Mariner doesn’t want to be promoted because her best friend at the Academy was Ensign Sito, and if you know The Next Generation, you know why that name matters.
That’s the reveal in “The Inner Fight,” season four, episode nine of Lower Decks, and it’s an excellent, excellent episode. It’s the penultimate episode of the season, and if you follow this channel you know penultimate episodes are something we hold very sacred. They’re sacred cows, if you will, in terms of what I expect from them. This one does everything it promises, especially because it’s a two-parter. So let’s get that out of the way right now: you’re going to hit a “to be continued” at the very end. I’d love to see them do the Majel Barrett style “last time on Star Trek: Lower Decks” next week. That’d be awesome.
My co-host and I watched this one together, and anybody who knows anything about Star Trek: The Next Generation knows this episode is a play on several different themes at once.
A Lower Decker on a Suicide Run
At the start of the episode, Mariner seems to be on some sort of suicide run. Every mission she goes on, she’s purposely being as dangerous as possible. Her friends are really worried about it, to the point that the captain calls them in and asks why her daughter is trying to get herself killed. We also get the return of T’Lyn, or Spock girl, as we like to call her.
My co-host stopped me here, because I’d called Mariner by her first name, Beckett. Obviously we know that’s her name, but we always call her Mariner. It sounded weird when I said it, too.
Meanwhile, Starfleet has put the Cerritos on a mission to track down a former cadet named Nick Locarno.
Where Nick Locarno Comes From
For those of you playing at home, Locarno goes way back to a Next Generation episode called “The First Duty.” It involved Wesley Crusher, who was part of a piloting group at the Academy. Locarno was the leader of that group, and he ended up getting expelled. The show says it plainly: “Mr. Locarno was drummed out of the Academy for getting another student killed during a prohibited flight maneuver.”
He was played by Robert Duncan McNeill, the guy who later plays Tom Paris on Voyager, which was always an interesting thing, and they did kind of try to retcon him into that role later.
So the Cerritos has to find him, because he may have information about that mysterious ship that’s been destroying other ships. Or, as we’ve now learned, collecting them somewhere and doing something with them.
Knives From the Sky
To keep Mariner out of trouble, her group gets sent to fix a weather buoy. “When is repairing an old ass weather satellite dangerous?” “Well, at any moment we could be hit by space debris or a solar flare. Just look at Sherbal V up there. So many electrical storms. No wonder it needs a buoy.”
While they’re there, Klingons crash them into the planet. They manage to beam themselves down, and it turns out this planet is where all the aliens that were taken away have ended up. I say aliens, and that’s so racist. All the other species that were taken away.
Mariner meets one Klingon down there, they get into a fight, and then it starts raining knives from the sky. Glass, whatever. It’s just the way hell happens on this planet. While the two of them wait out the storm, he’s telling her he didn’t know Starfleet fought like this, and somehow he gets the real thing out of her.
Ensign Sito, and the Episode This Show Is Named After
Ensign Sito goes back to the namesake of this show, the Next Generation episode “Lower Decks.” The whole point of that episode is an ensign, somebody in the lower decks, doing something bigger than their station. A lot of who this show is comes folded out of that hour. I have a feeling that when Mike McMahan pitched this show, he talked about that episode.
In that episode, Sito is on the Enterprise trying to rebuild herself. She managed to petition her way back into Starfleet and she’s doing her best to fight for the career she wants. Picard seems unusually hard on her about it, until finally she tells him off, and he says okay, I just wanted to be sure. Then he pulls her into a secret mission, and on that mission she ends up sacrificing herself to save the away team. That was the lesson she should have learned in “The First Duty.” You put your team first. Everybody puts each other first, and that’s how you help the mission.
So Mariner has been struggling with this. Why does she want to be part of a system that saw her best friend get killed? I don’t want to be a general. I don’t want to send my friends off to die. I just want to be an ensign. If it was good enough for Sito, then it’s good enough for me.
