“Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” provides a welcome return for one of Star Trek’s favorite day players, some hilarious character work, and some great worldbuilding that feels just right for the franchise. I mean, a Jeffrey Combs guest role and a precocious mother set on making life difficult for one of our senior officers? Sign me up!

The concept behind the Hysperians — the descendants of a group of “Ren Faire types” who colonized a planet populated with dragons — is incredibly zany and perfectly-Lower Decks idea, brought to life this week by writer Garrick Bernard. It would not be that far amiss in an episode of the Original Series, either, and so it doesn’t feel too over the top to me at all.

There are a lot of fun touches throughout this episode, including all of the standard Federation engineering terms having been renamed so that it all sounds like magic. And the design of Queen Paolana’s (June Diane Raphael) Hysperian flagship, the Monaveen, is very cool. (I’d buy that Eaglemoss model in a heartbeat. Huzzah!)

And even though I thought the sex joke in “Mugato, Gumato” was gratuitous and a bit off-putting, the raunchy humor in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” totally worked for me. I think where the bawdy humor succeeded in this episode because was tied to character development that felt believable and authentic to the world that Lower Decks has created.

Coupled with his mother’s attempts to trick him into having sex, the idea that Andarithio “Andy” Billups (Paul Scheer) must defiantly remain a virgin — to keep his place in Starfleet and avoid having to take the Hysperian throne — is a genuinely funny one.

Because they’re tied to the character and the worldbuilding that Lower Decks has laid down, it works for me and does not feel weird or gross. It’s a really fine line, and ultimately a matter of personal taste, how much raunchy humor works in a Star Trek context, and this episode falls on the right side of the line for me.

When word came last year that we’d learn Billups was a virgin, it was a concern that he’d be portrayed as “less-than” because of that; aside from a few nervous moments for the engineer, it was good to see that wasn’t the case — and that Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) and the Cerritos crew was all about protecting him from his mother’s scheme… something the ship clearly has had to deal with before!

While Andy fends off his mother, Ensigns Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) are tasked with taking a sentient, evil supercomputer called AGIMUS (Jeffrey Combs) back to the Daystrom Institute for imprisonment and further study, when they crash on a desert planet — and the computer seems to make the pair turn on each other when survival seems impossible.

Combs, who appeared in multiple roles in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, turns in a hilarious performance as AGIMUS in this episode, and gets the biggest star turn on Lower Decks of any legacy actor to date. Even Jonathan Frakes’ appearances as Captain Will Riker feel less considerable than AGIMUS’ role in this episode as a foil for Boimler and Mariner.

I am always a fan of more Jeffrey Combs, and Lower Decks delivers, slowly inching the veteran character actor up to Vaughn Armstrong’s record of the most distinct roles on Star Trek. The character work between Boimler and Mariner during this episode is also quite interesting, as Mariner underestimates Boimler’s readiness for making tougher decisions.

Boimler has grown a lot in the last year, especially since his return from the Titan, and I’m looking forward to seeing it continue.

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

• “Carol, you’re the closest ship in the quadrant!” Queen Paolana tells Captain Freeman, drawing upon the often used Star Trek plot device of our heroes just so happening to be the only ship close enough to go deal with a problem.
   
• Queen Paolana joins a lineage of Star Trek family members who pop up to cause problems for our crew; Lwaxana Troi from The Next Generation being the obvious archetype.
   
• When Billups resigns his Starfleet commission, he does so by removing his combadge, just like Worf in “Redemption.”
   
• Boimler and Mariner crash land on an alien planet after encountering a spatial anomaly — now that’s a trope! The shuttle Yosemite is brought down because of gravimetric shear, the same kind of space anomaly which caused problems for the Defiant in “Behind the Lines,” Voyager in “Gravity,” and the Enterprise NX-01 in “The Catwalk.”

CANON CONNECTIONS

• Mariner suggests they bury Lord Agamus in the desert, just like Data’s head in “Time’s Arrow” — but Boimler quickly reminds her that Data’s head was left in a cave, not buried.
   
• The ensigns are rescued in a Danube-class runabout, often seen in use around Deep Space 9.
   
• AGIMUS is taken to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, Japan; the esteemed scientific foundation’s location was established in Star Trek: Picard.
   
• The exterior depiction of the Daystrom Institute is based upon an establishing shot from “Remembrance,” and the D.I. logo used for the organization — also designed for Picard — is used on “Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage” signage.
   
• The attendant in the DI’s computer storage unit wears a green science outfit first seen in use at the Velara III terraforming station in “Home Soil.”

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• The episode’s title comes from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, from a thematically-appropriate passage about Renaissance-era sexual acts.
   
• Once again this season, Dr. Migleemo appears on the Cerritos bridge, but has no dialogue.
   
• The large Master Systems Display graphic of the Cerritos seen in Main Engineering labels the locations of the ship’s bridge, loading bay, shield generator, holodeck, mess hall, and captain’s ready room.
   
• There is also an extremely-detailed version of the Cerritos MSD graphic in Billups’ quarters, a new graphic created for the show by Mike Okuda. This intricate graphic features both the 2370s-era Starfleet Command logo, and a new logo (also designed by Okuda) which represents the California-class starship design (with the California state flag, Starfleet delta, and Cali-class silhouette).

• Hysperian engineering terms include dragon-breath engines (warp engines) and a dragonsblood flame (primary fusion reactor), each overseen by the chief blacksmith (chief engineer); the Hysperian fleet is known as the Royal Navy.
   
• When played a certain way, Hysperian guitars can block internship communication.
   
• Hysperian royal guards are trained from birth to skip foreplay — and they do not assume Billups is straight, as both male and female guards are assigned to assist in the Royal Copulation.
   
• The MSD graphic of the Monaveen includes a small dragon — possibly an homage to the duck hidden in the Enterprise-D’s Master System Display graphic.

• AGIMUS’ “murder drones” bear a striking resemblance to the Minosian drones encountered by the Enterprise-D in “The Arsenal of Freedom.”
   
• When Boimler and Rutherford are crossing the uninhabited desert planet, the music by Chris Westlake has a real Star Wars vibe to it, as the pair trek through the desert to find a very large crashed ship in the sand.
   
• I hope that by the end of this series, every character will have a surprising first name. Bradward Boimler, Samanthan Rutherford, and now Andarithio Billups – here’s hoping that “Jack” Ransom is more than meets the eye.
   
• Lastly, one of the evil computers in storage at the Daystrom Institute bears the CBS ‘eye’ logo.

“Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” is a fun character episode that serves up a funny new culture, deepens the character of one of our senior staff, and gives us a great Jeffrey Combs villain.

I hope that Queen Paolana makes another appearance in Lower Decks, because I think there’s more fun to be had with Hysperian culture — as long as Billups doesn’t fall for another one of her schemes!

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns with “I, Excretus” on September 30– on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada — followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 1.