Lower Decks is not exactly a show you would necessarily say has had a lot of bite to it, in terms of consequential conflict. There’s been moments, but they’re often brushed past for a gag, or resolved very quickly. As we get ready to enter the back half of its final season, however, we might have just gotten the show taking its biggest bite so far… at a perfect time for our ever-growing, ever-learning heroes to put their lessons into practice.
For the most part “Starbase 80?!” is another in the line of season five’s repeated lessons about communication and judgment, and it’s a perfectly fine one at being just that. Suffering a navigation issue that knocks out Cetacean Ops (not the dolphin officers!), both Mariner and her mother Captain Freeman alike are horrified when the nearest port of call that could offer repairs to the Cerritos is none other than Starbase 80. Both they and the crew at large hate the station, although Beckett and Captain Freeman are split on just why. For Mariner, Starbase 80 represents one of the lowest times of her career (and for Lower Decks alike), when she was reassigned to the infamously run-down Starbase by her mother as punishment for misconduct she didn’t commit. For Captain Freeman, it’s been part of a gag that was running in the background of the premiere episode of this season, when we learned in the adjacent, close-enough alternate reality that the reason its USS Cerritos was captained by “Becky” was because Alt-Freeman had seemingly been demoted and assigned to Starbase 80 herself, never to be seen again.
So naturally, everyone arrives at the Starbase a little on edge, and like they’d rather be anywhere else than. The crew assigned to the station are pretty chipper in comparison—especially the remarkably peppy Kassia Nox (delightful guest star Nicole Byer), who we learn actually volunteered to be assigned to the base—making do with the little they have on Starbase 80, a fun contrast where it’s the turn of our regular heroes to be dismissive Starfleet jerks to the scrappy underdogs. That gets extrapolated even further when Cerritos crewmembers aboard the Starbase start being afflicted with some kind of zombifying possessive virus, leading to Mariner’s immediate assumption that the “curse” of Starbase 80 is real, and their amicable hosts have something to do with it. Hijinks ensue, it turns out to no one but Mariner’s initial surprise that the “virus”—actually an anaphasic lifeform named Clem trying to prove himself—was the fault of the Cerritos rather than Starbase 80, having been picked up accidentally by its last mission, and everyone learns maybe to not make assumptions of other people.
Hooray for lessons in prejudice! As blasé as that might sound, it’s actually a really great moment to see Mariner’s attitude reflected back at her. The last time she was on Starbase 80, she was so furious at being actually pushed aside to a “lower decks” position she promptly resigned from Starfleet. Forcing her to pair up with Nox, who doesn’t just want to be there but sees the strength in making do with what little resources the crew of the station have scrounged while Starfleet ignores them, lets Mariner really take on board the maturation she went through in the season and a half between her visits to Starbase 80. As fun as it is to see her immediately start yelling about curses when things go wrong here, she’s a very different person this time around than the one that was assigned to Starbase 80 back in season three, and re-reminding her of that lesson ties the episode back into Lower Decks‘ ongoing repetition of people constantly having to re-learn their lessons as they mature this season.
But what really makes it interesting is also seeing that kind of arc mirrored by her mother. Captain Freeman has rarely had a spotlight in Lower Decks outside of being a foil and occasional antagonistic force for her daughter. In “Starbase 80?!” she’s largely cut off from the main plot about the anaphasic virus, wrapped up in her own insecurities about the Starbase’s reputation—and her alternate self’s consignment there—as she’s charmingly conned by the station’s engineer and wearer-of-many-proverbial-hats Gene Jakobowski (Stephen Root) into helping fix up the station in exchange for the parts the Cerritos needs in its own repair. By just having her and Ransom together, we finally get an opportunity to have Carol open up a little, even if it is through that sense of stubborn defiance she shares with her daughter, constantly refusing to let Starbase 80 beat her in the way it beat her other self. But it’s not just that defiance of fate driving her as she rolls her sleeves up and gets to work fixing up any little problem Gene throws at her and Ransom. Starbase 80 represents to Captain Freeman both her potential failure as a captain, but also her failure as a mother, distrusting Mariner back in season three to assume the worst of Beckett in assigning her to the Starbase as punishment.
Ultimately, the more she works on these myriad fixes, the more Captain Freeman comes to realize that she and the denizens of Starbase 80 have more in common than her fear had allowed her to consider. The Cerritos may have had a few hero moments, but it’s still a vessel that Starfleet at large has dismissed or looked down on—even now after the climax of season four, their overarching mission this season has been, as Captain Freeman put it herself, monitoring spacetime potholes. She knows what it’s like to struggle without recognition, support, or resources, even if it’s clear the situation aboard the Cerritos is way better than Starbase 80’s has been for a while. In coming to that understanding, Captain Freeman’s tone begins to shift beneath the comical stubbornness: she sees, potentially, a path where she wouldn’t be consigned to Starbase 80 as punishment, but perhaps a path where she would have stayed there willingly to help a crew she feels kinship with.
Well, that is if she isn’t taken out by a giant pyrithian bat, that is. “Starbase 80?!” concludes with Beckett wondering where her mother has been during the whole virus-zombie thing, only for us to cut to Ransom and Captain Freeman trying to round up the last of the giant bats clogging up the Starbase’s systems… and with an ever-stubborn Captain Freeman charging head first at the mother of all pyrithian bats, still eager to prove that she can succeed where her alt-self failed. We don’t see what happens next, just hear it, as Ransom yells at her to look out for the claws, and we hear a scream—whether it’s Ransom or Freeman, it’s hard to tell—as the soundtrack crescendos and suddenly falls silent.
One last parting gag, or perhaps those fears of failure teased in the premiere coming home to roost, we’ll have to wait until next week to find out, but if it isn’t a gag, we’re in for a situation here where Captain Freeman doesn’t get to decide if she’d be stuck on Starbase 80 as punishment or because she genuinely feels for its plight… and might be stuck on there for far direr reasons. After half a season of re-learning who our heroes have become as they’ve matured as people and Starfleet officers, what better way to put those lessons into practice than dealing with having their captain suddenly out of commission?
And if it is a gag? Well, we still got a pretty solid episode of Lower Decks out of it… even if re-iterating the message it’s had this season over and over again is starting to wear a little thin.
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