Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 5 “Starbase 80?!”
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to the infamous Starbase 80 in the Cerritos’ time of need, but it ends up being the kooky cast of characters on that run-down station that saves the day.
The Cerritos is flying through space as the lower deckers return from an aquatic away mission on Piskes Nine. Still, soon enough Beckett Mariner’s (Tawney Newsome) unusually optimistic, even, dare we say it, compliant attitude is threatened when the ship is forced to drop out of warp due to a navigation error in Cetacean Ops. There’s only one hope of rescue: the nearby Starbase 80.
Remember, Mariner has a history with Starbase 80, a place commonly known as the worst posting in Starfleet. In “Trusted Sources,” Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) banished her daughter to Starbase 80 when the captain thought Mariner had leaked information to the Federation News Network. Mariner, for her part, was immensely scarred by the experience, so when the Cerritos crew visits Starbase 80 for repairs to their navigation system, Mariner is constantly on edge and weary of the so-called “Starbase 80 curse” – the general explanation for why all members of the station are seemingly so disorganized, inefficient, and buffoonish.
The Cerritos crew beams aboard Starbase 80 and finds the station in disrepair, but its residents remarkably cheery. The station’s diplomatic liaison, Kassia Nox (Nicole Byer), is upbeat and appreciative of the Cerritos crew for helping repair minor odds and ends around the station. At the same time, Freeman retrieves a new navigational component for her Starfleet ship. Things take an unexpected turn for the worse when Cerritos crew members, both those on the away team and back aboard the ship, start turning into, for all intents and purposes, zombies.
For what it’s worth, we found Starbase 80 actually kind of charming; the station has outdated equipment, so things like The Original Series-era wall-mounted comm panels, engineering tubing, and Enterprise-era uniforms are the norm. The station also has food vendors instead of replicators, which honestly sounds pretty awesome, and loving attention to detail imparted by this show’s animation team really sells the messy but lived-in environment. The station’s multi-level promenade is a highlight of this environmental design; honestly, Starbase 80 seems kind of awesome.
“SB80 may not be the most glamorous starbase in the Federation, but it grows on you.”
– Kassia Nox to the Cerritos away team. For our money, she’s right.
The manifestation of such strange behavior – which mysteriously doesn’t impact the locals – only exacerbates Mariner’s belief that Starbase 80 is cursed, but she doesn’t investigate the “curse” scientifically due to her frenzied, PTSD-fueled bias against the station and its people. After a brief confrontation between Mariner and Nox – the former of whom suspects there’s some kind of conspiracy at play – Mariner, Nox, and the station’s doctor, Harrison Horseberry, realize the zombification only happens to Cerritos crew members who use their com badges. Moreover, the issue stems from the Cerritos, not the decrepit station.
The cause of the zombification comes from Cetacean Ops, where an anaphasic lifeform – the kind of energy-based being as we’ve seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation seventh season episode “Sub Rosa” – infected one of the whales during their recent away mission and spread itself to the entire Cerritos crew. Mariner and Nox themselves fall victim to the anaphasic lifeform, and it’s only the quick-thinking of Doctor Horseberry that saves Mariner, Nox, and everyone else who is infected. Mariner and Nox are then able to talk to the lifeform and learn its name is Clem, and that it’s apologetic for the trouble it accidentally caused. He only tried to inhabit other people to prove to his superiors he could indeed communicate with corporeal species. Nox allows Clem to stay on Starbase 80, so long as he doesn’t try to inhabit any more bodies.
We think this story is a wonderful Star Trekian tale, as it spotlights a few common attributes of Star Trek storytelling, such as a moral and diplomatic resolution to the crisis facing the protagonists, important character growth that stems from misunderstanding, and a found-family feeling as Mariner realizes the Starbase 80 crew are underdogs, just like the Cerritos crew. Kudos to writer May Darmon for crafting an excellent narrative.
Filling out this episode is something we’ve been anticipating since the season premiere. We learned in that episode that Captain Freeman’s alternate dimension counterpart was banished to Starbase 80 for unknown reasons; here in the Prime Universe, it’s Captain Freeman’s turn to visit the station. Freeman is aware that Starbase 80 got the better of her counterpart, and she swears not to suffer the same fate. As such, her approach to visiting the starbase in this episode is headstrong – she’s determined to help fix the station, no matter how inconvenient such a task might be.
While searching for the station’s chief engineer to procure a new navigational processor, Freeman comes across someone named Gene, a zany member of the starbase crew who leads Freeman and Commander Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) on a bit of a wild goose chase to find the chief engineer. The command pair eventually realize Gene is the station’s chief engineer, and he was only trying to get Freeman and Ransom to unwittingly help him repair parts of the station since Starfleet can’t be bothered to service the facility. Freeman is sympathetic to Gene’s plight, as the Cerritos often gets the short end of the stick due to the ship’s somewhat unimportant nature in Starfleet, so the captain is more dedicated than ever to helping the fledgling crew, even if it means fighting a giant bat at the end of the episode.
We enjoyed “Starbase 80?!” thanks to its reconciliation of the infamous posting; after years of making fun of the station, it turns out there’s much more to it than its reputation suggests. The fact that people on the station love it there and see it as a place where second chances happen and folks can get away from the modern flourishes of Starfleet life was a fascinating expansion of Lower Decks’ part of the larger Star Trek universe.
Stray Thoughts:
- The decontamination scene in this episode is a throwback to Star Trek: Enterprise’s decontamination scenes. Those scenes were just opportunities for some characters to shed most of their clothes, hence Boimler’s line about being a “total T’Pol” as he is rubbing himself down with gel.
- The away team passes by a sign on the Starbase 80 promenade that advertises parthas, food that was first seen in The Next Generation’s “The Vengeance Factor.”
- According to Nox, Starbase 80 has the largest population of Acamarians outside Acamar III. Acarmarians were a species seen in “The Vengeance Factor.” Seems like that TNG episode gets a lot of love in “Starbase 80?!”
- The Tarchannen parasite infecting Doctor Horseberry should look familiar to TNG fans; Geordi LaForge was infected by such a parasite in “Identity Crisis.”
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