Star Trek: Lower Decks

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The main characters. Left to right: D'Vana Tendi, Sam Rutherford, Beckett Mariner, and Brad Boimler

The Other Wiki tells us that "Star Trek: Lower Decks is set in the late 24th century in the Star Trek universe, where Earth is part of the multi-species United Federation of Planets. The Federation's military and exploration division, Starfleet, operates a fleet of starships that travel the galaxy establishing contact with alien races; Lower Decks focuses on one of Starfleet's least important starships, the USS Cerritos. Unlike previous Star Trek series, whose principal characters are typically starship captains and other senior officers, Lower Decks focuses on the missions and adventures of the "lower deckers", low-ranking officers with menial jobs, while the captain and other senior staff appear as supporting characters."

Tropes used in Star Trek: Lower Decks include:

MOD: This page's trope list was initially assembled by copying examples from trope pages. The repetitiveness of the trope descriptions is a hint that whoever added the examples to the trope pages used the same text more than once.

• Affably Evil: The Borg Queen, oddly enough (voiced by Alice Krige, reprising the role from Star Trek: First Contact) seems genuinely concerned about Boilmer (even while having him assimilated because that's "kind of our thing"), given the hell he's putting himself through for the rest of the crew. Granted, she's just part of a simulation created by the holodeck, and a lot of it may be the result of Boilmer managing to to teach her and the other Borg how to express empathy earlier in the drill.
• Afraid of Needles: In the episode "Mugato, Gumato", Dr. T'ana orders Ensign Tendi to "hunt down" the crew members who refuse to have their annual biometric scans taken; while these scans are painless, it seems a lot of crew members dislike "being reduced to a set of readings". In grand irony, the crew member who is the worst problem for Tendi (resulting in an actual fight) is T'ana herself.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Ensign Mariner, by her own admission, but also admits she has dated bad girls, bad aliens, and really bad aliens, including many bad typically-genderless Bynars. She's also a pretty bad girl herself, actually.
• Animalistic Abomination: A benevolent (probably) version of this trope is the Koala. This god-like entity that looks like a negative-image of koala (sometimes normal-sized, sometimes giant-sized) has been seen by dead or dying mortals. It resides in what humans describe as "a black mountain" and can talk, but does so in reverse.
• Apotheosis:
  • "In Moist Vessels", O'Connor lies about reaching enlightenment but achieves it when they commit a selfless act that causes him to ascend while burning and scream in pain as he turns into energy while obtaining cosmic knowledge, such as knowing how the universe is balanced on the back of a cosmic Koala.
  • "In A Few Badgeys More", Badgey expands himself throughout the universe by using the Federation's subspace relay for revenge against Ruther. By doing this, he gained cosmic awareness, where he sees the pointlessness of revenge and decides to travel to other universes or even create his own.
• Ascended Extra: Ensign Jennifer Sh'reyan was initially supposed to be one of several crewmembers that Mariner shoved aside in a scene in "Cupid's Errant Arrow". However, the Death Glare from Mariner and "Jennifer..." spoken in a low growl (an ad lib line from Mariner's VA) caused the writers to desire to develop the character more, giving her a role of Mariner's rival and, as of season 3, girlfriend.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Tendi is a White Sheep among the Orions, and dislikes anyone who assumes all of her species are "capitalist, hyper-libertarian gangster pirate" types. But that doesn't mean she doesn't know how to use the skills associated with such professions. As the episode "Hear All, Trust Nothing" shows, she learned a lot of those talents (including sabotage, jury-rigging, and fighting dirty) from her parents, and use them to apprehend the Karemma infiltrators. The end of the episode even suggests she is willing to use those skills more often.
