HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
Star Trek has been about family, found and otherwise, almost as much as it is about going where no one has gone before, from the found family in the TOS Triumvirate to Janeway’s fierce protectiveness for her crew. In “Moist Vessel,” Lower Decks focuses its lens on the rocky relationship between Ensign Mariner and her mother. Unfortunately, while there’s great content in the episode, the show’s episodic nature means that most of that growth will get lost in space.
Plot Ahoy!
The episode opens with a traditional mission brief in which Captain Freeman explains that the Cerritos and the Merced will be towing a defunct generation ship back to a Starbase for analysis. Starfleet hopes that its scientists will be able to analyze the mysterious terraforming technology and adapt it for use in the Federation’s own colonization efforts. Ensign Mariner, bored with the brief, proceeds to irritate her mother enough that Freeman conspires with Ransom to find a way to force Mariner to request a transfer. She initially plots to accomplish this goal by assigning Mariner to the worst jobs on the ship, including holodeck waste removal, but Mariner finds way to inject joy into each of these tasks. Freeman escalates her plan by promoting Mariner to full Lieutenant and expecting her to take her place in Starfleet middle management. Predictably, Mariner hates every minute of her promotion.
Ensign Tendi fares a bit better in that she accepts an invitation to watch an Ascension Ceremony. Lieutenant O’Connor has ostensibly been seeking to become one with the universe in the most literal sense, and Tendi, in her enthusiasm, ruins the ceremony. O’Connor wants nothing to do with her, which drives Tendi to provide “help.” Frustrated, O’Connor demands that she leave him alone, but Tendi only redoubles her efforts.
On board the Merced, Captain Durango directs his ship closer to the generation ship because he needs to demonstrate that he heads up the mission, not Captain Freeman. The change in position results in a piece of the hull breaking off from the generation ship and releasing the terraforming goo into space. The tractor beam pulls the goo onto the Merced, where it begins converting the ship into living matter. Some goo finds its way onto the Cerritos, leaving the crew to find a way to stop the terraforming process. Freeman and Mariner work together to make it to the ship’s environmental controls, and Mariner suggests gassing the goo and then irradiating it in order to neutralize it. Freeman, proud that her daughter read the mission brief, orders the computer to do so.
Tendi and O’Connor try to escape Engineering as the goo transforms the section into a water habitat. Tendi apologizes to O’Connor, again, for ruining his ascension, explaining that she only wanted him to like her. O’Connor confesses that he has been faking his efforts for years and shamelessly used her to cover for his own failure. Tendi concludes that they are now best friends about to die together, but O’Connor pushes her out of the way of a falling rock, sacrificing himself in the process. When the gas neutralizes the goo, the rock disappears, but O’Connor ascends due to his selflessness after sharing a kiss with Tendi. He reveals that the universe is balanced on the back of a smiling koala.
Though their actions saved the Cerritos, Mariner and Freeman determine that the Merced is too far gone to be saved. Mariner beams the Merced’s crew aboard the generation ship, depositing them into the stasis chamber. Upon arrival at Starbase, an Admiral awards both Freeman and Mariner with a medal, and Mariner mocks the Admiral’s pronunciation of “sensors,” offending the admiral and forcing Freeman to demote her daughter back to Ensign.
Analysis
“Most Vessels” is a Mariner-focused episode almost to the exclusion of all of the other characters. Rutherford barely appears, and Boimler’s only contribution is to dump hot coffee all over Commander Ransom at the absolute worst time to do so. The Tendi B-story exists mostly to take up air time and provide laughs, and the less said about the koala, the better. Her interaction with O’Connor just reminds us that Tendi is deeply driven to seek approval, which we already knew. If anything, the kiss she shares with O’Connor pre-ascension could pose a wrinkle to any romantic relationship she might pursue with Rutherford, but that is unlikely, considering that O’Connor is no longer corporeal.
The real heard of the episode is the fractious relationship between Mariner and her mother, which could be new ground for Star Trek. No other franchise installment wrestles with what it might be like for an adult child to work with a parent in a direct chain of command. That kind of situation can only go well or badly; there is no middle ground. Unsurprisingly, Lower Decks runs with the latter. The episode does a great job of showing just how difficult working with one’s mother might be while still being sensitive to the real love between the characters. Mariner is the star of the show, so it would be very easy to write Freeman as simply being a domineering mother. Writer Ann Kim does not do that; she allows Freeman to be awesomely capable in her own right. Even when she nags, Freeman’s nagging is all advice intended to protect Mariner. However, Mariner demonstrates that she’s capable enough not to need that advice. Mariner’s point, that she can handle the challenges posed by the life she chose for herself, is valid. When Freeman tells her daughter that she should act like the capable adult she actually is, her point is just as valid.
Significantly, Freeman never pretends that middle management is fun, nor does she pretend that certain responsibilities are anything but tedious. No one enjoys audits or sitting through arguments about upgrading conference room furniture, but part of being an adult is recognizing their necessity and doing them anyway. Certainly, Freeman chooses the worst of these tasks to give Mariner, but Freeman will also attend Ransom’s birthday party. She presumably sat through the “The United Federation of Characters” one man show, and we know she participated in the world’s worst poker game. She never really asks Mariner to do a task that she is unwilling to do herself, subtly reinforcing the point that enduring mandatory fun is part of being not only an adult but also an aspect of being on the command staff.
Mariner’s real problem is that she wants to be taken seriously but only when it’s convenient for her. We saw that in “Temporal Edict,” and her conduct in “Moist Vessel” reinforces the point. Freeman tries to teach her daughter that it doesn’t work that way. She cannot straddle the line between being the ship rebel and a capable officer. Freeman’s efforts ultimately prove futile because this lesson is one Mariner must learn on her own, but Freeman would not be a mother if she didn’t try. Mariner wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t ignore her mother’s advice. The show appears to side with Mariner as the final visual is a contented Mariner settling onto her lower deck Ensign’s bunk, resetting all of that progress. Ensign Mariner ends the show at odds with her mother, resuming the status quo. More’s the pity.
Rating:
Three and a half cups of Earl Grey Tea
Stray Thoughts from the Couch:
- Mariner clearly knows how to make awful jobs entertaining and can get through them, but she never applies that skill to the tasks given to her as a lieutenant. That failure is a great indicator of just how deep her loathing of responsibility runs; she cannot even wrap her brain around making it better.
- Durango is literally the least Tellarite of all Tellarites; at no point does he insult anyone or complain. I would have thought the Tellarite cultural predilection for argument would have been a great source for laughs, but the show never touches on it.
- Speaking of Durango, his needless posturing just reinforces the lack of competence among the captains we’re encountering in this series. It’s a trend, now.
- I love that Mariner jumped from Ensign to full Lieutenant, skipping the junior grade. That jump is clearly intentional; O’Connor has the black pip as a j.g.
- The “sensors” gag seems to poking gentle fun at Leonard Nimoy’s pronunciation of the word just like the riskless poker game pokes fun at the scenes in TNG.
- O’Connor’s Ascension is painful and awkward, just like Mariner’s slow crawl toward adulthood. Yay, metaphors! Also, the show uses it to squeeze references to Q and Wesley Crusher’s friend the Traveler into the episode.