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STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Season Finale Review — “Old Friends, New Planets”

Alex Perry
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86
STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Season Finale Review — “Old Friends, New Planets”

Star Trek: Lower Decks closes out its fourth season with a finale that sticks the landing and provides a solid 30 minutes of joyful Star Trek adventure. Building from last week’s significant character work,“Old Friends, New Planets” is all payoff from the season’s — and some of the series’ — overall arcs. These two episodes are a great Star Trek two-parter, and will be remembered as two of Lower Decks’ finest episodes.
 
Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill), the disgraced Starfleet cadet who was expelled for causing the death of a fellow cadet is revealed as the season’s big bad. With a plan to create an independent fleet of ships crewed by “anyone who feels like an afterthought,” Locarno’s plans are quickly thwarted by Lieutenant Mariner (Tawny Newsome) who then requires rescue by the Cerritos before Locarno can find another way to make his plan a reality.
 

“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

Locarno is the perfect choice for a Lower Decks villain, and his arc from “The First Duty” through today is a fitting one. He’s the Lower Decker who has broken bad. In “The First Duty,” Locarno is a self-obsessed jerk who uses notions of duty, honor, and a higher calling to pressure his fellow members of Nova Squadron into covering up their activities and saving his career. In Lower Decks, Locarno is a self-obsessed jerk who is using notions of a higher calling to feed his own ego. It’s the right arc for Locarno, not least because the “Robert Duncan McNeil character who has made mistakes and evolves into a better person” is a space already occupied by one Tom Paris.

Locarno’s arc also contrasts well with Mariner, because the dark side of many of her personality traits could easily have set her on a Locarno-like path. Combined with last week’s revelations in “The Inner Fight,” it makes for poignant viewing. It’s not that Locarno is Mariner’s Khan — even though the episode has a lot of fun with homages to The Wrath of Khan — it’s more that Locarno is what happens if Mariner makes just a few more bad choices.

Locarno is just such a good choice all around for a Lower Decks villain, and I am so happy that Mike McMahan chose to revisit him.

“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

Honestly, this episode is excellent, but it’s totally worth it just for the opening teaser. Returning to Starfleet Academy in the mid-2360s to see Mariner interacting with her hero, Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill returning!), as she, Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton returning!) and Josh Albert (who we meet for the first time!) discuss the idea of the Kolvood Starburst maneuver for the first time was so wonderful.

It was exactly the right way to bring back Sito, without stepping on the character’s eventual fate in TNG’s “Lower Decks” episode. And to finally get to meet Josh Albert, who is only talked about in “The First Duty” but never actually seen, was an extremely welcome addition to the Star Trek canon. The next time you watch “The First Duty,” you’ll now know that Mariner was just off screen the whole time.

“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

The action set pieces in this episode are so well done, and on par with the best of live action Star Trek. Mariner hiding from the Nova Fleet in an asteroid field, Locarno chasing her through an ion storm, the Cerritos crashing an Orion battlecruiser into the shield protecting the Detrion System… it’s exciting, it’s visually gorgeous, and it revels in the joy of Star Trek’s specific action tropes in the most fun way.

I had a big grin on my face this whole episode, just enjoying the hell out of it and everything that had been set up not just in “The Inner Fight,” but the whole season.

McMahan appears to have intentionally included callbacks to most of the previous episodes this season — even the Mark Twain gag I didn’t like at the time, but chuckled at here — to make Season 4 feel like more of a serialized story than the previous seasons of Lower Decks. While the finale creates a through-line of serialization to the season’s previous episodes, that does not do anything to diminish those episodes as great standalones stories.

The Lower Decks team struck a great balance for the season.

“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

But “Old Friends, New Planets” is not just a big episode for Mariner, it’s a big episode for Tendi (Noel Wells) as well, continuing to evolve the Mistress of the Winter Constellations story arc for her character as we return to Orion and her family (introduced in “Something Borrowed, Something Green”).

The season ends on a question mark for Tendi, who bargained away her Starfleet career to save Mariner, requiring her to pledge her service to her sister back home. I am fascinated to see where Tendi’s story goes next season – what a tease!

Lastly, even though he didn’t get a big share of the focus, this was also a big episode for Boimler (Jack Quaid). His pivotal scene is the obvious one — commanding the Cerritos while the senior staff works to break down the Trynar Shield. The Boimler of the first three seasons would not have been in a position to take command like that, nor politely and firmly dismiss a Starfleet admiral. Boimler has grown a lot, become more confident in himself, and actually began to earn some of the things he has always said that he wanted for himself.

“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

  • This episode continues one of my favorite tropes, that Lower Decks has kept to pretty slavishly: if characters are in San Francisco, or anywhere around Starfleet Academy or Starfleet Command, the Golden Gate Bridge must be visible in every single shot.
  • This episode uses a Trek Trope that was previously listed as a number one Trek Trope on the TrekRanks Top 5 Trek Tropes episode: when a higher-ranked officer orders our heroes to do nothing — and they disobey that order to rescue a friend — that usually gets the ranking officer to admit they were wrong for trying to stop them. (See Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek: Insurrection, or DS9’s “The Die is Cast” as examples.)