• Beat Them At Their Own Game: Captain Freeman tricks Grand Nagus Rom (as in the ruler of the Ferengi) into signing a contract without reading the fine print. Rom is actually impressed by her ingenuity.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the season one Season Finale, the Cerritos crew is clearly in their Darkest Hour; while Bolier has managed to destroy the Pakled vessel, Shaxs sacrificing himself so that Bolier doesn't go with it, it seems it all was for nothing because three more Pakled ships have shown up. Mainer — who is temporarily in command because every other officer is hurt or unconscious — is about to give the order to abandon ship, when out of the blue, they are hailed by another ship. It's none other than the U.S.S. Titan, Riker's ship. After Riker cajoles Mariner for "starting the party" without him, the theme music from Star Trek: The Next Generation starts to play and the far superior flagship easily dispatches the Pakled vessels, causing the villains to panic and retreat. One of the most awesome scenes in the series.
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce and Masochist's Meal; in the episode "Grounded", the main cast is eating at a Cajun restaurant that has Ketracel White-Hot sauce, the label claiming it has 17,000,000 Scoville Heat Units. (That's about a million more than pure capsaicin, the scale's theoretical limit.) Putting one drop on his gumbo causes Boimler to collapse after 30 seconds of agony; Mariner, on the other hand, puts the whole bottle on hers and calls it a "nice kick".
• Boisterous Bruiser: Lieutenant Shaxs is someone who could go through Worf's holodeck calistenics simulation on his day off and do it in record time.^[context?]
• Canine Companion: In the episode "wej Duj" (which is, ironically, a Lower Deck Episode) Captain Dorg is cruel even by Klingon standards; while giving Ensign Ma’ah (the protagonist of this part of the episode) demeaning tasks that include cleaning up after Dorg’s pet targ (a Klingon battle hound) don’t seem too excessive, he abuses his subordinates — including the targ — and murders his second in command while using the Pakleds as pawns to attack the Federation. When Ma’ah assumes command of the ship (via Klingon Promotion, naturally) it is obvious that the targ likes him much better than it did Dorg.
• Celibate Hero: Ensign (later Lieutenant) Boimler, depending on the interpretation. In "Mining the Mine's Mines" he is the only member of the crew whose fantasy has nothing to do with sex or romance (while Mariner and Rutherford spawn images of Jennifer and Leah Brahms trying to seduce them, Boimler spawns an image of an Admiral offering him a chance to be a hero by fighting the Borg), which both Mariner and Rutherford tease him about. In "Grounded", he barely acknowledges the obvious flirtations of the gorgeous female workers on his family's vineyard, although in a later episode he claims he was ignoring them on purpose because he didn't want to get roped into working there permanently.
• Chaste Hero: Zigzagged with Ensign Boimler. In "Grounded", he seems oblivious to the three young, attractive women at his family’s vineyard (Lianne, Mandolina, and Genevieve, the last of which looks just like the Sun Maid Raisin Girl) who are trying to get in his pants. Although, in a later episode he does start to wonder if he'd been better off staying there and marrying Lianne.
• Cleavage Window: Tendi's formal evening gown in the episode "Parth's Ferengi Heart Place".
• Clueless Chick Magnet: Ensign Boimler. In the episode "Grounded", where the whole cast is on mandated leave, he is working in his family's vineyard, where everyone else working there is a sexy female (including a Captain Ersatz of the Sun Maid Raisin Girl) who is coming onto him — he doesn't get the hint from them at all.
• Cool Helmet: If a Pakled has a Cool Helmet, that means he or she is an authority figure, and more authority that Pakled has, the cooler the helmet. Unfortunately, seeing as authority among them is decided by Klingon Promotion (and none of them are very bright), such positions change quickly.
• Crossover: The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Those Old Scientists" has Ensigns Mariner and Boimler end up in their past, where Captain Pike and the Enterprise have to return them to their own time. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid, the voice actors for Mariner and Boimler, played their characters in live action.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Mariner claims (in "Envoys") she did this on purpose once, dating an Anabaj to annoy her mother.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Lampooned. Characters come Back from the Dead all the time in the Star Trek franchise, so much that it is considered incredibly rude to remind someone of their apparent death. In "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", one crewman is reprimanded for asking Lt. Shaxs (who had assumed to have perished in a Heroic Sacrifice three episodes previous) how he survived.
