Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 is officially halfway over. This week the Cerritos and her crew are dragged to the hellish Starbase 80. It’s not a place that Mariner (Tawny Newsome) has spoken particularly highly of. Over the course of this season in particular, it’s been mentioned a fair few times. So it’s easy to approach this episode as some kind of payoff to all this, a fitting affair for the halfway mark in the season.
Is Starbase 80 as braindead and odd as Mariner’s described? Can the crew leave with their sanity intact? How much gel can one person apply in one go? All these questions, and more, will be answered in this review of this week’s Lower Decks adventure “Starbase 80?!”.
WARNING – Spoilers follow below for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 5 “Starbase 80?!”
Dragged into Hell
The episode starts with the Cerritos’ navigational computer all busted up, with the ship basically flying blind while in warp. It leaves them with a few options, go to Starbase 80 to get it fixed, or spend 400 years at impulse power going anywhere else. While the choice is obvious to anyone, it doesn’t stop Mariner pleading and crying on the bridge the whole ride there. Forced to revisit the site of her rock bottom reassignment, it’s not hard to see why.
The station they see is in a state of disrepair, lending some credence to Mariner’s stories. Perhaps she really did fall down a random hole in the floor. If there’s anywhere in Starfleet I could imagine having one of those, it’s there. The crew also seem out of time, with more than a few being a little wacky. This episode has a very memorable guest cast, each of them feeling distinct and surprisingly well rounded for a 25 minute episode of television.
The real hellish aspects of the station however are on show when Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) and Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) are in search of the ship’s engineer to get the help that they need. Even if the twist is a little obvious, a classic identity ruse, the tour of the base they get in the process revels in the layers of darkness and disrepair the station’s in. All ending up in one of the funniest closing gags of any Lower Decks episode that had me laughing long after the credits started rolling.
Throwback
Beyond looking like something out of a horror movie, the station’s complete with things that make it an absolute treat for Star Trek fans. The station lacks a lot of technological advances that the 24th century takes for granted, even less than cutting edge ships like the Cerritos. Be it the uniforms, the communicator panels, or even a 23rd century coat of paint in most rooms. It’s like a remnant of The Original Series that refuses to move on.
There’s something endearing about the crew wearing jumpsuits from Star Trek: Enterprise. They’re even more old school, and are a nice novelty for the episode. I remember showrunner Mike McMahan talking about doing some Enterprise fanservice this season. Even if this ends up being all there is, it’s amazing. It felt almost like watching 3 separate eras of the franchise clash together.
That’s not to say there’s nothing wholly original on the station. I’m something of a Star Trek completionist and have never seen a corndog stand anywhere before, let alone in the middle of engineering (that’s also got its gravity inverted). When the show wants to do something funny, it does. There’s something about this episode that’s funnier than most episodes of the show. In showing the most ridiculous Starbase out there, the team have really gone all out in the joke department.
Second Chances
Nostalgia aside, there’s so much more to the station. There’s corridors clearly inspired by horror cliches, complete with chains dangling from the ceilings. Oxygen leaks everywhere, things sparking at every corner. Needless to say, it’s not exactly a conducive working environment. But there’s more to this than meets the eye – behind every scary gang, there’s someone ready to offer you more arcade tokens. When the lifts stop working, there’s a massive flight of stairs to take you where you need to go.
By the end of the episode, Starbase 80 is framed not as a cursed hellhole, but rather a hub for second chances. It juxtaposes really nicely against what Mariner had been thinking the whole episode. It reframes not just her dread this week, but also her time at the station previously. Even though the station’s far from being in perfect working order, it almost lights up and feels like a home by the episode’s end.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that it felt like a Lower Decks answer to Deep Space Nine. One of the most insignificant stations, nobody doing anything particularly important. Nothing but bare, routine, Star Trek officers doing smaller assignments. I find myself treating “Starbase 80?!” almost like a backdoor pilot. Side characters feel more fleshed out than usual, and it feels like a world I’m almost too desperate to revisit.
Breaking the Curse
The episode’s climax involves the Starbase 80 crew storming the Cerritos, curing all of the infected crew. Self destruct sequences stopping and starting almost impossibly quickly, zombie-like crewmembers roaming around every hallway. Although knowing that this “curse” is spread through the combadges, it’s not entirely clear what their intentions are with ‘spreading’ it.
It ends up being an anaphasic entity, albeit one far less powerful than what we saw in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Sub Rosa”. While it’s a classic episode of the series, it’s not one that’s particularly highly regarded. The decision to revisit the alien species is a bit of an odd one. Although with the green lightning effect, and living undead aesthetic, it’s done very faithfully. The only thing missing is a love affair, to complete the “Sub Rosa” ensemble.
With some quick thinking from the base’s British doctor, the entity is removed from the whale hosts. Too often written off as a joke, the Cetacean Ops feels far less like an outlandish punchline here. If only for this week, it feels just like any other department on the ship. Like Mariner before them, this entity is also given a second chance, on Starbase 80. While it may not be the most idyllic posting, for some, it’s home.
Conclusion
This is one of the most obvious “don’t judge a book by its cover” stories that Star Trek has ever told. But it’s a damn effective one. Knowing that Mariner resigned from Starfleet minutes after setting foot on the station initially, the viewer does go in expecting the worst. With how much it’s been alluded to just this season, I was expecting death leaping out of every doorway. However, Starbase 80 wasn’t, and “Starbase 80?!” is all the better off for it.
The episode was also among the series funniest. Freeman and Ransom running around the station got more than a few laughs out of me. Endless staircases, giant bats, and gangs hanging out in shady alleys. So much of this episode was out of left field, but was also a visual treat for fans of The Original Series. As far as season midpoint payoffs come, this was pretty sweet. I’m really looking forward to next week.
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