We have already recapped and reviewed Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5, episode 3, “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel,” and will discuss it on the upcoming All Access Star Trek podcast. Today we are looking at all the canon connections, Easter eggs, and nods to Trek lore. Here are the ones that jumped out to us, which include SPOILERS.
Getting small
As the title implies, this episode deals with a “routine nanite infestation” on a giant cruise ship. Nanites—or more simply very tiny robots—were first mentioned in the TNG episode “Evolution” when Wesley let some medical nanites loose accidentally, causing havoc on the Enterprise.
These nanites came with a tiny little surprise in the form of the cute little USS Endeavor, from a small-scale parallel universe. Star Trek has dabbled in the tiny ship genre before: The DS9 episode “One Little Ship” featurined a miniaturized runabout, although not at microscopic scale. The Endeavor is an Intrepid-class (like the USS Voyager) and Captain Tersal revealed they have been through “a month of hell,” a reference the classic Voyager 2-part episode “Year of Hell.” While there have been Star Trek ships named Endeavor before, this one was likely named for the HMS Endeavor from the Marvel Micronauts comics.
Cruzin’ for connections
The Cosmic Duchess cruise ship resembled the Orbital Office Complex from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And the domes are also similar to Starbase 1 in Strange New Worlds.
The station included a tropical “Risa Bar,” modeled after the vacation planet Risa, often mentioned in Trek and first visited in the TNG episode “Captain’s Holiday.”
The cruise ship had multiple climate zones, including a ski resort with a mountain that looked like the one in the classic Paramount logo, seen at the start (or end) of many Star Trek productions.
When listing the many wonders the ship offers, Mariner points out “One of the space casinos has a bunch of Dixon Hill slot machines,” referencing the fictional Dixon Hill series of novels that Captain Picard was fond of, introduced in the TNG episode “The Big Goodbye” when he and others had an adventure in a Dixon Hill holo-novel program.
Good vibrations
The Cosmic Duchess was also hosting a concert by Krog, dismissed as just a “novelty beach crooner” by Mariner, but T’Lyn was a big fan. Krog was a master of the “Vibe Tubes,” giving a name to a weird future instrument that first appeared in the TNG episode “We’ll Always Have Paris.”
Boimler, Undercover
Brad had a side quest mission this episode, requiring him to go undercover on the Duchess with Ransom and Billups. Excited, he asked “Do we get to wear the black body suits?” referencing the outfits Picard, Worf, and Dr. Crusher wore for their undercover mission in the TNG episode “Chain of Command.” Tendi got to wear the cool black body suit on an undercover mission with Ransom in the season 1 episode “Veritas.”
I love the smell of piña coladas in the morning
Boimler, Billups and Ransom were tasked to track down an admiral who had gone AWOL with “vacation madness” in an adventure modeled after the hunt for an AWOL US Army colonel who had gone mad in Apocalypse Now. One of several homages to the 1970s Vietnam War movie came as the Starfleet trio was attacked by “natives” shooting darts while heading downriver, albeit on innertubes instead of a Navy Patrol Boat.
They find their way to “AWOL Falls” modeled after the Cambodian temple architecture of Colonel Kurtz’ compound in Apocalypse Now.
Eventually Boimler meets Admiral Milius (named for Apocalypse Now screenwriter John Milius) in a scene taken right out of the original movie when Captain Williard is taken before Col. Kurtz.
Ain’t ‘fraid of no Glumpus
It wasn’t all ’70s movies refs, the ’80s also got some love with Tendi and T’Lyn equipped with Starfleet capture packs for the nanite swarm (named Glumpus) that resembled Proton Packs from Ghostbusters.
There be whales here
When Milus says he was in charge of milking space whales, Boimler asks “What kind? The Gormagander or those “Galaxy’s Child” things?” referencing space whales from Discovery and TNG respectively.
Hey, Boday!
One of people Jadzia Dax dated when on station Deep Space 9 was Captain Boday, a Gallamite. He was mentioned in a few DS9 episodes, but we never saw him, which is a shame because Gallamites were described as having transparent skulls and “toothy smiles.” Leave it to Lower Decks to finally show us Gallamites for the first time in a blink-or-you-miss-it moment at the Risa Bar.