• Delicious Distraction: In the episode "Strange Energies", Dr. T'Ana tries sedate the cosmic-powered-and-drunk-on-it Commander Ransom with a high-tech syringe, but he turns it into an ice cream cone. "Dammit!" she shouts, but then she eats it anyway.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • In the episode "Veritas"; by the end of the episode, the Lower Deck crew has really had a long day, and when Q shows up wanting to challenge them, they do not want to deal with him, Mariner telling him to "go bother Picard".

Q: Aw, Picard is no fun! He's always quoting Shakespeare, always making wine...

• In The Stinger to "The Spy Humungous", the Lower Decks actually decide to get some laughs by crank-calling Armus (the villain from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Skin of Evil"), still languishing in isolation — and completely unrepentant — thirty years after Picard marooned him on Vagra II. Not exactly the type of guy you'd want to mock unless from a safe distance.

• Does Not Like Spam: Boimler really hates raisins, seeing as his family is in the business of producing and dealing them; while growing up, he was around them all the time. In the episode "Grounded" he has to work on his family's vineyard while the crew is on mandatory furlough, and he is clearly miserable, not at all aroused by the attractive young female hired hands trying to hit on him.
• Dr. Jerk: Dr. T'Ana combines this with Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior! Tends to be the Jerk With a Heart of Gold type.
• Drink Order: Dr. T'Ana has often said she needs a bowl of cream when she's stressed or agitated (which is most of the time), a Furry Reminder gag.
• Duel to the Death: In the episode "Something Borrowed, Something Green", Tendi, Mariner, and T'Lyn go to a tough-looking nightclub for information, and Tendi is challenged by an informant named Madam G to a cross between this and a Drinking Contest. (Orion bars tend to be tough places.) It works as follows, each combatant places her off-hand on a table and a scorpion-like critter with a lethal stinger is placed on the center. Each combatant has a mechanism that can shield her hand from the scorpion, which can only be used after she takes a drink and keeps it down; failing to do so disables that mechanism and activates a second one that secures the losers' hand to the table with a metal clamp. Tendi wins, but uses an empty glass to cage the scorpion before it strikes G — not out of any desire to grant mercy, but because they still need the info she has.
• Dumb Is Good: The Pakleds are an alien race that was intentionally designed to be Stupid Evil, and while they debuted in Star Trek: The Next Generation, this series expands their role and takes their stupidity to new heights. Like say, testing a bomb, only to discover bombs are not reusable. In a meta sense, this makes them Laughably Evil and almost lovable.
• Eaten Alive:
  • Played for laughs and subverted in the first episode, where a Giant Alien Spider that chases after Mariner and Bolmier is a herbivore and has no teeth, it is simply after moisture from sweat (going after Bolmier because he is far more afraid of it and panic makes his sweat more). Not that what it does to him is all too pleasant, of course, but given all the things that happen to him in this series, this was likely the least dangerous.
  • Played straight (but again, played for laughs) in "The Spy Humungous", where Tendi is devoured by a giant space slug. (One of many hazards the Ensigns experience while on "anomaly consolidation duty", which is basically disposing of the leftovers among dangerous stuff that higher ranking Starfleet members tend to deal with.) Fortunately, it could not digest her; unfortunately, that made the end result rather... undignified.
• Epic Fail: Rutherford not only flunks a advanced command training simulation and somehow manages to get 105% casualties - meaning he caused the deaths of more virtual crewmates than the computer had programmed into it, something Ransom tells him has never happened before. Rutherford makes up for it later though by passing Shaxs' SmorgasBorg simulation (where he has to single-handedly fight a dozen Borg drones unarmed) with flying colors, even though Shaxs' had designed it with the intent to teach recruits how to handle defeat.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the episode "The Inner Flight", the Klingon captain Ma’ah seizes back control of his ship from his mutinous second-in-command by tearing the traitor's throat out with his teeth. Even the other members of the Klingon crew who were the victim's accomplices seem disturbed by this.
