All the way back to Star Trek: Lower Decks In season 1, Starbase 80 loomed over the series like a ghost story told to keep children in check. Starfleet’s worst and most horrific mission, Starbase 80 – or SB80, as it is known – serves as the only refuge the damaged USS Cerritos can take. However, the SB80 is not what the crew or fans expected. Just as Lower decks often goes “Starbase 80?!” perfectly blends the show’s weird comedy with just plain awesome Star Trek narration.

Prior to this episode, the closest viewers had come to seeing SB80 in all its nightmarish glory were in Lower decks Season 3, after Mariner was banished there by her mother. Similarly, in the Season 5 premiere, Captain Carol Freeman learned that her alternate reality counterpart had been sent to Starbase 80 as its commander. While the station has been a source of jokes throughout the series, these two details give this episode some emotional charge, at least for the mother-daughter team of the USS Cerritos. Despite their growth as officers and people in Starfleet, being forced to join SB80 causes them both to fall back into old patterns. More importantly, it also allowed the Lower decks storytellers to include many references to the past Star Trek in the episode.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5 showed how much Beckett Mariner has grown since the series premiere

The episode revisited its carefree beginnings for poignant reasons

At first, the tension between Starfleet and Mariner came down to his mother. Although Mariner was an excellent officer, she had a strained relationship with her mother, Captain Freeman, and her father, an admiral.. This tension came to a head in season 3, when Freeman, thinking her daughter had reported her to a reporter, referred Mariner to SB80. Mariner resigned, but eventually returned and was promoted to lieutenant with the rest of the army. Lower deck-ers.

However, the penultimate episode of season 4 revealed that Mariner was also dealing with the death of Sito Jaxa, a cadet she admired. It was ultimately this trauma that motivated her to self-sabotage her career. Since accepting this, Mariner has started to truly excel in her role.. At the start of “Starbase 80?!” she even talks about how much she enjoyed the kind of mission she would have made fun of in previous seasons. So when the USS Cerritos is scheduled to dock at SB80, it naturally has a strong reaction.

10:35 a.m.

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During her last stint at the station, she quit immediately after arriving, in part because the station smelled like “old shrimp.” Despite his growth, his return to Starbase 80 brought back some of his old lazy and self-destructive habits. Mariner was contradictory and suspicious for no good reason. Mariner’s internal panic is why she “missed” seeing the connection between the use of communication badges and the “curse” that turned her crewmates into green-eyed zombies.. Returning to SB80 allowed her to face another dark period in her career and overcome the anxiety she felt about it. As far as solo arcs go, Mariner’s return to Starbase 80 was surprising but necessary. It’s nice to see Mariner face her past in a literal way and see how far she’s come just before Lower decks ends.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5 Deepens the Character of Captain Carol Freeman with SB80

The episode showed a different side of one of the series’ strictest characters

Of course, Mariner’s reassignment to Starbase 80 wasn’t his fault, but rather his mother’s mistake. When the reporter’s report on the USS Cerritos was finally published, Mariner sang the praises of not only the crew, but also his mother in particular. To be fair to Captain Freeman, there was a much larger plot against her, led by Admiral Buenamigo. Always, SB80 represents her failure as both a commander and a mother. The revelation that his counterpart was stationed there brought those feelings back to the surface.

The crew stationed on Starbase 80 are in desperate need of help, and it seems that Starfleet command is just as afraid of it as the Cerritos crew. To get the replacement part the ship needs, Captain Freeman is essentially brought in to help Starbase 80 solve some of its problems.. In fact, she misses the whole situation with the comm badges because she’s trying to prove herself by confronting the problems of SB80 and fixing them herself. She was last seen in the episode where Commander Ransom fights a giant Pyritian bat.

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Captains who lead a Star Trek series, Lower decks‘ Carol Freeman isn’t close to being the “best.” This isn’t entirely her fault, because as with SB80, Starfleet often neglects her and the Cerritos. When she realizes that Starbase 80 is suffering from the same problem, she feels a sort of kinship with them. Also, by “conquering” the problems of SB80, Captain Freeman proves to herself that she doesn’t belong there like her alternate reality counterpart. Seeing the infamous Starbase 80 from the perspective of one of the series’ strictest characters was always going to be interesting, but using it as a catalyst for his character development was surprising and welcome. Thanks to this, everyone (including the audience) realizes that Starfleet’s most feared station isn’t actually that bad.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5 returns to the core ideas and themes of the series

Episode Pays Homage to Star Trek’s Most Disposable Characters

Starbase 80 is a pretty terrible place to work and live. Half the station is controlled by a nasty alien species who are only referred to as the “knife gang” in the episode. It’s also full of old technology that can just as easily be considered antiques at best and trash at worst. The uniforms worn by the crew stationed there are those worn in the 22nd century, as seen on Star Trek: Enterprise. Turbolifts are the manually operated type found on 23rd century ships, notably those seen in Star Trek: The Original Series. Finally, instead of Replicators, SB80 is full of food vendors selling things like corndogs and other suspicious meals.

