After the long dark drought of any televisual Trek in the great Ginnungagap between Enterprise's end in 2005 and the DISCO getting started in 2017 (the big screen JJverse trilogy [which looks not to be expanding further than the three, sadly, in their perverse I: good, II: shit, III: good reversal of the commonly accepted ranking of ST movies] notwithstanding) now comes the deluge. We've had two - soon to be three - seasons of Discovery, the second of which set up the forthcoming Pike-centric Strange New Worlds, the first season of Picard, a brace of the anthological minisodes (oh that word, what have you done to my brain, fandom?) Short Treks, a prospective Section 31 show covering the darker sides of Federation espionage and now the animated series Lower Decks.
As only the second animated venture into the Great Bird's galaxy after '73-'74's (there's almost a Connells song in there, but not quite) explanatorily-titled Star Trek: the Animated Series, and the first to have input from a writer best known for comedy rather than drama - the show's creator being Mike McMahan of Rick & Morty - I suspect that I wasn't the only one looking slightly askance at this when it was first announced. I dig Rick & Morty myself, but knowing that there are a lot of reactionary and conservative members of fandom (witness some of the online rage at aspects of Discovery and Picard over the last few years) it was always going to be... interesting, so say the least.
Speaking of Connells - we've got one here, namely Jerry O'Connell of Sliders fame (or Joe's Apartment fame. Or Kangaroo Jack fame if you really must) alongside other names I recognised such as Jack ('son of Dennis') Quaid off of The Boys and veteran voice actor Fred Tatasciore. With animation from Titmouse studios (of The Venture Bros., among others) very much in the style of Rick & Morty, the episode opens with the starship USS Cerritos docked at Douglas Station which bears a great resemblance to Spacedock of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock - as well as Starbase 74 of the TNG instalment '11001001' - earning the episode its first "Squee!" from me. Here we are introduced to our Lower Decks protagonists: the stickling and command hungry Brad Boimler (Quaid) and the can't-be-arsed fun times lovin' Beckett Marriner (Tawny Newsome, whom I was previously unaware of, but on the basis of such a fun performance i'll have to rectify that) who appear on first impression to be the Rimmer and Lister respectively of this craft - the bottom of the power ziggurat, doing the menial work that keeps the spaceship running, to the disinterest and non-recognition of the main crew.
After Marriner, drunk on Romulan ale ("You'd think it would be green - but it's BLUE!"), finishes her bout of roundly mocking Boimler for wanting to reach the echelons of command that she's been busted down from by accident stabbing him with a bat'leth belonging to a one-eyed Klingon general (Martok?!?) the pair make the acquaintance of new crew member D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells) an eager beaver ensign of the green-hued Orion race. Sadly, she's wearing full uniform. Darn. We're also introduced to our other main character, engineering ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) who is adjusting to his newly-installed cybernetic head implant (like a cross between DISCO's Kayla Detmer and the full Airiam) which keeps fritzing into a Vulcan-like logic over emotion state and jeopardising his upcoming date with a sexy Trill coworker.
As these are our main characters, the main crew of the ship including Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) - who is [SPOILER ALERT!) Marriner's mother and constantly frustrated by her wayward rule-breaking daughter, butch Will Riker-alike First Officer Jack Ransom (O'Connell) and Chief Medical Officer T'Ana (Gillian Vigman) - who is of the feline Caitian race as a nod to TAS's Lt M'Ress, are very much in the background making the big decisions and causing the havoc that our lower decks guys have to deal with. This includes making Second Contact - the form-filling, box-ticking bureaucratic also-ran to the prestigious First Contact - with a race that i'm sure were called the Caladonians. I may have misheard. They certainly didn't look very Caledonian: i've met many inhabitants of Bonnie Scotland and none of them looked like these misshapen purple betusked characters. The again, i've still never been tae Fintry.
While Ransom and other members of the command crew unwittingly bring a mutagenic pathogen aboard the Cerritos that leads to outbursts of murderous violence and attempted cannibalism, Boimler has to try and follow the captain's instruction to keep an eye on Marriner and make sure she doesn't deviate from Starfleet protocol as the pair are pursued through the alien jungle by an immense creature. Meanwhile, Tendi is co-opted by Dr T'Ana to assist with the medical emergency, having to palpate the exposed heart of her immediate superior whilst a virtual zombie apocalypse of black bile-spewing infected occurs around her, and Rutherford's Dax-y date culminates in a spacewalk across the ship's outer hull to reach safety. Chaotic and hilarious, Lower Decks had me alternating between squeeing at such fannish stuff as equipment designs and title fonts and cackling at the rapid-fire gags. Quick-paced and full of character and humour, i'm sure stick in the mud devotees of such staid and beige stuff as Voyager will hate it.
Which, from me, is a big recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment