Yahoo Movies Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Recap: Lower Decks’ Boimler and Mariner Drop by in Bonkers Crossover — Grade It!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ second season has been an ambitious, wildly entertaining ride so far, and this week’s crossover with the animated series Lower Decks proved it’s one of the best shows out there right now.
The hour, titled “Those Old Scientists,” kicked off with the animated Cerritos crew from Lower Decks checking up on a random portal believed to be inactive. But when Boimler took a photo on the famous artifact — discovered by Pike’s Enterprise crew more than a century ago — he found himself transported to the past and surrounded by his heroes, including Una Chin-Riley.
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Cue Strange New Worlds’ fully animated opening credits!
Although Boimler was adorkably excited to meet the Enterprise crew, he was surprisingly skittish around Una and thrown off by Spock, who acted way more human than he remembered from history. Still, the Cerritos ensign couldn’t help himself and geeked out over the different gadgets that were considered ancient in his time.
When Pike’s crew spotted an Orion vessel and assumed they were pirates, Boimler — remembering what Tendi (voiced by Noël Wells) told him about Orion scientists discovering the portal — tried to convince the captain that it was a science vessel. Pike listened and hailed the Orion ship, only for them to sneak away with the stolen portal.
The crew, with Boimler’s help, eventually caught up with the Orions and worked out a trade: the portal for the loads of grain Enterprise had in its cargo. And just as Boimler moved to go through the portal, Mariner came flying out of it. So now the Enterprise was stuck with double the trouble and no solutions since the portal ran out of juice.
Mariner teamed up with Uhura to decipher the ancient text on the portal, while Boimler worked with Spock to develop a synthetic alternative to potentially power it. Spoiler alert: attempts to manufacture a new power source failed. Meanwhile, Uhura hit a wall trying to translate the unknown text, and Mariner convinced her to take a much-needed break. Getting drunk off Orion Hurricanes worked out because Uhura quickly pinned down what language was inscribed on the portal.
Boimer, with Mariner as his accomplice, tried to fix things on his own by calling the Orions to trade back the grain (which he would give to people who needed it). They were caught by La’an and pulled into a private meeting with Pike, which felt like being sent to the principal’s office.
But Pike simply leveled with them, and asked Boimler to stop encouraging his crew to throw him a surprise birthday party. His birthday this year officially made him older than his father when he died, and he planned to drink alone in a remote cabin. Boimler convinced him to rethink that, pointing out the Enterprise crew would one day miss him like he missed his father.
Their conversation also sparked a clever workaround for their time-travel situation. Boimler remembered that NX-class ships from back in the day used the alloy needed to power the portal in their hulls. Tradition stated that construction on new ships starts with a piece of the last ship to bare its name, and the Enterprise had a piece of an NX-class ship on board. In short, Mariner and Boimler had the means to get home!
But first, Mariner cleared up an awkward situation with Una, who thought Boimler might have kept her poster like a pinup model. But as it turned out, Una was the face of Starfleet recruitment in the future, and she inspired him to join. He kept running away from her because she meant so much to him.
At the portal, the Orions weren’t particularly happy about being called back by mistake. Pike then came clean about their time traveler friends, and Boimler revealed that Tendi’s grandmother was on their ship.
This assuaged the tension, and Pike struck a compromise: The Orions let the Enterprise use the portal, and they’ll let history say it was discovered by Orion scientists. Of course, Mariner and Boimler made it back home in their animated forms.
The episode wrapped with the two-dimensional Enterprise crew drinking Orion Hurricanes and wondering why they felt funny.
What did you think of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ crossover with Lower Decks? Which moment was your favorite? Grade the episode below, and then share your thoughts in the comments.
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