Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 10 “The New Next Generation”
After last week’s enticing penultimate episode, Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan takes a final turn with the writer’s pen as he crafts a flawed but solid finish to this season’s multiverse madness and his incredible animated show as a whole.
This episode begins as soliton waves from the multiverse tear into the Prime Universe, right before a small fleet of Klingon ships. This fleet is commanded by Relga, the sister of two Klingon brothers, Dorg and Bargh, recently killed by our old friend, Ma’ah, who we’ll see in just a minute. Relga is out for revenge, as Klingons usually are, and after an explosive encounter with the multiverse rift, she realizes the chaotic energy is the perfect tool through which to launch her revenge against her brothers’ killer.
“The New Next Generation” soon shifts its focus to Ma’ah (Jon Curry), who we last saw in “A Farewell to Farms.” Ma’ah and his brother, Malor (Sam Witwer), are living a peaceful life hauling bloodwine until Relga comes seeking revenge. Their little ship stands no chance against Relga’s fleet, so Malor, against his brother’s wishes, seeks the Cerritos and their friend, Beckett Mariner (Tawney Newsome), for asylum and assistance.
The Cerritos is already dealing with its own problem, as Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) just received a message from his clone, William, about the impending arrival of vitriolic multiverse energy that will threaten to destroy everything. Despite only being a lowly California-class support vessel, the Cerritos is the only ship that can deal with the rift thanks to the link the two Boimlers share, although Starfleet assures Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) that more support is coming – including the Enterprise herself.
The plan is for the Cerritos to seal the rift with a gluonic beam, but first, it’ll have to travel through the surrounding Schrödinger Possibility Field; this field is highly unstable and apt to unpredictably transform whatever it touches. Luckily, Starfleet has some shield modifications the Cerritos can use to negate the effects of the field, but these modifications will conveniently only protect the crew from changes, not the Cerritos herself.
We’ll stop here for a moment and discuss our first critique of this episode. While of course, our heroes are the ones who should handle this massive crisis – they are the stars of the show, after all – Mike McMahan completely glazes over why the Cerritos is the only ship that can save the day. The supposed mysterious link the two Boimlers share is so vague and ill-conceived that the viewer just has to take it on faith. And in the end, it seems any ship without Boimler could have closed the rift just as well as the Cerritos. What made Boimler so special to this process? We’ll mark this plot issue as the first of a few we’ll mention in this review.
“We would never choose to have a California-class ship handle a catastrophe of this scale.”
“Oh, thank god, for a moment it sounded like this was up to us.”
“Unfortunately, it is.”
– A Starfleet admiral and Captain Freeman.
On their way to seal the multiverse rift, the Cerritos crew comes face-to-face with Relga, who demands the return of the Klingon brothers harbored on the Starfleet ship. Despite an unexpected and somewhat strange message from Admiral Alonzo Freeman (Phil LaMarr) confirming Carol should hand over Ma’ah and Malor, the latter Klingon goes missing on the Cerritos. This leaves Relga apoplectic, so Freeman offers an olive branch: shield modifications to protect Relga’s ship against the multiverse rift. This isn’t enough to prevent Relga from attacking the Cerritos, so Freeman orders her ship to scramble away from the Klingon armada and race toward the rift.
The Cerritos reaches the rift and dives headfirst into the waves of matter-changing energy emanating from its center. In typical Lower Decks wackiness, the Cerritos is transfigured into a variety of ships. For diehard Star Trek nerds, which Mike McMahan clearly is, this sequence is exciting. The Cerritos is transformed into a single-nacelled Freedom-class, and then a heavily armed Mirror Universe version of a California-class, much to the delight of Shax (Fred Tatasciore); a bit later, the ship is altered into a Sovereign class, Oberth-class, Galaxy-class, and Miranda-class. It’s a game of Starfleet starship roulette, and we get the sense McMahan is having just the best time playing in this universe he so dearly loves.
In typical Lower Decks season finale fashion, McMahan ties together a few threads from the previous nine episodes to put a bow on this finale. Here are a few ways he does this:
- Whereas Tendi and T’Lyn were competitors in “Fully Dilated,” and indeed remain a bit competitive with each other in this episode, they ultimately realize their friendship and trust for one another trumps all. Their dramatically becoming “science besties” helps the Cerritos during a particularly risky part of the rift traversal.
