while ago that fitting a Rick and Morty like comedy in the universe of Star Trek is like making the Austin Powers series canon in the James Bond franchise, under the excuse that they're both "fiction" or "they are ridiculous". Both series work on their own, but they aren't compatible due to fundamental differences. Same here.

So while there is some improvement later on, it's difficult to remove the stench of the first episode(s), as the whole point of a pilot is to be an introductory to the characters of the series. As the old expression goes "build a thousand bridges, no one calls you a bridge builder, fuck a goat, everyone calls you goatfucker". Only Mariner seems to prefer something else...

To be fair, we don't speak of "Spock's Brain."

I thought it was "Shades of Gray" we don't speak of.

[Fianna]

I guess there is the question of, is Lower Decks meant to be in-continuity with the other Trek shows, or just a riff on them? Like, could you ever see live-action versions of these characters appear on one of the other shows?

[stryke]

I thought it was "Shades of Gray" we don't speak of.

Or 'Profit and Lace', or 'Code of Honour', or 'Up the Long Ladder' or well we could be here for awhile. Even the best of Trek's series had some rather offensive skeletons lurking in the closet.