Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for for its fourth year with a big season opener filled with loving tributes to Star Trek: Voyager, hilarious jokes, a significant step forward for the show’s character development — and a the start of a big mystery set to last through the season.
 
If that all sounds like a little too much, well… it is. But that’s okay, because Lower Decks is back, and “Twovix” shows that the animated series is as funny as ever. The Cerritos is assigned to escort the USS Voyager — newly restored into a floating museum after its seven-year trip through the Delta Quadrant — to Earth, where it will go on display.
 
While preparing the ship for departure, a rogue orchid leaf makes its way into the transporter room, where it accidentally causes Lt. Commander Billups (Paul Scheer) and Doctor T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) to merge into T’illups, just like Tuvok and Neelix in the original “Tuvix” episode. When T’illups returns to the Cerritos and discovers that Tuvix was murdered by Captain Janeway, he sets about creating more hybrids to preserve his chance of living.
 
Meanwhile, back aboard Voyager, Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) accidentally awakens a dormant macrovirus (from “Macrocosm”) which wreaks havoc on the ship by reactivating old systems and interacting with the delicate museum displays.
 

First, what rules about this episode? Everything Voyager! Like the Deep Space Nine tributes in last season’s “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” this week’s tale is a love letter to all things Star Trek: Voyager — and the Intrepid-class starship looks absolutely gorgeous in animation. Just as Deep Space Nine’s vibe was perfectly captured by the Lower Decks animators in Season 3, they also excelled here, rendering each of the iconic locations on Voyager perfectly. I could have easily watched another 20 minutes of the crew exploring the ship and visiting the exhibits.

The episode also marks the entry of T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) — the breakout character from Season 2’s “wej Duj” — into the Cerritos crew. After being teased in the final moments last season, this episode is the first real opportunity we have had to see how T’Lyn will complement and evolve the core foursome (now fivesome) of our Lower Decks main characters. Like other Vulcan characters before her, T’Lyn often serves as the foil to the humor of Boimler and the gang, and it totally works.

“Twovix” also begins a big evolution for our Lower Decks main characters, showing its credentials not just as an adult animated comedy, but also a Star Trek show. Long-running animated shows like The Simpsons thrive off of sameness — Bart Simpson has been 10 years old for nearly 35 years. But by the end of “Twovix,” four of the five ensigns have been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade), with only Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) left behind.

This move represents a big step forward for Lower Decks, and an opportunity to evolve its formula a little. I’ll talk more about how well the show accomplishes that in future reviews, but in Star Trek, characters grow and evolve — and we’re seeing that here with our main cast.

This episode is also hilarious. The introduction of the Tuvix’d crew had me in stitches (and that “Swhale Swhaleson” joke is in my top five funniest jokes in all of Lower Decks so far). But while I enjoyed “Twovix” immensely, I felt a little empty by the end of the episode. I think there are two reasons for that: first, because the central ethical dilemma is not explored in any more depth here, it is just played for laughs. And second… I don’t really love that an episode was effectively inspired by Star Trek Twitter.

Go anywhere Star Trek fans hang out on the web, and you’ll find a debate about “Tuvix” — and nowhere more than on Twitter, where the episode has become so debated, that the debate itself has also become its own meme. It is one of the most talked about, most controversial episodes of Star Trek, in part because social media thrives on that.

And I just don’t love the idea of Star Trek episodes that I hope to be watching 40 years from now having such a tie-in to a stupid bit from the fandom at a specific moment in time. I think we’ve just written the last page of the “Tuvix” story, and it’s time to move on.

But at the same time, if this is the great crescendo of the last few years of Tuvix-mania, what did we learn from it? There was no nuanced exploration of the moral and ethical debate inherent in the original Voyager episode, nor is there a more satisfying conclusion — T’Lyn pulls a Janeway and murders them all, and only with the help of Tendi (Noel Wells) are they able to restore all the original characters to normal. “Twovix” does not add anything to “Tuvix” except some great jokes, and I am not sure that was enough for a Star Trek episode.

“Twovix” ends with a big tease for a mystery that will span a number of episodes (and potentially the whole season): in the epilogue, the IKS Che’Ta’ from “wej Duj” returns, still under the command of Captain Ma’ah (John Curry). They are investigating an unknown starship… one that promptly destroys the Che’Ta’ and kills the crew.

It’s a big shocker to end the season premiere, and I’m excited to learn more!