- Rutherford’s experiences with technical issues between his implant and the Cerritos across multiple episodes this season cumulated in this episode with him “falling out of love” with the Cerritos. But don’t worry, he falls back in love with her as he realizes her age is her saving grace, and he even permanently removes his implant so he can enjoy serving on his ship again. We were happy to see Rutherford draw some attention in this episode, as it seems he was the most underused of the lower deckers this season.
- Boimler, who has been relying on his alternate reality counterpart’s padd to navigate his way up the ladder, finally breaks with that strategy. Why? Ma’ah suspects Mariner of hiding his brother on the Cerritos because that’s what the padd said Becky Mariner did in the alternate reality, so Boimler chooses between the padd and supporting Mariner against those accusations.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. As the Cerritos lies dead in space from Relga’s attack in the rift and Mariner faces accusations from Ma’ah about hiding Malor, Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) reveals he was the one who hid the Klingon. Suspecting the message from Admiral Freeman was illegitimate, the commander didn’t tell his captain about his plan to hide Malor, which therefore protected Freeman’s plausible deniability in the face of orders presumably coming from Starfleet. Confirming Ransom’s suspicions, Kayshon (Carl Tart) replays Admiral Freeman’s video and exposes Relga’s scheming.
We were left a bit confused by this scene and watched it repeatedly to ensure we didn’t miss a crucial plot detail. Kayshon appears to investigate Admiral Freeman’s video while Ransom is explaining why he hid Malor. But why didn’t Ransom review the admiral’s video himself upon suspecting the video was fake? Was Ransom’s plan just to hide the Klingon and lie to his captain in perpetuity? Why didn’t Ransom ask someone like Kayshon to review the video immediately, and then present it to Freeman to reveal Relga’s ploy? Ransom didn’t seem to have a well-thought-out plan, despite the enormous consequences of hiding Malor on the Cerritos.
With the mystery of Malor’s disappearance solved, the Cerritos still needs to power its engines and make it to the rift. As Doctor T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) asserts, there must be a sneaky, Kirk-style way to weasel themselves out of their seemingly impossible situation. Andy Billups (Paul Scheer) realizes there is a way: Olly (Saba Homayoon), who we opined was a neat addition to the Cerritos crew, uses her otherworldly electric powers to shoot an energy bolt at Relga’s ship. Without shields, Relga and her crew are at the mercy of the rift’s soliton waves. In the end, Relga and her people are transformed into mindless proto-Klingons before their ship is destroyed. Goodbye, Relga, we hardly knew thee.
With the villain out of the way, the path is clear for our heroes to seal the rift. Thanks to the Cerritos turning into various other vessels before returning to its original state, our crew make their way to the rift, but it doesn’t seem that they’ll get there in time. That is until Rutherford realizes the tried-and-true California-class is exceptional, in that it kind of sucks. It’s old, worn down, and uses a variety of mismatched systems, but that means Rutherford can quickly reconfigure whatever systems he needs to fuel the ship by interdimensionality itself, whatever in the world that means.
There’s an unintended consequence of this modification, in that the Cerritos splits apart into two versions of itself, but that just gives co-senior science officers Tendi and T’Lyn the aforementioned opportunity to flex their science muscles and, perhaps more importantly, their trust in each other. The pair successfully navigate the Cerritos’ bifurcation to bring the two instances of the ship back into their proper state.
When the Cerritos finally shoots the gluonic beam into the rift, it doesn’t work at first. But thanks to the convenient and inexplicable appearance of Malor on the bridge, who analogizes the destructive rift to dealing with flooding on his farm, Mariner has an inspired idea: alter the gluonic beam to not shut down the rift but keep it open permanently. With a few button presses, the soliton waves are halted, and the rift is stabilized, saving the day.
All Good Things
Now it’s time for Lower Decks to wrap up and send its characters on their way. Ma’ah and Malor do return to Klingon space, but not to continue their bloodwine shipping business. No, the two brothers command the fleet formerly headed by Relga; we are happy Ma’ah finally returned to command after his tumultuous journey throughout this show.
The rift, meanwhile, is ripe for exploration; having a gateway to other realities certainly sounds like a hotbed for any number of wacky stories. Leading this exploration effort is Captain Carol Freeman and her husband, Alonzo. The pair will be stationed on Starbase 80, the only facility capable of being stationed that close to such a high density of tachyon particles thanks to its older design.
We loved seeing the infamous Starbase 80 have this resolution. After being a punching bag for so long until its clever redemption in this season’s titular episode, it’s only right Kassia Nox (Nicole Byer) and her crew have their heyday – although we don’t quite buy that Starbase 80 is the only installation capable of handling the long-term corrosive effects of the rift. In another bit of closure, William Boimler (the clone of Brad who alerted the Prime Universe to the multiverse threat), returns through the now-permanent rift with his crew on the Anaximander to help Starfleet’s exploration efforts.