• Explain, Explain, Oh Crap: In the episode "Room for Growth", Mariner, Boimler, and Tendi are sneaking through the ship's arboretum. Tendi stops to admire some rare plant life, commenting on how they don't need water so long as they are grown in an atmosphere that is high in nitrous oxide. She doesn't figure out for a minute or so that while she — an Orion — can survive comfortably in such an environment, humans — like Mariner and Boimler — cannot.
• Fan Disservice: The relationship between Lieutenant Shaxs and Commander T'Ana; they think they're keeping it a secret by using the holodeck to be intimate, but in truth, the whole crew already knows, and do not want to know any details. Most viewers are of the same mindset, as they aren't exactly the most fanservicy members of the cast.
• Fictional Video Game: The episode "The Least Dangerous Game" starts with the Lower Deckers playing Bat'leths & BiHnuchs, a sort of high tech combination of Dungeons and Dragons and VCR board game. The host is a virtual representation of Martok, hilariously depicted by J. G. Hertzler, reprising the role as a VA. The game is marketed by Ferengi, so naturally, it is an Allegedly Free Game.
• Furry Reminder: Dr. T'ana (an alien Cat Girl) does this now and then. In a log entry, she says she needs a bowl of cream while lamenting over Shax's death. In "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" she tells Tendi she needs her to go fetch a "family heirloom" from a storage unit on another planet, saying she's asking her because Ensigns ask the fewest questions. While the heirloom is indeed something that might be embarrassing for T'ana to have (it's a a Caitian libido post, the equivalent of a sex toy) T'ana actually only needs the crate it comes in — a Caitian can work off stress using such a container the same way a cat likes to play in a cardboard box.
• Heroic Sacrifice; In "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee", Mariner seems almost too eager to do this when she, Ransom, and two novice Ensigns are being stalked by Moopsie, a Killer Rabbit that drinks the bones of victims. After a heated argument with Ransom, Mariner decides to throw herself to the beast to distract it so the others can escape. Ransom, however, thinks up a safer, non-lethal version of the trope, he tells Mariner to knock his teeth out. (Adding “That's an Order!”) Seeing as Mariner has wanted to do that for the past two seasons, she gladly complies, and they use the teeth to lead Moopsie back to its containment.
• Hotter and Sexier: The Sun Maid Raisin Girl, of all characters.
• How Is That Even Possible?: In the episode “The Spy Humongous”, Dr. T’ana remarks how she has no idea how Rumdar (a Pakled) could still be alive and unharmed after being blown out an airlock into the vacuum of space. “Pakleds are strong!” replies Rumdar. Maybe so, but seeing as he wound up out there because he mistook the airlock for a bathroom, he's also pretty dumb.
• I Resemble That Remark: Log entry by Dr. T'Ana:

Dr. T'Ana: Chief Medical Officer's Log, Stardate who the [Profanity Censor] cares? So get this, Peanut Hamper - am I saying that right? Stupid name - bugged out in the middle of a big battle. But I gotta admit, she was an impressive, talented surgeon. Skilled Ensigns are hard to come by, FOR SOME [Profanity Censor] REASON I INTIMIDATE THEM!

• In-Universe Catharsis: The episode "Crisis Point" is all about this. Mariner is angry at her mother for sending her to therapy, so she programs the holodeck into a scenario where she can have her idea of therapy, an entire movie where she and the other Lower Decks can play as Space Pirates, brutally murdering the crew of the Cerritos. Ironically, the "movie" ends with her evil alter-ego losing, fighting a holo-replica of herself, leading her to conclude that the therapy sessions are better.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Packleds as a whole, being woefully stupid and Laughably Evil, almost as if "incompetent villains" is their “hat” as a species. But special mention goes to Rumdar from the episode "The Spy Humongous". Sent to infiltrate the Cerritos as a Trojan Prisoner, he all but confesses to Ransom his intent to steal information regarding their technology, which is already a common Packled MO. (“We're not exactly dealing with a Tal Shiar here,” says Ransom to another officer.) Eventually, Rumdar mistakes an airlock for a restroom, blows himself out of it, and has to be rescued by Ransom - Dr. T'Ana is puzzled as to how he can still be alive.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Ensign Mariner (human) tends to date outside her species often, and as of season 3 is going out with her former rival Ensign Jennifer Sh'reyan, an Andorian.
