Peanut Hamper is the worst, and Lower Decks just handed her an entire episode. It’s Thursday morning, so my co-host and I are talking about our favorite show, and this week that’s episode seven, “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption.” What a weird episode this was.

They open with a quick flashback to remind you who she is. I don’t remember which specific episode it was, but it’s the one where the Cerritos was about to explode or something. She had the chance to save everyone. She said no and dashed out of there.

And if you’re watching this one, don’t be fooled. My co-host did not voice Peanut Hamper, even though Lord knows they sound very similar.

Bird People and a Planet That Shunned Its Ships

The episode picks up in the aftermath of that old one. Peanut Hamper’s floating in space, and then she gets sucked down onto a planet, crashes, and meets bird people. I butchered their name about three different ways on camera, so let’s go with the Areore.

They’re considered pre-warp. Their ancestors warned them about technology, so they’re wary of her, and Peanut Hamper goes right on being Peanut Hampery about it. Eventually she gets to know the son of the head of the village. I don’t remember his name. And then it turns awkward. It’s a very strange scenario, because the two of them were going to get married.

I had the official description of the episode in front of me, and they’re getting really lax and lazy with those. We’ve gone from three sentences to two sentences to one. This week’s log line is “A wayward Starfleet ensign struggles to find a path to redemption.” That’s the whole thing.

It didn’t help me with the next part, either, because a bunch of space pirates show up and I still don’t know exactly what to call them. I almost called them the Vorkians. They’re there because this isn’t a pre-warp civilization after all. These people just shunned technology because of their ancestors. Under the ground there are these big, giant starships, and the pirates want to salvage them.

The Cerritos Finally Shows Up

That’s when Starfleet arrives, and it’s the Cerritos. It’s the first time we’ve seen them since the opening. They just weren’t there for the entire episode.

This is one of those episodes that focuses on someone else completely. We’re following Peanut Hamper’s whole mission, and I’m sitting there asking who wants to hear about Peanut Hamper. Apparently that’s a thing.

So the captain and part of the Cerritos crew are down on the planet while the pirates are wrecking shop. Then the pirates explain themselves. They got a signal telling them these ships were totally available. And everyone looks at Peanut Hamper, because Peanut Hamper is Peanut Hamper and she sucks.

She never wanted to stay there. She wanted back into Starfleet, and she figured that if she saved the day, maybe they’d let her in. The whole thing’s a big manipulation. And by the way, this all comes out during their freaking wedding.

The Groom Has Had Enough

I wanted to call him Bird Person. He’s the son, the husband to be, and he takes one of those old ships up himself, yelling something about the ancestors. Then he finds a bigger ship and just slaps it into the pirates.

Peanut Hamper’s reaction is “oh my gosh, we did it.” He wants nothing to do with her anymore. So she says fine, she’ll go with her Starfleet family, and they tell her, yeah, no, we’re good.

Then she starts ranting. She should have called the Borg, she’ll destroy all of them, resistance is futile. So they lock her away in a little robot place, and there’s another machine in there next to her, a super scary one, that says something like “I think we could do really bad things.” It ends with this bad AI laughing. Okay. All right. I see what they did there.

I Can’t Unsee the Beak

I don’t know how you handle interspecies bird and robot mating, but it was very uncomfortable. She had a bird beak on during the wedding. A fake one. It’s not like she talked and it moved. It was bad, and it was funny.

The bird people did remind me of old Space Ghost style animation. The way they were drawn is pretty interesting.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 307, “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,” is a 7 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

The seven is my co-host’s, and her reason is that we didn’t really get to see our people, but it was still a good story. I’ll agree with that. I think it’s fair. I was going to go six, but I’m willing to stay the same and go seven. I have no problem with that.

We’re both in uniform this week, too. She’s got the Lower Decks one on, and I’ve got my TNG movies version.

Tell me what you thought of this one, because it was a crazy one, and tell me what you think of the uniforms. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.