Star Trek: Lower Decks has had some great episodes this season, but so far none of them have quite hit the series highs from previous seasons — like “Crisis Point,” “wej Duj” and “Crisis Point II: Paradoxus” — until now.
 
“The Inner Fight” is a rich masterpiece that surprises, delights, and moved me in equal measure. Watching the endgame of Season 4 begin to play out, it’s clear how much of the season has been an intentional build up to this. Not just the recurring storyline of ships being abducted by a mysterious force, but many of the season’s plot points come to a head in “The Inner Fight,” and that’s before we’ve even gotten to the season finale.
 
While the picture is not completely clear how this season will end (that “To Be Continued…” rolls at what feels like the exact moment the season’s storyline is about to be explained), there is enough in this episode to have a sense of where things are going. And while I could not be more excited about that (Lower Decks is revisiting Nick Locarno?!), the build-up to the season finale was secondary for me to the exquisite character work in this episode.
 

After 39 episodes, Lower Decks has a tie-in to its namesake episode of The Next Generation. And it’s beautiful. And wonderful. And it makes all the sense in the world. For nearly four seasons, we’ve watched Mariner (Tawny Newsome) rebel against authority, glory in being an ensign, rebuke the possibility of advancement, and thrive on danger. The final explanation for that — trauma over the death of Mariner’s Academy classmate Sito Jaxa in “Lower Decks,” coupled with the horrors of the Dominion War — add an intense layer of pathos to the Mariner character.

In some ways, more fool us for not having put everything together. We knew Mariner served on Deep Space 9 for a period either prior to or during the Dominion War, and we knew she’s had a much longer Starfleet career than some of the other Lower Deckers. Hearing her explain her motivations, and have it tie so beautifully into the wonderfully affecting TNG episode that inspired this series was incredible writing.

Mariner is not a rebel without a cause, she’s suffering what many Starfleet officers of her generation are suffering through during this time period: having to live through the harsh realities of the modern era puncturing so many of the hopes and dreams they had at the start of their careers. And in some ways, Mariner isn’t just speaking for Starfleet officers in the 2380s; she’s speaking for many of us today.

It was also an inspired choice to have Ma’ah (Jon Curry) be Mariner’s counterpart through this important moment. Lower Decks has such a deep stable of Lower Deckers to draw upon, not just from the USS Cerritos, to help it tell its stories — and I am relieved Ma’ah is alive. He’s a great character who plays off Mariner well, and he’s ultimately right about her and tells her exactly what she needs to hear to begin to move on.

“The Inner Fight” is not just profound, it’s also very clever. Over on the Cerritos, where Captain Freeman is searching for Nick Locarno, I had no idea that the mysterious bounty hunter would turn out to be Billups (Paul Scheer) running a Freeman-inspired ruse! Mike McMahan’s writing of this episode played it perfectly, calling back to “In the Cradle of Vexilon” where Freeman’s previous use of her Academy electives worked out so poorly to make you believe that we’re seeing the same thing happen again: Freeman being a bit of an idiot.

To then have the reveal that it was all a ruse to play not just the characters, but also the audience, was exceptionally well done. And further proves my long-running point that Lower Decks never needs to play its characters actually as idiots for laughs. This is so much better.

There’s not much to say about Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill) at this point since he had just two lines in the episode, other than I trust in Lower Decks, I get a huge kick out of them revisiting a character like that, and I am excited for the season finale.

There is clearly some kind of ”lower decks rising up” theme asserting itself with the way the senior officers of the stolen ships were stranded on Sherbal V, but it’ll take the season finale to fully understand what’s going on there. Bring it on!

TREK TROPE TRIBUTE

• One of our heroes getting trapped with an enemy and having an important emotional moment or learning to get along with them is a classic Star Trek trope — think about La Forge being stuck with Bochra on the surface of Galorndan Core in “The Enemy,” or Tucker and Zho’Kaan trying to survive in “Dawn.”

CANON CONNECTIONS

• The mysterious enemy has started targeting ex-Starfleet officers, and Command sends ships to retrieve Seven of Nine, Beverly Crusher, Thomas Riker, and Nick Locarno. The USS Vancouver from “Much Ado About Boimler” and “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place” has been assigned to pick up Seven of Nine.
• Star Trek: Picard told us that Crusher left Starfleet around 20 years before the events of Season 3’s story, set in 2401 — Lower Decks Season 4 is set in 2381, and she’s confirmed this week to be out of the service at this point in Trek history.
• The most interesting thing about this to me? Thomas Riker is assumed to still be alive — and likely not in a Cardassian prison if he needs retrieving by Starfleet for his protection.

• The establishment on New Axton where the information broker is present is Mudd’s, likely a reference to the wily scoundrel Harcourt Fenton Mudd — and there’s even a reference to the Short Trek “The Escape Artist” and Mudd’s preferred drink in that short, the jipper.
• In his sleep, Boimler asks Beverly Crusher to teach him how to tap dance, a reference to the plot of “Data’s Day.”
• We now know that Mariner was at Starfleet Academy at the same time as Sito Jaxa (from “The First Duty” and who tragically died in “Lower Decks”) and that Mariner idolized and was devastated by Sito’s death.
• The Balok puppet (that isn’t a puppet) is the famous alien visage from “The Corbomite Maneuver” that also featured in the end title cards of what felt like every episode of Star Trek. (Also, the Balok puppet joke had me absolutely cackling. It was the biggest laugh I’ve gotten since Ransom’s fake teeth in “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee.”)
• The logo on both Locarno’s jacket and the capture Klingon Bird of Prey represent the banned Kolvoord Starburst flight maneuver, the stunt-gone-wrong that led to Locarno’s departure from Starfleet Academy.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Despite the similar-sounding nature of this week’s episode title, “The Inner Fight” has little in common with the classic Next Generation tale “The Inner Light.”
• The music when the moon shuttle lands on New Axton with Freeman and away team on board is very Star Wars-y, and made New Axton feel very much like Tatooine to me.
• “Hoodlums and Racketeering” is a course at Starfleet Academy.
• While this is only the second appearance of Nick Locarno across the Star Trek saga, a photograph of Locarno was used to represent an Academy-era Tom Paris in Voyager’s “Pathfinder” — since both Locarno and Paris are portrayed by Robbie McNeill.

The fact that “The Inner Fight” is just the first half of the season’s closer — and that the main endgame of the season is not yet obvious — does not detract for me from how good of an episode this is on its own. It’s a profound character episode for Mariner that I thoroughly enjoyed.

This is easily the best episode of of the season to date, but we’ll see how that changes with next week’s finale!

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to Paramount+ with the Season 4 finale on Thursday, November 2.