Also at the Risa Bar was a group of Kreetassans, who Boimler offends by eating and drinking in front of them. The same thing happened to Captain Archer when the race was introduced in the Enterprise episode “Vox Sola.” Speaking of Enterprise races, the Milus acolyte they chased to the ski resort was a Denobulan, like Dr. Phlox.
Private parts
Another painful Boimler alien encounter happened on the ski slope when he careened into an unknown alien, grabbing his back. The alien winced in pain saying, “You are grabbing my genitals.” Boimler responds, “Why are they on your back?” with the alien replying “Where else would they be?!” This kind of thing has happened before. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Kirk got into a prison fight with an unknown alien, turning the tables when he kicked the alien in the knees. Fellow inmate Martia clued him into why he won the fight, saying “That was not his knee. Not everybody keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain.”
What did you see?
Spot any new Trek references we missed on Lower Decks? Have a favorite? Sound off in the comments below.
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The exchange between Boimler and the skier he crashes into about the location of his genitals is a direct reference to The Undiscovered Country when Martia explains to Kirk and Bones that not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place.
Well, Brando was almost in Star Trek, so that’s a nice nod.
Brando was? I know they wanted Connery for V but when was Brando on a short list for Trek?
Shatner wanted Connery, don’t think they had a chance to get him. I seem to recall he was filming Hunt for Red October.
I always thought it was Indiana Jones.
To the best of my knowledge, he never was. It’s a reference to appearance of the Admiral in the latest LDS ep. It’s a parody of a famous Brando scene from “Apocalypse Now”.
For Soran in GEN. Though honestly I can’t imagine him duking it out with Shatner and Stewart.
Brando expressed interest but never actually came close to playing the role… similar to Tom Hanks as Cochran. People like to blow these things out of proportion so they can have headlines like “Marlon Brando almost played a Star Trek villain!” When the reality is it was barely even a discussion.
What about Hackman and Downey in GEN? I heard that the only reason Downey wasn’t in it (I’m guessing the Gregg Henry part) owed to his not being insurable. Can’t imagine Hackman wearing a ton of prothetics as Ru’afo and figure Doherty would have to be seriously overhauled to be worthwhile for GH to play him, though it would be fun to see Hackman say, ‘jean-luc, i’m in command here, now kindly shut the f*** up!’
A lot of casting and other creative choices come down to dollars as much as interest, I was flabbergasted in early 91 when Meyer told me he couldn’t afford James Horner to score TUC.
The Endeavor is the name of the ship in the classic Marvel comic The Micronauts, who also hailed from another universe and when they were in our universe they were very small. This is an impossibly deep cut, and a shoutout to the Gen X nerd who made that reference.
The entrance to the caves looked a lot like Vaal to me.
The Cosmic Duchess is presumably a callback to the Astral Queen, mentioned in the TOS episode “The Conscience of the King.”
Like any great but self-important work APOCALYPSE NOW is ripe for parody, and that the Heart of Darkness found itself stuck in the utopian Trek universe could have made the sendup even funnier (“Rehabilitate. . . with extreme prejudice”). But the whole thing gets reduced to a couple of B-side references in an unfocused story that’s mostly about some goopy nanites and the breakup of Mariner and her Andorian girlfriend. (Sigh.) Too bad about the missed opportunity, but at least John Milius will enjoy the homage if it ever gets back to him, because if the world needed anything it was for the noted screenwriter and director of CONAN THE BARBARIAN to have another reason to swagger.
Having Walter Sobchak (partially) based on you is reason enough.
True dat. 😊
One of my favorite internet lines was “I wish there was a German term for when someone is right but he’s such a jerk you don’t want to admit it.”
“Oh, there is. It’s ‘waltersobchakeit.’ ‘You’re not wrong, you’re just an a******.”
That’s a great line about Sobchak. I’m stealing it, with or without your permission (most of my own best stuff, such as it is, relies heavily on stolen material).
Hey, I stole it myself. :-)
I irregularly rip a priest’s line from EXORCIST III: Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you’re an a**h***.”
Having the cajones to cast Connery as the last of the Berbery Pirates would be yet another. (Milius’ THE WIND AND THE LION probably remains one of my alltime fave adventure flicks — saw it as a teen and immediately went back to the theater and tape-recorded his last speech and memorized it, probably just ahead of when all my friends started doing the same with the JAWS / Quint / Indianapolis speech, which is also Milius … mostly.)
