Star Trek: Lower Decks 506 “Of Gods and Angles” Review: Angling for a Good Time

Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 6 “Of Gods and Angles”

Star Trek: Lower Decks presents an adventure demonstrating how certain stories are best conveyed through animation, as the Cerritos crew gains an electric new crewmember. 

This episode begins with the Cerritos in a novel situation. Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) and her crew are hosting two races from the Veraflex Nebula amid tense diplomatic negotiations. These races are unlike anything seen before in Star Trek, in that they aren’t whacky, imaginative alien designs, but rather orbs and cubes, photonic species made of pure energy. Yep, the two races aboard the Cerritos are simple, sentient geometric shapes, polar opposite factions who have been at war for more than a century. 

Framed within this precarious diplomatic scenario is a new ensign on the Cerritos, Olly (Saba Homayoon), who is clearly out of her element. The bumbling Olly, who is prone to electricity-related accidents, has had trouble in previous postings; she has never managed to stay in one for too long before being transferred for one reason for another. In a neat deep dive into Star Trek lore, Olly is related to the psychokinetic being who presented himself as Zeus to Captain Kirk back in 2267, as seen in The Original Series episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Beckett Mariner (Tawney Newsome), sympathizing with a fellow troubled officer, befriends Olly and tries to get her on the right track.

“We could use you in the conference room. The cubes have an issue with Article 10 – they don’t like that the 10 has a zero. It’s too round.”

– Commander Jack Ransom to Captain Freeman about the ongoing negotiations between the orbs and the cubes. 

The pair’s first assignment is to entertain one of the cube’s children, Quadralon, while his dad conducts negotiations. But Mariner and Olly are surprised when they walk into the diplomat’s quarters and find the place ransacked and the video screen from the quarters missing, a development that could seriously hamper negotiations. Mariner and Olly head an investigation into Quadralon’s disappearance, but some strange behavior from Olly not only leads Mariner to suspect the demigod might be behind Quadralon’s disappearance, but all-out war breaks out on the Cerritos as it’s learned a younger orb, Radiara is also missing. 

Ultimately, Mariner does find an incriminating piece of evidence – the missing video screen – within Olly’s locker, but as Olly explains, that’s only because she happened upon the crime scene first and wanted to avoid being suspected. In her mind, being the new, unpopular, accident-prone ensign with electric powers (her grandfather was Zeus, after all) wouldn’t have cast her in a good light. 

Olly has a chance at redemption as she’s the only one who can stop the war spreading through the Cerritos between the orbs and cubes, but she even fails at that as her lightening powers do nothing but cause the two fighting factions to form bigger versions of their respective shapes. This battle graduates from the ship’s corridors to outside the Starfleet vessel, with the Cerritos caught in the crossfire. We were mighty impressed with the way this battle came to life, as beautiful animation work from Titmouse reminds us there are just some things you would never see in live action.

After a brief pity party, Olly realizes her approach to ending the conflict should have been as an engineer, not as a Zeus. So, the battle outside the Cerritos ends as Olly uses her technical prowess to disable the shapes. As the two factions recover in the shuttle bay, Radiara and Quadralon reappear and admit they simply ran away as lovers after wrecking Quadralon’s quarters during passionate lovemaking. The two shapes have even welcomed a baby into the world, a novel cross between both species. With peace restored on the Cerritos in the face of the two shapes’ romance, Olly suspects she is bound to be transferred again, but nicely enough she is reassigned to the Cerritos’ engineering team, albeit after a time in the ship’s brig for concealing evidence.  

For Mariner’s part, it appears there’s another member of the Cerritos crew who she can bond with. Both Mariner and Olly are unconventional officers who find challenges in adhering to Starfleet rules and regulations. We hope to see more of Olly before the show is done since she’s not only a neat addition to Lower Decks’ cast, but an exciting addition to Star Trek lore thanks to her godly lineage. 

While Mariner and Olly are running around dealing with the shapes, Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) realizes his secret padd – the one he stole from his alternate dimension self to be a better officer – isn’t so secret; both Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) and D’Vana Tendi (Noel Wells) know about Boimler’s secret to success. As such, they witness Boimler trying to get on Doctor T’Ana’s (Gillian Vigman) good side, as that’s apparently what Beard Boimler did in his universe during his own dealings with the shape species. Boimler’s initial attempts to gain the casually profane doctor’s favor fail hilariously, and it’s only when an all-out battle breaks out on the ship and Boimler is injured in a somewhat delicate place that T’Ana finds newfound respect for Boimler. The doctor asserts the new procedure used to heal Boimler will earn her some medical clout.

As was his objective, Boimler earns a nickname from T’Ana, and the doctor even invites him to her book club, which teaches both Boimler and Rutherford a valuable lesson: just alter your personality to attract friends, which is a lesson Tendi ends the episode objecting to. We’ll see if Boimler continues to not be himself to climb the command ladder, and if there are any repercussions to this pseudo-lesson. 

Taken together, “Of Gods and Angles” presents another Lower Decks story complete with a well-practiced blend of humor, action, and heartfelt moments with characters facing quirky and imaginative scenarios. As the Cerritos crew continues to navigate both the absurdities of Starfleet life and their struggles, “Of Gods and Angles” reminds us why Lower Decks remains one of the freshest, most entertaining corners of the Star Trek universe. 

Stray Thoughts: 

• Here’s a great deep cut: Boimler, in panic mode, discards Rutherford’s knowledge of the alternate Boimler’s padd as the engineer being a regular “Ronald B. Moore.” Ronald B. Moore was the name of the comedian played by real-life comedian Joe Piscopo in the early The Next Generation episode “The Outrageous Okona.” The name Ronald B. Moore is itself a reference to one of TNG’s visual effects coordinators, Ronald B. Moore.
  
  

• During Boimler’s attempts at altering his personality to try and get on T’Ana’s good side, Tendi references another time Boimler tried and failed to do the same thing with Commander Ransom. Back in “wej Duj,” Boimler tried to pretend he was from Hawaii to endear himself to Ransom.
  
  

• Here’s some great attention to continuity: the brig cell Olly inhabits still has drawings Mariner made during her numerous times in the cell.

New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

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