Mariner is enjoying the freedom granted her by Captain Freeman, making up her own "side missions" and frustrating Commander Ransom. But when Mariner accidentally "Gary Mitchells" Ransom and he becomes corrupted with god-like powers, the Cerritos is suddenly in a danger of her own making. Meanwhile, Tendi is convinced that Rutherford's implant is malfunctioning, and sets out to "fix" him.
Lower Decks has always featured plots that seem like they could have taken place on one of the more serious Star Trek series. This episode took an adjacent approach: do an episode that was done on a serious Star Trek series, but add jokes. "Strange Energies" explicitly mentions the Gary Mitchell episode of the original series ("Where No Man Has Gone Before"), but is also similar to The Next Generation's "Hide and Q," while dropping a fairly overt reference to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (when Ransom's giant "space hand" -- and then head -- comes after the ship).
New to this take on the "someone gets god-like powers" story was that it played on an already existing conflict: Ransom's insecurity about where Mariner and Freeman's relationship has left him. We went on a fun journey before arriving at "Mariner maybe won't have so much freedom after all." Insecurity was also the theme of the subplot, as Tendi doubted her relationship with Rutherford and went to sitcom lengths to preserve it. It all demonstrated just how far the characters of this series have come in the 10 prior episodes. They couldn't really have done this episode in season one; the relationships weren't developed enough for the characters to "hurt each other" like this, and the audience would not yet have been invested in the outcome.
Not much Boimler this week, but as I said, the show isn't done picking up all its toys yet. We got a fun taste at the end of the episode of how an exciting life on a more front-line ship might not be for him... but that'll be for another episode.
A solid season premiere, I give "Strange Energies" a B+.
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