with Jim Moorhouse and Ken Reilly

After parodying a classic Star Trek trial episode in last week’s “Veritas,” this week’s “Crisis Point” sets its sights much higher — parodying the thirteen Star Trek movies — to hilarious effect.

After being ordered to go to therapy, Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) discovers that Boimler (Jack Quaid) has developed a holodeck program of the Cerritos crew, and decides to create some therapy of her own by developing a scenario in which she can act out her frustrations with her mother, Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis)… taking her lower-decker crewmates along for the ride.

“Crisis Point” is a loving send-up of the Star Trek movies, with fun moments and tics that are unique to the films. And with only one episode left this season, it helps that we’ve had time to get to know the Cerritos characters and what makes them tick as Mariner pushes her rebelliousness to the absolute brink, and discovers she doesn’t much like what she finds there.

Structured around the movie spoofing — including a multitude of Kelvin Timeline-esque lens flares — “Crisis Point” is a Mariner story, as Lower Decks continues to explore the psyche of a character whose natural inclination is to push back as far and as quickly as she can from the strictures of her mother, and of Starfleet. Mariner creates a holodeck program in which she portrays the villain, ‘Vindicta,’ invading, crashing, and ultimately leading to the destruction of the holographic Cerritos.

Mariner’s reckless behavior is too much even for her friends; even fun-loving Tendi (Noel Wells) leaves the holodeck in disgust after witnessing how Mariner is acting out her fantasies. But ultimately, it’s Mariner — or rather, the simulated version of the character within the Cerritos holodeck program — who causes the real Mariner to see that she’s gone too far.

While literally facing off against herself but in the position of the villain, Mariner realizes she really does enjoy being in Starfleet, that she’s the person who insists on casting herself as the villain, and that she would prefer to be the heroic simulation of the character and not the evil Vindicta.

I’m not sure the “Mariner realizes she needs to tone it down” storyline has too much more life in it without some growth or evolution to the character, but the exploration we’ve gotten for the character through nine episodes this season has been fascinating. Mariner is both the reckless rebel and the Kirk-like skilled Starfleet officer, and there is literally a fight taking place within her between those two personas. That was, quite literally, the plot of this week’s episode!

In addition to Mariner’s character growth, there are also nice moments for Tendi and Rutherford. We’ve known Tendi is an Orion since the series pilot, but this is the first episode to really address why she differs from the previous portrayals of Orions in Star Trek as, in Tendi’s own words, “capitalist, hyper-libertarian gangster pirates.” Many Orions are like that, Tendi explains, but just not her.

It’s a sweet moment, and I’m glad it came nine episodes in rather than right up front to allow the character to establish herself rather than just serve as a proxy for what we think we know about Orions.

And in another moment where Lower Decks turns a traditional comedy trope on its head — in this case the idea that you have a free pass to tell your boss anything you want —  and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) uses that opportunity to tell Chief Engineer Billups (Paul Scheer) how much he admires him. I would enjoy seeing the Rutherford/Billups bromance (or something more?) translate from the holodeck and into the actual show. It was sweet.

Trek Trope Tributes

• Mariner fights a holographic version of herself, representing one of many times in Star Trek where a character has faced off against themselves (“The Enemy Within,” “Whom Gods Destroy,” “Second Chances,” “Deadlock,” Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, et al).
   
• “Time to take this puppy off its leash. Warp me!” is a funny moment that plays off all the big inspiring-captain moments from the Star Trek movies — as well as Captain Freeman’s attempt to create her own catchphrase (“Warp me!”) as seen in opening teaser of “Envoys.”
   
• So. Many. Beautiful. Lens. Flares.
   
• Vindicta joins Khan and Chang as yet another Trek movie villain who enjoys quoting Shakespeare to our heroes.
   
• The Cerritos has a giant door that drops during an emergency that requires the crew to evacuate from the ship.

• Mariner begins her script rewrite with the line: “Interior. Rickety catwalk. Night.” There have been many rickety bridges and catwalks seen on Trek throughout the years (“Second Chances,” “Caretaker,” Star Trek: Nemesis), but most famously the one resulting in Captain Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations, a moment alluded to during Mariner-as-Vindicta’s battle with her holographic duplicate.
   
• Like all great Star Trek movies, our hero ship crashes (like the various Enterprise destructions in The Search for Spock, Generations, and Star Trek Beyond)… but in classic Lower Decks style, the saucer section just gets rolled around the planet’s surface like a tossed coin.
   
• The opening and closing credits to Mariner’s holodeck program riffs on the previous Star Trek movies – the opening music is a Lower Decks twist on the musical overature at the start of The Wrath of Khan, with the crew’s closing sign-off straight out of The Undiscovered Country.
   
