The scream I scrumpt for the gays was so long and high pitched I’m sure even the Colonel would get the all-dog alert. Written by executive story editor and writer of Bless the Harts (a King of the Hill-wannabe), Lauren McGuire writes her only episode of Lower Decks. McGuire previously worked on TBS “comedy” dross, Wrecked. The only reason I opened with the writer this week is because Brandon Williams is back once again, one final time following “Of Gods and Angels.” An episode I forgot was a thing during the break.
Unlike a Hilary Duff-led comedy, Lauren McGuire had one shot (thus far) at Star Trek, and she might have just nailed it. While Rutherford does a lot of tinkering to get his oculus to work (I’ve been there), a full weirdy-beardy Boimler is reminiscing about his dead transporter clone, or at least he would have been dead if it weren’t for Section 31. With more 5 o’clock shadow than our Boimler has had all season, Bill Boimler is disheveled, gruff, commanding a Defiant-class ship with a crew of T’Pol (who?), Curzon, a bunch of Harrys (take a guess), and the two sexy bastards I just mentioned.
Turns out Bill Boimler is commanding this unnamed ship for an unnamed organization (hun, we all know) in Starfleet, with an interdimensional crew of degenerates sealing the quantum fissures. The latest addition to the crew is Harry Kim… another Harry Kim. I want to see that, this Boimler in a The Thick of It-like series but Star Trek, with the “kill a kid an hour” joke being swapped for “Kill a Kim an hour.” Long story short, this is easily the best episode of an otherwise bog-standard season thus far.
Can I talk about the gays now? I don’t care if I’ve moaned all the way throughout the season and I’ll continue to do so about the front half of it, having Garak and Bashir in a gay Doctor-Doctor relationship, that’s worth it. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, homophobic slur. As reference-heavy as, well me, “Fissure Quest” not only offers a refreshing look at a Boimler and Beckett relationship but does so in an episode that understands Star Trek better than most. Lauren, you are now my second favorite “L McGuire”.
Chasing down the thing that’s creating these dimensional fissures, causing multiple realities to crossover throughout the season, Bill Boimler is tired of it. Our Boimler’s clone that was good with adventure is getting the “ultimate” adventure of correcting dimensions crossing over each other, but he’s just bored of it: Finding his enthusiasm “waning,” this wasn’t the adventure of a lifetime. Finding an escape pod, the crew beam on board their latest Harry Kim for the collection, but this one has a second pip.
Not long after, we get another dimensional fissure spewing out a shuttle that’s about to explode, this time with Beckett, kind of. A Boimler kind of Beckett, she’s very well-versed in engineering – clearly following in the path of the greatest human to have ever lived – and she’s also very risk-averse. Yeah, not our Mariner at all. However, she’s the one who’s able to understand and reverse-engineer the polarity of the thinking behind this whole creation of dimensional fissures thing, she truly is a totally different Beckett.
Chasing down the thing that’s creating these fissures, the crew sends the ship crashing down on an alien planet and that’s where we get the best bit of Star Trek this side of DS9. It is about as subtle as a brick to the plumbs, but it very much is the reason Star Trek is a thing. With Alfre Woodard returning for her role in a different dimension, Lily says the thing so many people forget when writing Star Trek: “It’s fun to learn about aliens, but learning about humanity, that’s something else.”
I’ve done enough of the blow-by-blow of the episode, I need to gush about how lovely it is to have (as Bill Boimler notes) “lazy derivative remixes” that feel refreshing. Very much Star Trek’s version of What If…?, there is just enough deviation in character for you to care but still know the characters enough. You have T’Pol from a show I refuse to think about because of that awful cover, Curzon being constantly mentioned in DS9, and Harry Kim being— You know, the less I think about Harry Kim the better. Most importantly, you have Andrew Robinson and Alexander Siddig back.
If there is one thing I have to say about “Fissure Quest” that maybe doesn’t work, it has to be Robinson and Siddig’s voice acting. Maybe they were recording in different rooms, different days, or whatever, but that natural chemistry the two have in DS9 doesn’t really come across as fluid as it still does rewatching DS9. Arguably with more chemistry than Jadzia and Worf, these two just perfectly worked. Here? I don’t want to say they felt wooden, but they certainly felt stilted in some way that I assume is either the years since DS9 or possible aforementioned production faults.
As for “Fissure Quest” itself, maybe some of the latter parts are techno-babel, but I think it sort of works in that “we just need appropriate sounding words to hand-wave the problem onto the finale.” I don’t know how I feel so much about “Fissure Quest” being a secret part 1 to the series finale, though if we’re honest, as a show I think the shorter length of Lower Decks makes it a given. However, the reason “Fissure Quest” works so well is because it is not just a good episode that ties together Lower Decks storylines. It does it across basically the entire timeline (thankfully minus Discovery).
This was the most fun episode of the season thus far, and that’s not really saying much. There have been episodes that have been enjoyable for different reasons. “A Farewell to Farms” was great, but I’m hesitant to say it is going anywhere far with one episode left. I liked the Tendi story that we had, until “Shades of Green” spent that up a wall and went nowhere. If it wasn’t for the fact it is animation, and thus I know that it was written long before we got the cancellation notice, I’d have almost said this penultimate episode could have been a season on its own.
I would have thought this episode and the finale could have been the whole season on its own, like Picard season 3, but we needed to wrap up Jennifer, Ma’ah, Tendi, Starbase 80, and a couple of odd bits and pieces. I get that parts of this have been built up to, but this same idea could have been executed better across the whole season rather than drips and drabs, then the ceiling falls in and your flat(/apartment) is flooded. I still love it as an episode, but the overall arc being told could have been more involved to make this feel like a series finale storyline.
As an episode on its own, “Fissure Quest” is the breath of fresh air I needed from the series. The sad part is that it is the last gasp of a series that has been running on the same few ideas up to this point, mostly on filler episodes that were enjoyable but oftentimes never stood out. Not only is it fun in that way earlier episodes felt, but it also feels like it finally got its act together to tell a consequential story, a bit like The Orville after a couple of episodes.
Five seasons in, this is the type of story I’d have expected to have seen in Lower Decks. It is the type of story I’d have expected any Star Trek show to have done at this stage because the franchise has often done this, start light and move into more serious topics later on. The trouble is that for Lower Decks it is a little too late to be doing excellent stories about the history of Star Trek as well as the humanity that the series is meant to be built around. It honestly feels like I’m eulogizing the show an episode before the end.
Ultimately, “Fissure Quest” is the best Star Trek: Lower Decks has been in a long time, however, that only goes so far. By my reckoning about 30-ish minutes. A breath of fresh air that sets up for a finale that hopefully feels final in some way. If not for my sanity, I hope it is for the sake of putting the show to rest in some way until someone can figure out how to move us along in Lower Decks without doing the same stories every season.
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