with Jim Moorhouse

“Moist Vessel,” the latest very enjoyable episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks’ first season, returns to the last-minute twist from the series premiere, which revealed that Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) is the daughter of Captain Freeman (Dawn Lewis).

The episode explores that relationship further, and it turns out that like a lot of Star Trek’s family relationships, it’s complicated. But perhaps in that complication – aided by a crisis aboard the Cerritos and its sister ship, the USS Merced – we learn a bit more about both characters and what drives them.

Since the premiere of Lower Decks, Mariner has been portrayed as relentlessly independent and individualistic. It’s her character’s defining feature, and we learn why in this episode: as a response to her mother’s overbearing parenting. It turns out that Freeman is an overly protective parent, and Mariner’s way of rebelling is to push too far in the other direction.

While it’s clear by the end of the episode that both Mariner and Freeman understand each other a little better, it’s also apparent to Mariner that she’s not ready to work side-by-side with her mom as an “unstoppable mommy-daughter team.” So the rebellious ensign purposefully gets herself demoted again by making “fone” of a stuffy admiral who mispronounces words.

Meanwhile, Ensign Tendi (Noel Wells) is on her own journey of discovery; after disrupting an ascension ceremony for a fellow crewman, Tendi desperately attempts to make up for it and inadvertently helps that crewman complete his mission to ascend to a higher plane of existence. As someone who also doesn’t like knowing that someone doesn’t like me very much, the cringe factor of watching this storyline play out was extremely relatable!

Now that the show has mostly settled into a rhythm for its characters, it would be nice to see the character combinations begin to change up. While the key foursome of ensigns share several scenes together, the A and B stories from the last three episodes have mostly seen Boimler teaming up with Mariner and Tendi working with Rutherford.

I would enjoy seeing that mixed up in later episodes so each of the four ensigns get more of a chance to interact with each other.

Trek Trope Tributes

• Tendi specifies the temperature of the “colorful sand” that she requests from the replicator, playing off all the times the computer asks an individual to specify temperature when ordering a beverage.
   
• Senior officers get their own quarters, which are highly coveted by junior officers. And just like aboard the Enterprise -D, the Cerritos’s quarters are also decorated with space art.
   
• We get a classic senior officers’ poker game, complete with a green visor for Doctor T’Ana… and just like we see so often in TNG, everyone is folding, much to Mariner’s dismay!
   
• This episode includes several classic briefing room scenes (complete with PADDs for every officer), playing up the old criticism that TNG was always just people ‘sitting around and talking.’

Canon Connections

Tellarite

Captain Durango of the USS Merced is a Tellarite, the first appearance of the classic Federation-founding race in ‘Lower Decks.’ Tellarites were previously seen in the Original Series, in ‘The Animated Series,’ multiple classic ‘Trek’ films, in ‘Enterprise,’ and in both ‘Discovery’ and ‘Picard.’

Ascended Beings

Tendi explains to Rutherford the ascension ritual she has been invited to witness, to which he responds “Oh, like a Q… or a The Traveler!” name-checking a couple of the higher beings encountered by the Enterprise-D in’The Next Generation.’

Tamarians

Tendi mentions the Tamarian method of ascension, referencing the Children of Tama seen in the TNG episode “Darmok.”

Generational Ships

As previously seen in episodes like “The Disease,” the crew of the Cerritos works closely with a generational ship designed for long voyages. (And similar to the episode “Masks,” this generational ship tries to terraform the Cerritos in the way the cultural archive discovered by the Enterprise tried to transform it.)

Prime Directive

When entering the conference room, Mariner asks if “you guys debating the Prime Directive again?” referring to Starfleet’s General Order Number One and non-interference directive, which the Enterprise-D senior staff vigorously debated on multiple occasions (notably in “Pen Pals”).

Conference Room Décor

We get our first good look at the Cerritos’ conference room wall in this episode, which matches the design of the Enterprise-D’s observation lounge in its final season. (And we see the senior staff debating new conference room chairs and whether or not a strip of leather is “too ostentatious.”)

Emergency Force Fields

Chief engineer Andy Billups (Paul Scheer) calls for an emergency force field in Corridor 89 just in the nick of time, a move seen countless times across many iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

Moriarty

“That was the holodeck! Uh, Moriarty!” Boimler sheepishly exclaims into his combadge to cover his feeble attempt at breaking the rules to win promotion. Moriarty, of course, is the sentient holodeck program that matched wits with the Enterprise-D in “Elementary Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle,” who was also referenced in ‘Voyager’s’ “Alter Ego.”

Coffee on the Bridge

From the Original Series through ‘Voyager,’ coffee has always had a home on the bridge… and here, Boimler uses it with hilarious effect by intentionally spilling it on Ransom’s lap to prove he is a rulebreaker worthy of promotion.

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Other Observations

• After several years of serialized Star Trek, it’s mildly jarring that a key character reveal from episode one went entirely unmentioned in the subsequent two episodes before being revisited… but that kind of ‘forgotten’ plot point is a Next Generation-era staple.
   
• The USS Merced is named for another city in California, and ship has the blue striping –which Mike McMahan has said shows the ship has more of a science focus — while the Cerritos’ yellow striping shows it to be an engineering ship.
   
• The goggles worn by the Cerritos cleanup crew are very similar to Spock’s visor worn in “Is There in Truth No Beauty.”
   
• You’ll never look at the Vulcan salute the same way again after this episode.
   
• This episode comes the closest since Deep Space Nine to acknowledging what we all know the holodeck gets used for. (“Oh, yeah. It’s mostly that.”)
   
• Two of Mariner’s assignments after getting promoted include “auditing the audit” and reporting to Ops “for review of scheduled Ops.”
   
• “Moist Vessel” is the second episode this season to have the ship saved by gas dispersed through the ventilation system.
   
• Admiral Vassery speaks the word “sensors” in the Vulcan manner, favoring the pronunciation used by officers like Spock (both Nimoy and Peck) and Tuvok.

Lower Decks continues to serve up an extremely enjoyable 25 minutes of Star Trek each week, and “Moist Vessel” is a strong contender for best of the season (so far), on the back of strong character exploration for Mariner, Freeman and Tendi.

This episode proves the show’s real power is in the interpersonal dynamics of the crew, which should only continue to improve as those dynamics develop between more of the characters in future episodes.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on September 3 with the fifth episode of the season, on CBS All Access in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada. Additional international availability for the series has not yet been announced.