  • Lieutenant Shaxs (Bajoran) and Commander T'Ana (Caitian); they try to use the holodeck to keep their relationship secret, but the whole crew already seems to know, and do not want to know any details.
• The Ladette: Ensign Mariner. As shown in "Envoys", her tolerance level is greater than a Klingon's!
• Lawful Stupid: The flaws in the Prime Directive show up many times in Star Trek: Lower Decks, where Mariner has gotten in trouble frequently for well-intentioned violations of it. In "Crisis Point" she gets in trouble for "interfering in a political dispute", where the "interfering" in question was liberating a sapient Slave Race that another species literally treated like cattle. ("Screw the Prime Directive!" she blatantly says.)
• Member Berries: Star Trek: Lower Decks would require its own subpage just to cover all the Member Berries powering it.
• Mistaken Identity: In the episode "The Spy Humungous", the Pakleds all seem to think Freeman is Janeway; to those who are not Trekkies, Freeman looks absolutely nothing like Janeway. But then, the Pakleds are all pretty dumb.
• Monster Clown: In the episode "Mining the Mind's Mines", the psychic mines initially try to tempt the Lower Deckers by creating illusions of their fantasies; when the mines malfunction, however, they switch to illusions of their nightmares, which includes Klingon clowns with bat'leths for arms. While this does not specify whose nightmare this is, all of the ensigns flee in terror.
• Nepotism: It is implied that Mariner's "unorthodox" methods would have gotten her court-martialed and thrown in the brig years ago, had her mother not been the Captain of the Cerritos — and that might have happened anyway if not for the fact that Mariner's father is an Admiral.
  • The episode "Crisis Point", where the whole ship finds out about it, is pretty much an expository of why this is not a good idea, as the officers are now afraid to discipline Mariner, some of them showing her favoritism, and everyone trying to be nice to her as a way to suck up to her parents. The headache Mariner gets from it makes her apply for a promotion and transfer, which she has never wanted before.
• No Ontological Inertia: Defied in the episode "Room for Growth". After Captain Freeman is possessed by a D'Arsay mask and transforms the Cerritos into an ancient temple (the third "mask incident" Mariner has witnessed on the Cerritos) it takes the unfortunate engineering team a week after managing to remove it to restore the ship back to a functional state. Even then, many doors remain unlabeled, giving the Lower Deckers a very hard time during the episode's A-plot.
• Non-Indicative Name: Protagonist Ensign Beckett Mariner is the daughter of Alonzo and Carol Freeman; as of season 3, no explanation is given for her having a different surname than her parents.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Ensign Mariner is a font of Noodle Incidents. In "Envoys", she claim she was trapped in a sentient cave for weeks (describing it as "a dark place that knows things"), that she was almost decapitated by a singing crystal, and was detained in a Klingon prison where she had to fight a yeti who tried to steal her shoes. ("For no reason! He was just being a dick!") She has many scars which she refuses to have healed, claiming each is a battle trophy and remembers where she got each one; one is from a fight with a tentacled man that stabbed her with a barnacle blade in the chest.
  • "Room for Growth" mentions the incident where T'Ana lost her tail; all that the viewers hear about it is that it happened on the U.S.S. Algonquin. T'Ana says she would kill anyone who learns it, other than her lover, Shax, though Tendi actually tries to eavesdrop when she's about to tell him.
  • Also in "Room for Growth", Captain Freeman is possessed by an Evil Mask... for the third time.
  • Done twice over in one episode where Dr. T'ana claims she once "let Admiral Verna put a [Profanity Censor] up my [Profanity Censor]."