• The final reveal, that perhaps Vindicta survived the destruction of the Cerritos, complete with the camera pushing in through a forest towards a torpedo-like capsule, is of course a fun reference to the closing shot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Canon Connections

Xon

In a real fourth-wall-breaking moment, Mariner describes Boimler as “Kind of a Xon to be honest – probably weren’t going to make the final cut,” referring to the Vulcan science officer slated to star in the aborted Star Trek: Phase II sequel series, who was replaced by Spock for The Motion Picture when Leonard Nimoy agreed to return.

David Gautreaux, who was cast as Xon for ‘Phase II,’ later appeared as Commander Branch on the Epislon IX station, killed by V’Ger in ‘The Motion Picture.’

Leonardo da Vinci

Apparently, Starfleet holodecks have a standard Leonardo da Vinci program, as the Cerritos’ version of the famous Renaissance artist matches that of the da Vinci who made friends with Janeway aboard the USS Voyager, played by veteran character actor John Rhys Davies in “Scorpion” and “Concerning Flight.”

Pah Wraiths

Shax refers to the Bajoran demons featured prominently in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ when he tells Vindicta that, “When you get to hell, tell the Pah Wraiths that Shax sent ya… special delivery straight from Bajor!”

Orions

Tendi explains that the Orions, previously seen in ‘Star Trek’ as slavers, pirates, and rebels, “haven’t been pirates for over…FIVE YEARS.” And she accurately describes many of the members of her race as “capitalist, hyper-libertarian gangster pirates.”

Holodeck Matter

When Tendi leaves the holodeck, the blood spattered on her from the simulation immediately disappears. This matches the way in which the holodeck has been seen to function in episodes such as TNG’s “Ship in a Bottle,” as well as when the EMH leaves his sickbay on Voyager without his mobile emitter (“Projections”).

Toby the Targ

Vindicta tells simulated Mariner she knows her Halloween costume for many years was Toby the Targ.

B’Elanna Torres was established to have a Toby the Targ plush, and it was later revealed in the ‘Voyager’ episode “Author, Author” to be a popular line of children’s stories. (Molly O’Brien had a plush targ as well, though named “Piggy” — we’ll buy that it’s the same character!)

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Other Observations

• The planet that Mariner ‘liberates’ in the cold open features mammalian and reptilian characters who, while they are not referred to as such, look a lot like the Anticans and the Selay from TNG’s first-season episode “Lonely Among Us.”
   
• Paul F. Tompkins, who co-hosts the official Star Trek podcast The Pod Directive with Tawny Newsome, voiced food-focused avian psychotherapist Dr. Migleemo aboard the Cerritos. (“It’s the 80’s, dude! We don’t have psychiatric problems!”)
   
• Cerritos improv speaker Winger Bingston, Jr., receives a special ‘and’ credit in the Crisis Point holo-movie opening titles.
   
• When the Crisis Point: The Rise of Vindicta holoprogram begins, the aspect ratio of the episode changes to more closely match that of the Star Trek movies.
   
• In addition to the music, credit sequences, lens flares, and aspect ratios, the episode features another movie-going tribute in the very subtle grainy lines and splotchy film effects drawn into the animation throughout the holodeck’s film simulation. A beautiful touch.

• The spoof of the Enterprise shuttle approach scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, here featuring an endless loop of spinning images of the Cerritos, might be one of the funniest scenes in the show to date.
   
• Jean-Luc Picard may have won the Academy marathon as a Freshman back in the day, but Captain Carol Freeman holds the Academy hydro-scoot speed record.
   
• When the simulated crew walks onto the bridge of the Cerritos, you can hear the distinctive sound effects of the Kelvin Timeline USS Enterprise playing in the background — and it’s lighting-filled warp trail comes right out of the final moments of Star Trek Into Darkness.
   
• Vindicta’s ship looks quite like a a modified Klingon D-7 battlecruiser.
   
• “You can do all sorts of beaming stuff in a movie!” Rutherford stammers, a sly wink at one of the more criticized parts of Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, where characters seem to beam halfway across the galaxy when the plot demands it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks gears up for its season finale with a strong penultimate entry to the year, masterfully spoofing what we love — and what we love to hate — about Star Trek movies, all while also delivering us another character study of Mariner and the internal conflict waging within her.

I am curious how the episode’s final act, in which Boimler discovers that Mariner is Freeman’s daughter, will play into the season finale — or the forthcoming second season — of the show. I can’t believe there’s only one more episode to go this season!

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on October 8 with the tenth and final episode of its first 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.