“Trusted Sources” – the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks season three – delivers a big shake up to the status quo for the show, just in time for next week’s season finale. In what feels like it might be more of a part one than it lets on, “Trusted Sources” by Ben M. Waller packs a lot into its 25-minute run time.

The USS Cerritos has been approved by Starfleet to test out “Operation Swing By,” a concept developed by Captain Freeman that appears to date back to her realization in the season one finale “No Small Parts” that the races that Starfleet contacts might not stay on the right path forever.

To herald the dawn of an expansion of the California-class’s mission, Starfleet assigns a Federation News Network reporter to cover the first examples of Operation Swing By.

Freeman, desperate to look good in front of the reporter Victoria Nuzé, forbids Mariner from speaking with her. But when Mariner defies Freeman and speaks to the reporter anyway, all of the blame for the reporter’s bad impressions of the Cerritos fall firmly on Mariner. But there’s a twist; when the reporter’s piece airs, it becomes clear that Mariner spoke very highly of Freeman and the Cerritos — and it was the rest of the crew who said all the bad things about the ship.

But it’s already too late; Freeman reassigned Mariner to Starbase 80, where she decided to resign from Starfleet and link up with Petra Aberdeen, the Vash-like archeologist from “Reflections.” Meanwhile, Project Swing By experiences a lot of complications; after getting a polite brush off from the Ornarans (of TNG’s “Symbiosis” fame), the Cerritos is attacked by the Breen when they attempt to re-establish contact with the Brekka (of the same episode) and are rescued at the last minute by a new class of automated Federation starships.

It’s a lot of different ideas, but it’s fun to see the show weave together more elements of its own backstory into new tales. The conversation between Mariner and Freeman from “No Small Parts” about their frustrations with Starfleet’s blasé attitude towards second and third contact returns in this episode as Project Swing By, and it’s fun to revisit the two races from “Symbiosis.”

“Trusted Sources” is also really successful in laying in and executing its twist. The audience, just like the crew of the Cerritos, are so conditioned into expecting Mariner to be the wild card and the problem, that when you discover that she isn’t, it is a genuinely surprising turn of affairs. It’s a credit to the growth that we’ve seen from the character over the last couple of seasons, and a signal about how that growth might continue for the character moving forward… if she returns to Starfleet!

This season, Lower Decks really does feel like it is attempting to move its characters forward in a significant way from where we met them at the start of the series.

Each of the four Lower Deckers has gotten some level of meaningful growth this season – ranging from Bold Boimler and his experiences in “Crisis Point II: Paradoxus,” Tendi’s acceptance of her family history and her desire to be a leader, to Rutherford’s exploration of his past and who he used to be – and now significant signs that Mariner has found ways to channel her rebellious energy more productively that serve herself and her shipmates equally.

This episode has a strong “Redemption, Part I” vibe to it, in that it ends with a character off the ship, though Mariner gets a lot less support from her colleagues than Worf does for his decision to stand and fight for the Klingons. Mariner didn’t get a long line of her colleagues wishing her well as she headed to Starbase 80, which seems like a genuinely awful place.

I’m excited to see where next week’s season finale takes us!

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

• You would think that in nearly 900 episodes of Star Trek, one of the previous series would have used the faux-documentary “interviewed by the camera” trope (used in sitcoms like The Office and Modern Family) as a central conceit for an episode, but I think this might actually be the first time it’s been used in Star Trek!
   
• Characters leaving the ship under less than ideal circumstances for a non-Starfleet life is a reoccurring trope in Star Trek, such as the previously mentioned “Redemption, Part I” or Tom Paris in “Investigations.”

CANON CONNECTIONS

• The Ornarans and the Brekka were previously seen in the first season Next Generation episode “Symbiosis.” This episode even includes a decent synopsis for the events of the “just say no to drugs kids” episode from season one… in case you can’t bring yourself to revisit it.
   
• The Federation News Network has become the go to news agency for modern Star Trek, used previously this season in “Grounded” and in the Star Trek: Picard pilot “Remembrance.”
   
• The Ornarans created a mural about their experiences, which includes the Enterprise-D warping away and leaving them to get themselves together.
   
• Admiral Buenamigo suggests that Freeman ask the Ornarans to show her their government, “just in case it’s secretly run by kids or someone pretending to be the devil” – the latter referring to Ventax II and the case of Ardra’s appearances in the TNG episode “Devil’s Due.”

• Freeman remarks that they should send the next Project Swing By mission back to Beta III because there’s “a pretty good chance they’ve gone back to Landru again,” referring to both the first season Lower Decks finale “No Small Parts” and the Original Series episode “The Return of the Archons.”
   
• Victoria Nuzé references the events of “Strange Energies,” “An Embarrassment of Dooplers,” “I, Excretus,” “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” “Temporal Edict,” and “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,” to demonstrate that Freeman might be a bad captain.
   
• Also, “I’m seeing a lot of stuff about Q” – harkening back to the trickster’s appearance in “Veritas.”
   
• The shuttle from Starbase 80 that arrives is the TNG-style shuttlepod, which has not been seen since the earlier years of The Next Generation — along with the officers’ TNG-eera combadges, this shows just how far behind Starbase 80’s technology is compared to the rest of the fleet.

• The conspiracy theorist Levy returns, this time telling Mariner that her troubles are connected to the Temporal Cold War from Star Trek: Enterprise.
   
• Mariner is so confused by the crew’s reaction to something that she didn’t do, she asks whether she’s in a “Frame of Mind” situation, referring to the Next Generation episode where Riker was psychically tortured.
   
• The Breen return! The race is seen for the first time since Voyager’s “Flesh and Blood,” and their ships for the first time since Deep Space Nine’s “What You Leave Behind.” The ships apparently still possess the energy-dampening weapon, though it only damages the Cerritos’s shields and doesn’t drain it of all power.
   
• The Starbase 80 crew are trying to subdue a Pyrithian bat, in much the same way as Archer and Phlox in “A Night in Sickbay.”
   
• At the end of the episode, Mariner and Aberdeen are on their way to retrieve some Vedalan mummies, likely referring to the Vedala from the Animated Series.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• “Trusted Sources” has to be the most meta title for a Star Trek episode ever, clearly referring to all the so-called “news” sites that publish unfounded and patently-ridiculous rumors about modern Star Trek (based, of course, upon what they hear from their “trusted sources” that they never name).
   
• Blueberry pie is a perfectly respectable flavor choice for a pie eating contest.
   
• Lauren Lapkus pulls double duty in this episode, voicing both the Federation reporter and Jennifer in the same episode.
   
• The Texas-class is the first of three new fully automated Federation starships.

“Trusted Sources” sets up what will hopefully be another big season finale for Star Trek: Lower Decks, and continues this season’s work of building on the show’s own story and mythos from the last two seasons to craft interesting stories that push our characters to continue to grow and evolve. This episode was a lot, but it was also a lot of fun.

Star Trek: Lower Decks concludes its third season with “The Stars At Night” on Thursday, October 28 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada and on Prime Video in many other regions.