Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x10 "The New Next Generation"
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x10 "The New Next Generation"
Logline
Season finale where lots of wild stuff happens!
Written by: Mike McMahan
Directed by: Megan Lloyd
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A pretty cool episode. Top takeaways:
- I'm going to miss Captain Ransom. I think it would have been fun to have a season or two of him. Only Discovery has had the balls to hand over the Captain's chair to another during its main run, and I think that is a good thing.
- Starbase 80 is now set up as a new DS9-style show. A starbase guarding a dimensional portal. God I hope that happens. I just hope they pull off the ensemble cast that made DS9 such a classic.
- I hate the tease for Rutherford x Tendi, it's so mean to tease it in the finale :'( But really it's so cute.
Plenty more I missed of course.
I feel like this finale did a very impressive job of tying things up, not in the way that they are concluded and done but that we see a transition in which that which we know has ended, and now the characters are going off toward grand new things. Which is a great approach to providing resolution without essentially killing and mounting your characters like butterflies in a collection.
But also, I sort of wonder if part of the intent was to loudly tell the fans and the network that if anyone was curious, the writers had a ton of juice in the battery. This is pure speculation, but I feel like the thematic message of this finale was something to the effect of 'Just in case anyone wondered if we're finishing because we didn't have more to say, wrong, WRONG, WRONG. We could've made another five jam-packed high quality seasons of this easily.'
That's what I felt watching it. Tendi and Rutherford's bond was always strong, but I long wondered if a romantic pairing was a possibility or not. It didn't feel obvious or obviously out of place. Seeing Rutherford remove the implant provided in just a single scene a lot of fodder to consider what we could learn about him as a person and technology in seeing how he is the same and how he is different without the implant. And seeing him essentially look up from his cell phone and realize he has a crush on his best friend he was long avoiding thinking about is a great direction for him to go, imo. I think that would be a great story, regardless of whether it culminates in a lasting romance or leads to a decision to remain platonic.
I'd never quite liked Ransom. I don't hate him, but his gimmick always annoyed more than endeared. But in the last minute, I had to admit that it has worked. He's supposed to annoy, but also to remain hard to dislike. You want to dislike him, but he won't quite let you. "Engage the core!" landed very well with me. That's a catch phrase that kind of gets both more tired with use, and funnier as it gets more tired. I'd love to see him deliver this incredibly groan-inducing line in a moment of genuine high stakes drama, at which point you'd have no choice but to admit... it's become iconic (and you'd hate him for doing that).
Anyway, 3 out of 5 stars (Jk, I loved the finale. Paramount should just announce that they've reassessed and green-lit another season. Seems like an obvious thing to do, but we'll see).