The Pakled conflict that began in last season’s finale reaches a crescendo with this week’s “wej Duj”… and with great credit to the Star Trek: Lower Decks writing team, viewers have no idea it’s even happening until nearly the end of the episode.

“wej Duj,” or “Three Ships,” from writer Kathryn Lyn begins as a traditional “off-duty” episode, where the Cerritos crew gets a break from regular responsibilities during a long voyage — but before long, the story shifts surprisingly to the lower decks of a Klingon Bird of Prey, and then over to the same bottom-rank levels of a Vulcan cruiser.

Even then, we’re tricked into thinking it’s narrative about how our ensigns’ counterparts in the Klingon Defense Force and Vulcan High Command experience life on duty, in a low-stakes set of parallel stories… until the Che’ta rendezvous with a Pakled vessel, and the real reason behind this “side story” comes into focus.

Way back in the second episode of the season, Captain Riker mentioned that Starfleet Intelligence believed the Pakleds were receiving help from an outside source, and in “wej Duj” we learn that rogue Klingon captain Dorg (Colton Dunn) is that source — supplying the dimwitted aliens with not just information and weaponry, but the deadly Veruvian explosives they’re using to target Earth.

(Knowing the Klingon influence behind the Pakled’s actions explains why the Titan away team saw them using Klingon disruptors, too!)

The Boimler and Mariner alien equivalents — Ma’ah (John Curry) of the Klingon Defense Force and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) of the Vulcan High Command — are both very interesting, and I hope that we see more of them in the future. While Ma’ah seems to have earned his way to the Che’ta captain’s chair, we may very well see T’Lyn again after her “hot-headed” outbursts got her booted to Starfleet service.

Life aboard both the Klingon and Vulcan ships are rendered really well, with all the cultural peculiarities that we’ve come to expect from both races — from the harsh Klingon promotional tactic of killing a senior officer to move up in rank, and “punitive spiritualism” after one of T’Lyn’s emotional outbursts.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds may be getting buzz about “returning to episodic Star Trek,” but Lower Decks has been serving up stories for almost two seasons now, while deftly including a low-focus, season-long arc along the way!

The final act’s exciting space battle is thrilling — whether you’ve seen the rest of the season’s episodes or not — because you’re interested in the lower deckers on the Che’ta and Sh’Vahl, but also because the episode also significantly moves forward a key storyline from the season.

It’s also great fun to see the Cerritos crew explore their off-duty time, leading to the hilarious image of the ship’s officers sprinting through the corridors of the ship in their leisure wear in the episode’s climax. I’m finding it difficult to come up with new ways of writing “this is great,” every week, but Lower Decks is genuinely a delight.

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

• Many of the Cerritos crew have Next Generation-style hobbies — whether it’s art, classical music, or relaxing in one of many holodeck adventures. Many fanciful outfits can be seen on the off-duty crew, like Napoleon and Peter Pan costumes, smoking jackets, ice-skating attire, or anbo-jyutsu suits.
   
• Boimler enters not one, but two in-progress holodeck sessions without asking, or needing permission. Apparently Starfleet hasn’t fixed that yet!
   
• Dorg joins the great pantheon of Klingon officers who take decide to take the fate of the Klingon Empire into their own hands, a tradition dating back to Captain Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• Boimler proposes a Stratagema tournament to pass the time during the Cerritos crew’s day off, the first time that goofy holographic game has been referenced since “Peak Performance.”
   
• There’s a lot of Klingon culture on display in this episode, including teeth sharpening, murdering a senior officer to move up in rank, eating dinner at a communal table, and the captain keeping a pet targ on board.
   
• Veruvian bomb detonations release metreon particles, a common Star Trek science element that has been referenced in multiple episodes.
   
• The design of the Klingon bridge matches the set seen in early Next Generation episodes like “A Matter of Honor,” the mess hall is designed like the set seen multiple times in Deep Space Nine, and the transporter room is based upon the set used in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

• Ma’ah references the famous Battle of Klach D’kel Brakt — Kor fought in a simulation of this battle in one of Quark’s holosuites in the opening moments of “Blood Oath.”
   
• The Sh’Vhal’s captain’s office includes a Vulcan meditation lamp of the same design owned by Tuvok, as well as a replica of Surak’s pyramid-shaped kir’shara.
   