From what I’ve gleaned recently, Milius thinks of himself as some kind of hard-right hipster counterculturalist. (“No, seriously, I think half the Fortune 500 should be put up against a wall and shot!”) But, no question, the man can write.
He’s at least half-right.
I’ve gone from being dismayed by capitalism in my youth to really feeling outraged over how it reinforces an unofficial class/caste system. Bill Maher was talking about how the GDP was up, but does that help folks who didn’t inherit a house to live in or who work retail (in other words, no union)?
Crowing about the GDP is meaningless when increasing percentages of the gross are siphoned-off at the top. It’s like saying that the average annual income of Bill Gates and a dozen nuns is a billion dollars a year. Bill Maher is an idiot.
You beat me to it. I was about to say, “Only half?”
It’s been pointed out recently what a realignment American politics is going through right now. An article I just read said that Bernie Sanders and JD Vance are a lot closer than we realize (or they’d admit). And ironically you can put people like Trump and Musk (who sure aren’t hurting for money) up there.
With just hours to go now before our own potential apocalypse and sleep being elusive I’m genuinely curious about how the politics of J.D. Vance and Bernie Sanders align. In the case of John Milius it’s at least possible that he was channeling Teddy Roosevelt, who was an ardent “America First” imperialist but was also a genuine populist who affected to despise many of his own class and busted the trusts to prove it. So far as I can tell, the only thing Vance holds against corporate America is not its greed but its supposed wokeness, while Sanders is a lifelong Social Democrat. Please elucidate.
Yeah, I’m wondering about this myself, but wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know. Now I think I really do.
Obviously they’re not a perfect match, and of course no one is completely consistent even in their own beliefs. But what Vance has against corporations is a lot more than any of their supposed wokeness. He grew up dirt poor in a depressed part of America and feels corporations have abandoned the people, moving manufacturing abroad and so on. I distinctly remember when he entered politics (he was famous already), it was a real toss-up as to which party he’d join. The choice he made is very emblematic of what’s happened to the parties and American politics in general.
For all the talk about keeping the mines open and restoring American manufacturing, in practice Trump’s first term actually did very little of any of that; certainly far less than the CHIPS and infrastructure legislation that Biden got passed with some Republican buy-in. Maybe Vance is sincere and will make progress in getting his former neighbors lifted out of poverty after decades of failures and neglect; perhaps not. Color me skeptical, as prioritizing the interests of American workers over short-term profits directly runs counter to Republican free-market orthodoxy, but you never know. (One thing is for certain, at least: those workers can cease losing sleep over the prospect of their children sharing bathrooms and competing with transgenders in team sports.) It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out — which, with any luck, I’m pleased to note that I’ll be doing from abroad.
I think the lack of “free-market orthodoxy” is part of the point.
As someone living abroad myself, you’d better be sure that things have implications. In our case, thousands of dead.
Can you clarify what you mean by that second paragraph? What things, and what implications?
I’m old enough to remember when Bush Senior’s trade representative made a public statement to the effect that he didn’t care if Americans made computer chips or potato chips, so long as they were working. Ross Perot, who turned out to have some considerable baggage of his own, nevertheless made the reasonable reply that, well, people make a lot more money making computer chips. If Trump/Vance turns out to be serious on that front I suppose that’s a good thing, though I will always maintain that hiring such people to solve your trade issues is like easing your flu symptoms by drinking rat poison.
If the sun in the resort knows when you’ve had enough, why was Milius so badly sunburned?
Maybe he wanted to be?
Interesting! I imagine he’ll be back, so we’ll see.
I was thinking that object you say looks like the TMP office complex actually looks even more like the particle beam station from TNG’s cute little intelligent robot episode, just inverted (which in itself is another nod to the TMP office complex, since it was inverted in all subsequent appearances (as Regula in TWOK and various starbases on TNG and DS9.)
Inverting that model was one of the lesser decisions made on TWOK imo. It just doesn’t look right in that orientation, the hint of interior detail that I’m sure Trumbull insisted upon looking distinctly off. Even worse was its use in TNG’s “The Measure of a Man,” where both the scale AND orientation were wrong.
Agreed on all points. They could have torn a hunk off epsilon 9 and done better.
