Episode 5: What it says on the tin (LD 3x01 "Grounded")

Hello and welcome back to Subspace Radio. It's me, Kevin.

And me, Rob. Did you miss us? We missed you.

Did you miss us? Good news is, everyone survived. We're all still on this planet.

We haven't lost anybody else from, uh, Star Trek legacy, so um it's been a fortunate couple of weeks.

Uhhuh. And, uh, the good news is we have new Star Trek in our lives again. So we will be coming to you weekly for the next little while as Lower Decks season three drip-feeds into our eyeballs.

And I've been able to finally catch up on this whole Lower Decks thing and be up to date with everything. Cuz I was sadly behind the eight ball. I missed the entire first and second season, so I had to do a massive catch up over the last couple of weeks.

You have what I like to call beginner's mindset. You can still remember what it was like, not to know what was going on with Lower Decks. So tell me, having made that transition very quickly over the past couple of weeks, how did it feel going from there to here? How are you feeling about the show now, going into season three?

Yeah, look, I really love it, but it took a while to get into the right head space for me. Um, first things first, Beckett just annoyed the hell out of me. There was, like… For me in those first couple of episodes, there was nothing redeeming about her whatsoever. And there was no real comeuppance for what she was doing. She was sort of like cocky and knew everything, but nothing really stuck to her. There was, um, the episode, of course, when the captain, her mum, promoted her.

Yes. Her rolling off the bed and groaning because she was invited to the poker game is a highlight for me.

Yes. But through the course of the series, learning where she comes from and actually showing, all the range of her as a character…

Yeah, I had that. I think a lot of people had that experience, perhaps people of the Bradward Boimler persuasion. Like I think you and I are naturally, uh, uh, inclined to relate to him. And Beckett Mariner is designed to annoy Brad Boimlers of the world.

Yes. And there's no, you know, sugar coating the fact that we are, uh, very Boimler, very, very, Boimler the both of us. But yeah, I love the setup of it. I love the Cerritos, I love the fact that it's not just, we're seeing the lower decks. We're seeing the lower decks of a lower class.

This is the third tier ship in the…

Yeah, the California class, which I really like, has become a thing. And so, it's grown on me in those first couple of episodes, the references are thrown in right near the end, a bit ham-fisted, but they've found this beautiful way of integrating it all in there. And the cameos have just been outstanding. I mean, you know, uh, Jonathan Frakes is, is, is absolute legend in getting, um, Tom Paris back was also a, a particularly delightful little moment. So just waiting for Harry Kim to come back,

Well, there is bound to be a clarinet recital on, the Cerritos at some point where he will be needed.

There, there has to be, there has to be. So yeah, it's got to that point where like with, Orville which I really like as well, and I haven't seen the recent series of that, it's started pushing the comedy and the sci-fi was there in the background, but now it's really incorporated. It's become a really confident Star Trek show that hasn't lost it's sassy sense of humor, and that ability to show the graphic violence of animation, has now integrated itself really beautifully.

Yeah, much less of a sudden clunk when it switches between earnest Star Trek and comedy cartoon. And now it, it does feel like those things are part of a uniform, tone.

Yeah. And I found it really interesting and it was a really good work with character, like when Boimler finally gets his dream of working on a real, Hollywood-type Starship with the Titan. And he just, it's just too much. It's too much for him. Like, just seeing how he just wants to explore stuff. He just wants to be a scientist or work on engineering stuff, as opposed to being like in battles and warfare and sacrificing himself.

I'm interested to talk more about the level of, nostalgia and reference that is built into this show, but I think that's gonna come up in our discussion of season three, episode one. So maybe let us turn our attention to "Grounded", the season premiere of Lower Decks season three.

Beautiful segue.

This episode picks up from the cliffhanger of season two, where the captain, Mariner's mum is carried away in shackles, for the supposed destruction of Packled Planet. And during this episode, Mariner takes matters into her own hands to try to rescue her mother, or at least prove her innocence. But meanwhile, all along, Starfleet is doing the right thing and exonerating her.

