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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ second season has been an ambitious, wildly entertaining ride so far, and this week’s crossover with the animated series Lower Decks proved it’s one of the best shows out there right now.
The hour, titled “Those Old Scientists,” kicked off with the animated Cerritos crew from Lower Decks checking up on a random portal believed to be inactive. But when Boimler took a photo on the famous artifact — discovered by Pike’s Enterprise crew more than a century ago — he found himself transported to the past and surrounded by his heroes, including Una Chin-Riley.
Cue Strange New Worlds’ fully animated opening credits!
Although Boimler was adorkably excited to meet the Enterprise crew, he was surprisingly skittish around Una and thrown off by Spock, who acted way more human than he remembered from history. Still, the Cerritos ensign couldn’t help himself and geeked out over the different gadgets that were considered ancient in his time.
When Pike’s crew spotted an Orion vessel and assumed they were pirates, Boimler — remembering what Tendi (voiced by Noël Wells) told him about Orion scientists discovering the portal — tried to convince the captain that it was a science vessel. Pike listened and hailed the Orion ship, only for them to sneak away with the stolen portal.
The crew, with Boimler’s help, eventually caught up with the Orions and worked out a trade: the portal for the loads of grain Enterprise had in its cargo. And just as Boimler moved to go through the portal, Mariner came flying out of it. So now the Enterprise was stuck with double the trouble and no solutions since the portal ran out of juice.
Mariner teamed up with Uhura to decipher the ancient text on the portal, while Boimler worked with Spock to develop a synthetic alternative to potentially power it. Spoiler alert: attempts to manufacture a new power source failed. Meanwhile, Uhura hit a wall trying to translate the unknown text, and Mariner convinced her to take a much-needed break. Getting drunk off Orion Hurricanes worked out because Uhura quickly pinned down what language was inscribed on the portal.
Boimer, with Mariner as his accomplice, tried to fix things on his own by calling the Orions to trade back the grain (which he would give to people who needed it). They were caught by La’an and pulled into a private meeting with Pike, which felt like being sent to the principal’s office.
But Pike simply leveled with them, and asked Boimler to stop encouraging his crew to throw him a surprise birthday party. His birthday this year officially made him older than his father when he died, and he planned to drink alone in a remote cabin. Boimler convinced him to rethink that, pointing out the Enterprise crew would one day miss him like he missed his father.
Their conversation also sparked a clever workaround for their time-travel situation. Boimler remembered that NX-class ships from back in the day used the alloy needed to power the portal in their hulls. Tradition stated that construction on new ships starts with a piece of the last ship to bare its name, and the Enterprise had a piece of an NX-class ship on board. In short, Mariner and Boimler had the means to get home!
But first, Mariner cleared up an awkward situation with Una, who thought Boimler might have kept her poster like a pinup model. But as it turned out, Una was the face of Starfleet recruitment in the future, and she inspired him to join. He kept running away from her because she meant so much to him.
At the portal, the Orions weren’t particularly happy about being called back by mistake. Pike then came clean about their time traveler friends, and Boimler revealed that Tendi’s grandmother was on their ship.
This assuaged the tension, and Pike struck a compromise: The Orions let the Enterprise use the portal, and they’ll let history say it was discovered by Orion scientists. Of course, Mariner and Boimler made it back home in their animated forms.
The episode wrapped with the two-dimensional Enterprise crew drinking Orion Hurricanes and wondering why they felt funny.
What did you think of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ crossover with Lower Decks? Which moment was your favorite? Grade the episode below, and then share your thoughts in the comments.
Just watched it. Its EPIC!!!
This is such a good show and to combine it with Lower Decks which is also amazing there was a very high bar to get over. They jumped it with ease!!
Loved it. But it’s very much a Lower Decks episode in every way, not a Strange New Worlds episode. I hope this isn’t the only time we get to see Mariner and Boimler in live action!
Isn’t the crossover next week? I’m sure this weeks episode was the quantum
organisms in the deuterium messing with Uhuras brain
The crossover episode dropped on Paramount+ tonight (Saturday 7/22).
It was. They released the crossover episode early on Saturday 7/22. They moved all of the other episodes up. So, there will still be a new episode this Thursday.
Preseason NFL starts next week on Thursday (first week of August), I wonder if that has anything to do with the schedule change?
This episode was okay, but I really didn’t need two characters crossing over. One character was more than enough, the two together were obnoxious.
It was a ComicCon bonus. They showed it there, and then dropped it online.
It was, but as a bonus for Comic-Con week, they moved it up five days, so we got two episodes this week.
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Also, bonus for Lower Decks fan: On the Ready Room for this episode, it was revealed that Tawny Newsome, who plays Mariner, was hired by Alex Kurtzman to the writing staff for the Starfleet Academy series. (There’s going to be a Starfleet Academy series?!) Since this Ready Room was almost certainly filmed before at least the SAG strike, if not also the WGA strike, I hope that the show and Newsome’s gig on it are still going to happen.
It probably will, just not *soon*. Star Trek Universe has been doing VERY well for Paramount+. I think SNW was just in the Top 10 streamed series this past week.
I am not sure Comic-Con has much to do with it. Once preseason football starts in early August, I seriously doubt the streaming numbers will be anywhere near as high.
