Envoys: Lower Decks S01 E02

Envoys is chock full of stuff Star Trek fans will love but it does feel that Lower Decks could potentially be a one trick pony.

The lighter tone, the brighter vistas; they all work wonderfully but episode two seems to be following a formula from last week - Boimler and Mariner are stuck on a planet and find that they can work together while there's a B story on the ship connecting Tendi and Rutherford.

A standard tale of transporting a Klingon general to a conference of course turns into a warped incident that goes to explore a little more of Mariner's background and her life experience in Starfleet that has put her into contact with many weird and wonderful lifeforms and adventures. Boimler continues as her foil, expressing his naivety once more and having to be saved from a series of "embarrassing" moments by his more worldly wise colleague.

Up on the ship, Rutherford decides to test out other job opportunities by having a crack at command, medicine in Sickbay and tackling security with him proving to be heavily unfit for two roles and surprisingly good at the third.

Envoys overall is ok. It's probably more fascinating to watch out for the references in this one than it is to pay attention to the story and I found that for a good deal of the half hour I was looking around at the animation on screen to spot the fan nods - the recurring dream Mariner has is a screaming referral to The Wrath of Khan, the town the pair of ensigns visit has a Horganah as its stone centrepiece and in a stroke of utter genius, the Vendorian shape shifter last seen in The Original Series turns up in a bar only to escape from a group of Andorians.

It's dead easy to watch but that's also it's problem. The creators are firmly aiming for the fan market here with the references and background inclusions but this detracts from your interest in what's going on. Instead of giving a crap about the characters I was more fascinated by how the Andorians looked, what style they chose to go with for the Borg holodeck opponents or what the Janeway protocol was (guessing this was blow up the damn ship!) than what the four leads were doing themselves.

The humour too was a little flat once again. It;s not quite full of pratfalls and "hilarious" misunderstandings but Lower Decks always feels that it's about a millimeter away from becoming either super-annoying or super-clever. It's not going to make anyone think deeply or go away to have a huge discussion on matters of life or death but it could make you really consider why some of these people still have jobs.

Seeing a Ferengi or a Klingon will always be something special but do we actually need to be reminded of the humour there? Do we need to be signposted what should be funny and in fact could some of the notes to what we have viewed before actually damage our further entertainment of the franchise's older series?

I understand that we want to fracture the tropes but what Envoys does is caricatures and stereotypes both Klingon and Ferengi without a bat of an eyelid. The Klingon drinks bloodwine and shouts a lot, the Ferengi speaks like Peter Lorre and slithers about. If it is the intention to point out the silliness in some of the established framework then its bang on the nose but it might be both clever and cutting too close to the bone all at the same time. 

Mariner is already the most deeply explored character with her background both shrouded in some level of classic TV shadows and at the same time we can see she is certainly worldly wise and fairly intelligent although it’s equally hidden in cockiness and bravado. Her know-it-all, been-there-done-that attitude could end up rubbing fans the wrong way with a continuous one upmanship versus Boimler but you can tell, especially from her actions at the end that she genuinely cares for her peer, to the point where she’ll take some ribbing to aid his personal confidence and development. 

Tendi, after being the audience route into Lower Decks felt very much sidelined in episode two and if it hadn’t been for the trip into sickbay I might have even forgotten she existed in the show. Hopefully this will be balanced out across the series although it is much more clearly a two horse show rather than the quartet we were briefed on since the opportunities within their characters offer more dramatic - and comedic - avenues.

I’m already excited for episode three with Lower Decks providing a much welcomed lighter and entertaining angle on the Star Trek universe. Sure its not to everyone’s taste or desires but that’s ironically its biggest win - the franchise has diversified, not taken itself too seriously nor shuttered itself off from the real world and has chosen to be daring. Envoys helps to round out the Lower Decks corner of the universe with its attention to detail and 50 years of canon and for me was a small step up from Second Contact.

What's your verdict on episode two?

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