Upon arriving at Starbase 80, the Cerritos crew meets Commander Knox, who is overly positive and eager to be there. Not only does she impress Mariner with her fighting skills, but Knox also recognizes that the “curse” plaguing the base is something else entirely. She and the station’s chief medical officer, Doctor Horseberry, realize that it is an “anaphasic consciousness”, which viewers later learn is called “Clem”. This being possessed the Cerritos crew for the purpose of communicating with corporeal beings. After rescuing the crew, Knox allows the being to remain on board.

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Although SB80 is very much a joke station, it’s also a place for “second chances,” according to Knox. Lower decks was born from the idea that not everyone in Starfleet is a genius hero or military legend. In fact, the whole show could be seen as an homage to the faceless, nameless hordes (colloquially known as the “Red Shirts”) who run behind the main characters whenever the ship is attacked. These characters’ disposable beginnings don’t mean they can’t rise to the occasion, however. As the entire Cerritos crew puts their acts together as their characters evolve, the detour to Starbase 80 reminds the audience where they came from.. Much like the Cerritos, the SB80 crew must make the most of what Starfleet offers them, which isn’t much. Yet not only are they getting by, they are thriving.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5 Shows Even Starfleet’s Mistakes Can Be Heroes

The episode strikes the perfect balance between laughter and sincerity

Even though Starfleet is supposed to represent the best of humanity, people are still flawed. Star Trekthe future. This should not be surprising, given the true complexity of human nature. This is why, in a certain way, errors on Lower decks are even more impressive than the perfection found on ships commanded by captains like Jean-Luc Picard or Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek: The Next Generation And Star Trek: Voyager, respectively. Compared to the franchise’s most famous (and competent) crews, the Cerritos crew struggles to keep up and don’t always make the right decisions, but they and the other members of the group struggle to keep up and don’t always make the right decisions. don’t always make the right decisions. Lower decks try. They have the best of intentions and still strive to uphold Starfleet’s values.

From Mariner and Freeman’s SB80 anxiety to Boimler’s continually growing beard (mistakenly inspired by his dashing alternate reality doppelganger), the Lower decks the crew always wants to be “better”. Serialized Star Trek Storytelling was sparse in the first and second waves, but as Starfleet role models, characters like the crew of the USS Enterprise did not need as much growth as their colleagues on the USS Cerritos. Watching them evolve over the past five seasons has been as rewarding as the comedy. The detour to Starbase 80, while also very funny, served to remind the audience of where these characters began..

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“Starbase 80?!” mark half way Star Trek: Lower Decks‘last season. This episode cleverly highlights the growth of these very silly characters, while the SB80 crew serves as a reminder of what the Cerritos might look like to outside observers.. Even the so-called losers of SB80 are all competent and capable Starfleet officers in their own right, and that doesn’t diminish because their struggles are greater and their resources are less. All we can do is move forward boldly and continue to fight for the ideals that make Starfleet what it is. With its balance of comedy and heart, “Starbase 80?!” is currently one of the best episodes of Lower decks last race. It wouldn’t be surprising if subsequent episodes beat it, but it’s a high bar to surpass nonetheless.

Star Trek: Lower Decks debuts new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5: “Starbase 80?!”

Release date

August 6, 2020

Cast

Jack Quaid, Gillian Vigman, Dawnn Lewis, Noel Wells, Eugene Cordero, Fred Tatasciore, Jerry O’Connell, Tawny Newsome

Story by

gene roddenbury

Writers

Gene Roddenberry

Streaming service(s)

Paramount+

Benefits

• The reveal of Starbase 80 is the payoff of a long running joke that works both comedically and dramatically.
• Beckett Mariner’s story in this episode is an important step in her journey to becoming a better Starfleet officer.
• The episode’s sci-fi problem is a classic Star Trek conundrum used in a fresh and clever way.

Disadvantages

• There’s no mention of the season-wide problem of extradimensional rifts, although last week revealed that they were created by someone.
• The idea that Starfleet would completely ignore Starbase 80 at this point might anger some longtime Star Trek fans.
• Captain Freeman brushes Mariner aside when she mentions sending him there, missing an opportunity for a touching moment between mother and daughter.

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