CANON CONNECTIONS

  • The opening moments flashing back to Starfleet Academy is set in the weeks prior to the events of TNG Season 5’s “The First Duty,” where Wesley Crusher and Nova Squadron face a tribunal following the accidental death of cadet Joshua Albert.
  • This episode marks the first in-canon appearance of Joshua Albert, who died off-screen prior to “The First Duty.”
  • Cadet Mariner wears a single rank pip (indicating her status as a first-year cadet) in the flashback scene, putting her a year behind Wesley Crusher (who wears two pips). If Mariner entered the Academy at age 18, this would put her date of birth in 2350 — making her 31 during the events of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 (set in 2381).
  • Starfleet Academy of the 2368 was lovingly re-created in animation, using the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and its Japanese Gardens — where all the 90s era Star Treks filmed their Starfleet Command scenes — for inspiration. There’s even a tiny Boothby on the grounds in the big establishing shot of the Academy campus.
  • Mariner discusses learning about the Preservers (“The Paradise Syndrome”) and the Xindi (Enterprise season 3) in her Academy classes.
  • Boimler references the Maquis as being a prior independent fleet operating in the Alpha Quadrant, which is made funnier by the knowledge that the not-quite-Locarno character Tom Paris spent a short amount of time working for the Maquis.
“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)
  • Goodgey from “A Few Badgeys More” briefly appears while Captain Freeman is addressing the Cerritos crew.
  • The ion storm in the Detrion System is level 7; Voyager’s “Once Upon a Time” established that level 8 or higher are the most dangerous kinds of ion storm.
  • A number of the shots of Mariner battling Locarno in the ion storm (as well as the  accompanying musical score!) are direct homages to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. As is the shot of the Genesis Device exploding a new planet being created as our hero ship escapes from it at warp. These shots looked gorgeous in animation.
  • Boimler’s adoration of Captain Riker is a recurring joke throughout the series (and in Strange New Worlds), so it appears to be no coincidence then that Boimler’s captain’s chair posture appears to mimic his favorite Starfleet officer.
  • The Cerritos captain’s yacht appears to be the same design as the captain’s yacht from Star Trek: Insurrection.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

  • Jerry O’Connell voiced the “Previously on Star Trek: Lower Decks” at the episode’s opening, and even though it wasn’t the classic Majel Barrett Roddenberry introduction it was so welcome to get that voiceover (along with “And now, the conclusion”).
  • Continuing the precedent set by “wej Duj,” we see that ships of other races also have a “towel guy,” this time aboard the Tamarian ship.
“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)
  • Shannon Fill reprises her role as Sito Jaxa, the Bajoran she portrayed in TNG’s “The First Duty” and “Lower Decks.” I am so curious to know how they found her and convinced the actor to return, as her last acting credit is dated 1995.
  • Wil Wheaton does a great job of emulating his 1990s era performance as Wesley Crusher, with a slightly exaggerated Lower Decks. This was a nice way to get Wil onto Lower Decks, something that McMahan has previously discussed.
  • I really liked the quick, but hilarious way the show nodded to the “Tom Paris and Nick Locarno are two similar characters played by the same actor” thing, with the Boimler/Rutherford conversation during Locarno’s transmission.
  • Detrion is a great name for a Star Trek star system. A similarly named system (the Detrian system) was the setting for TNG’s “Ship in a Bottle.”
  • The three Bynars don’t get any more character development this episode than they did in their debut a couple of episodes ago, but the indestructable Trynar Shield is absolutely their handiwork.
  • T’Lyn’s “I believe the only response in this situation is: Cerritos strong.” feels like a direct play on Spock’s “I believe if I were human my response would be: go to Hell” from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
  • The Steamrunner-class ship that Mariner steals from Nova Fleet is the USS Passaro (NCC-52670), named for digital artist Fabio Passaro who made a number of contributions to the Star Trek franchise — including to the line of now-defunct Eaglemoss starship models. Passaro passed away in 2022 at the age of 52, and the ship’s registry number is his birthday (May 26, 1970).
  • Mariner pilots the Passaro using the same manual joystick system used by Commander Ransom during the events of “First First Contact.”
“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)
  • Since Admiral Vassery says that no Federation ships were kidnapped into joining Nova Fleet, I wonder if the USS Passaro is a decommissioned Starfleet ship in use by independent contractors — perhaps Locarno obtained it legally? We have very recent precedence for this from Picard Season 3, as Beverly Crusher’s SS Eleos was a former Starfleet vessel.
  • Captain Freeman’s command code override is “06107.2.”
  • The Orion names from recent episodes — D’Erica and B’Eth — are hilarious to me.
  • We get two new additions to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in this episode. Rule 91: “Your boss is only worth what he pays you,” and Rule 289: “Shoot first, count profits later.”
  • Migleemo’s down fluffing reminds me a lot of Dr. Phlox’s puffer-fish type instinctive defense from “Home.”
  • Love, hate, or confused by the Mark Twain gag, “Illogical tactics can sometimes lead to logical solutions” is a great Vulcan line.
  • There’s a lot of Paul F. Tompkins in this episode: he plays Migleemo of course, but also one of the Romulans and one of the Ferengi. He even shares a scene with himself when Locarno is communicating with the Nova Fleet.
  • The Ferengi putting a paywall on deactivating the Genesis Device is a delicious and hilarious bit of worldbuilding.
“Old Friends, New Planets” (Paramount+)