It’s one of those moments that gave me an insight into the character of Mariner, and I think into this whole show. I really do like and appreciate it.
My co-host thought Mariner was being very vulnerable there. She figured they were both going to die anyway, and that’s what all the risky behavior had been about. After she got it out, she gave him a big old hug. So she really needed to get it out. She just didn’t know how to tell her friends.
After that, Mariner becomes very Starfleet. I’m really interested to see how that affects her going into the next episode, and potentially into next season. Either they wipe the slate clean and she’s more or less the same Beckett she’s always been, or this is a new Mariner we’re finding moving forward. That’ll be very interesting.
Everything I Skipped, According to My Co-Host
This is where my co-host cut in, because I was talking about all the Star Trek stuff and forgetting so many parts.
It wasn’t just Klingons on that planet. Spock girl’s cousins are there, and Tendi’s people, and a few more she couldn’t name. They’re all there because the same ship zapped every one of them, and they’re all fighting each other.
Then there’s the other story, which I hadn’t talked about at all. In her words, it’s Rutherford, the big yellow guy, and the captain. She doesn’t know all the names, but she pays attention. The three of them have to go to a planet to find out where this Nick guy is, and the person with the information reminded her of Zoltar, the fortune teller machine you see at the beach. He’s doing the thing and he sounds like a robot. The captain isn’t having it. She says she’s not intimidated by a puppet, picks him up and demands to know who his master is. He was definitely not a puppet, even though my co-host thought he was a puppet or a robot too.
Then a bounty hunter gets the information instead, and the captain says they did complete their mission. What do you mean? The bounty hunter comes around the corner, the helmet comes off, and it’s the guy with the mustache. It’s Billups. “You know how sweaty and uncomfortable a full face helmet gets?”
Mariner Does What Mariner Does
Back on the planet, Mariner does as Mariner does. While all these species are fighting one another, she jumps in and tries to talk them down. Very Starfleet. She gives them a rah-rah speech, and then, boof, she gets transported up to that ship. The ship turns around and leaves.
The Klingon she’d been talking to won’t accept that she ran. She wouldn’t do this, she’s a warrior. So they plan a revolt and take the Klingon ship back.
Mariner wakes up on the mystery ship, and the man pulling her in is Nick Locarno. “Nick, what the hell are you doing here?” “We’re going to cause some trouble together.” To be continued.
Same Actor, Rougher Edges
My co-host had questions about Sito afterward. She wanted to know whether Sito was expelled or just demoted. She was expelled, but she petitioned to be brought back, and they brought her back. Picard helped, and she didn’t know that until he finally tests her. That’s when she finds out it was him. Nobody else fought to come back. She was the only one.
Then she asked whether we’ll see an animated Sito. I could totally see them doing that. If we can do a crossover episode with real life Boimler and Mariner, I’m pretty sure we can animate her. Hands down, absolutely, even if it’s only a flashback. We just saw an animated Nick Locarno, who really is the same guy who plays Tom Paris, which is pretty funny. I think it’s smart that they made him look rougher on the edges to offset that.
One of the guys in the Discord I’m in wondered whether we’re going to get Tom Paris next episode. I think that would be awesome, because then you’d have the same actor playing both characters in the same story.
As for my co-host’s theories about the mystery ship: all wrong. Completely wrong, apparently. She had no idea who this guy was. Sorry to disappoint anyone.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Lower Decks “The Inner Fight” is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index. My co-host called the nine and I’m right there with her.
I enjoyed it. It’s probably one of the best of the season so far. I feel like we’ve had the heart of this series revealed, and it only took us four seasons.
Sometimes this kind of thing can make the universe feel smaller, and you find yourself asking if they really needed to. I feel like this worked, especially because it harkens back to that TNG episode, “Lower Decks.”
Let me know what you thought of the episode. Did you like the reveals? And those of you who are longtime Star Trek fans like me, do you like the way they’ve woven the whole storyline together? I know I did. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