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Star Trek: Lower Decks did the "future unisex communal shower" thing (sonic showers, which use soundwaves instead of water), and again, nobody (male or female) seemed aroused at all. Mariner was more intent on starting a Macho Masochism duel with Jet by turning up the shower's intensity as high as it will go.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: When the Pakleds appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they were joke villains intentionally portrayed as incompetent and dimwitted, the reason the crew mistook them for harmless. In Star Trek: Lower Decks, while still incompetent and dimwitted, they manage to be a legitimate threat, mostly because Starfleet never considered them to be such and ignored them. Indeed, the episode "No Small Parts" could be seen as a precautionary tale to any who dismiss a potential threat as unimportant.
• Nubile Savage: From the episode “Hunting the Least Dangerous Game”, the Dulainians are similar to the Edo, but more concerned with health than passion, their skimpy outfits meant to show off their tanned, muscular bodies. They are very nubile, however, kissing instead of shaking hands (with tongue!). Unfortunately, their views on justice are also similar to the Edo, as Billups and Rutherford learn the hard way when discovering that they consider it a blasphemy to enter one of their temples without a midriff-baring shirt.
• Older Than They Look: Lieutenant T'Lyn is 62 years old, but being a Vulcan, she looks no older than Mariner.
• Only a Flesh Wound: In the epsiode "Something Borrowed, Something Green", Mariner, Tendi, and T'Lyn go to an Orion nightclub for information, and are barely there a minute when an offstage assailant buries a knife in Mariner:

Tendi: MARINER! Mariner: Uh, all good! Just part of the ambiance...

• Which is true, seeing as she extracts the knife quickly and hands it to an attendant who seems to be there for that purpose; Orion nightclubs are tough places.

• Open Secret: Shaxs and T'Ana try to keep their relationship a secret, using the Holodeck for their rendezvous for privacy. In truth, the whole crew already seems to know, and do not want to know any details.
• Our Nudity Is Different: The Dulainians from the episode "Hunting the Least Dangerous Game" are Nubile Savage types who wear skimpy outfits to emphasize their well-toned, incredibly fit, and tanned bodies. All of them wear midriff-baring shirts, as their faith claims the navel is sort of a spiritual "third eye", and while friendly to visitors overall, they consider it a blasphemy for someone to enter one of their temples with their navel covered.
• Platonic Life Partners: The whole main cast might be considered this, the usual pairings being Mariner and Boimler or Rutherford and Tendi, though with the latter, there have been some Will They or Won't They? hints.
• Power Perversion Potential: Star Trek: Lower Decks confirms that yes, some members of the crew do use the holodeck for less savory purposes. In fact, Ransom claims that most crew members use them this way. So much, in fact, that the worst job one of the Lower Deck crew can have is cleaning out its "bio-filters".
• Real Men Wear Pink: the episode "The Least Dangerous Game" introduces K'ranch, a huge, mean, hulking Expy of the Predator who enjoys hunting humans for sport (which Boilmer stupidly volunteers to be the prey for, thus the title of the episode). You'd expect this guy to be the type who'd eat raw meat and drink the blood of his foes — until, that is, he stops mid-hunt to thank Captain Freeman for the mimosas they had at brunch.
• Red Shirt: Amazingly enough, not lampooned, poked at, or even played straight in Star Trek: Lower Decks, a series that focuses mostly on crewmembers that would normally fit the trope. Despite already having one transporter accident and one holodeck accident in the first season alone (plus your typical accidents involving alien viruses, a few hostile aliens, and a visit from Q), by the end of that season, the only casualty among the Cerritos‍'‍s crew is Lieutenant Shaxs, the chief of security! Even then, it's a Heroic Sarcifice, Shaxs dying as the Boisterous Bruiser he's always been.
• The Rival: The Delta Shift (the ship's equivalent of the night shift) seems to be a Sitcom Arch Nemesis to the Beta Shift (the main cast) although the episode "Terminal Provocations" seems to give them both Shifts a Not So Different realization.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: The Caitian Dr. T'Ana. Seeing as Cats Are Snarkers, she can really be a Dr. Jerk sometimes.