“Old Friends, New Planets” is so great because it feels like an episode that would only have been possible at this point in the show; paying off four seasons of character development and delivering a giant episode of Lower Decks.

I am so invigorated for Season 5!

Star Trek: Lower Decks will return to Paramount+ for a fifth season in 2024.

New Images and Preview Clip from This Thursday’s STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Season 4 Finale

TrekCore Staff
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25
New Images and Preview Clip from This Thursday’s STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Season 4 Finale

Star Trek: Lower Decks rounds out its fourth season this Thursday, and today we’ve got new images from the upcoming season final for your review!
 
After the series revealed that long-forgotten Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill) was behind the mysterious ship attacking alien vessels throughout Season 4, Lieutenant Mariner (Tawny Newsome) learns more about the former Starfleet cadet’s actions.
 
Here are just three images from this week’s episode:
 

L-R Jerry O’Connell as Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman and Noël Wells as Tendi in episode 10, season 4 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2023. (Paramount+)

Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner in episode 10, season 4 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2023. (Paramount+)
L-R Jack Quaid as Brad Boimler, Jerry O’Connell as Jack Ransom, Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Noël Wells as Tendi, Gabrielle Ruiz as T’Lynn, and Eugene Cordero as Rutherford in episode 10, season 4 of Lower Decks streaming on Paramount+, 2023. (Paramount+)

Beyond that, we’ve got little information about the final episode of the year — as like last week Paramount+ has withheld both the episode’s title, logline, and review screeners from press in an effort to keep spoilers to a minimum.

The streamer did, however, release a short clip from the finale to IGN, which is from the opening moments of this week’s episode.

We’ll have our review this Thursday — in the meantime, share your theories about Nick Locarno’s new mission in the comments below!

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 concludes Thursday, November 2 on Paramount+.

WeeklyTrek Podcast #232 — Alex Kurtzman Shares STAR TREK UNIVERSE Updates at NYCC

Alex Perry
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2
WeeklyTrek Podcast #232 — Alex Kurtzman Shares STAR TREK UNIVERSE Updates at NYCC

On this week’s episode of WeeklyTrek — TrekCore’s news podcast — host Alex Perry is joined by Ron Wrobel to discuss all the latest Star Trek news.
 

 
This week, Alex and his guest discuss the following stories from TrekCore and around the web:

In addition, stick around to hear Ron’s theory about how much longer Star Trek: Lower Decks will be on the air, and Alex’s theory that a big announcement many fans are waiting for will be coming in 2024. 

WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify — and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.

Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!

STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Review — “The Inner Fight”

Alex Perry
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57
STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Review — “The Inner Fight”

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.
 

“The Inner Fight” (Paramount+)

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.

“The Inner Fight” (Paramount+)

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” (Paramount+)

“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.

Cadets Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill), Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), and Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill) in “The First Duty.” (Paramount)

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 Inner Fight” (Paramount+)
  • 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.
“The Inner Fight” (Paramount+)

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 Inner Fight” (Paramount+)

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.

New Images from STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Penultimate Season 4 Episode

TrekCore Staff
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10
New Images from STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Penultimate Season 4 Episode

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back with the penultimate episode of the Season 4 this week, and today we’ve got new images from Episode 409 for your review!
 
This week… we don’t know what’s going to happen! So far, Paramount+ has not released either an title or synopsis for the Thursday’s episode, and review screeners have not been sent out to press for advanced viewing!
 
Here are ten new images from this week’s new episode, which shows the Cerritos crew encountering Federation scientists, aggressive aliens, and more:
 

Series creator and showrunner Mike McMahan expressed his concern about preventing spoilers for the last two episodes of the year at New York Comic Con last weekend, indicating that there are big Lower Decks events that are on the way — so unless this information gets released over the next two days, this may be a radio-silence week until Thursday morning arrives.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on Thursday, October 26 on Paramount+.

Review — Factory Entertainment’s STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN Necklace Prop Replica

Ken Reilly
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2
Review — Factory Entertainment’s STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN Necklace Prop Replica

First announced to fans this back in late June, Factory Entertainment’s new Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan prop replica is now in the hands of collectors — and today we can bring you a close look at this detailed edition of Khan’s scavenged-parts necklace from the 1982 feature film.
 
