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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As a finale, I think that was satisfying. I'm glad they got the cameos out of their system last week, and primarily focused on the core cast this week.
The main thing that I wanted to see this season - a tie-in with the impending Romulan supernova - didn't come to fruition, but I'm trying not to hold that against them. They've very clearly left themselves a path for continuation in some form, so we'll have to see what comes of it.
Boimler eventually turning away from the alt-universe PADD was an inevitable conclusion, but I like the reason they provided, avoiding the low-hanging fruit of alt-Boims turning out to be a dick or something.
The overall Rutherford arc was less successful. I guess they seeded it previously, but I always just assumed his implant was on the fritz, so it was odd to see him suddenly blaming the ship.
The overall Rutherford arc was less successful. I guess they seeded it previously, but I always just assumed his implant was on the fritz, so it was odd to see him suddenly blaming the ship.
I am at a loss as to how Rutherford's implant could be flexible enough to function as part of his brain in day-to-day life, and yet somehow be incapable of helping him solve engineering problems on an old ship? Is there some kind of weird DRM installed that prevents it from opening schematics older than a couple years? Or is all the data on California class systems stored in a file format that they latest and greatest starfleet tech can't open? Both of which would be rather colossal failures of Federation computer tech.
Rutherford upgraded his implant to be little more like Alternate Rutherford who had a super implant that also blocked out his emotions entirely.
This wasn't a story about how his implant was bad at dealing with alternate universe versions of technology. His story was about how he had always used his implant to protect him from feeling emotions. Cranking it up slightly was all it took to finally block him from loving anything. Himself as he is, the Cerritos, Tendi. As soon as he took it out all of those emotions flooded in.
That makes quite a bit more sense, and if that was the intention I wish they'd been a little more explicit about it. I didn't even realize the implant was mucking with his emotional processing? Despite the Episode 1 throwaway line about it being a "Vulcan" implant, he seemed to have pretty normal emotional responses to me.
Normal for a person, but not normal for him. We see him as a very passionate person before he gets his implant who treats the dulling of his emotions as a boon.
I'd be shocked if the person influencing this writing of his character had never dealt with SSRIs or a similar medication.
This makes this season's Rutherford make a lot more sense. I am definitely a Rutherford-Tendí shipper, but even my friend who is significantly less so of one than me noticed that the two of them seemed to barely interact after she returned from Orion. They didn't have a lot of screen time, but even the screen time they did have was more being in the same scene together than interacting together which seemed so unlike them. But I thought the whole Tendi-T'Lyn rivalry was very unlike Tendi, too.
The impending supernova doesn’t occur until 2387 and the latest stardate available indicates a year of 2382 (“Fully Dilated”). The synth attack on Mars, which as a reminder was orchestrated by Zhat Vash to stop the evacuation fleet, happened on First Contact Day of 2385. The closest we’ve gotten was PRO. And I can’t figure out how to add a spoiler so I won’t mention it.
One has to dig into the novels for some of this, but Picard took his promotion to oversee the evacuation plans, so in theory, Starfleet already knows about the supernova and is beginning their initial evacuation effort.
The Utopia Planitia fleet was a major project, but evacuations took place even before the fleet was built - Elnor's colony was an evacuee settlement, and Laris and Zhaban stuck with Picard after he rescued them.
I had been hoping that such a major re-evaluation of Starfleet's mission would affect this show, but it was not to be.
Which leads me to think this occurred before any of it. Or at the time they relegated their lower tier ships and starbase to this mission (explaining why we haven’t heard of California-class before). Everyone else is trying to help Romulus. Which of course we know the black hole created didn’t work, thus leaving the Prime Timeline without Spock.