“Something Borrowed, Something Green” marks the latest step in Star Trek: Lower Decks’ journey from “Star Trek show that uses other shows’ canon to tell stories” towards “Star Trek show comes into its own and makes its own canon for other Star Trek shows to use.” It’s a delicious exercise in Orion world-building, elevating and continuing to build on “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” and “Hear All, Trust Nothing” by taking us finally to the Orion homeworld.
 
After an Orion ship is destroyed by the mysterious enemy from earlier episodes who has been attacking ships across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, Tendi (Noel Wells) is granted leave by Starfleet, and encouraged to return to Orion for her sister’s wedding. Joined by Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz), Tendi grapples with the past that she left behind and gives us our clearest look yet at Orion culture.
 
The beating heart of “Something Borrowed, Something Green” is Tendi, Mariner, and T’Lynn’s trip to Orion. In a 24-minute episode, the Lower Decks team has managed to show us a lot of the planet, including how its major families live, what its cities are like, and some of the more unseemly parts of the planet — and in the process, we finally learn Tendi’s full backstory.
 

Hinted at in those previous episodes with an Orion tie-in, particularly “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” we learn in this episode that Tendi was trained to be the “Tip of the Moonlit Blade” — an assassin for the Orion Syndicate — and the “prime” for her family who would make its greatest contribution to the Orion Syndicate’s villainous enterprises. Rebelling against her upbringing, Tendi ultimately decided to leave Orion for Starfleet, where she’s been holding onto the secret of her background this entire time.

Establishing Orion family dynamics is really interesting, and works very well with what we already know about green-skinned aliens. It also tells us so much more about Tendi and what she has had to fight for in order to get to be the person that she wants to be. Tendi becomes extremely relatable for anyone who has had to leave their upbringing behind and find spaces in which they can be comfortable and be themselves, and it’s a rich addition to the character.

Lower Decks is also establishing itself in the Star Trek pantheon as a show just as capable of shaping our understanding of the Star Trek universe as any other. To take a big race like the Orions — who have been a part of Star Trek since the very beginning, but only lightly explored — and to build them out like this is great. It is also effective, meshing nicely with what we already know but adding new dimensions and layers to the species.

If a future Star Trek show ever visits Orion, they will need to look at what Lower Decks already established and build from there — and that’s very cool for the adult animated comedy entry to the franchise that was initially derided by a number of fans as being somehow “less than” because it was an animated comedy.

The decision to replicate the “girls’ trip” dynamic from “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” with the addition of T’Lyn was also great. T’Lyn especially has some great lines in this episode commenting on Orion culture, and Mariner has just the right devil may care attitude to fit in well into the Orion surroundings and allow the story to focus on Tendi.

I will just briefly dwell on the apparent fever dream of Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) overcoming their disagreements on bonsai maintenance through playing Mark Twain on the holodeck. When Lower Decks leans into the absurd, it is sometimes successful and sometimes not, and I’ll let you decide how successfully this subplot succeeds. To me, it just seems to be based on a love for Jerry Hardin’s accent choice for Mark Twain in “Time’s Arrow,” which — don’t get me wrong, I love too — but it didn’t seem like there was much more to this subplot.

But none of that really matters, because it was so cool to finally get to visit Orion and to learn the full picture about Tendi’s upbringing and how she ended up joining Starfleet. Three and a half seasons into Lower Decks, it is really difficult to point to any deficiencies for our core foursome in how their characters have been developed and how established they have become.

Each has an interesting backstory and roles to play in the show, and it’s created a nice balance that does not leave any of the characters feeling underserved.

TREK TROPE TRIBUTE

Tendi is the latest in a long line of alien characters on Star Trek whose backstories have been slowly revealed over time. Like Spock’s surprise family members and meeting Worf’s parents, we slowly get the full picture over the course of several seasons just like has happened here with Tendi.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• Tendi’s assassin training explains why she was so easily able to fill the roll of “The Cleaner” during the events of Season 1’s “Veritas.”
• The Orion ship destroyed in the teaser is an updated 24^th century version of the Orion interceptor designs seen in Star Trek: Enterprise.
• The captain of the competitor ship for scanning the oscillating nebula is a Chalnoth, seen before in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Allegiance.”
• The ship in the Orion junkyard that Tendi used to spend time on dreaming about a life in Starfleet is the same class of ship as the USS Raven, the vessel used by the Hansen family to investigate the Borg.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Great T’Lyn lines this episode include “Celebrating a lack of purpose is illogical,” and “their emotional closeness is unpleasant.”
• Like every gangster movie you ever watched, of course the crime families’ homes are ostentatious compounds.
• Tendi’s parents are The Warrior Queen Shona and B’Rt. Other Orion names in this episode are D’Erika, Madame G, Nya’al, and Ingreeta.
• The Murder Bug Drinking Game (which is the only name for it, provided by Mariner) is a really cool concept and I would be interested to learn the writers room process in developing it!

This week brings a welcome exploration of Orion that teaches us more about Orion culture, and it’s long overdue for a Star Trek show to explore this race in more depth. In doing so, this episode adds significant depth to Tendi’s character and adds meaning and poignance to her enthusiastic and bubbly persona.

“Something Borrowed, Something Green” makes a big contribution to the Star Trek milieu in a fascinating way, and it is to be applauded and enjoyed for that, I say, I say!