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

T’Lyn’s addition to Lower Decks gives the show its first real “straight man” (or straight woman, in this case), which echoes the role that characters like Spock, Data, Odo, Seven of Nine, and T’Pol have played in previous series. Everyone wins:  T’Lyn gets some great character stuff out of her role, not just in this episode, but in several other moments across the first eight Season 4 episodes we’ve seen.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• Some of the iconic Voyager sets recreated in animation this episode include the bridge, main engineering, Cargo Bay 2, the mess hall, sickbay, the shuttlebay, the transporter room, and Seven of Nine’s Astrometrics lab.
• Each of the locations visited includes familiar props or costumes, like Seven’s silver outfit from the end of “The Gift” next to her Borg regeneration chambers, or Neelix’s cooking attire in the mess hall.
• Neelix’s calamitous Brill cheese (which caused so much trouble in “Learning Curve”) returns this episode, used to knock Voyager out of warp before it makes contact with a Borg Cube.
• The assimilated macrovirus activated several holograms of characters from Voyager’s adventures, including Michael Sullivan (“Fair Haven”), a recreation of Harry Kim’s nightmare Clown (“The Thaw”), and Dr. Chaotica (from “Bride of Chaotica!” and other appearances) — and it also partially assimilated animatronic replicas of Janeway and Paris as “Threshold” salamanders.
• Michael Sullivan admits to “missing his wife” — fitting, after Janeway deleted her from the “Fair Haven” holoprogram in the episode of the same name.
• Boimler distracts Chaotica by saying that he is the son of Captain Proton. Is that the opening to Chapter 19?
• Thanks to Star Trek: Picard, we know that Voyager eventually ends up at the Athan Prime fleet museum under Geordi La Forge’s care, but for now, the ship is headed to San Francisco for Earth-bound visitors. This tracks with Admiral Janeway’s description from “Endgame,” where she refers to the ship as a “museum on the grounds of the Presidio” in her alternate future.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Like mother, like daughter: both Mariner and Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) each hoped their classified mission wasn’t some kind of “Romulan thing.”
• The set up for the Tendi/T’Lyn dynamic in this episode — that Tendi is desperate for T’Lyn’s friendship and approval and T’Lyn’s reticence to offer it — is one of my favorite things about Lower Decks Season 4.
• According to the curator and historian, Beljo Tweekle, Voyager is “the most beautiful work of art in Starfleet history.” And after seeing her in animation, I’d have to agree!
• The Season 4 opening credits have added the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Whale Probe to the big battle sequence, complete with its iconic sounds.
• The poles for the rope lines that keep future tourists away from the Voyager exhibits have the combadge at the top.
• “That’s a mission-worn uniform!” cautions Tweekle, as the Cerritos crew get a little too handsy with Harry Kim’s mannequin — a very a funny parallel to how many screen-used prop and costume collectors behave if you manhandle their collectibles.
• Forget “Weird is part of the job” — “It’s Voyager, shit got freaky!” should be the show’s official motto.

• Billups had a dragon named Fiddlesticks growing up.
• Each Tuvix’d crewmember gets a swirly pattern on their uniform shoulder yoke, a throwback to the look Tuvix’s uniform had after merging with Neelix’s clothes. It makes no sense here, but it’s a nice callback!
• The new names of the Tuvix’d crew include T’illups, Frigleeman, Chaundie, Sh’Barnes, and Swhale Swhaleson.
• “It’s VOY, man!” is a nice callback to “We’ll Always Have Have Tom Paris” where the debate about the show’s three letter abbreviation was put to bed.
• “Dude, this is nothing compared to that Pike thing we’re not supposed to talk about!” is, of course, a fun reference to the recent Strange New Worlds crossover episode “Those Old Scientists.”
• Referring to the Voyager era as “the 70’s” was at the same time both a weird thing to hear and made total sense. It was the (23)70s! A wild time! Just not our 70s…
• Voyager is headed in the direction of Borg Cube 858779 — might that be the same cube the Star Trek: Prodigy crew encountered in “Let Sleeping Borg Lie” last season? There probably aren’t a ton of Borg Cubes knocking around close to Federation space…

“Twovix” almost gets a pass for saying nothing interesting — by virtue of being so funny. But I don’t want my Lower Decks to just be funny. I also like it when it has something to say, just like it does about Boimler and Mariner’s promotion. Boimler struggling with the promotion throughout the episode because of his fear about how it would impact his relationship with Mariner (Tawny Newsome) was great stuff, as was Ransom’s (Jerry O’Connell) diagnosis of Mariner’s reluctance to take the promotion at the end.

This show can make insightful character commentary when it wants to. It just chose not to when it came to “Tuvix.” And that’s a big missed opportunity.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 continues with “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” — check out our review of the year’s second episode, also debuting today on Paramount+.