Boimler and Mariner are back from that Pike thing that we’re not supposed to talk about. The Lower Decks crew is back together and ready to show that nostalgia isn’t just for the TNG / Picard fans! The Cerritos’ first mission of the season is to escort THE Voyager (now refurbished, and with a built-in museum) back to Starfleet command.
The theme music from Star Trek: Voyager swells and the camera drifts lovingly in a long pan shot over every deck and nacelle of the NCC-74656 as she powers up and prepares to leave space-dock. It’s enough even to get Mariner excited. The museum on board has just about everything a young Voyager fan could ever want! Mannequins, bio-neural circuit gel packs, questionably persevered vegetables, a few macro viruses, Kes’ orchid, animatronics of Paris and Janeway’s hyper-evolved amphibian offspring, and just a faint aroma of Borg…
Wait! didn’t something strange happen on Voyager with that orchid? “It’s Voyager. Shit got freaky…”
Oh, right! And what was the title of this episode of Lower Decks? “Twovix”? It looks like it’s going to be Tuvix all over again.
The Lower Decks crew is moving on up
When Billups and Dr. T’ana enter the transporter, only one pattern emerges. It calls itself T’illups. Captain Freeman has Janeway’s logs to work from, and the benefit of not being a billion light years away from Earth. Ethical considerations and the possibility of a less straight-up murderous solution mean that the Janeway playbook is already straight out the Jefferies tube.
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to promise T’illups that they won’t kill it. Before we know it, hostages are taken (to be fair, the hostage is just Dr. Migleemo). Soon Migleemo and Captain Freeman become Doctor Captain Frigleeman. Rounding out the very Doctor Moreau-esque mutineers are Shabart, Chondas, and Swhale Swhalens (Steve Stephens and Matt the Whale). Soon enough, they’re all transported into a holding cell and become one huge, sweaty meatball of DNA. Meanwhile, the ship is haunted by the holodeck projections of Voyager’s deepest cuts, including Doctor Chaotica, Viorsa’s Clown and Michael Sullivan.
Meanwhile, Boimer gets a promotion dangled in front of him that could mean the end of holodeck duty, provided nothing goes sideways in a historically significant way (spoiler alert: it already has). When Boimler tries to rescue Mariner from a macro virus’ web, she reminds him of their friendship and gives him the confidence to try to help save the day. The scene reminds us that even amidst all of the chaos, the lower-deckers are a family.
Tendi and T’Lyn sort out the Tuvix blob into their original entities while Boimler and Rutherford knock out the cheesy holograms with even more cheese. With all of the chaos sorted out, we see almost all of beta shift crew promoted to the lowest of the middle. Things are looking up for the Lower Decks crew!
Finally, a stinger: What is that mysterious badge-shaped ship that just destroyed a Klingon bird-of-prey?!
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