The only thing missing from Brad’s test would be “some dips**t from Chicago.” Yes, I know I said I was done talking about season 3 of Picard but I do love Shaw, he’s one of the highlights of Picard because he is a flawed character affected by something. This hasn’t really been the case in the last two seasons of Picard. Anyway, that’s enough about Wolf 359 and its many brilliant fractures throughout the franchise, or at least I’d like to, but I don’t think that’s possible with “I, Excretus” from Ann Kim, writer of “Moist Vessel.” A fine episode but nothing revolutionary.

“I, Excretus” continues a bit of the work that was being done through this latter half of the season that quite frankly should have been done a bit earlier. I’ve said time and time again that this season has been rather stagnant since “No Small Parts” ended until “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” began. “I, Excretus” should have been the standard of episodes we’ve gotten between the big moments, it should have been this good and well-made. Was it? No, and that’s the problem.

Ann Kim’s second story stands out because it is just a very good episode about the whole crew coming together in the face of someone just being the worst of Starfleet. It is difficult to be the worst of Starfleet, especially with Michael Burnham stabbing and crying her way across the universe. Focused around Mariner having an argument with the crew following Beckett, Brad, Tendi, and Samanthan being left for hours stranded on a satellite, almost freezing to death, a Starfleet standardized tester comes to check the crew’s readiness.

At least that is the A plot, where we’re getting a plot of forward motion. We’re seeing the relationships between Mariner and the bridge crew being tested. The B plot sets itself aside just bumbling along before becoming important later on and tying itself back into the A story. One can only imagine why this episode is considered well-written. It isn’t often I’m quoting whole lines from Lower Decks, but “I, Excretus” actually has a simple and funny joke that works brilliantly. After Shaxs says that everyone is equal and Ransom corrects him with “They sleep in a hallway,” and the “oh” is perfectly timed and said.

At least here I get to talk about a Pandronian and not James Cameron’s blue Pocahontas people. So Shari Yn Yem, head of wasting everyone’s time at Starfleet, comes along to test the crew with drills specially created for each member of the crew so that Starfleet command can know how well the Cerritos can handle a crisis. At this point, I don’t think the postman is handing over Carol’s reports on the antics that happen every week. That or they think so lowly of the ship and her crew that standardized testing is the final conclusion when they’ve had enough of all of these adventures.

Brad being a Brad, he has to get a 100% score no matter what happens, even though the drills are cheated. Of course, Mariner fails a number of tests due to being constructed on a large amount of game theory; A strict story is set out and much like a Rockstar mission in GTA or Red Dead, “follow the story how we tell you or you will fail!” Tendi has to void the Hippocratic oath to allow a Klingon to die an honorable death, and Rutherford has to fix a warp core breach by entering the chamber which is so hot with radiation it would burn your hand down to a marrowy stub.

Honestly, if I was a Borg my name would be Excretus of Borg. No guesses for what Brad is tasked with and repeatedly succeeds at. We’re treated to him continuously running this one test over and over; Killing some Borg and escaping the first time, killing adults and saving Borg babies the second, and third time he’s killing, saving, and capturing a bunch of Borg. By the sixth time, he’s killed the angry ones, saved the innocent ones, captured the ones escaping, slept with the camp commandant’s wife, taught the Borg Queen empathy, drank all the Cube’s supply of rum, and returned the cube to earth spacedock without a scratch, single-handedly.

Unsurprisingly Bradward is the only one getting any of this right but 87% isn’t enough for the self-conscious purple-haired little weirdo. So while everyone is failing and getting frustrated by this, including the Bridge crew who are doing lower decks work while the opposite is true of the others, he’s plugging away at his Borg-based adventures. Eventually, it all comes up to the surface and Mariner, with Carol in her corner because this is an episode about cooperation, tells Shari to shove a Yam up her Yn Yem. Revealing that the sparsely talked about animated series alien is the villain.

This is where we go a bit left and bananas for a Star Trek show, the entire crew turns on Shari and goes into ridiculously dangerous sections of space to prove a point. They are never truly in danger, but they need the illusion that the crew is stupid and crazy enough to endanger Shari’s life to prove that this crew works best with chaos, danger, and a little bit of crazy too. They can only do so because up to this point, the non-A plot story with Brad gets tied in and he has to keep doing the training drill until Shari’s bottle caves and she thinks she’s going to die.

Oh wait, that’s the wrong pronoun, Shari seems to use “this/that” for some reason. Referring to that’s self as “this one” a couple of times. I’ll throw my hands up and say it, if that’s a reference to TAS‘ second episode from the second season “Bem,” then I don’t know it. Yes, though it might seem to my editor that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of both Star Trek and Doctor Who, there are gaps. Mostly TOS up to TNG, then Voyager up to season 2 of Discovery. So basically, skip the dross slopped out by idiots and JJ-Wars, and enjoy the Dominion War as well as the bits before it.

Ultimately, “I, Excretus” is never going to be the biggest episode of Lower Decks‘ second season, but it keeps us moving along and advances the plot that is being told. There is a theme to season 2, but you wouldn’t be laughed at if it took you until “The Spy Humongous” to figure it out. In terms of favorites written by Ann Kim, for me it is still a toss-up between “Moist Vessel” and “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption;” I love good storytelling, but I like nice visuals too. Then again, Shaxs’ “oh” would almost pip them both if that’s all this episode was.

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Star Trek: Lower Decks "I, Excretus"

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• A solid episode that keeps up the momentum.
• A nice poke at game theory constraints.
• "They sleep in a hallway!" - "Oh."
• Naked Time.

Cons

• Shari could have been more than a literal cartoon villain.