• Secret Test of Character: In the episode "The Least Dangerous Game", Commander Ransom brings Mariner, Billups, and Rutherford to a planet called Dulain to fix one of the orbital lifts (or “giant space elevators”, as Mariner calls them) that the Dulainians used to board orbiting starships (Dulain has a thermosphere of charged ions which prevents them from using transporters). Ransom tells Mariner to help him fix the actual lift, and tells Billups and Rutherford to go down to the surface to act as diplomats. This of course seems like an absurd idea (as Mariner points out), because both Billups and Rutherford are engineers, while Mariner specializes in diplomacy. To absolutely nobody's surprise, Billups and Rutherford manage to make the natives angry by committing a religious taboo, but despite Mariner's pleas, Ransom insists the two can handle themselves, and that their intervention is not necessary. And again, to nobody's surprise, the situation with Billups and Rutherford gets worse, until they are under sentence of execution. Mariner finally decides to defy orders and skydive to the surface in order to help them, but just as she does, she gets a comlink call from Ransom. He apologizes and congratulates her, claiming he was testing her to see if she would defy in order to help them, a test that has now gone too far out of control, and tells her to meet him at the docking Bay so they can both go down to assist them. Mariner manages to get there before he notices she was gone (barely, nearly getting herself killed in the process), so while technically she failed this ill-conceived test, Ransom believes she passed it.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: An LGBT example with an odd twist occurs in the episode "Mining the Mind's Mines". The Lower Deckers are part of an away team sent to dispose of the psychic mines on a planet's surface; the orbs tempt Mariner with an illusion of Jennifer Sh'reyan (an Andorian crewmate whom Mariner has had a love-hate relationship with in previous episdes) wearing a bikini, implying that Mariner has romantic feelings towards her and they are possibly dating. When Boimler and Stevens tease her about this fantasy, she vehemently denies that she and Sh'reyan are dating, claiming it is an "inaccurate fantasy" and that the mines are malfunctioning. (She is visibly blushing when she says this.) Later, however, when the orbs clearly do malfunction and start manifesting illusions in the form of nightmares, a second, monstrous version of Sh'reyan appears, "kills" the first one, and then chases Mariner with the implication it wants to rape her, its words unconvincingly claiming it wants marriage and a family. This seems to imply that Mariner does indeed have feelings for Jennifer, but fears upgrading the relationship to a point where commitment would be an issue.
• Star Scraper: In the episode “The Least Dangerous Game”, Dulaine is a planet with a thermosphere of charged ions, meaning transporters cannot be used to go to or from the surface. Instead, the Dulainians use orbital lifts (or "space elevators", as Mariner calls them) to board orbiting starships. These towers are so impossibly tall that should the elevator malfunction (which is has in this episode) the surface can be accessed by skydiving, and the second time Mariner has to do so, she is able to take a 10-minute nap while in freefall before pulling her ripcord.
• Stupid Evil: The Pakleds were intentionally designed to fit this trope when they first appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation; when they started appearing as recurring villains in Star Trek: Lower Decks, the Denser and Wackier nature of the series let the writers have a lot of fun with their buffoonery, like say, one of them mistaking an airlock for a rest room (and having to be rescued by the heroes) and testing a bomb, only to discover bombs are not reusable. Often they can be so Laughably Evil they're almost lovable.
• Tailor-Made Prison: The Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage area in the Daystrom Institute. It seems that the concept of A.I. Is a Crapshoot has become such a problem for Starfleet that they use this place as a prison for evil computers. Known inmates include 10111 and AGIMUS (from "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie") and Peanut Hamper (from "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption"). A later episode gives is a name — Daystrom Institute, Megalomaniacal A.I. Penitentiary — and shows it has a lot of amenities a regular prison has, including work detail, an exercise room, and group therapy sessions. Inmates are also given parole hearings.
