“Mining the Mind’s Mines” is a serviceable episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks which brings a good number of laughs and provides a fun away team story, but never feels like it totally gels or reaches the heights of some of the series’ greatest episodes. You’re going to have a great 23 minutes watching this episode, but it doesn’t stand among the show’s best.
The USS Cerritos, alongside the USS Carlsbad, are called in to help relocate a Federation outpost that has made contact with a silica based lifeform on the surface of Jengus IV called the Scrubble, whose psychic mines — glowing orbs that litter the planet’s surface — read nearby sentients’ thoughts and project their fantasies.
Ensigns Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Boimler (Jack Quaid), and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) are dispatched to the surface under supervision from Lt. Commander Stevens (Ben Rodgers) to help collect and safely dispose of the psychic mines, while a team from the Carlsbad becomes responsible for dismantling the outpost.
Meanwhile, aboard the ship, Ensign Tendi (Noel Wells) begins her senior science officer training under the less-than-successful mentorship of Dr. Migleemo (Paul F. Tompkins), who assigns Tendi to staff Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) during final negotiations with the Scrubble.
After Stevens accidentally shatters a number of the psychic mines and they begin manifesting the away team’s nightmares in addition to their fantasies, the team on the surface determines that the outpost scientists and the Scrubble are actually in league together — using the mines to steal Federation secrets to sell them on the black market.
It’s fun to see the various different fantasies and nightmares manifested by our characters, such as Rutherford’s fantasy involving Dr. Leah Brahms (Susan Gibney, returning for the first time since 1991’s “Galaxy’s Child”) dirty talking technobabble about designing Galaxy-class ships is a real hoot.
And Boimler’s nightmare — a monstrous California Raisin reflecting his raisin farmer heritage — is a great sight gag tying back to the season premiere that doesn’t get picked up in dialogue. On top of all that, the Cerritos crew discover that they’ve become famous — at least, among the ranks of their fellow California-class starships.
But overall, the episode is just fine, and in one set of scenes unfortunately falls back into a problem Lower Decks had during its earliest days: Captain Freeman and rival Captain Maier (Baron Vaughn) are complete jerks — both to each other and to the Scrubble — as they argue over who gets the “honor” of taking home the offered rock totem. It ultimately works out okay, since totem was actually a listening device designed to steal Starfleet secrets, but neither of the characters knew that when they were openly arguing with each other.
That extended bit just didn’t work for me; Starfleet captains would never be so openly rude to an alien guest they were about to start negotiations with. And Freeman’s motivation is pure pettiness — she just doesn’t like that the younger captain has a rising reputation, and just wants to knock him down a peg.
That kind of behavior works on a show like The Office to drive the humor, because it’s true to the characters and settings of that kind of series. But not in Star Trek — and Lower Decks has demonstrated time and time again it does not need its characters to punch down, or be irredeemable jerks, in order to generate humor in any given situation.
It just completely takes me out of the moment, because then the show just feels like a situational comedy with a Star Trek skin — and not a true Star Trek comedy. And we know that Lower Decks does true Star Trek comedy so well, so it’s a little disappointing to slide back to storytelling devices that the show grew out of two years ago.
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
- The entire premise for this episode is an extended Star Trek trope: the Federation outpost that blunders into trouble that requires Starfleet to bail them out, and the mysterious alien race nobody knew existed before they arrived (see episodes like TNG’s “Home Soil” for comparison.)
- Manifesting character’s fantasies or nightmares in some form is also a Star Trek trope that has a long pedigree, extending all the way back to “Shore Leave,” and even some Voyager episodes like “Bliss” and “Persistence of Vision.”
- We get a classic “heating rocks with phasers” moment, which I just love.
CANON CONNECTIONS
- The illusionary Leah Brahms is dressed in the same attire as her holographic in “Booby Trap.”
- The USS Hood brokers the initial truce between the Federation outpost and the Scrubble. The Excelsior-class Hood has a long history of appearances in Star Trek, going all the way back to its first appearance in “Encounter at Farpoint” when it was under the command of Captain Robert DeSoto.
- Stevens tells the Lower Deckers that if they find themselves facing their fantasies, they should think about the game parrises squares to make them go away – though we’re no closer after a bunch of references throughout Star Trek to learning how the game is played or what it involves beyond mallets and shiny costumes.
- The third Carlsbad ensign on the surface, Cor’dee (Carl Tart), is a webbed-handed Zaldan, first seen confronting Wesley Crusher as part of his Starfleet Academy entrance tests in “Coming of Age.”
- The science officer mentor’s manual has a foreword by Ambassador Spock, though because of its length Dr. Migleemo observers that “it would have been logical to find an editor.”
- Commander Stevens; nightmare involves being attacked by Kukulkan from the Animated Series episode “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth.” I think we just need the inflatable Enterprise at this point to complete the TAS bingo card!
- At the end of the episode, Stevens asks why “saw a koala” if he was brain-dead — yet another reference to the cosmic koala spotted by Lt. O’Connor as he was ascending in “Moist Vessel.”
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
- Ransom observes that the California-class crews “get real gossipy,” which then turns out to be true as the Carlsbad Lower Deckers have heard a lot about the Cerritos and its adventures. It was fun to see the internal politics of the California-class ships play out more.
- Paul F. Tompkins seems to voice three characters in this episode: Dr. Migleemo, the Tellarite ensign from the Carslbad, and the lead Federation scientist from the outpost.
- Tompkins’ delivery of lines as Migleemo is always incredible. He’s one of the most expressive voice actors in the guest cast for Lower Decks.
- I really enjoyed that Mariner’s fantasy was a “hot, supportive girlfriend,” while her nightmare appeared to be a clingy girlfriend who “wants to be exclusive” (and is also a werewolf because it’s a nightmare).
- Boimler’s fantasy of being asked to help an admiral defeat the Borg — but in which he would ride in the sidecar of a ridiculous-looking motorcycle — feels spot on. The writers really know each of these characters so well.
- Tellarites have a dominant groin. That’s a Memory Alpha article I’m looking forward to reading!
- Other manifested nightmares in addition to the Kukulkan, the monstrous raisin, and werewolf Jennifer are Borg snakes and killer clowns with bat’leths for hands.
- The negotiation scenes on the Cerritos feature Starfleet delta shaped finger food and an USS Enterprise cutting board, which was once actually available for purchase.
Overall, “Mining the Mind’s Mines” has some fun moments that uses the complete confidence the Lower Decks writing staff has in the Lower Decker characters to great effect. But pushing Freeman in this episode into becoming a jerk — and playing that for laughs, when it is so far outside the norm for a traditional Starfleet captain — undermined the episode as a whole.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun watching this episode, just that it won’t be in the top tier for this season.
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns with “Room For Growth” on Thursday, September 15 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.