Meant to be constructed from components of the S.S. Botany Bay paired with a broken Starfleet emblem, the original prop worn by Ricardo Montalban was made from electrical components, thin telephone wires, copper wire, and suede leather — a similar original prop necklace, worn by Joachim (Judson Scott), was put up for auction in 2012.
 

Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonien Singh.

As for Khan’s necklace, multiple versions of the prop were used throughout Star Trek II as his appearance deteriorated during battle with the Enterprise in the Mutara Nebula; in addition, some have reported that the original necklace props were often stolen during the making of Star Trek II, requiring additional versions to be build. (Factory Entertainment’s replica is based upon the undamaged necklace seen in the first half of the film.)

In the included information card, the company explains that this new replica is based upon “surviving original props along with reference material from the Paramount Pictures archive,” including original elements which were recreated as 3D models for manufacturing.

(Sourcing and using 40-year-old components for the necklace would have certainly been a bit of a challenge!)

Factory Entertainment’s version is quite a nice piece — comparing it to publicity photos from Star Trek II, it’s easy to see how much work went into trying to rebuild this complicated, hand-made necklace four decades after the originals were crafted.

The efforts to match the wiring colors and component shapes (in new all-metal castings) are definitely appreciated, and it even sits around the neck in a way that makes you want to take over the nearest Federation starship. The clasp at the top of the necklace is also extremely similar to the one used in the Joachim necklace linked to above.

The metal Starfleet buckle pendant is a nice solid piece, though it does feel a little bit too smooth and manufactured, compared to how the original props used in the film — in several set photos like this one, you can see that the backing ring especially had a handmade feel to it (with a slight bit of texture from the original metalworking), and the delta carried more of a patina.

That’s definitely a minor nit to pick, but something that would have helped bring a real vintage feel to the Factory Entertainment edition.

The only other thing to call out is the coloring on the three major metal components in the necklace itself: the two ringed pieces at the midpoint, and the large wiring hub at the base. The copper ‘wiring’ on these pieces are paint on the black/dark grey metal pieces, which makes sense for the necessary production of the parts, but there’s far too little copper in the paint application.

In the original props — again, comparing to what can be seen in production photography (including the photo on the Factory Entertainment packaging for this replica), the rings should be almost entirely copper colored, and the wiring hub should be copper colored around the circumference of the entire wiring connection, and not just dotted with copper in the middle portion.

Beyond those two issues, though, there’s very little to complain about — and for the first officially-licensed replica of this absolutely iconic piece, it’s a lovely recreation of Khan’s necklace for fans of Star Trek II. 

The only question left for you to answer: do you have the pecs to pull it off?

If you’d like to add one of these Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan necklace prop replicas to your own collection, head over to the Factory Entertainment website where they are available for 199.99 each.

Our thanks to Factory Entertainment for sending us a sample for this review.

STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Review — “Caves”

Alex Perry
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27
STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Review — “Caves”

“Caves” is a wonderful episode that uses the familiar Star Trek visit to the standing cave set — aka the franchise’s “Planet Hell” Stage 16 set used in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise — to tell a deeply thoughtful story about the Lower Deckers’ newfound responsibilities since their promotion.  “Caves” also doubles as an examination of how, as we grow and our responsibilities increase, our friendships also change and grow in unexpected ways.
 
Boimler (Jack Quaid), Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), Tendi (Noel Wells), and a reluctant Mariner (Tawny Newsome) are assigned to an away team to study moss in the caves of Grottonus, where they become trapped — and share stories about their experience with cave away missions while they work to find an escape.
 
Throughout the episode, we see glimpses of other Cerritos missions that weren’t featured in an episode of Lower Decks, and how our core foursome of Lower Deckers have seen their relationships evolve since their promotions.
 

“Caves” (Paramount+)

At New York Comic Con last Saturday, series creator and showrunner Mike McMahan discussed how this episode was designed to show the way in which, as we move through our 20s and early 30s and our jobs change and responsibilities increase, it can become harder to hold onto our core relationships. I think “Caves” demonstrates this exceptionally well, as the Lower Deckers are forced to confront the ways that their friendships have evolved — and ultimately, they rediscover the inspiration and motivation for their enduring bond.

Tendi’s story about how the Lower Deckers got trapped in a turbolift following the events of the series pilot provides a nice juxtaposition with these characters’ lives four years later — and the other flashbacks to previous cave missions give us wonderful snippets events that we have never seen before. Each has an appropriate Lower Decks level of zaniness, and they’re all creatively executed.

“Caves” is another solid example of how Lower Decks can use its Star Trek setting and its genre to such great effect, by taking a Star Trek trope and using humor to thread together a great ensemble character story.