Exactly. And it was that, perfect example of what Lower Decks was set out to be. You've got the characters who have no power and no control who aren't even invited to the big kids table, having to come up with this weird, wacky, bizarre plot to free one of these characters on the higher level. And, and then that's all happening in the background.

I went into this episode expecting, as we talked about last time, a retread or revisit or reminiscence on Star Trek III in the great Enterprise theft at the start of that movie. And we did get a bit of that, but completely unexpectedly, the real movie being referenced here was Star Trek: First Contact.

…and they got all the references. Not only—

They have none left! They have burned that entire movie for parts.

James Cromwell has appeared and Steppenwolf…

Uhhuh.

…just go, that's it: tick, tick. And it doesn't feel tacked on at all. It was a celebration, which I really love.

Yeah, I have learned to go into a Lower Decks episode kind of half squinting, waiting for the reference. And I feel like they almost, bait and switched us on this. When they decided they were going to the transporter facility to hijack the transporter and beam onboard the Cerritos, they went in and they said, now this place is run by a veteran of Starfleet security, so watch your back. And I'm like, oh, who is it gonna be? I I'm trying to think. Who, who would that be?

You're going Good Will Hunting type figuring out the equation.

Is it O'Brien cuz he runs transporters? But no, he wasn't in security. Who ran security that was… and it's a never-before-seen character, transporter chief Denny. Carlton Dennis. And I'm going, who are you Denny? I feel like I'm meant to recognize you, but I don't.

I expected a cameo and I did not get it, Denny. How dare you? How the very well dare you be original? So you better pull out Oscar nominated actors to be this cameo. Otherwise I'm oh, hello, James Cromwell.

Yes, the, uh, you should have seen it coming cuz they dangled Bozeman, Montana there. Um, and they get to beam over and suddenly they are in First Contact land, with the big, gold statue of James Cromwell's Zefram Cochrane. They've got balloons in the shapes of starships including a Defiant balloon, which is a nice, deep cut from the start of that movie.

Always love a good Defiant reference.

And they've got the Phoenix taking off in the middle. Offscreen, they all buy James Cromwell hats. So they're all wearing Zefram Cochrane hats for the second half of this episode,

And it was great to go to First Contact world. Even in the future, in the utopian future of Star Trek, they have, tacky, cheap… It's not even like a big Disney World type thing. It's like this dodgy, thrown together place going, no, this is really interesting and exciting, and it's like a fun place. And you go, nohohoho. There's no rollercoaster so what's the point?

Moving gently along through the flight of the Phoenix and boarding the Cerritos, what's the second half of this episode, like for you?

It's sort of like more harkened back to earlier episodes. It's quite surprising for me. I was expecting that momentum to carry on from the previous season of all this big intergalactic, conflict and Packled and Klingon conspiracies and all that type of…

Well, the surprise is that is all going on; it's just going on offscreen.

They just went back to go, remember what the show is? It's called Lower Decks.

I loved when they get on the ship and they finally get, Boimler's logs out of his bunk and they play them back. And it's him, re-recording the logs of the captain, but then with these, so cringy comments of, "Oh, got caught sniffing the captain's chair again." "I got awful gas and I just wish I could fart!" All of that. And the look on his face as he's hearing himself, going "Yep. That's right." Just so…

Yes. Yeah-yeah-yeah.

I think that blend of the nostalgia of being overwhelmed with references, and then taking a step back and going, but we have characters that you care about here too. And characters being themselves is also really enjoyable to watch. And it's almost like as soon as you get bored of one, they switch to the other.

Yeah. And that's what you want in a Star Trek show. It really is an ensemble cast that you fall in love with. They've really strengthened that bond between those four lead characters, and they've taken that time. Even though they're all nerdy wannabees in their own different way, even Beckett is, no matter how much she protests too much, there is that hidden Starfleet nerd deep down.

