“Starbase 80?!”
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 5 – Debuted Thursday, November 14, 2024
Written by May Darmon
Directed by Bob Suarez
A spooky visit to the eponymous station allows for some fun moments, clever callbacks, and the exorcising of some ghosts for key characters.
SPOILERS BELOW
You are way too chipper, are you sure you are Mariner Prime?
RECAP
“That’s the worst Starbase in the quadrant!”
Returning from a taxing ocean world mission, Mariner has a new officer glow, finally embracing the Starfleeting of it all. The calm is punctured by a red alert as a navigation system malfunction drops the Cerritos out of warp, sending shocks through Cetacean Ops. Oh no, Matt! The only refuge in range is… Starbase 80! (title alert!). Mariner begs captain mom not to return her to that “hellhole,” but there’s no other option. Most (especially Ransom) are into the 22nd-century vibe of using decon gel, but Beckett warns of the SB80 “curse.” They soon meet Kassia Nox (who actually volunteered to be there), whose enthusiasm is diminished upon learning that Starfleet wasn’t finally sending the assistance with repairs she’d requested. The lower deckers are tasked with helping out while the captain and Ransom head off to secure an old nav processor. In engineering, the lieutenants find the gravity reversed, old tech that barely works, and food stands instead of replicators… “retro cool,” according to the bubbly Nox. Rutherford starts helping with the gravity, but a call to Billups only returns incoherent moaning… also there are some guys in the background with glowing eyes, licking the walls. Things get even more spooky in the shopping district controlled by a “knife gang” of surly Acamarians. Searching for the grav plate manual, Rutherford starts zombie-ing, and more of the Cerritos crew joins in. Tendi is stricken too as they meet 80’s Chief Medical Officer, who is quite odd—and not because of his cartoonishly British name, Dr. Harrison Horseberry. The doc (don’t stare at his Tarchannen parasite half) can’t find anything medically wrong, but before Mariner can call for backup, Nox lunges at her, destroying her com badge. Now that she’s been proven right, all of Mariner’s pent up 80 anger erupts into a fight. The curse is real!?
No I didn’t notice Rutherford was a zombie, there are too many Easter eggs.
“This place does have a signature stink.”
Freeman and Ransom make it to the operations center, finding it at full red alert with its sole officer slumped over. Turns out slumpy Gene was just resting, and those malfunctioning alarms are something you get used to, but Carol uses her tricorder to fix it. The guy points them to the arcade to find engineer Jakobowski, but the old-school turbolift malfunctions. Determined to not meet the fate of her alt universe self (see episode 501), Carol powers through the bat-infested “maintenance labyrinth” only to find Gene with his head stuck in a tube. Ransom uses his spare gel to free him while Carol helps out again, this time fixing an oxygen leak. Gene points them to the stairs (yes, stairs, in space!), only 30 floors up to get to the arcade. Naturally, Ransom is pumped for the workout, while an exhausted Carol won’t let 80 beat her. Finally at the arcade, they find that same guy again, who is actually Chief Engineer Gene Jakobowski, who’s been using them to fix things around the station. His last task: Clear out the bats from subsection 5, and then they can have their spare part. Ransom is outraged over all the deception, but Carol gets it. As the captain of a California class, she feels Gene’s pain over being ignored by Starfleet. So… Let’s get those bats!
Who needs a holodeck when you have “Cardboard Chaos,” am I right?
“New plan: reckless abandon!”
Nox and Mariner scuffle, but able Starbase 80 officer Kassia (who turns out to be El-Aurian, but not Guinan old or even old at all) is deflecting blows while trying to explain that only the Cerritos crew members are zombifying… and only after using their com badges, with Boimler the latest to turn. Mariner realizes her loathing for Starbase 80 had her miss the signs, so she is now happy to team up and soon tracks a mysterious bio signal coming from the Cerritos. Nox grabs her “two biggest weirdos” and they board the zombie-infested ship. After Chad the corn dog guy sacrifices himself, the rest make it to the bridge to shut down the self-destruct Billups kept licking on and off. Gross. They follow the bio signal to Cetacean Ops to find one of the whales possessed by the central mind of an energy consciousness, apparently picked up on a recent away mission. Mariner leaps into action, taking on the “crazy energy ghost,” and just as she and Nox get infected, the doc uses some percussive medicine (an “old-fashioned bonking”) to knock a gross slimy glowy thing right out of the beluga. Once it’s secured under a bucket, the zombified crew returns to being their normal weird selves. Oh, and don’t worry about Chad, he lives “to dog another day.” Turns out the energy thing, named “Clem,” just got overtaxed trying to prove to his boss that he could communicate with corporeals, so Starbase 80 welcomes him to join their underdog ranks. Things wrap up with Rutherford fixing the gravity and other problems as we check in with captain. Ransom tells her they can leave now, but she isn’t going anywhere until they get every bat, including the last giant one. “Look out for the claws, captain!”
What? Is it my posh accent?
