Star Trek: Lower Decks brings jokes and depth in “Reflections”
Troubled by vivid nightmares, Rutherford seeks Tendi’s help in clearing his mind and unknowingly uncovers a part of his personality long kept dormant. Meanwhile, Mariner and Boimler are tasked with managing the Starfleet recruitment booth, and find their enlistment efforts sabotaged by the stiff competition among the other attendees. All this and more in this week’s episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Reflections’.’
The main thrust of this episode focuses on Rutherford, who is suffering from a bout of insomnia due to nightmares of him failing to repair something in time before a device explodes. Ever the good friend, Ensign Tendi notices Rutherford’s dilemma and offers to clear the backed up memories stored within his head implant. Sounds innocent enough, until Rutherford awakes from a nap to find an “imposter” in control of his body.
It’s a classic Star Trek story, the body of a crew member taken over by an outside entity, the original owner disabled while the new one wreaks havoc. The writers are aware how common the trope is. There’s a nice mystery element to the first half of the story as well as a clever twist in the second
SPOILERS incoming for Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 305
As it turns out, the abductor of Rutherford’s body is Rutherford himself; not the one we know, but a younger, more rambunctious version of him lost since he started wearing his headgear.
The younger Rutherford is critical of the disciplined man the older Rutherford has become and challenges him to a space race. This all happens in Rutherford’s subconscious, where the two entities can manifest anything they desire. The story ends on a nice reassuring note for Rutherford, who is able to gain an edge in the competition because he had imagined his friends beside him to crew his ship, whereas this younger personality had not imagined any help.
The B-story is comparatively simple. It’s just Mariner and Boimler running a recruitment booth for Starfleet at some college fair-esque event. The conflict is that Mariner, who does not enjoy this kind of boring work, is forced to do it under threat of reassignment. We blast past that with the introduction of an archeologist whose booth is right next to Starfleet’s and who takes pleasure in siphoning attention from them.
Mariner and Boilmer end up switching their usual roles, with Mariner doing a fantastic job recruiting people. It’s a decent enough story, but what puts it over the top for me are the fun references to older Star Trek series. We have cameos by alien species such as the Antedians, one of the members of the nearby Collector’s group is dressed just like Kivas Fajo, and there’s even a mention of the mind-controlling worms that tried to take over The Federation in The Next Generation season 1.
I’d much rather we have strong stories and jokes than simple references…but every rule has its exception, and for whatever reason callbacks to old Star Trek lore make me happy.
And that’s that for this week’s episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. A fine episode, maybe my favorite of the season so far, and one that leaves us with two great cliffhangers.
Grade: B
dark. Next. Star Trek: Lower Decks wins me over in “Room for Growth”
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