And, as we get to see at the end of this episode, the loving daughter as well, who is just scared for her mum. When she finally cannot make the ship move anymore, and she collapses down at the con and cries, I'm like, wow, yes, this is two seasons of me learning what this character is about and learning to understand her as a person coming to pay off.

Definitely. Mind you, I'm still annoyed by the dad's a bit too blase for my, for my liking. Eh, it's cool. Everything will work out. I'm fine. I'm an Admiral.

I loved that all of the pot plants in his office all had little computer screens on pots. It's like even the pots for their plants are computerized in Star Trek…

Love it. Love it. Love it.

Uh, the thing that this episode will, I think, be remembered for is the last beat where we get to see all of the galactic machinations that took place offscreen.

Yeah. I gave it the description does what it says on the tin, really. It's like when you go into each of the shows of Star Trek, they go in with a particular modus operandi or a statement of intention and it's a weird thing. Sometimes the episodes that we like the best from each particular series are the ones that break that routine. So, what I wanted to celebrate is the ones that are fundamentally good, bad, or crippling, what it is, are actually the routine.

Yes, when someone pitched this show, they described a certain kind of story. What is the one episode that most is an example of that story in the series. And for me, when I went back looking for them, I was surprised some of them come early, but some of them come surprisingly late. So I'm interested which ones we picked out of the history books, here. Did you have anything in the original series?

I didn't. Did you have one from the animated series.

I did not, no. TNG is where I came in first. Have you got something from TNG?

I haven't got anything from, TNG.

Good. That sounds like you've got DS9 covered.

Who would've thought! Who would've thought Rob Lloyd has a DS9 episode.

I'm gonna start with Star Trek: The Next Generation. And I'm, I might be, I might not be fulfilling the brief, here. So you tell me at the end whether you think this is a good example. To me, what Star Trek: The Next Generation says on the tin is, you know Kirk, Spock and Bones, but we're gonna see how the world of star Trek has moved on a generation later. Literally the next generation of Starfleet, of the galaxy, what does that look like?

Aaaaaah!

I don't think they could have done this episode much earlier in TNG, because it actually subverts a thing that fans were feeling at the start of The Next Generation. Fans very skeptical of this bald captain and this android, on the bridge and a Klingon on the bridge. And just this whole crew, they were like, don't give me new people in a new ship. I love Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. That's Star Trek to me.

The outcry was just insane. And they've been showing recently articles that came out in fan magazines or just local newspapers and stuff like that, going Star Trek is James T. Kirk and Spock. And the whole reason why they created it is because they could no longer afford Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. Imagine that. Imagine there is a time in the world, Kevin Yank, where you cannot afford Leonard Nemoy and William Shatner. Oh, what a wonderful time that must have been! Oh!

And now, six years in, the cast has earned the confidence to say, what if we brought one of our favorite characters from the previous generation on the ship and all our characters that you've grown to love, find him annoying?

They have had previous, like first episode famously had very, very old McCoy there just for the look there he is. DeForest Kelley, doing a, the thankless job of appearing in heavy makeup and just walking around for a little bit and then being toddled off. And of course, you know, Leonard Nimoy showed up for Unification. So to get to that point six seasons in where you go, you know what, we've been quite reverent towards these characters and these figures from the past.

Yes. The episode takes a really nice turn when Scotty, feeling sorry for himself, goes to the holodeck and recreates the bridge of his original Enterprise and has a drink at the center seat, and then Picard wanders on. And Picard recognizes the value of this man, empathizes with how he must be feeling. They have a great drink and talk about the, the ladies in their lives that are, of course, the ships that fly. And it is so touching, and a rare slow beat.

Yes.

Finally, the last third of this episode is ultimately, inevitably, Scotty saving the day.

Of course.

By, flying his crashed ship into the doors of the Dyson sphere that the Enterprise is locked inside, and holding them open so that the Enterprise can fly through sideways just in the nick of time, before Scotty's old ship explodes and to thank him for it, the crew of the Enterprise give him a shuttle craft that he can fly off into the sunset. And that is the last canonical moment of Montgomery Scott in the universe of Star Trek.