Not sure if it is a good omen for the election, but as of a couple days back, LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR is finally going to be releasing on disc and I got my order in for the 4K limited version before the inevitable sellout (only 8000 copies.) That brings it down to only one totally absent on dvd movie I am still coveting and craving, the Coburn flick HARD CONTRACT.
Have to admit, that’s one whose appeal I’ve never understood (for totally un-nuanced cynicism about what it means to be human it’s right up there with CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, another film I cheerfully loathe). I guess that makes us even for my kinda liking Daniel Craig’s take on Bond, if not all of the films. 😊
Shoot Michael, I can’t even explain my fascination with GOODBAR. My wife asks me, even while ordering me the thing, what I find so compelling, when so much goes unanswered regarding motivation and self-destructive behavior.
All I can say is that there is a live-wire aspect to some scenes (not just the ending) that had me jumping, plus it portrays a lifestyle scene totally alien to me in a way that I was repulsed by … yet the largely despicable people in that world felt real to me in a way that I guess I attribute to Brooks’ writing and directing skills.
I cannot make the same claim about his WRONG IS RIGHT, but I am similarly mesmerized by that film and how it fails to blend comedy and drama and action in a coherent fashion, and increasingly how prescient the whole thing was.
I’ve not seen much of his work (have tried watching several of his higher-rated earlier pictures w/o success), though two of his westerns are in my top 5 alltime westerns, BITE THE BULLET and THE PROFESSIONALS (have seen them at least 15 times apiece) and consider the latter to be as memorable as THE WILD BUNCH, even if it does obviously lack the Peckinpah’s visual punch.
And Diane Keaton just plain brings it in GOODBAR. I’ve never found a really satisfying interview with her that discusses the character in a ‘get the answers’ way, and yet I can’t imagine how she played Theresa w/o having some things worked out. After all, it wasn’t like TWIN PEAKS, where, when Michael Anderson asked Lynch for context in a ‘red room’ scene, Lynch told him simply, ‘there is no context.’ (then again, Keaton actually directed a TP ep — probably one of the two or three worst, but shoot, she didn’t write the thing — so maybe there is some affinity/connection there.)
As for Craig … sigh/snarl … I have to evoke the BUTCH CASSIDY thing yet again, about having vision while the whole rest of the world needs bifocals.
Agreed about Diane Keaton bringing it to the role (unlike Richard Gere, as per usual). But of course the range that could give us Luna and Kay Corleone would be pretty admirable in any case.
Looking at the Wiki entry, I had no idea that LeVar Burton made his debut in GOODBAR.
I was pretty sure ROOTS happened before GOODBAR, do you mean theatrical debut? He shows a lot more street here than usual, I do remember that.
I’ve actually never seen either miniseries of ROOTS, except for the Brando as Rockwell scene, which I think was in the second one. Keep meaning to watch HOLOCAUST too (big Michael Moriarty fan, going back to BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY and especially REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER, which I think is the most overlooked NY crime drama of that decade), maybe one of these decades …
One vague trek thing — my wife was ust showing me a home baked pie she found online that was done as a yin-yang symbol, with a curving section of pumpkin on one side and streusel on the other. I took one look at it and said, ‘can you not see the difference? I am Pumpkin on the left side.’
Also, rewatched the uprezzed bluray TRIALS & TRIBBLEATIONS from the TOS blu set last nite and couldn’t believe how bad it looked, with image jitter and the faux sharpening being enormously annoying. I think I”ll stick with the DVD or streamed version next time, it looks awful in SD but at least it is consistently awful, instead of this flash&fade effect.
Only hit on the idea of watching this because we have been mainlining the first 7 seasons of XFILES again and mixing in MOONLIGHTING episodes, and I noticed each of the temporal agent guys from this ep were in X- and MOON (the blond guy is actually in a lot of the latter, as well as being an early victim in GALAXY OF TERROR for those who remember that film for more than just the giant rape maggot.)
Well, in space there’s no up or down.
I sort of got the impression that we’re supposed to see Regula 1 as being a disaster, upside down and all.
That upside-down disaster remark made me think of the original POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Apparently the shot of the giant wave hitting the ship was the visual inspiration for the EXCELSIOR getting hit at the start of TUC.
Interesting!