“Caves” (Paramount+)

The joke about all cave sets in Star Trek looking the same is a quick and easy one — but “Caves” takes the joke and adds a layer of complexity and nuance to it, making the episode not really about the aforementioned caverns, but about the people in those subterraneous locales. Which is what every other cave episode of Star Trek also does, thus completing the circle of telling a great Star Trek story in a way that only Lower Decks can!

The animators also do a great job of making all the caves feel very same-y. Given that Lower Decks is animation and not limited to the use of one set, they could have gone further in terms of introducing variety of settings, but that would have killed the joke.

This episode feels like a good pause on our Lower Decker core foursome before the season’s final two episodes, which McMahan promised will be very big — and that he didn’t want press to get them early to keep any hint of spoilers outside of the public eye.

It’s a wonderful moment to take a breath, but there are great character moments for the Lower Deckers (Rutherford giving birth! Mariner leading an away mission! Boimler getting friendly with Levy!), a bunch of cool aliens (Vendorians! The Graflax!), and some nice character moments for the secondary cast, like Levy the conspiracy theorist, and those losers (well, maybe they’re not that bad…) from Delta Shift.

“Caves” (Paramount+)

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

  • Obviously, the big one that this episode hangs its hat on is the frequent use of caves as a story device in Star Trek, and that most of those caves all looked the same because they were filmed on the same standing set on the Paramount lot. As Mariner archly notes, “it feels like a third of our missions are in caves” and “all the caves look the same.”
  • The Rutherford/T’Ana story uses the Trek Trope of a character becoming unexpectedly pregnant, previously seen in episodes like “The Child” and “Unexpected.”
  • In the Boimler flashback to Kyron IV, he becomes trapped with Levy because “an ion storm blew in out of nowhere.” The use of ion storms to explain particular story circumstances and set up an episode goes all the way back to the Original Series.
  • The aging field Mariner’s away team encounters on Glish plays with the trope of characters undergoing rapid aging or de-aging.
  • And Tendi’s “trapped in the turbolift” story mirrors many such a story from Star Trek, with the most similarities to Harry Kim and B’Elanna Torres being stuck in the turbolift in “Year of Hell.”
“Caves” (Paramount+)

CANON CONNECTIONS

  • The Vendorians of The Animated Series fame get a starring turn here in “Caves,” but also previously appeared in the Lower Decks episode “Envoys.”
  • The single seat vehicle found by Boimler and Levy looks similar to the Argo-type vehicle from Star Trek: Nemesis (also seen in previous Lower Decks adventures).
  • Levy contends — and the Vendorians do not deny — that they were the source of “falsified data” that going to warp speed damages subspace, the central idea behind 1993’s “Force of Nature” that was very quickly forgotten. The Vendorians do deny, however, that they were behind the Klingon Civil War.
  • Pergium, the substance needed by Mariner’s away team to re-start the shuttle’s engines, was the substance that the Federation was mining that led them into conflict with the Horta in “The Devil in the Dark.”
“Caves” (Paramount+)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

  • The cave planets seen in this episode are “Grottonus,” “Kyron IV,” “Balkus 9,” and “Glish” — I love the way Lower Decks uses both numbers and Roman numerals for planets like there’s some rhyme of reason to it.
  • Add “gammanite” to the list of made-up Star Trek minerals!
  • While we don’t see much of the Cerritos senior staff on screen in this episode beyond T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) and Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), both Dawnn Lewis and Jerry O’Connell lend their voices to the Vendorians and the other aliens seen in this episode.
  • I don’t think I would enjoy having Porkian swamp rash.
  • The ability to vaporize a dirty diaper would likely be a godsend to parents everywhere.
  • We only hear about one more cave adventure: the time that the Lower Deckers met themselves, thinking it was them from the future, only to discover it was aliens pretending to be them, but who also turned out to have been from the future.
“Caves” (Paramount+)

“Caves” is a solid character episode that lovingly sends up Star Trek’s reliance on cave episodes while giving us a deeper examination into the advancing lives and careers of the Lower Deckers. This is a great episode because its central theme is only possible after four seasons and career advancement for our characters, allowing us to reflect on how far they have come since the series pilot.

It’s a good pause before the season’s last two episodes, and I can’t wait to see how Season 4 rounds out.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to Paramount+ with the penultimate episode of the season on Thursday, October 26.

Interview — STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS’ Mike McMahan on Moopsy, Creating the Orion Homeworld, Tuvix, and Much More!

Ken Reilly
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Interview — STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS’ Mike McMahan on Moopsy, Creating the Orion Homeworld, Tuvix, and Much More!

We’re nearing the end of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, but before the Cerritos crosses this year’s finish line, series creator and showrunner Mike McMahan beamed into New York Comic Con to present a special screening of this week’s “Caves,” and share some tidbits with the assembled crowd — including confirmation that T’Lyn will remain with the series into Season 5, and that the show will revisit the Orion homeworld as well.
 
