It’s so funny, Lower Decks sells you on the Boimler thing this week. “In the Cradle of Vexilon” has him leading his first away mission, with a bunch of ensigns he’s worked with before and knows really well, and there’s a very unsafe thing they have to do. But that’s only a third of what’s going on here.

This is a fun episode. I’ve gotten into the groove of not doing verbatim recaps anymore, only because those took a long time, and frankly you just want to hear us talk about the thing. So my co-host and I are going to talk about it.

At the end of the day the episode’s very simple. It’s an A plot, a B plot and a C plot. The A plot is Freeman and the Vexilon. The B plot is Boimler and the ensigns. The C plot is our other lower deckers, Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi, back on the ship.

Freeman and a Six Million Year Old Computer

The whole thing is one mission the Cerritos is running on this planet. Well, not even a planet. It’s an alien megastructure, a ring. The ring, I think that’s what they called it.

The captain is down there helping the people who live on it deal with their AI interface, which is named Vexilon. Apparently she took some really good Starfleet Academy courses, like archaic technology, which sounds like a fun major to me. My co-host is looking at going to school, so I asked her if she’d take archaic technology. “No. That seems like way too much work.”

I said it’s like the art history of the 25th century. She told me that might be offensive to people who take art history. That’s kind of the joke, but I hear you. I do.

The premise is that Freeman obviously shouldn’t be messing with the computer, but she ends up having to do an update, because the Vexilon hasn’t had one in six million years. Go figure. To do the update she has to reboot the entire thing, and that sends it into a night and day loop. The volcanoes are rising, cats and dogs, and as my co-host put it, it definitely throws off their everyday. So finally she calls an engineer down, and he helps them fix the main problem.

Boimler Is Scared of Everything and Good at His Job

The whole time, Boimler is too scared to assign the ensigns the jobs he’s supposed to be assigning them. My co-host says that’s on brand for him, being scared of everything.

It is. But at the same time he’s always good at his job, and I think he’s the perfect model of Starfleet that way. Yes, they do scary things all the time. Part of what you do is say, well, I’m Starfleet, I’ve got to do the job, so I’m going to focus on the science of it. It feels a lot like a military sometimes, but remember, they’re basically scientists. They’re dealing with stuff that’s this dangerous, and he’s always the one who focuses and does it.

So what does he do? He starts trying to do everything for them. And I want it known that the Vulcan on his team is from here on, forever, known as the Spock girl, because she looks like Spock. My co-host agrees. She totally does.

Then there’s one last thing they have to do at the main site, and it’s one of those moments that’s very Starfleet command, and by that I mean command structure, red shirt. He basically says, okay, I can handle the rest of this, everybody get out. Everyone’s going wait, wait, until somebody says, “You heard him. Everybody out.” He does the thing, and of course it’s the very last second, and it explodes.

My co-host said I forgot the part where he finally lets them help, so I’ll let her tell it. He was going to do it all by himself, and the Spock girl told him he kind of has to let them help. So he’s running back with all of these bomb things in his hands and he says, okay, I guess you guys can help. He actually took charge. They all help, and then at one point it overheats and he has to press a button. He presses the button, it explodes, and he dies.

So apparently he sort of dies. They do the classic, and I say classic, it’s from Picard, where Boimler wakes up in this weird abstract painting of a living room with a holographic koala. It’s the space koala, by the way. Shout out to the opening titles, where the little ship flies by and you get to see the space koala.

I like what Boimler’s doing. I really do.

The Isolinear Chips and the Easter Egg Room

Meanwhile, on the ship, a lieutenant tells Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi they have to scan all of the isolinear chips in one particular area that’s really hot. They’re making fun of it. Oh, we’re just being hazed because we’ve been promoted. And Tendi’s getting real upset about it, because she’s got that Orion blood and she gets real angry about stuff.

There are literally thousands of isolinear chips. By the time they’re finished, the dude walks in and says, oh, by the way, you didn’t finish the second run of them. All the walls go up and it’s another thousand of these things.

They were not happy. It was rough, and my co-host points out it was twice as hot. They have to wear air masks, because the room injects nitrogen to cool down the chips, and they have to do the second run with tweezers. It’s the most ridiculous thing, and somehow it feels very on brand.

So they set up a trap for him with a talking box, and my co-host says it’s kind of like a colorful Saw, low key. She’s talking about the game. Remember “Allamaraine,” that whole thing from Deep Space Nine? Now that they’re lieutenants, they have access to the anomalies room. Call it the Easter egg room, because it’s all this Easter egg stuff from Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was awesome.

They get stuck in the game, and getting out is basically a speedrun. Then they set the trap up in the dude’s room with all the anomalies. He starts telling Mariner his sad story, so she has to keep him busy while the others break everything down, and that’s when Rutherford gets stuck in it. Tendi finds the missing piece and does a speedrun of her own. Honestly, she’s pretty awesome.

The Ferret

I asked my co-host if anything else caught her eye. “The ferret.”

Right. The chief engineer’s got a ferret. We see it right away in the anomalies room, where the big bat’leth is, and for the rest of the episode it’s running through all the stuff on the ship.

Then at the very, very button end you see Ransom and the guy who gave them the assignment, Larry we’ll call him, and apparently it was some kind of hazing. And then the ferret gets let loose on him, as one does.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Episode 3, “In the Cradle of Vexilon,” is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

My co-host gave it the eight first. I like this episode too, so I’ll also give it an eight. It was pretty entertaining. It wasn’t too shabby.

I feel like the show’s gotten very comfortable in its own skin, and I’m looking forward to seeing this more evolved version of it going forward. My co-host asked if we’re supposed to get more seasons. I think so, eventually. Obviously we’re in the middle of a writers strike, which means a lot of those things will ultimately be determined by how that turns out. But I don’t see why they wouldn’t. The show is doing really well and it’s very successful. I know they didn’t exactly cancel Prodigy, but either way there are some things going on in the animation world.

Are you watching any of the Very Short Treks on the Star Trek YouTube channel? If you’re not, check them out. I was going to say they’re kind of good. They’re odd. I haven’t reviewed them on the channel because I don’t know what to make of them. I don’t want to hate on them like everybody else is, but at the same time, I don’t know.

Let us know what you thought of the episode. Was it crazy? Was it a little too much? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.