Some wild quotes about Gene Roddenberry’s reservation about casting Stewart as Picard:
It was very odd with Gene because I was dragged in to audition for him in his living room the morning after I’d been seen doing something at UCLA. My meeting lasted about six minutes, and then it was perfectly clear I was not wanted in that room any time longer. It was Gene who said, “What the hell? I don’t want a bald, middle-aged Englishman.”
I had lunch with him only once, just the two of us and I said, “So Gene, to help me: Where did the idea for the character spring from? Can you give me any connections that I could use and build on for this?” And he said, “Oh yeah I’ve got it here with me,” and he pulled out a beaten-up paperback copy of one of the Horatio Hornblower books, and said, “It’s all there.” So the character, it turns out, was based on Horatio Hornblower, but as I was in a spaceship and not an ocean-going ship, I felt that I never really satisfied Gene the way he wanted to be satisfied.
Also, was reading the Memory Alpha page for that wild-ass season 1 lowlight, “Matter of Honor”, and saw this gem:
“At a Star Trek panel at DragonCon 2010, Star Trek: Voyager actor Garrett Wang said this episode “stinks”, to which LeVar Burton agreed, adding, “Without question.” [10] Furthermore, Wang attributed his viewing of the episode as the reason why he ended up landing the role of Harry Kim, stating that, had he watched another episode of TNG, he would have been “too nervous” during his audition, as he would have ended up being a big fan of the show: “So three times I tried watching [the series] and I realised God was telling me ‘Do not watch Star Trek: The Next Generation’.” [11]”
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Pretty good one! Main plot was cute, B plot with the planet was pretty cool. Feel like they should’ve dropped the C plot with Tendi - maybe if they dropped some of these extra plot threads they could slow the fuck down for 5 seconds.
I love ones where characters go insane, which also tends to happen all the time in Star Trek. Glad they’re not scared of making any one character lose composure.
find it interesting that they are including the events of picard (and lower decks) in star trek online despite them contradicting the plot of the game. like data is still around captaining the enterprise. they retconned the game so icheb and hugh are properly dead now though lol
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Really liked how the Vancouver on this week’s below decks was a minor redressing of the Cerritos like you’d see on older treks as a cost saving measure. That was cute.
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gene roddenbery jr presents: gene roddenbery’s andromeda 2: the other one
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lol it took them 3 seasons to just make a fucking sequel to the other star trek shows. we’ve come such a long way since klingons having two dicks and dwight from the office being insufferable
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today’s lower decks really just was really like 100% fanservice. like a gag or two about how the characters are functionally star trek fans is fine but this was just wall to wall with it. i’m not exactly mad about it like if this was literally a fan production it probably wouldn’t bother me but it feels weird for canon characters to be talking about their favorite tng episodes or whatever. i mean i am delighted at a star trek show that mentioned spock II the giant spock existing but you can bring it into the narrative. even the Q stuff was better because it was actually cutting away to something on screen. pandering to me the star trek fan is fine and part of the appeal of the thing but i wish there was more that could stand on its own. felt like the writers were under a dare to make the longest continuity section on memory alpha
also i had to remember the timeline after they went to romulus like oh yeah it still exists.
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Kinda loved this one to be honest. Each of the stories was delightful.
Edit: Okay I was only halfway through when I wrote this why is the entire last half just family guy trek sketches
Still not completely sure what this episode did so much better than the others, for me.
I think a big part was that there was one single “core” story that split into sub-stories, then re-forms back into the main plot. They focused on one thing, even if that one thing was 4 different things:
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Tendi’s was the most fun, she’s adorable and her getting sucked into this Chain of Command secret mission, but too afraid to ask, was delightful. Kinda eye-rolling that they make this ensign medic like a super-skilled combat ninja for a joke? Hate when they undercut the characters like that. You can also have her be like, bad at fighting but ferocious. Anyways the line with her co-mercenaries giving her shit about apologizing to the guy they beat up was probably the funniest part of this ep for me.
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Mariner/Boimler’s was pretty much the thesis of this show, where they’re these unmotivated schlubs trying to make it through the day. The view screen is straight-up on and they still crawl into their seats like they were always there. For all the time spent with Mariner yelling at Boimler, I like how she tries to help him avoid fucking up.
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I know I shit on Rutherford a lot but man his entire thing was just fanservice moment after fanservice moment, none of it particularly funny. The gorn wedding in particular was like… come on guys, try to earn this stuff. Also I guess there’s a romulan ship in an Federation museum with its cloaking device still connected? I get that they wanted to use the ship, again, for fanservice, but it sucks when they seemingly try to make it so this show could exist in-continuity, then undercut it all for a mediocre reference.
I think this was the first one where I liked Mariner all the way through. Her reaction to every part of this is great, particularly the tank of eels, which make me laugh each time. Her arguing with the alien was more fun than that bit usually is, thanks in part to the alien’s VA being great.
Q showing up was like… I love the character, Jon de Lancie is always great, but the notion he fucks around with Lower Deck members and exclusively does the same thing he did in TNG ep 1 all the time is a not-particularly-funny stretch. Why not just make him oblivious to the LD crew and like have them turned into potted plants or mariachi band players or something as he attempts to torment the captain?
Did love the command crew becoming chess pieces though.
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oh wow, that’s the kind of deep cut reference I like
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They need to stop trying to go warp 10
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Is that the fucking
Goddddd
I love these even-less-practical argo jetskis, which the crew exclusively uses to fuck around with, as with the argo itself.
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This one was like… I liked parts of it, but overall, kinda fucked up that Mariner just massacres the entire crew in the holodeck and we’re supposed to take it all in a comedic stride? I guess whatever.
Best part for me was the weird subplot with Mariner making Tendi wildly uncomfortable with all the Orion slaver pirate stereotypes. I’m a sucker for the concept of a character coming from one of Trek’s traditionally evil races and just trying to get through the workday without being judged for it. They still haven’t dealt with the fact that Orions were designed in TOS to literally be sexy exotic slave girls, later adding that they naturally intoxicated every (cishet?) man with mind-control pheromones. Not convinced they going to touch that, but you could just do a throwaway line about needing to have an injection or something every week.
Anyways Tendi rightfully gets enraged about being called a slaver, and after Mariner detonates the bajorian guy and tells her to wear the religious earring, she tells her to get fucked and storms off.
But, then at the end of the episode Mariner gives this shitty “hey sorry if I put you in a weird spot” and Tendi’s like, “no it’s fine most Orions are pirate slavers lol!” and they reset to 0. Weak.
Mariner is like fully insane in this one, wanting to torture her mom and the cat doctor and all that. I guess we’re not supposed to take it seriously, which, okay, just would be cool to have a little drama here and there if they want this Mariner arc to work.
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truly lower decks most important addition to canon
that finale was fun as hell. they really get a lot done in 22 minutes. i am glad that riker continues to appear on every single star trek show for no reason. they gotta figure out a way to get him on discovery (i’m pretty sure frakes at least directed one). jokes are still too cute by half (the “TOS” gag) but the show actually feels like it has it’s own ideas and creative ways to execute them under all the fanservice. i’m looking forward to season 2
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I liked that one a lot. Good chemistry, lot of great Mariner.
Definitely tried to cram too much into too little space, as usual, but everyone got something fun to do and most of the jokes landed. Everything looked great - once again, they’re using the animated medium to be creative and stylistic as hell and I love it.
Looking forward to season 2. Would be great if they did a different cast every season or something, or swapped out half the characters each time.
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