After October 14’s presentation, TrekCore and a group of assembled outlets sat down with McMahan to discuss this season’s stories, Star Trek hot takes, the Strange New Worlds crossover — and a missed opportunity Lower Decks will be revisiting during next year’s Season 5 episodes.
 

The cute-but-dangerous Moopsy creature from “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee.” (Paramount+)

Q: Why do you feel like you need to make monsters like Moopsy so cute?

MIKE MCMAHAN: (Laughs) Well, we’re playing it for comedy, right? And inherently, it’s hard to draw something really scary in the Lower Decks animation style. It’s almost easier to draw something cute, and then have it drink your bones!

That bone-drinking thing, actually, came from a movie I saw in high school called Deep Rising with Treat Williams and Famke Jansen, and the tagline in the trailer was like “It drinks you!” or something. So I always wanted to do a creature that drinks you.

But it’s harder to get something that looks scary – but if you go back to “wej duj,” the Klingons look intense and scary, which is awesome work from the animators, artists, and character designers.

Q: What kind of challenges do you face when you set out to explore some of the lesser-known areas of Star Trek that the other shows may have barely covered — like the visit to Orion this season?

MCMAHAN: My first question is always, “What have other people done?” And the answer is always, “Way less than you think!” Imagine a sketch that’s unfinished, where you can almost connect the dots and fill in the blanks… there was zero Orion. Like, I couldn’t believe it; we had nothing to work from.

With Ferenginar, Deep Space Nine did so much that we could just go have a blast, and then just edge things slowly forward. Rom has probably heard from Nog about just how much he loves Starfleet, so I can understand why Ferenginar would be moving in that direction. That all made sense to me.

I like to take monocultures and build them out so it’s all less ‘mono.’ I try to honor what’s there before, and then logically expand it to where it might go in a way that surprises. But for Orion, we had to make this all whole-cloth, which is crazy… and I’m NOT making it about a bunch of people who control men with pheromones, because that’s frickin’ weird!

The other part was that we needed to figure out how a visit to Orion would tell us about Tendi. My wife’s favorite movie is Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, so we made Tendi’s family house that castle from Florence and built things out from there.

They’re space pirates — but at home, they have a code; they have honor systems; they’re matriarchal. I loved all that. I loved the groom being walked down the aisle… so I tried to honor the stuff we had seen before about powerful women, but make it less of a sexual thing. Less about control; less “episodic,” in a way.

The Tuvix infographic seen in “Twovix.” (Paramount+)

Q: You made a decision about Tuvix a few weeks ago —

MCMAHAN: Oh, Janeway made the decision!

Q: You called her a monster!

MCMAHAN: Well, sometimes, when you’re stuck in The Iliad, you need to be a monster to preserve characters that you have TV season deals with. [Laughs] Tuvix is so funny, and I think I’ve thought about Tuvix more than I’ve seen the episode. But that’s the power of Star Trek, it sticks with you even if you don’t agree with it.

But once she got rid of Tuvix, I was like, “All right, I can breath again. This is great.” I didn’t want that motherfucker sticking around! I was going to have to tune in every week to see Tuvix learning about pie, and shit like that? That guy was going to be the new Data, but he’s fuckin’ Tuvix?

And they made him weirdly likable! You didn’t have to do that, you didn’t have to make Tuvix likeable if you knew where the story was going! It was like, “Hey everybody, it’s Tuvix! Tuvix is so cool, Tuvix can do a kick-flip!” You know what I mean? No, no, why are we doing this? I don’t like Tuvix!

I was happy Janeway killed Tuvix just because I didn’t want to see his ass anymore. But I love that we’re still arguing about Tuvix. That’s real Star Trek shit! I see why people hate it, but get Tuvix the fuck outta here. Oh, you don’t like what happened to Tuvix? Show “The Tuvix Show.” You wanted to see more Tuvix? Get the hell outta here. (Laughs)

T’Lyn and gang in “Empathological Fallacies,” from LOWER DECKS newcomer Jamie Loftus. (Paramount+)

Q: It seems like there are a few new names in the credits this year. Can you talk about some of the newcomers to the Season 4 writers room?

MCMAHAN: Well, I’m working on Season 5 right now where we’ve also mixed things up a little — but I’ll tell you, I’ll have people come in on shows, and sometimes they’re great at everything, and sometimes they’re like, “I’ve never seen Star Trek, but I have a crazy relationship with my mom,” so I’ll have them work on those Mariner-Freeman scenes and make them better.

You never know what the kind of match will be for each season… and also, writing Lower Decks is incredibly hard! You have to not only match the tone of Star Trek, but also the tone of Lower Decks which is something nobody ever did before us. The comedy of it, you know, is really specific.

I used to work at Second City as the guy who would clean up at the end of the day, and Second City would do jokes that were very Chicago-specific, but people still got them because most of the crowd would be from the surrounding areas. That’s what you have to do in Lower Decks, but for Star Trek. You know what I mean? Like, you can’t leave “the Chicagoland area” of Star Trek.

