One of the fun things about Lower Decks is that they take joy in the obscure to a degree usually reserved for tie-in fiction. Over the nearly sixty years that Star Trek has been around, there’s been a lot of weird-ass stuff that only showed up in one episode and was mostly forgotten. That “mostly” is necessary because tie-in writers have taken those weird-ass things and run with them. (As an example, your humble reviewer took a thirty-second conversation between Bashir and Garak in a DS9 episode about the Betreka Nebula Incident—which has never been mentioned before or since—and built a 100,000-word novel out of it.)
LD has continued this tradition, from a fifty-foot skeleton of Spock to the use last week of the Acamarians (which I totally forgot to mention in my review of “Starbase 80?!”). This week, we get something even more obscure, as it’s from a part of an original series script that was cut from the final episode.
Back in 1967, the original series episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” posited that the gods worshipped by the Greeks were actual alien beings. We meet Apollo in that episode, and the original script ended with Enterprise officer Carolyn Palamas, with whom Apollo has been making smoochy faces with, announcing that she was pregnant with Apollo’s child. While that was cut from the final episode, “Of Gods and Angles” runs with that notion by giving us Ensign Olly (wonderfully voiced by Saba Homayoon), who is descended from Zeus and a human woman.
Olly is on the Cerritos as kind of her last chance, as she’s been transferred multiple other posts thanks to all the times she’s messed things up, blown things up, damaged things, and so on. Plus she’s always late and doesn’t follow orders. Mariner—who has some experience in being the fuckup ensign—offers to take her under her wing, and hopefully lead her on the same path Mariner herself has been on. (Though Freeman has to point out that Mariner isn’t 100% there yet, either, given that she yanked a padd out of Freeman’s hands without asking, which isn’t something you do to your captain or your mother…)
Another thing LD does well is take advantage of being animated to give us some truly alien aliens. In this case, the Cerritos is hosting peace talks between two sets of beings of pure energy, one of whom contains their energy in cubes, the other of whom does so in spheres. Complicating matters is that one of the cubes has gone missing, the teenaged offspring of one of the leaders. There’s evidence pointing to the teenaged cube being dead, but it’s not conclusive. Freeman bends over backward to make sure that nobody accuses anybody of murder without way more evidence, but Olly jumps to that conclusion with both feet and acts accordingly while she and Mariner investigate. (They do the investigating because Shaxs and his security detail are already spread thin maintaining security with all the energy beings on board, plus if security is investigating, it’ll look like they think the cube was killed, which will upset the delicate negotiating balance Freeman is trying to maintain.)
The biggest flaw in this episode is that I saw the fact that the teenager was missing and not murdered and off canoodling with a sphere a mile off, as that plot had whiskers on it when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1597 (not to mention when TNG did “The Outrageous Okona” in 1988).
However, what I particularly like about this plot is that it’s some of the best evidence that Mariner really is evolving. Mariner turning back into a good Starfleet officer has been a slow, laborious process, which has been frustrating for me because she was so awful in the first season. But seeing her mentor someone incredibly similar to her in Olly (but not exactly the same—I like that Olly is her own kind of messed up, different from Mariner’s brand of messed up) is encouraging.
I especially like the final scene. Olly has been thrown in the brig. While she did help save the day by using her gods-given powers to suck the energy from the cubes and spheres when they start fighting each other on the Cerritos, Olly also lied about having those powers and also hid evidence from the missing cube’s quarters. (She was worried she’d be accused of causing the cube to be killed or go missing or whatever, so she hid the fried computer terminal.) Mariner insists on sitting with Olly—the same way Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford always sat with Mariner when she got tossed in the brig. Olly isn’t all that thrilled with it, but Mariner doesn’t take no for an answer.
The B-plot is Boimler’s continued attempts to be more like his alternate-universe counterpart. His mustache is completely grown in at this point, and the beard is, er, coming along. The funniest part of this plot is that both Rutherford and Tendi know he’s been surreptitiously looking at alt-Boimler’s padd, which they recognized as being from the other universe because the bevelling is a few millimeters different. (Both times this is mentioned, Boimler pointedly remarks that the other universe’s padd is also red, and the response is a surprised, “Oh yeah!”)
It turns out that alt-Boimler and alt-T’Ana were very close friends, with the doctor referring to Boimler as “Flip” and Boimler being part of her book club. Boimler’s attempts to make this happen on his own ship are, of course, absolutely dismal failures that make T’Ana just be more annoyed at him. As usual, when Boimler gets out of his own way, things work out better, as during the climactic donnybrook involving the cubes, spheres, and Olly’s electricity powers, Boimler gets a lightning bolt up his ass. T’Ana has to perform a very delicate, career-improving operation to remove it, and that’s what ingratiates Boimler to her. She invites him to her book club, and does indeed give him a nickname: “Fuck-o.” Boimler is thrilled.
I’m genuinely curious what the endgame is of Boimler’s quest to make himself over into his seemingly-more-successful counterpart, and it’s been fun to watch him make an idiot of himself trying to do so. I like that his friends remain supportive.
This episode is exactly what LD is best at: telling a Star Trek story with humor. The resolution of the sphere/cube storyline is very Trek, with the forbidden-love couple (complete with funky-shaped offspring named SquAaron) inspiring everyone to go back to the negotiating table to try to make it all work. Olly gets a transfer to engineering, which is where she always wanted to be. (Her powers kept futzing out equipment, so she was kicked out of engineering, but now that her powers are publicly known, they can be compensated for in a way they weren’t when she kept them secret.) And Boimler makes friends with T’Ana. All of it is done in a way that’s genuinely funny, from Olly’s OTT reactions to, well, everything to all the comments about corners and smoothness coming from the spheres and cubes to “Also it’s red” to T’Lyn’s delightfully deadpan recitation of all the “incidents” Olly had that should probably have already gotten her transferred off the Cerritos.
Random thoughts
- This episode establishes that the laurel crown that was in Apollo’s hair in “…Adonais?” and the one that Olly has as well isn’t an affectation, it’s actually attached, which is hilarious. Also, she can create physical lightning bolts as well as generate electricity, which is why one of them gets stuck up Boimler’s ass…
- The most extensive use of the cut line establishing that Palamas was pregnant was by Peter David in the Star Trek: New Frontier series, where the novel Being Human established that one of the main characters, Mark McHenry, is a descendant of Apollo and Palamas (and who was partly raised by Artemis, whom McHenry as a child thought was his imaginary friend). In addition, John Byrne did a direct sequel to “…Adonais?” focusing on Palamas in issue #11 of his New Visions photo-novel-style comic book series
- When the cube and sphere reveal their love affair, they also reveal that the mess made of the cube’s quarters was because of their kinky sex play. Olly is appalled to realize that she touched the fried computer terminal…
- When Ransom rants and raves about how annoying Olly is, the thing that pisses him off the most is that he thinks Olly may have stolen his kettle-bell weights. Because of course that’s his main concern…
- We see Kayshon again in this episode. He has two lines of dialogue, one in regular English, one in Tamarian metaphor, and this refusal to commit to the bit still isn’t working for me. He should really just only talk in Tamarian metaphor. If you’re gonna do the joke, do the joke. Kayshon remains one of LD’s biggest misfires, alas.
- I forgot to mention the Acamarians last week because I honestly forgot all about them ten minutes after I watched the episode. To be fair, I also totally forgot about the Acamarians ten minutes after I watched their only other appearance, in TNG’s incredibly forgettable fourth-season episode “The Vengeance Factor.”
