Terminal Provocations

The latest Star Trek: Lower Decks repurposed two of Trek's most common plot tropes for comedic effect: the killer AI and the malfunctioning holodeck.

Mariner and Boimler must deal with a crisis when Ensign Fletcher makes a mistake worse by not owning up to it. Rutherford and Tendi get trapped on the holodeck, on the run from a killer hologram. And up on the bridge, Captain Freeman is clashing over salvage with an alien ship.

I'm not sure if putting two "killer AIs" together in the same episode was Lower Decks making a commentary on how often this sort of thing happens in Star Trek, or a more writerly exercise in making two plots run parallel. In either case, there were some fun gags in both stories, though I found the Mariner/Boimler version a bit less engaging.

The character of Fletcher was a lot to take, a sort of Reginald Barclay magnified by a huge dose of frat bro. And he was more of a plot convenience than a character, really, as he was so very put together at the start of the episode, and then so utterly not later on when the plot required that. Still, I'd rather see side characters be the screw-ups that juice the danger so the main characters can come to the rescue, and that's exactly what we got here.

The Rutherford/Tendi take on a similar idea played much funnier to me, for a variety of reasons. I loved seeing the Lower Decks take on Next Generation's biggest plot staple, the malfunctioning holodeck. I also remember "Clippy," the Microsoft Office assistant, and appreciate the comedic premise that it would be trying to kill you. Mostly, though, I just had to laugh at a killer Starfleet emblem voiced by 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer. ("Badgey's" over-the-top violence was pretty funny to me too, though I recognize that'll probably rub some fans the wrong way.)

The bridge story line was sort of one note, but that was the "C plot" of the episode, and the one note was pretty funny. To me, it seemed based on a YouTube montage of Captain Picard shooting down every suggestion Worf ever makes, as poor Shaxs wasn't allowed to actually do his job at Tactical until it was too late. A little Easter Egg in this part of the episode was that the alien captain was voiced by J.G. Hertzler, the actor who played Martok on Deep Space Nine -- and that the character had an eye patch, just like his previous character.

I give "Terminal Provocations" a B. I keep waiting for a truly outstanding episode of Lower Decks, but I suppose there is something to be said for its "better-than-average" consistency. This isn't early Next Generation, where every "The Measure of a Man" meant enduring a "Too Short a Season" (or three). I'd love to see whatever the Lower Decks version of a "Duet" is -- an episode that really announces the show is capable of greatness. But maybe getting "some form of B" every week is okay too.