There’s never been a “crisis” on Lower Decks – it just takes a long time to write. Sometimes writers are moving on to better stuff, sometimes they’re selling shows. Sometimes people move to live-action work to make a bunch more money, and I’m like “Bye, have fun!”

There’s a little more turnover on Lower Decks just because it’s really hard, but we’re always trying to keep it fresh.

Q: Have we seen the last of Jennifer, Mariner’s Andorian ex-girlfriend?

MCMAHAN: I thought I had resolved the Mariner-Jennifer relationship in a way that had spoken to me, because I had never liked their relationship. I thought Jennifer liked Mariner for the wrong reasons, like how she utilizes her with her group of friends (in “Hear All, Trust Nothing”), I thought, was not from a loving place.

They also met each other and had a romance start in chaos, and not in the calmness that I find in relationships that grow and come form a place of support. Mariner’s worst tendencies were being magnified by Jennifer, in a way, and Jennifer kept her from going to visit Deep Space 9.

Jennifer gives Mariner only anger in “Trusted Sources.” (Paramount+)

I thought people would hate Jennifer for that – but unfortunately she’s so funny and fun, and you love seeing them together, that my resolution of having Jennifer react exactly wrong to Mariner getting kicked off the Cerritos (in “Trusted Sources”)… in hindsight, we needed another episode for them.

That should have been in episode seven, have Mariner be gone in episode eight, and we should have had a tougher resolution at the end of the season. These are things you only learn in hindsight, but knowing it now — and I had a long conversation with Jessie Gender about this -– I see the audience’s reaction and their opinion, and I respect it.

So there is a better resolution to Mariner and Jennifer coming in Season 5.

Q: But will they sit weird in chairs together?

MCMAHAN: (Laughs) Mariner canonically sits weird in chairs because I had a long conversation with Andi from Women at Warp back at the Mission: Chicago convention, who told me that there is a meme about bisexual women sitting weird in chairs, so I made sure to have Mariner reference that on-screen for her — and if you didn’t know what that meant, you’d just think she was making a Riker joke.

A fan shout-out in “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place.” (Paramount+)

Q: When originally developing the Cerritos crew, were Mariner and Freeman planned as Black characters, or was that based upon the casting of Tawny Newsome and Dawnn Lewis?

MCMAHAN: I didn’t know who would be playing Mariner, so I didn’t have a particular casting idea in mind. We met with tons of people when we were casting, and Brad Winters — our producer who Brad Boimler is named for — said, “I just listened to this podcast, and you’ve got to hear this girl.”

Tawny came in, and her name got added to the casting list. Like, hand-written onto the printed list of names. I had maybe heard 500 auditions, and when I heard her I sat back and thought, “This is her, this is it.” That moment you hear about, you know? “Tawny has to play this character. I’m going to make sure this character utilizes Tawny’s performance.”

Then at the end of her audition, I asked her to just ramble on about Star Trek. “Just keep the scene going and improvise!” And that’s when I knew that she’s as big of a nerd as I am, and even though she doesn’t seem like it — since she’s so cool — but when she started going… I changed the ending of the Lower Decks pilot to match her rambling from that audition because I wanted that to become a permanent part of the show! Then, once I knew Mariner was going to be Tawny, that’s when I thought of the idea that the captain could be Mariner’s mom. I hadn’t even decided that yet.

And Dawnn Lewis is just, like, a force. She’s an amazing voice actor; I love her on Futurama… it was such a no-brainer to cast her. I think we utilize Tawny really well, but Dawnn is so great that I don’t know if we’ve ever fully unlocked everything with Freeman — because she has to keep it a little locked down as the captain.

But Dawnn brought her mom to the first Lower Decks table read, because she was just so proud to be a Star Trek captain! From that moment on, I just knew I was going to love Captain Freeman so much.

Q: This collaboration Star Trek is doing with Kid Cudi —

MCMAHAN: Yeah, I never get a collab!

Q: So if you got a Lower Decks collab, who would it be with?

MCMAHAN: (Long pause) Mattel! (Laughs)

Q: Yeah, where are those action figures, man? [Laughs]

MCMAHAN: I don’t know! I mean, I would love there to be so much Lower Decks stuff, so much that it becomes a problem, you know? But if we had a collab, that’s an interesting question. Let’s collab with Sufjan Stevens, like, a real chill one.

I love the Kid Cudi thing though, because he did Entergalactic… like, I get liking sci-fi so much that it fucks up your other shit. Right? That you like it SO MUCH that even when you have a big career, you keep doing sci-fi because that’s what I LOVE.

Q: What are your controversial ‘hot takes’ about Star Trek?

MCMAHAN: I think the skants should still be worn all the time. There are far too few skants — they look comfortable, and it’s probably super easy to go to the bathroom wearing one.