That's right. Yeah.

He was seen again on screen two years later in Star Trek: Generations. But that is a much younger, earlier Scotty. He looks very similar because he's been trapped in a, a transporter buffer the whole time. But yes, we didn't get our send off until we saw him on the big screen in Generations, but this was the character's final beat. And what a sweet one.

Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Yeah, it's— I saw "does what it says on the tin" more like one of those average episodes that you kind of forget. Especially like with Next Gen it would be, how is this new generation solving those problems? So the key line is always – and in many ways, wrongly – described as Kirk always fired first, asked questions later.

You would go for an episode that was like the time we solved it with diplomacy, it was dramatic anyway.

Exactly.

Well show me what you mean. Take me to your, your first episode.

Well I am taking you to series two of Deep Space Nine, episode, 10 of series two, "Sanctuary". The episode involves just a run-of-the-mill day. Kira isn't filling out her obligations as first officer on Deep Space Nine, cuz she's dealing with politicians and arguments and diplomacy and all this type of stuff. And she's a freedom fighter; she's not used to any of that.

Yeah it has all the elements. It's got the drudgery of managing a space station. The adventure comes to us through the wormhole. That I feel has, was the pitch for Deep Space Nine. What if, instead of going to the adventure, the adventure came to us?

Exactly. And that wormhole is the, the thing that ties it all together.

And it has Bajor in the mix.

It has Bajor in the mix. It has the dramas on the ship, and how the balance of power is distributed there with Quark and Odo. It has Jake and Nog getting caught up with the young refugees and a bit of tension there. We get a new species who are dominated by women and the men are the lower classes…

And they are so alien, we can't even translate their language at…

…can't even translate their language and their hair is…

Outrageous!

Outrageously high. But my favorite thing is the 1990s future politics, where she comes in and says, all our men are second class citizens cuz they're too emotional and Julian Bashir is going, your women are in charge.

Imagine that. How alien!

Yeah. And Dax has to look and go, yep, that's right. That's right. I'm there going, "You're in the future."

Amazing.

And this refugee who arrives, she has two men and she sleeps with both of them!

Oh, yes.

And Kira doesn't even have one. Ooh. So it's your standard, Deep Space Nine episode. It never appears on any of your top five or top 10. And I know; I looked. Everyone goes for Pale Moonlight or Beyond the Stars or Trials and Tribble-ations. Those ones that really take the format and shift it. Whereas I always remember this episode. I always remember it more than any others, because it is everything that Deep Space Nine should be, is there. Every character gets a focus.

To your earlier point, this very by-the-book DS9 episode, it good?

It's one that you watch, and you enjoy. And it's one that you forget. It's not one that you go back and rewatch over and over again, but it is a good, standard Deep Space Nine. And there's less and less of them once we get into the Dominion war. And there's little hints of it, because I forgot when I re-watched it, how early the Dominion are brought in, or the, at least the, threat of them.

The specter of them.

Yes. Yeah. And they become what is now known, thanks to Buffy and all that type of stuff, the overarching villain. But yeah there is a mention of it. They have to flee because they were persecuted by a race who were a part of a group only known as the Dominion. So it has all those elements there. And for whatever reason, I always remember this episode because, the gamma quadrant couldn't be translated. So for the first 10 minutes, they can't communicate.

Where I'm landing with this is these episodes, they did the formula to its fullest and there are examples of what the show was before it became something more.

Yes.

And I almost feel, as the writers, I might have panicked a little once this episode was out, it was because it's like, oh, okay, well, we've done it. Now we need to find something else to do. Because our one idea that we had, like the pitch is done now. So what comes next? Hopefully our characters are strong enough to carry us somewhere else.

I mean, they could have done that format forever and it would've been like a procedural cop drama type thing. You know, you see them all the time, the exact same format of a cop show, procedural thing, they do it with just a different hat on the lead character. But they had to go, well, we've done that. We don't want to do that over and over again. And so then it shifts into being that, interplanetary, galactical, war spectacle, and they explore other issues.

