‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Just Made Fun of J.J. Abrams, and It Was Great

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 1, Episode 9, “Crisis Point.”]

In “Crisis Point,” the newest episode of CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Lower Decks, Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid) pilots a shuttlecraft of senior officers to the USS Cerritos. He’s doing this, however, in a holodeck program created by Mariner (Tawny Newsome) to turn their ordinary lives into an “awesome movie.” So he and his fellow officers take their sweet time flying up to the ship, for over a minute of over-the-top spaceship porn set to a sweeping instrumental score.

If it feels familiar, it’s because it’s a sequence you’ve seen in plenty of other Trek films, most notably in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and J.J. Abrams‘ 2009 film, but with plenty of variations over the years, whenever a new ship or space station is introduced. And “Crisis Point” pokes a little fun at it.

This isn’t the only Trek trope that “Crisis Point” — rickety catwalks, inconvenient capes, and plot-convenient transporting advances all get a mention. While the actual focus of “Crisis Point” is Mariner processing her not-so-latent anger at her mother by indulging in a little Khan Noonien Soong-esque roleplaying, it’s also the closest Lower Decks has gotten to full-on parody of the franchise to which it belongs.

All season long, Lower Decks has packed its episodes with jokes which play best for longtime fans of Trek — those who don’t mind poking a little bit of fun at the concept of the Prime Directive, or thrill to the casual namedrop of beloved characters like Q or Chief O’Brien. But once Mariner’s simulation in “Crisis Point” starts, the aspect ratio changes, the animation takes on some cinematic film grain, and you’d better believe that there’s a whole lot of lens flare. (Sorry, J.J.)

Much like when it comes to your family or friends, finding the right tone when making fun of a beloved media property can be tricky to navigate. The opening sequence of Lower Decks is a perfect example of the balance that the show has tried to strike from the beginning: While the visuals of the Cerritos soaring through the cosmos are nearly identical to ’90s-era Trek series (they even brought back the TNG font, because font call-backs are the best and no that’s not sarcasm), there are still touches of fun — the edge of the ship scraping against an ice peak, or the ship hurtling at warp speed with a giant grub monster gnawing on its tail end.

Trek has never been allergic to the funny — after, this is the universe that gave us tribbles, an extended James Bond homage, and “I am not a merry man!” But Lower Decks is the first Trek series with the explicit mandate to be a half-hour comedy, and it’s managed to find ways to tell stories that fit into both boxes.

A really important part of that is that its core quartet of characters all have one thing in common: Boimler, Mariner, Tendi (Noël Wells), and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) are all actually dedicated Starfleet officers. Even Mariner, the least conventional of them, is actually talented, capable, and honorable — her biggest flaw is resisting those facts due to her maternal issues, which gives her a character arc on the level of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) coping with his half-human side or Sisko (Avery Brooks) trying to balance fatherhood with running a space station and being a Bajoran religious deity.

Mariner might roll up her sleeves, but she still has respect for the uniform she wears — much like Lower Decks itself. It was clear from the season premiere that showrunner Mike McMahan and his writers really love Star Trek, and they’ve managed to infuse that love into each episode, even an episode like this. “Crisis Point” does acknowledge that sometimes, Trek can be a little silly. But by this point in the season, Lower Decks has earned the right to say so. After all, it’s family.

The Star Trek: Lower Decks season finale premieres next Thursday on CBS All Access.

Source: collider.com