After last week’s “Fully Dilated” home run, Star Trek: Lower Decks continues the streak with the new best episode of the season that will likely land for me in the series ten best episodes overall. “Upper Decks” is a jam-packed lovefest for Star Trek that gives Lower Decks its own “Lower Decks” — flipping the action from our main cast to the supporting characters of the show, who in this show are the Cerritos command crew.
 
This episode has it all: alien invasions, space cows, engineering disasters, old Bajoran artifacts, one-man shows, fertility events, a Sousaphone. And despite being absolutely chock full of great Star Trek content, following Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commaner Ransom (Jerry O’Connell), Lieutenant Shax (Fred Tatasciore), and Dr. T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) through individual stories of a day in their life on the Cerritos, the whole episode sings and never feels over-crowded.
 
It’s a gripping episode that gives the command crew, who are often the set up persons or the butt of the jokes for our main characters, the chance to shine and be the main characters for a change.
 

Lower Decks has always been adept at lightly tapping the fourth wall in a way that shows how much the show loves Star Trek, and does so again here with some winking in-universe nods to the conceit of flipping the action. It also provides fun new depth to each of the bridge crew, particularly Shax, who gets a rich and interesting backstory connected to his repressed rage over the Cardassian Occupation.

The episode also does right by my favorite of the bridge crew characters, Jack Ransom. On the face of it, Ransom has always been the most buffoonish of the bridge crew characters — addicted to working out, strutting his stuff around the Cerritos, very impressed with himself — but over the course of the show whenever Ransom takes the spotlight we get to see deeper into the character.

The reveal that his work-out-and-fall-asleep routine as a way of promoting bonding between the ship’s crew over a hapless commander was a funny one, and shows that while Ransom is definitely very out there, he’s a true Starfleet officer at the core.

“Upper Decks” also fully displays how much the Lower Decks team love Star Trek. From some amazing technobabble, to a partial explanation (I’m so disappointed Billups got cut off!) for the rocks that seem to fall from the bridge ceiling panels anytime the ship is in battle, to episode and show references all over, Lower Decks can immerse itself in the joy of Star Trek and does so here to great effect. I am really going to miss this show.

And in addition to the starring role for the “Bridge Crew,” a surprising number of the show’s supporting characters get another (and maybe final!) outing before the show bows in two weeks. Ensign Meredith, Winger Bingston, Nurse Westlake, Ensign Barnes, Towel Guy, and Steve Stevens have fun little moments that serve to remind you how expansive the Lower Decks crew has become with interesting and funny characters.

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

• ”Upper Decks” joins TNG’s “Lower Decks” and Voyager’s “Good Shepherd” as episodes that reverse the action with the show’s supporting characters taking a starring role, and the main characters moving into the background.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• Rutherford carves V’Ger into his pumpkin from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The ship design was created for the movie but was never fully seen on screen until the debut of the Director’s Edition in 2001.
• The Starfleet ecologist (who is actually Clicket in disguise) is a Grazerite, the same race as Federation President Jaresh-Inyo from DS9’s “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost.”
• Shax’s vision fighting — what could be either his repressed rage from the Occupation or an ancient Bajoran spirit freed from an exploded tablet — takes place at the Battle of Tempasa. Tempasa was previously referenced in DS9’s “Ties of Blood and Water.”
• Billups’s chief engineers log discussing the digestion of his morning bagel picks up on a line from Rutherford in “Starbase 80?!” about Billups changing up his breakfast routine.
• Winger Bingston references the experiences of Ro and Geordi in TNG’s “The Next Phase,” before talking about the experience serving on the Oberth-class USS Manticore in “Act 7, the Oberth Year.”
• Admiral Freeman appears to have the same taste in French cafes as Jean-Luc Picard, as the holodeck locale he takes Carole for their anniversary looks to be the Café des Artistes (from “We’ll Only Have Paris”).

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Does the opening scene of our Lower Decks carving pumpkins — in addition to Shax’s spectral projection — mean that this counts as a Star Trek Halloween episode?
• There are so many fun Lower Decks stories mentioned that we never get to see, like Mariner’s escape from being trapped in a painting, Ensign Barnes’ transformation into a futuristic cave woman who could read minds (but had a fear of open flames), or the installation of an AI defense golem that can only be turned off by holding down the power button and telling a sad story that demonstrates human emotion.
• The bridge ceiling rocks get a partial canon explanation! They’re also called the Cordry Rocks, likely a reference to Marion Cordry, the longtime director of Star Trek brand management at CBS, and director of the Star Trek library and archive.
• Where the Lower Deckers have their chant “Lower Decks! Lower Decks!” the Cerritos command crew’s chant is “Strong and Brave! Wise and True! That’s what makes the Cerritos crew!”

• There’s a lot for engineers to enjoy in this episode, in addition to the sick technobabble there’s also the lines “Everybody dies. But it’s the engineers who really get to live!” and “This is how all engineers want to go! At work! In a tube!”
• Nurse Westlake’s prepared hyposprays that inoculates the crew from a virus that makes everyone sing does provide the perfect set up for a sequel to “Subspace Rhapsody” and proves why we need a Lower Decks season six more than ever.
• Ensign Meredith’s Charlotte Nicdao is a true delight in every Lower Decks appearance.

“Upper Decks” is a loving tribute to Star Trek and to Lower Decks itself, and feels like a completely fitting episode before the season and series’ grand finale. This episode proves how great Lower Decks is, and how much I am going to miss it when it’s gone.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 continues next week with “Fissure Quest,” premiering December 12 on Paramount+.