Decrease Decks Lastly Bought Its Personal ‘D...

Over the past 5 seasons, Star Trek: Decrease Decks has usually had a lot to say about the power dynamics aboard a Starfleet vessel—taking a web page from the iconic Next Generation episode that gave the collection its identify. But it surely’s taken till there’s only a handful of episodes left for the collection to take that episode’s premise for a spin, besides. In doing so, we’d not get an episode that’s as self-serious and poignant as its TNG predecessor, however we do get one that’s completely Decrease Decks.

“Higher Decks,” because the cheeky identify implies, shifts Decrease Decks perspective away from our Lieutenants Junior Grade (who spend the episode carving pumpkins, a transfer that makes it really feel like possibly this episode might’ve run a bit earlier within the season) and onto the Cerritos often-supporting senior bridge crew. However that’s just about the place the similarities between it and TNG‘s “Decrease Decks” come to an finish: as our heroes joke within the opening and shutting scenes bookending the episode, the present’s about them, besides this time it’s not. They’re solely in these two scenes. That is an episode totally about these major bridge officers, who all get moments to shine as each characters and of their relationships with the broader crew at giant, not simply our common stars.

It’s nice, as a result of that makes this a Decrease Decks episode, not only a re-hash of what “Decrease Decks” already did so brilliantly. And that‘s nice, as a result of it frees “Higher Decks” to only be a enjoyable, sentimental love letter to itself and its characters for as soon as, fairly than a love letter to a Star Trek premise. Even higher? It’s the one episode up to now this season that doesn’t resolve thematically identically across the series’ wider message about communication and teamwork, so all in all it’s only a very enjoyable, refreshing episode!

And that’s all in must be. Initially seemingly a collection of vignettes specializing in every of the primary senior officers—Captain Freeman navigating her approach by way of a making an attempt day of conferences and outreach with Cerritos officers, Shaxs coping with the repressed rage of his time in the course of the Cardassian Occupation by astrally snapping some Cardassian ghost’s necks, Billups stopping Engineering from blowing up (once more), Ransom corralling quarreling ensigns as they wrangle space-bug-cows, and Dr. T’Ana testing her ache tolerance to show her bedside method in Sickbay is nice—all the things comes collectively when it’s revealed that the assorted shenanigans aboard the ship have been agitated by saboteurs within the type of the Clickets, the insectoid race that may’t take a praise from season one.

It’s a enjoyable technique to tie all these disparate plotlines collectively into one thing extra coherent as an episode, however it additionally will get to climax all these vignettes round simply what makes the Cerritos‘ senior workers such enjoyable characters, albeit hardly ever explored ones. Certain, some are performed for laughs, like Shaxs simply mainly hanging round to get in a battle with himself that may solely be resolved together with his fists, and T’Ana’s is generally an excuse for Gillian Vigman to set free her greatest feral feline shrieks. However elsewhere there’s a real, honest look after what these officers do aboard the ship and their bond with the officers beneath them.

Billups teaming up with a younger ensign who has no thought simply how harmful (and form of enjoyable) life in engineering will be. Freeman silently gritting her enamel however getting by way of days the place she makes the time for being there to assist her crew of their lives past their duties. Even Ransom displaying he cares sufficient about getting his ensigns to work collectively by giving them an annoying figurehead to rally towards collectively out of spite! It’s a candy reminder that for all the facility dynamics that the present has interrogated earlier than of their relationship with the decrease deckers, on the finish of the day, all these persons are Starfleet officers who acquired the place they’re by caring, about their jobs, about their co-workers, concerning the generations of officers they encourage.

It’s good that Decrease Decks acquired an opportunity to indicate that earlier than it heads into its last finish. It took an extended highway, getting from there to right here, however the present acquired to ship on its namesake in one of the best ways—and by itself phrases, as an alternative of merely by way of homage.

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