Star Trek: Lower Decks Homages The Original Series’ Final Film
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1, Episode 9, "Crisis Point," now streaming on CBS All Access.
In the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, Boimler loads a new program into the holodeck to get ready for his upcoming interview with Captain Freeman. This program recreates the bridge and crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos perfectly, and he plans on using that to practice his interactions with the ship's Captain.
However, all of that changes when Mariner takes control of the program and alters it to plunge herself, as well as the other Ensigns, into a cinematic adventure filled with phaser fights and crashing ships. As a result, "Crisis Point" delivers plenty of references to the various Star Trek films -- even during its credits.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowIn "Crisis Point," Mariner casts herself as the villain in her very own Star Trek movie. This allows the animated series to poke fun at everything from Star Trek: The Motion Picture to director J.J. Abrams' Kelvin Timeline movies. But the episode's homages are not just contained to the events of Mariner's film.
Once Mariner's movie comes to an end -- as well as the episode itself -- the credits roll. However, before the Lower Decks' actual credits, "Crisis Point" features the "credits" of Mariner's film in the form of the name of the "actors" that took part in the simulation: Boimler, Rutherford, Tendi and Mariner herself. In front of a screen featuring nothing but space and stars, their names appear one by one in blue, written as if they were being autographed onto the screen.
This is an homage to the credits of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The 1991 film served as the final movie featuring the Star Trek: The Original Series crew at the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise. At the end of The Undiscovered Country, Kirk, Spock and the rest of ship's crew flew off into the cosmos on their final adventure before someone else would take over the Enterprise. This marked the end of an era, a fact clearly highlighted by the movie's credits, which featured all of the names of the actors appearing one by one, autographed onto the screen on a starry background.
But make no mistake, despite this homage, "Crisis Point" is by no means the end of Mariner and her fellow Ensigns' adventures. And there are still plenty more adventures in their futures.
Streaming on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Lower Decks stars Tawny Newsome as Ensign Beckett Mariner, Eugene Cordero as Ensign Rutherford, Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as Ensign Tendi, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O'Connell as Commander Jack Ransom, Gillian Vigman as Doctor T'Ana and Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs.
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