The preseason game between the Browns and Jets is going to draw an incredible amount of coverage, regardless of how much Rodgers plays.
CBS should have moved up Big Brother as well, and started it well before preseason NFL. One day earlier isn’t enough.
No, they straight up said it was because they debuted it at San Diego. They wanted to avoid spoilers so it got dropped early.
Fantastic! That is how you do a genre combining crossover!! I was watching it with childlike excitement, which I can’t remember the last time an episode of anything evoked that! Brilliantly executed and directed!
I loved it. I love the time-travel jokes, the Orion Hurricanes, and just the meet-cute with the Orions in general. They handled heavy things with humor and the shout-out to Enterprise NX-01 and her crew was great! This is the show that both respects and breaks the rules. We needed it.
Would have been better if the two cartoon characters were not there. All I kept thinking was How hard up for people is the future Starfleet that they would hire those two?
If that is the caliber of childish people they are going to hire, I don’t think Star Fleet would have existed at that point. That speaks volumes for the judgement of their bosses.
These are 2 of the lowest ranked people on one of the least important ships in the fleet. This is the future. There’s room for everyone. They’re not hard up, just accepting of people with flaws.
Fantastically done episode, I laughed out loud when I saw the animated opening with the bear(?) thrown in.
Funny when Ramson sees the recruitment poster of Una Chin-Riley and calls her the hottest woman in Starfleet. Let´s hope there is a future episode where this real life couple appear on screen together.
Oh THANK YOU for reminding me about that connection! I’d completely forgotten that they’re married, haha. That makes the line 100% more awesome.
You are welcome!
I admittedly have only seen a few Lower Decks, enough to get the gist, but still found the episode to be delightful!
This was quite the crossover episode: Strange New Worlds melding with Lower Decks, referencing Enterprise and the original Star Trek, slipping in a sly Picard reference and directed by TNG’s Jonathan Frakes! It was a lot of fun…
Also a DS9 reference with the Bell Riots. I didn’t catch anything for Voyager, though.
Very fun episode, although I was really hoping for Boimler to make a reference about Chapel & Una being originally played by the same person. “Huh, you two don’t look as much like each other as I thought…” kinda thing.
Oh, that would have been GREAT!
It was terrific! And how about that animated Strange New Worlds opening? Huh? Oh, you didn’t see it? Did you “skip” the intro again? In this case, it’s worth watching just to see the opening (with a little Lower Decks “baggage”) beautifully animated. And for that comment about probably being better w/o the two Lower Deck “cartoon characters” well, you have to watch Lower Decks to get the gist of those Mariner and Boimler. Despite the fact it is an animated series, it really is a very good Star Trek “cannon” show and if you haven’t watched it, you are the one missing out.
Good episode, and I like it that SNW is keeping things fresh.
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Not so good, I think, when Boimler talked with Christine about Spock. The implication was that a happy Spock is an ineffective Spock, and it’s absolutely necessary for the sake of the universe that Spock be effective. That’s trite and melodramatic. It’s also terrible reasoning. Why would that be true? And what exactly is Boimler’s evidence for it? Even if his received picture of Spock was accurate, and such popular images are usually highly distorted, that’s just post hoc, propter hoc. The Spock that Boimler is thinking of was inexpressive, but that doesn’t mean that his inexpressiveness was responsible for his success. He might have done even better without it.
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What it looks like is that SNW is setting it up for Spock and Chapel to break up, I think just because it wouldn’t be canon for them to stay together. Having heard what Boimler said, she would do the noble thing and dump him to save the world. If so, and that’s the only reason for it, that touches on a larger issue. Should SNW be stuck with TOS’s baggage this way? It seems almost fetishistic.
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It’s certainly not necessary for SNW to arrive at precisely the same points as TOS. Changing time lines have been a major theme in the show, and there’s even a time war going on. This isn’t exactly the time line of the original series, anyway. The Eugenics War, was originally said to have taken place in what, the 1990s? The movies, of course, have made a big deal out of not being on the TOS time lines, so there is precedent.
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So I hope that SNW will have the guts to follow its own instincts. If Spock and Chapel break up for emotionally logical reasons, okay, though I wouldn’t enjoy it much. But to doom her to fall into the embarrassing role she takes on in TOS, and to make loyal, subtly emotional T’Pring into the “flawlessly logical” psychopath she becomes later on? Just to stay consistent with scripts that were hastily written nearly 60 years ago? Please don’t. It’s like carrying a bag of dirty laundry around.
I thought about that, too, but then realized this was Boimler mistakenly thinking it’s what he HAD to do, so I was glad when Spock shut him down a bit during their lab scene later on. Spock’s right. Whatever happens with Christine has to happen in order for him to end up the Spock we know. Logical. Meanwhile, I hope to see them have a blast together for as long as it lasts.
Absolutely the best Star Trek episode I have ever seen! And Jack Quaid should win an Emmy for his guest-starring performance. I haven’t seen that kind of physical talent since Roger Rabbit.
It’s a shame I can’t vote higher than “A”.
On stars on mars , tell me how the girls change their hair all the time. This is so fake!
Fantastic episode!
I love Star Trek but this was PAINFUL to watch. I can’t believe how horrible it was.