The dark side of Star Trek. The murky ethics of Star Trek.

Yeah. So that was for me, one that I always go back to for some reason, but re-watching it today I went, yeah, it's it is that fundamentally basic structure of what Deep Space Nine would be.

I think I have that for Star Trek: Voyager. Should I go next?

Ah, I was interested. I was almost gonna pick a Star Trek: Voyager, but I went with a different one. So I'll be interested to which one you picked.

Okay. All right. Great. So I'm taking us to Star Trek: Voyager season one, episode 10, "Prime Factors".

Ooooh!

And I expect no one to recognize that episode by its title. I certainly could not have told you the title of this episode, but I remember the story and it, to me, is an exact mirror of what you just described, from DS9. Is it is the episode that is a completely stereotypical episode of Star Trek: Voyager, as it was originally conceived, before it became something more.

Classic Maquis.

At the last minute, Tuvok, trying to spare Janeway the impossible, lose-lose situation, says I'll make the trade. And he beams down, exchanges the library for the device, brings it on board. The device blows up in engineering and is revealed to be fundamentally incompatible with Starfleet technology. It was never gonna work and it only works on this planet. So they're outta luck.

Mulgrew is a very good actor.

She is great. She sells it despite everything. But the last third of this episode, where Torres is hiding what she's doing from the bridge, as they try to make this machine work and send them home, and Janeway facing off against Tuvok about this ethical quandary. It is so, so good. For me, it is the prototypical episode of Voyager because it has, again, all

a possible way home,

Mm-hmm.

blocked by an ethical dilemma, and the crew of Voyager fighting each other because half of them don't feel like they are Starfleet.

Well done.

So for me, Prime Factors is what they thought they were gonna do every week when they first invented Voyager.

Yeah. Yeah. And I do remember that one. That was the interesting stuff that really worked on Voyager. Half are Maquis, half are Federation, how does that work, dynamic? Every mission or every place we're getting to is another way of getting home, and still sticking to our Starfleet rules. And do we keep to them, even though we are on the other side of the universe?

As an early episode, we still had Seska yet to be unmasked Cardassian spy, and so she was the most mutinous one. She was the one that could do the irredeemable things and say, "Oh, um, okay, it didn't work, but let's erase the logs so we don't get caught." And Torres goes, no, we're going to face the music. And so having that sacrificial character that I guess they knew they were gonna get rid of so they could make her do irredeemable things, was really useful.

And they shifted it to be more like, what role do they play within this new quadrant? And so what alliances they have made and what type of strategies? Yeah. As opposed to, what can we find to, knock off 10, 15, 20, you know, 60 years of our voyage home. I was contemplating one just a bit later on, "Learning Curve" where Tuvok takes a couple of the Maquis crewmen and tries and tries to,

Whip em into shape.

Whip em into shape. But uh, your choice is, uh, far more of a perfect representation.

Well, we'll come back to Learning Curve another day, I…

Another day, we shall come back when we do a Tuvok's focused episode.

Uhhuh.

For my second one, jumping ahead to Strange New Worlds.

Ooh, wow. Modern, modern Star Trek. Is this breaking our rules? Are we actually going into the past of Star Trek? If we're going to Strange New Worlds?

Well, you know, that we'll need to you know, like James T., Kirk will flout all the time traveling…

We've got a whole first season, so surely the prototypical episode is in there somewhere.

Definitely. And especially because, you know, we came into reviewing, uh, these episodes quite late and some people have been getting in touch going, are you gonna go back and do the other ones? Um, and, and, you know, we are very much like F Murray Abraham in the failed, uh, Journey To The Center Of The Earth pilot done in the nineties, we are forward, ever forward. But it doesn't mean we can't…

Ever forward, but looking…

Looking back at some points, we can look in the rear view mirror. So I'm looking at, episode six of season one of Strange New Worlds, "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach".

