A Positive Look At: Star Trek Lower Decks

[stryke]

What a season. Compared to season 1 which took 4-5 episodes to get better and didn't get great until near the end, this had literally a single dud all the way through. Everything else has been so dang good to the point of actually managing to pull of a Best of Both World WHAM to be continued.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Woo that was goo-WAIT THE seASON IS OVER! NOOOOO! T_T

Ah well. I should probably start working on some fanfiction.

[Deledrius]

Woo that was goo-WAIT THE seASON IS OVER! NOOOOO! T_T

Yeah, quite unfortunate. Both seasons so far seem to demonstrate an ability to write well... but only for the final two episodes of each season. I wish I could be confident that S3 will start out stronger, but the way S2 began by backpedaling the improvements of S1's ending, it's hard to say if this time it will stick. I will look forward to seeing a better S3.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, they must be doing something right if they've won over you, the show's most ardent detractor on this forum.

[CharlesPhipps]

Part of the reason for the backtracking seems to be the fact that they don't want to have the characters stop being Ensigns because, well, it's about Lower Decks.

The problem being they're approaching the position of that being Harry Kim levels of ridiculous.

[Al-1701]

There's actually been discussion that it's typical for a Starfleet Officer to spend three years as an Ensign. Which means the next season could be the one where things change for the main characters. And they could solve this by having a rotating cast. Ensigns are coming out of the Academy every year, so they could create a cycle.

Year 1: The new group is introduced alongside the current cast.
Year 2: The group gets to stand on their own as the previous are promoted.
Year 3: The group welcomes then next group who comes out of the Academy.

Considering we got to see how Gomez made it to Captain, the theme of Lower Decks is you have to start somewhere, and keeping these four (except Mariner who has dodged every opportunity at promotion she can and gotten herself busted back down to Ensign when she couldn't) as Ensigns because consistency betrays that.

[Sir Will]

Love this show. This season was so great. A couple weaker episodes were still decent, not bad, and some were just fantastic.

As far as the rank issue, I'd rather we just continue following them as junior grade lieutenants. They're still low on the totem pole, there's still jokes to be had there. And they're already getting more integrated into bigger plots sometimes. I'd rather watch them continue to grow together. They can still be misfits on a misfit ship.

[Riedquat]

Forgot about this until recently and found it's on something I've got acccess to so I've just watched the first season (hate binge-watching, can't help binge-watching, do feel it spoils a show a bit though). Like most I wasn't all that impressed with the first few episodes (too much "only being a childish jerk is good!" about it) but after it settled down it improved quite a bit and managed to get some chuckles out of me. Works better when it's not trying to be so self-aware I think.

[Riedquat]

And... just got to the end of the second series, this is definitely something that really works well when it hits its best, which is telling its own Trek story with a dose of humour, with the odd nod to the past but more concerned with that original story than nodding to the audience all the time. Feels a hell of a lot more like Star Trek than Discovery or Picard (although admittedly I've only seen Discovery via Chuck's reviews). I hadn't realised I've only just caught up not longer after the second series had finished, and now I'm rather impatient for the third.

I think one good point is that at the start the main characters appeared rather more like children than junior officers. There's still a few hints of that (the character design doesn't help) but they're moving beyond it, very much so. Mariner's lost to a degree the "being a self-absorbed idiot is always right" vibe and Boimler's no longer quite a "Wesley but things go wrong" that he started off being (without quite the same annoyance), and there's more and more of the rest of the cast that's really starting to give it a bit of the DS9 ensemble vibe.

Best music in Trek for years too (I admit I do enjoy the musical nods to previous series and films).

[Deledrius]

this is definitely something that really works well when it hits its best, which is telling its own Trek story with a dose of humour, with the odd nod to the past but more concerned with that original story than nodding to the audience all the time. Feels a hell of a lot more like Star Trek than Discovery or Picard

I 100% agree.