Spoilers

Tendi saves a life – and gets in trouble…

The franchise overall has pretty much made a mess of exploring Orion culture, which was founded on an awful premise. Lower Decks is doing what it can to overcome that.

Lots of great stuff here that has everything to do with character and very little to do with plot. Still back with her family instead of aboard Cerritos, Tendi – the much feared Mistress of the Winter Constellation – is doing what she can to remove “murderous” from the criteria to be a good pirate. This causes trouble when she saves the life of another Orion (of a sect who in a reference to a TAS episode by Howard Weinstein call themselves OARions, are blue instead of green, and are evidently not all that clever). The queen of the syndicate has no patience with the interfamily competition. When they are busy in-fighting they are failing to bring in loot. She orders the two parties to settle the matter via a race using the ancient sailships first shown on Deep Space Nine.

Complicating matters, Tendi learns her sister is pregnant and promptly goes into overwhelming overprotectiveness including recruiting her crewmates for a “Cute-iny”. Treating a pregnant woman as if she’s suddenly made of the most delicate and fragile glass is a tired and tiresome trope. They do manage to twist it at the end, in that D’Erika didn’t tell her sister so Tendi wouldn’t be required by law to stay behind for fourteen years to train her niece. The twist, however – similar to protecting pregnant women – is an equally tiresome one of being heavy handed ‘for their own good’. However annoying the method chosen, it is still nice to see the relationship between the siblings. More skillfully executed, none of Tendi’s crewmates like being bloodthirsty either. They all want out, and thought the only way to follow in Tendi’s footsteps was to be super ruthless. In the end, Tendi’s association with Starfleet saves her family and restores their wealth when they helpfully agree to accept all the treasures from a planet switching over to a ‘post scarcity’ (i.e. replicator) economy. Grateful, her family sends her back to the Cerritos.

Meanwhile Rutherford is doing as much busy work as possible to try to cope with Tendi’s absence. T’Lyn offers to help fix a shuttle instead, but Rutherford declines. What he doesn’t say is that the shuttle is his and Tendi’s special project. Not knowing that and wanting to build stronger friendships herself, T’Lyn goes ahead and repairs it for him – much to his dismay. He doesn’t want to reveal this to Tendi upon her return, but she goes to the repair bay and is as stunned as Rutherford to see the shuttle utterly destroyed. T’Lyn confesses it was her way of correcting her error.

Mariner and Boimler spent the episode running around the planet shifting its economy and sharing a com badge, with Boimler trying to come to terms with being a good leader.

Verdict: The conclusions of both stories dovetail nicely in this episode with lots of great character moments. 7/10

Rigel Ailur

http://www.BluetrixBooks.com