Ooh, many people's least favourite episode of the season.

Ah, but for me, it's, it is ah, chef's kiss, beautiful. I love the twist ending. I love that fundamental structure of going this is good, old fashioned Star Trek style science fiction of that adventure journeying from location to location, interacting with a culture, what that culture sees as acceptable, what we see as not. And do we let this pass by or not? And it's a great sci-fi twist.

Gimme the broad strokes, for those like me who are struggling to remember the details.

There's a idyllic culture, there's this young figure, this child who is seen as this holy deity within their society, who is coming up to their day of Ascension. For whatever reason, people are trying to kidnap him, take him away. The child is saved and these fanatics have been stopped. And it isn't until right near the end that we find out the true meaning of the word Ascension this…

…what the child was being saved for.

He's taken down to the depths of the planet and he is pretty much used as an engine to keep the planet going to keep all the riches that this planet has for this entire society. The only way it works is if this child is sacrificed.

He keeps the hovering continents hovering.

Exactly. And so that beautiful, horrifying moment when Pike has done all, he could to save this child and this child doesn't even know what they're doing until that moment the previous holy child's rotting corpse is, uh charred corpse is being taken away. The child feels that fear and Pike realizes what have we done. And he is literally powerless to stop tradition carrying on and this child is sacrificed. It happens anyway.

Many is the episode of the original series in which Kirk beams down to a planet, takes stock of what's going on and effectively says your society is stupid, I'm gonna break it for you, and then they leave. And the first episode of Strange New Worlds has that. Pike beams down into the middle of their council chamber and says, stop fighting. This war is stupid.

And you wanna know why, because we did all that. We were stupid.

Maybe is that is the prototype of TOS, whereas Strange New Worlds is the world is so strange, it gets away from us a little. And we're swept up in it. And we don't quite realize what we're dealing with until it's too late.

Exactly. I think this was the one that really started to flip things around because, people going, oh yeah, it's so positive, and so joyous, and it's what real Star Trek is. It's getting away from what Discovery was doing and what Picard was doing in season one, which was so grim and dark, and all this stuff is so hopeful. And then it twisted the knife in, at the end and going, yeah, you can still have that hope and that positivity, but you can't have that light without a bit of the darkness.

It is interesting to me what has been left off of our list. So Discovery, I struggle to pick a stereotypical episode of Discovery because I don't know what that show is trying to be.

Well, because they have they have shifted from season to season, you know…

Even shifted in the inception of the show, like they changed creators and then they changed writing team during the first season. So the original idea was to create an anthology show following characters who were not on the bridge of ships, like Michael Burnham around the backwaters of the Star Trek universe. But that is they threw that concept away early on.

And they just made Michael Burnham, the greatest person in the history of the universe who can solve every single problem, and every single emotional issue they have is the focus.

I would almost say that is what it ended up becoming. I think they do talk a bit about how early in the run of the show, they had figured out that this was going to be the long form story of how Michael Burnham became captain of a ship. From prison to back in charge of a ship. But she's done that now, and the show's still going. Anyway, I struggle with Discovery's identity crisis, and I think many of us do.

I do too.

I wonder what the stereotypical episode of it being a long road, getting from there to here would be. I don't know what Enterprise is trying to be.

You can't even, you can't even lower yourself to say the name of it!

There are great episodes of Enterprise. And I think if I had to guess what that show was trying to be is how did Star Trek come to be? How did we go from the human world that we have now, how did we make the leap into the future? How did we overcome our humanity to become the humans of Star Trek?

I mean, I haven't watched as much of Enterprise. Uh, I have hardly watched any of it. I mean, and I love Scott Bacula, he's my Quantum Leap man. But I remember watching that first episode and that got me a little intrigued when like a Klingon is on the planet Earth and they've never seen one before. So they're going, what is this? Like Picard doesn't really have a standard…

Oh, yeah. I completely forgot about Picard. Which is the most Picard episode of Picard? Conversation for another day.

Yeah.