In a touching exchange that sees Captain Freeman admit Mariner has matured enough to warrant the captain leaving the Cerritos, Mariner says a tearful goodbye to her mom and dad. While the Freemans have their next steps laid out, what’s next for the lower deckers? For Rutherford and Tendi, it’s the continued hint that someday a romance may develop between them. We see Rutherford, without his characteristic implant, seemingly recognize his attraction to Tendi for the first time; of course, the innocent Tendi remains blind to Rutherford’s awkwardness.
Mariner, meanwhile, reflects on what makes lower deckers like her and her friends – and the ship upon which they serve – so awesome. In predictable series-ending fashion, we get a voiceover monologue from Mariner celebrating the quirkiness and awesomeness of the Cerritos crew. During this monologue, we get a shot of Doctor T’Ana attending to a patient as a portal opens behind her and out drops a scared-looking O’Connor, who, let’s remember way back to season one, turned into an energy being as he ascended to another plane of existence. What a great callback! What knowledge does he bring back, and why has he come back now?
With the friends on the bridge, it’s time for one final wrench thrown into the lower deckers’ lives. The Cerritos’ new captain, Jack Ransom, needs a first officer, and he chooses Boimler and Mariner as co-provisional first officers. Ransom thinks of this as a contest between the two lieutenants junior grade, much to the friends’ chagrin. As it is, Boimler and Mariner now oversee all lower deckers, which is quite the neat evolution of their initial starting point in this show. As the Cerritos warps away, we wonder what new adventures await this ship’s memorable, unusual crew.
The Imperfect Goodbye
“The New Next Generation” is a solid farewell for Lower Decks, but not without noteworthy critiques. The various minor plot inconsistencies we’ve mentioned already somewhat deflate the experience, as we are always sucked out of a viewing when we must question certain events. Here are just a few examples of some more inexplicable moments that took us out of the episode:
- Captain Freeman should have been clued into the duplicitous nature of Admiral Freeman’s message when he mentioned the brother Freeman was harboring. The brothers came aboard mere minutes before… how should the captain have expected her husband to learn of this development, or that Relga was the one asking for the brothers? Talk about an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment from Captain Freeman.
- We’re not quite sure how the Cerritos’ physical structure changing doesn’t lead to the death of crewmates inside the ship. For example, at one point the Cerritos changes from a two-nacelle ship to a one-nacelle ship; if anyone was in the second nacelle, wouldn’t they be dead?
- Boimler having to spray down the Cetacean Ops whales during the ship’s navigation troubles is funny, but wouldn’t there be someone assigned to that task so that the helmsman wouldn’t have to leave his post in an emergency?
- What are the chances the Cerritos turns back into its normal self during their journey through the Schrödinger Field? There are countless versions of itself the Cerritos can transform into. Landing on the Prime Universe Cerritos is quite a bit of luck.
Taken together, it’s easy to see Mike McMahan knew where his characters should be at certain parts of this episode, but didn’t really care how they got there.
All that being said, “The New Next Generation” suitably sets up these characters to have adventures beyond this show – and really, we’re holding our breath for some other service besides Paramount+ picking up Lower Decks. The show is just too intriguing, and the characters too charming, to end after 50 episodes. Boimler and Mariner sure have a task before them as they become responsible for lower deckers on the Cerritos, not to mention the contest they are forced into for the first officer position. And who knows what having a permanently opened multiverse rift could mean for storytelling in the 24th century.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is easily one of the best things to come out of the Kurtzman era, and the five seasons we’ve had with the crew of the Cerritos have been a treat. The show is a celebration of this dear franchise, and we sure will miss it.
Stray Thoughts:
- The Klingons who were hit by multiverse particles in the beginning of the episode are seen briefly transforming into the kind of Klingon seen in season one of Star Trek: Discovery. Likewise, the Bird-of-Prey that gets hit by particles turns into a Bird-of-Prey from that same period.
- Relga captains a ship that looks like a bigger, more powerful version of the quintessential Bird-of-Prey design. The similarity of this flagship to the legendary Bird-of-Prey family of ships aligns with Doctor T’Ana’s tongue-in-cheek remark in this episode that Klingons rarely change starship design.
- We were teased about the appearance of the Enterprise, and we got it, as she was one of the ships stationed at the rift at the end of the episode.
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