I think Oberth-class ships are tight. I think they’re great — and actually, I think that the cooler a Star Trek ship looks, the less I like it. Like, if you have a really, really cool ship, I’m like, give me the goofy medical ship with the big ball in the front.

Give me the ship nobody else at the pound is adopting because it’s got just one eye, you know what I mean? I mean, look at the Cerritos. I went through a lot of designs saying, “No, that looks too cool.” Like we all love the Enterprise-D, but when they went into the movies with the Sovereign-class… it’s just too fancy.

I’m with Captain Freeman on that one! (Laughs)

The Enterprise-D and Oberth-class SS Tsiolkovsky in “The Naked Now.” (Paramount)

Q: Have you ever been restricted from using certain parts of the Star Trek story in Lower Decks — like, “You can do a lot, but you can’t touch Sisko” or something like that?

MCMAHAN: Oh, no, nothing like that. I mean, I’d work with Avery in a second! But I do try to be really respectful — like, if I run into a legacy Star Trek actor at an event, I mention Lower Decks, and if they get excited I ask if they’re open to talking. I don’t want to just pounce on them.

The only real boundaries I get is to keep Lower Decks from stepping on the other Star Trek shows. I can’t give away anything about Prodigy, but there are characters and some Delta Quadrant stuff in that show that I really wish I had been able to call dibs on. But people are going to love that stuff in Prodigy!

The same thing is happening a little bit with the Starfleet Academy show — we bump up against them, narratively, because like Lower Decks those characters will be people who aren’t at their best just yet, and are still learning. But because Tawny is in the Academy writers’ room, and she knows so much about Lower Decks, she can help make sure that our two shows aren’t showing viewers the same thing twice.

Q: Speaking of Prodigy — that show’s story is just a few years ahead of Lower Decks in the Star Trek timeline; Picard was twenty-something years down the line. Do you know how the Lower Decks characters have progressed during those time periods?

MCMAHAN: …I do know. [Laughs] I’m being very careful!

Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid as Mariner and Boimler in “These Old Scientists.” (Paramount+)

Q: The Strange New Worlds crossover was fantastic. Would you like to do any more live-action crossover stories?

MCMAHAN: Sign me up! I mean, let’s “Oops, All Berries!” the crossovers, because we need to get the rest of the Lower Decks crew into live-action!

Seriously, though — this was so important to me, and Tawny and Jack Quaid were so excited to do it — but I’ve always struggled with the “live action versus animation” thing. Like, Futurama is a really big comfort show for me, and I wanted Lower Decks to be a comfort show like that, so I was really glad that “Those Old Scientists” began in animation, became live-action, and then ended with animation again, even for the Strange New Worlds crew.

It’s a different medium, but it’s supposed to spark this joy, right? So part of me is like, “Yeah, let’s go!” I want to do more live-action… but another part of me is like, “Folks, please go watch Lower Decks. It’s special, too!” You know what I mean? I don’t want people to feel like, “Yeah, but we could have this other thing.”

It kind of feels like when the band splits up and people go off to do solo projects – because as much as I love the crossover, we need Tendi and Rutherford and T’Lyn there, too. And I love Strange New Worlds… but that’s their show. I don’t want to take away from Uhura and Spock and everybody else, because then you’re competing for emotional storytelling at the same time.

So I would always love to do more live-action – our cast would freaking kill it – but at the same time, I love Lower Decks and don’t want that to go away.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on Thursday, October 19 with “Caves” on Paramount+.

New STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Images — “Caves”

TrekCore Staff
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New STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS Images — “Caves”

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back for the next episode of the new season this week, and today we’ve got new images from “Caves” for your review!
 
This week, the Cerritos core four — Lieutenants Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Boimler (Jack Quaid), Tendi (Noel Wells), and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) — explore a set of alien caves, in classic Star Trek tradition.
 
Here are nine new images from this week’s new episode, which screened for fans at New York Comic Con this past Saturday.
 

CAVES —The Lower Deckers go on a classic cave mission.

 

Written by Ben Rodgers. Directed by Meghan Lloyd.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on Thursday, October 19 with “Caves” on Paramount+.

WeeklyTrek Podcast #231— STAR TREK: PRODIGY Finds a New Home!

Alex Perry
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WeeklyTrek Podcast #231— STAR TREK: PRODIGY Finds a New Home!

On this week’s episode of WeeklyTrek — now the OFFICIAL podcast of TrekCore.com! — host Alex Perry is joined by Infinite Diversity co-host Thad Hait to discuss all the latest Star Trek news.
 

 
This week, Alex and his guest discuss the following stories from TrekCore and around the web:
 

In addition, stick around to hear Thad’s theory about what we might learn at New York Comic Con this weekend, and Alex’s theory that this week’s Heritage Auctions auction of the Greg Jein Collection of props and costumes, including treasures from many of the Star Trek productions, will raise a lot of money. 

WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify — and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.

Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!

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