REVIEW
As this self-reflective final season hits the half-way point, Lower Decks reached into its own lore for an opportunity to take some deep dives into Trek canon while challenging its own characters, never forgetting to keep it funny. Returning to the dreaded Starbase 80 offered plenty of gags tied to old-school Star Trek, but at its heart, the episode put Mariner’s new season 5 attitude of no longer fighting the system to the test. Tawny Newsome showed range as she went from optimistic “I sound like a Boimler” lieutenant to “it’s the curse!” paranoid Starbase 80 alum and then back to self-actualized understanding. She also got an able assist from comedian guest star Nicole Byer as the bubbly El-Aurian and her foil for the episode, with the rest of the lower deckers mostly just along for the ride—but still each had their comic moments. In the end, the episode was a classic Trek alien-of-the-week mystery with teamwork and science as the solutions, tying things up in Cetacean Ops for a classic Lower Decks twist.
And this was a great episode for Captain Freeman, who put herself to the test, with Dawnn Lewis flawlessly taking us on a fun but exhausting tour of Starbase 80. Here she returns to her obsession with her alternate self from “Dos Cerritos” who was exiled to that universe’s Starbase 80. No matter what the station threw Freeman Prime, she was not going to let it beat her, and she was perfectly paired with veteran character actor Stephen Root as Gene Jakobowski. This cynical counterpart to Kassia ably manipulated Freeman from the start, and it feels fitting this guy with the thankless job from hell was played by Office Space’s Milton (who also had a guest role on TNG).
OMG! Is he… wearing an Enterprise uniform!?
Together this visit reminded us of what Lower Decks is all about, as Starbase 80 is kind of the Cerritos of Starbases. So in the end, everyone found that common ground of a group of misfits finding community together with the second contact ship and the Starbase 80 for second chances. And to make sure you got it, Kassia refers to the crew of Starbase 80 as “scrappy underdogs,” exactly how Mariner described the crew of the Cerritos in the series premiere. This all sounds very heartwarming, but you only get there after the show indulges in the horror genre that has always had its place in Star Trek, including a few dips into the zombie well. And once again, the production team really stepped up, creating the haunted house of a Starbase both scary and full of “I recognize that” elements primarily from The Original Series and Enterprise. The ties to Enterprise helped amplify how this Starbase is reliant on Starfleet’s hand-me-downs, but is still a delight for fans of the show that feel it never gets the love it deserves when it comes to the new Star Trek Universe.
Notably absent from the episode was any connection to the “space potholes” season arc, after we got a tease last week that the rifts in space are being made by persons unknown. But that’s just fine; this season is keeping all that on the back burner, set to a very light simmer. This visit to Starbase 80 could be a bit of a pause before the storm as the show heads into the back five and ramps things up, but the indulgence was worth it. And if you want to get all Steve Levy about it, this extended visit to a kooky workplace full of lovable weirdos could be stealth pilot for a spinoff. Who doesn’t want to see more of Kassia, Gene, Dr. Horseberry, and of course, Chad.
No, I like your… um… beard.
Final thoughts
Another strong episode from another excellent season of this animated comedy that simply feels like a gift to Star Trek fans. Episodes like “Starbase 80?!” feel especially geared as a reward for longtime franchise fans and especially fans of this series.
Ooh, I wonder what this button does.
RANDOM BITS
- The ocean world (where “Clem” infected the whale) was Piskes IX, which may be a play on “Pisces,” Latin for fishes.
- Mariner offered to do holodeck waste removal duty, showing how far she has progressed since being assigned that duty in season 1.
- Captain Freeman was looking forward to attending a captain’s conference on Casperia Prime where she was set to host a “scatting battle,” showing she is moving up since her troubles with the Command Conference in season 2.
- Billups has been trying to be less of a picky eater, trying a breakfast burrito instead of his strict hot cereal-only breakfasts.
- One of the games in the arcade featured the show’s favorite god-entity, the Great Koala.
Yeah, we’re a TNG reference, what of it?
Easter eggs and more to come
We will take a deeper dive into Acamarians and all the Easter eggs and canon connections this weekend. And we will discuss this episode on Friday’s All Access Podcast.
New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks premiere on Thursdays, streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Europe. Lower Decks also airs on Thursdays in Canada on CTV Sci-Fi Channel.
Keep up with all the news and reviews from the new Star Trek Universe on TV at TrekMovie.com.
I want Lower Decks to end with a live-action sequence that shows the actors that voice the animated characters playing them in real life.
This morning I actually googled Eugene Cordero to see if he’s as jacked as they make Rutherford to be.
Can confirm.
Cool.
I imagine that the final episode will reuse plot points from all the previous final episodes.
All Good Things:
Q putting humanity on trial — again!
Old Mariner traveling backwards and forwards in time!
Deep Space 9:
Boimler will ascend to join the Great Koala (like Sisko did when he entered the Celestial Temple).
Voyager:
The Cerritos will return to Earth after being in space and join a fleet of vessels that escorts it to the planet.
Old Mainer and Young Mariner will team up to defeat the Borg Queen.
Enterprise:
Someone will say “end program”, revealing that it was all a holographic projection. Then, the actors that voice the animated characters will step into view dressed up in character for a final live-action sequence.