• Dr. T’Ana’s rock-climbing sequence replicates Captain Kirk’s ascent up El Capitan in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier — though she and Tendi smartly wear safety gear in their holographic climb. Boimler represents both Kirk and Spock when visiting the holodeck, wearing Kirk’s “Go climb a rock.” shirt and Spock’s rocket boots.
   
• Freeman and Mariner work out their grievances while playing a game of Velocity in the holodeck, a target-practice game first seen played by Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine in “Hope and Fear.”

• Freeman wears a T-shirt reading RITOS while off duty, a cheeky play on the DISCO shirts worn by the USS Discovery crew while exercising.
   
• Two off-duty Cerritos officers are wearing the same leotards Crusher and Troi wore in “The Price.”
   
• An officer in the Cerritos bar is seen playing the Ktarian game.
   
• T’Lyn’s Vulcan padd design matches the one seen in the Enterprise episode “Stigma,” itself a repaint of the Bajoran padd originally built for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
   
• “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end,” says T’Lyn, quoting one of Spock’s lines to Valeris in Star Trek VI.
   
• While the 22nd century Vulcan High Command was dissolved after the events of “United” in 2154, it was back in business by 2257 (“Brother”) and continues to operate into the 2380s. Though separate from Starfleet, officers in the Vulcan service can apparently be transferred to Starfleet vessels without issue.

• Klingons and Shakespeare, two great flavors: Dorg echoes General Chang by quoting “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” from Julius Caesar.
   
• Like Beverly Crusher and cadet Dorian Collins, Jack Ransom is a “lunar schooner” — a human born on Earth’s moon. Ransom is from Tycho City, like Dorian Collins; the domed town was originally mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact.
   
• The Cerritos crew compliment includes at least four acting ensigns, all who seem to be wearing California-class versions of the grey provisional officer uniform Wesley Crusher donned in early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Not counting episodes named after individuals (“Darmok,” “Su’Kal,” etc.), “wej Duj” is the fifth episode title to contain only alien words, after “Elogium,” “Empok Nor,” “Tsunkatse,” and “Kir’Shara.” It is the first episode to have an on-screen title rendered in non-human text.
   
• “wej Duj” is the second Season 2 episode which opens without a teaser.
   
• The Klingon Bird of Prey’s name, Che’Ta, translates to “battle.”
   
• Billups has a new soup recipe he wants Rutherford to try, referencing back to the time he called a soup-eating Billups “a stone-cold badass” last season.
   
• Interestingly, the holodeck where Mariner and Freeman play Velocity appears to be designed after the Voyager-style set, even though the Cerritos‘ holodecks have  matched the Enterprise-D yellow-grid design in all previous appearances.

• The Sh’Vahl is a 24th century update to the Vulcan “ring-ship” starships seen in Star Trek: Enterprise, dwarfing the Cerritos; the larger ship comes to the rescue in a moment mimicking the Enterprise-E’s rescue of the USS Defiant in Star Trek: First Contact.
   
• The captain of the Sh’Vhal is one of the few Vulcans with facial hair we’ve seen in the prime Star Trek universe.
   
• Whenever the episode returned to scenes aboard the Che’ta, the Christ Westlake’s score was quite reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith’s famous Klingon theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
   
• The Tamarian language is taught at Starfleet Academy; “Carno in the forest, with Mithra” is a Tamarian phrase implying weight gain.

• While relaxing in his bunk, Rutherford is holding a completed Deep Space 9 model, which was a gift from Tendi at the end of “An Embarrassment of Dooplers.”
   
• Mariner and Freeman are playing the Starfleet version of the board game Clue, where the map resembles a Galaxy-class starship; Mariner’s guess at the murder weapon is the TR-116 teleportation rifle from “Field of Fire,” which she calls “the sniper rifle that can shoot through walls.”
   
• The Pakled “clumpship” is called Pakled, and their Red Alert status is simply a repeated call: “Red alarm!”

“wej Duj” is another highly creative and hilarious episode of Lower Decks, one which hopefully sets us up for a big season finale next week. This season has been a true delight so far, with only one or two “just okay” episodes along the the way, which is a pretty good track record for a series still in its early days.

I am going to be sad next week when this show is done for the year!

Star Trek: Lower Decks concludes with its season finale next week, as Season 2 wraps on October 14 on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada,  followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 15.