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Star Trek: Lower Decks #5 (2024) review

So a time rift has opened up and Starfleet’s DTI (Department of Temporal Investigations) has to go and save the day which means the bridge crew has to go off on a separate ship to help save the universe. Meanwhile the lower decks crew remains on The USS Cerritos and deals with waves of changes to the timeline all culminating in a cliffhanger that, well seems like it will be impossible to get out of. Who doesn’t love a good Star Trek time travel story!? And this issue is a good time travel story that has most everything you could want, changes to the present because of things done in the past, altered states, lower decks sticking to the idea of following the lower decks cast while the bridge crew goes off to deal with a major time rift, Brad Boimler having a freak out because of said timeline changes only to be given a technological solution. And a cliffhanger that makes you want to come back! Vendorians and the USS Protostar from Star Trek: Prodigy get a reference! 9/10

Star Trek: Section 31 - Emperor Born review

One second I have to review a one shot issue of section 31 that starts with a present day-ish meeting with former emperor and time traveler as well as dimension hopper Philippa Georgiou as she decides to regale someone and thus the reader of her time in the winnowing. And so young Philippa is sent off to essentially learn what it takes to be the Terran emperor, which means essentially everyone fights and strategizes against each other until the 15 kids there are… winnowed to one. Which she will obviously walk away from and into her future as a genocidal and tyrannical emperor that we will all meet (have met) in Star Trek: Discovery. This story adds to her backstory that we already saw in the Section 31 movie, and it’s kind of unnecessary, I mean it doesn’t tell anything new about her or even the Terran Empire. This is like a footnote if that because the movie already explained that she was part of the hunger games... I mean the winnowing and we already know she won, and we already kno...

Star Trek: Lower Decks #4 (2024) review

And now the conclusion! In order to keep the USS Cerritos in one piece engineering concocts a way to use the engines to use a warp bubble to survive inside the proto universe. Unfortunately that universe is home to an energy being called koj, which inhabits Sam Rutherford and D'Vana Tendi and talks like some kind of influencer and Rutherford and Tendi are placed inside the ships computer which has a slight 4th wall break of them being floating digital heads in the computer interface. Eventually they all solve the crisis and stop the proto universe from expanding. This works, this entire story works, it shouldn’t but because this is Lower Decks it works, the influencer energy being, the talking heads in the computer, even the ending works in a very Star Trek way that shouldn’t. Yet here we are. The energy being decides on a solution that saves the universe even while our Starfleet heroes keep trying to find a Star Trek like answer that makes everyone happy and sometimes that just ca...

Star Trek: Lower Decks #3 (2024) review

The USS Cerritos has had a successful second contact with a pulp sci-fi civilization that was easily handled by all involved, though later Beckett Mariner muses on their very subservient robots… Meanwhile in another sector!  A metastability bubble has expanded and consumed a whole star cluster! It contains a small universe that would throw our universe into unstable chaos and death! The Cerritos rushes in to try and save the universe while the rest of Starfleet is on its way to do more with bigger more advanced starships! Great issue, just great, it could’ve fit in the fifth season easily, the story takes place not long after the first episode, as evidenced by Sam Rutherford ruminating on his alternate self who was a full cyborg and we now see him lightly contemplating if he should do that as that’d make him an even more efficient engineer. One thing I liked about the show, and they do this here, is when the story includes more than just the lower deckers, and in fact shows them a...

Star Trek: Lower Decks #2 (2024) review

Where the first issue was a successful swing for the fences this one is… A bunt.   This issue picks up with immediately showing us what happened to the lower decks cast: The Excalbians have returned from TOS’ episode The Savage Curtain to once again kidnap four starfleet officers and have them deal with manifestations of their heroes for entertainment and learning. Only this time they face manifestations of favorite past trek characters (Boimler’s choice of Picard is funny) who all immediately turn into violent and conniving versions of themselves (Kathryn Janeway wanting to separate everyone’s dna ala Tuvix was a nice use of the overplayed Tuvix trope… Janeway did the right thing, get over it!) I’m one of those Trekkies who wants Star Trek episodes that go back to worlds and aliens from the past and I love when that happens, but Excalbians seems like an odd choice, the TOS episode intro’ing them wasn’t great and never left me wanting to revisit the Excalbians, and this one really ...

Star Trek: Lower Decks #1 (2024) review

Lower decks 1. Opens with single panels following a boring and uneventful round of episodic non-adventures with each panel having its own episode title (Cerritos Factor sounds like a novel title btw). Each panel shows Mariner's annoyance at such easy mundane work, and as the lower decks cast is about to unwind on the holodeck, they’re called to the bridge where we find the U.S.S. Bonaventure lost in space since the 23rd century. An away team beams aboard the derelict ship, powers it up and learns the Enterprise under Kirk’s command had found the ship in the odd space anomaly, and the Bonaventure’s crew eventually escaped the time trap that was a pocket in the garment of time. However the ship is abandoned and powered down until the Cerritos away team powers it back up and learns from the ships logs that the crew had copied Kirk and Spock’s solution to breaking free and got out. Billups, Rutherford, and T’ana get the engines working again but some unknown cause causes the ship to ju...