I like it.
Something like that could be cool, heh.
Terrible idea. Give them their own storyline to finish the series off.
Nice try, but the ENT uniform was just WAY out of place and totally forced. Even if SB80 hasn’t been upgraded in almost a century, it makes zero sense to have ENT uniforms. They should have worn at least monster maroons. Otherwise it was a nice episode
I took as more of them embracing being lovable misfits at the edge of the Federation and taking that license to just run with it.
I mean, it’s Lower Decks and par for the course; what did you expect?
I really liked that one. I should have known Starbase 80 would turn out to be endearing somehow, but I enjoyed how we got to that understanding. Mariner’s character development is still on point.
Acamarians are a deep cut (loved that parthas restaurant in the background), but as usual it’s nice to check up on a Trek civilization.
Wasn’t quite sure what the zombie virus was making everyone do – was it just… lick things and people? I mean, why not?
Shout out to the set design and art direction in this one too. Beautiful and lovingly rendered locations.
It was Clem working through Matt using their tongues as fingertips, etc…?
Good Episode love the retro Star Base 80 bridge and Halls !
So this will be the Spin off Next series STAR BASE 80 right ?
All they have to do is fill out the crew a little more we got a Captain A Doctor and a Engineer already.
This one is my favorite episode of the season so far. Yeah, a lot of fun stuff happening and shows us why SB 80 is an absolute shit show lol. I loved all the ENT and TOS elements in the station too. Yeah I don’t really buy they would be wearing 22nd century Starfleet uniforms 200 years later but it’s a comedy so you go with it. But I also wondered why would anyone even be working there if it was so bad and I liked the explanation it’s to give people who needs a second chance and that’s their penance. Still though, the place seems really rough, like prison style rough lol. But people seem generally happy there and have adapted to it.
The virus stuff was, per usual, handled too easily and fast IMO but that’s been the case with every virus story in Star Trek lol. I can’t think of one story where it wasn’t resolved within a day. And when you only have 25 minutes, you do the best you can.
Now that we’re at the halfway mark, I can say I am liking this season, but it is feeling like the worst so far. With the exception of episode 3, I have liked all the others, but have not been as strong as other seasons at this point. But we still got 5 episodes to go.
But it’s also the first season since season one where we haven’t seen any legacy characters in the first half. It’s a little surprising only because they kept promoting we were going to see lots of them and yet not one so far. And I think there has only been one reference to one all season as well. And that’s totally fine of course, and it also proves the show doesn’t go out of its way to just stuff legacy characters as much as possible, only when it makes sense to the story.
I give the episode a 7.5/10. Not amazing but very enjoyable.
bUt ThIs ShOw iS nOtHiNg BuT lEgAcY rEfErEnCeS!!!
/s
(in before the usual suspect starts their ranting lol).
LOL, yeah we all know who that is.
“Starfleet uniforms 200 years later…”
I never understood “Enterprise” using “pips” 200 years earlier.
I won’t lie, I never noticed it. But stuff like that and Star dates I never really focused on. But yeah this show definitely does lol.
Here’s one Easter egg you missed in your recap: Clem was described, if memory serves, as an anaphasic energy life form, which puts him as a sibling to Ronin from “Sub Rosa”. And I wonder if Clem’s “superiors” have anything to do with the space potholes…
I feel this is the weakest season so far, but still happy to be in this era and it is still far better than most modern Trek.
I liked this episode, but it definitely feels like they’re saving all the good stuff for the last half of the season. Last season they were a little more consistent with the Locarno arc, showing the ships being “destroyed” or at least talked about in most episodes. They’re definitely handling this arc with a lighter touch, but with 5 episodes to go I’d expect it starts coming into focus. If not, it will be disappointing to see such a great show end on a disappointing note.
Only if the series finale hinges on the arc and it not being seeded more turns into a big problem. The Locarno arc was based on lower decks officers being disgruntled, so needed more setup. If the finale is just about an anomaly and Boimler growing a beard or shaving it off, then the light touch may be plenty.
You know, a series where a promising Starfleet officer being assigned to a run-down space station, by choice, would be an interesting show.
This show just looks like a trail of ST easter eggs.
I dunno. I’ve seen 2 episodes, including the premier of season 5, and I’m still not sold on Lower Decks.
It’s not. If you are really on the fence then maybe skip ahead to a well-regarded episode like “wej Duj” in season 2.
This show is sneakily good at character work and has real heart.
This series bores me equally watching it or reading summaries.
Well, thanks for taking the time to tell us, I guess?
Does anyone think that Gene has a bit of Roddenberry about him?
I really liked this one. The ‘horror’ music every time SB80 was shown in space, and I was NOT expecting the twist that they are all just misfits. LOVED the Enterprise uniforms and the de-con gel was HILARIOUS.
Loved how the crew continues to grow while still keeping it hilarious.
Laugh out loud moment: “Self destruct activated / Self destruct deactivated / Self destruct activated”
Only 5 episodes to go but I have the DVDs and will keep watching.