• Teleporter Accident: Star Trek: Lower Decks reveals that transporter accidents now happen often enough that Starfleet has regulations concerning them. After Ensign Boimler is "cloned" by such an accident, one of the two Boimlers has to be transferred back to the Cerritos.
• Third Eye: The Dulainians are Nubile Savage types whose religion (they worship a volcano god, sapient computer, and psychic infant) claims the navel is the spiritual third eye. All of them (male and female) wear midriff-baring clothing, and they consider it a blasphemy for anyone to enter one of their houses of worship with the navel covered.
• To Serve Man: Non-human Black Comedy example: Caitians and Betazoids used to be a predator-prey matching, but while such ended centuries ago, T'Ana still seems tempted to attack three Betazoid ambassadors - especially when under a Hate Plague and the Betazoid ambassadors are complete jerks.
  • Something of a Genius Bonus for Trekkies, seeing as Star Trek lore claims Betazoids evolved from fish.
  • Also, rather... disturbing that Starfleet even needs a clause in the oath taken by doctors that forbids them from preying on patients.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Pakleds were intentionally designed to fit this Trope when they first appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation; when they started appearing as recurring villains in Star Trek: Lower Decks, the Denser and Wackier nature of the series let the writers have a lot of fun with their buffoonery, like say, one of them mistaking an airlock for a rest room (and having to be rescued by the heroes) and testing a bomb, only to discover bombs are not reusable. Often they can be so Laughably Evil, they're almost lovable.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • In the episode "I, Excretus", the Ensigns get to eat in the officers' mess hall due to a training drill (where they assume the roles of officers) and Tendi quickly falls in love with pesto sauce, something the replicators in their mess hall cannot produce. She is, of course, very happy at the end of the episode when Captain Freeman rewards them by upgrading those replicators.
  • Boimler expressed a love of breaded macaroni and cheese with lobster in a season one episode. Again, this is a luxury for him, and in the aforementioned episode, he considers the hell he went through worth it when Freeman upgrades the replicators.
• Unexplained Recovery: As any Trekkie knows, characters come Back from the Dead all the time in Star Trek , so much that by the time of Star Trek: Lower Decks it is considered incredibly rude to remind someone of their apparent death. In "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", Rutherford is reprimanded for asking Lt. Shaxs (who had assumed to have perished in a Heroic Sacrifice three episodes previous) how he survived. Eventually, Shaxs does decide to tell him - the viewers do not hear the explanation, but it leaves Rutherford shaken and terrified.
• We Can Rule Together: In the fourth season finale, main antagonist Nick Locarno (the orchestrator of the Nova Squadron conspiracy plot from Star Trek: The Next Generation) plans to recruit Mariner into the Nova Fleet, kidnapping her in order to do so, mistaking her "wild card" rebellious attitude for a desire for open rebellion against Starfleet. In truth, for all her dislike of authority, Mariner thinks he's out of his mind (which he is) and instead proves the biggest factor in the failure of his plans.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Star Trek: Lower Decks is an animated series that seems devoted to the deconstruction of this trope, showing the Star Trek mythos from the point of view of four Ensigns, showing how horrifying it can be for a potential Red Shirt. Of course, on the other hand the show is also a Deconstructive Parody and the four named characters seem mostly unfazed by the violence and — for now — manage to survive.
• Who Shot JFK?: Used as an off-joke in the episode "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus". Mariner tells Boimler that no, she will not participate in a Time Travel-oriented mission that requires assassinating Kennedy (even if it does mean saving the galaxy from the Romulans) even if it is only a Holodeck simulation. "That is not happening!" she says.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: From the episode "Caves"; Mariner is usually a Fearless Fool who is Not Afraid to Die, but she dreads having to be in an away team mission that involves entering a cave - mostly because she is Dangerously Genre Savvy enough to know that all caves are lethal places are full of Red Shirt-eating monsters where both the comlinks and transporters always malfuction. The whole episode, in fact, seems to have been written with the purpose of lampooning this trend in the franchise.
• You Look Familiar: Lampshaded in the episode "Old Friends, New Planets". When Nicholas Locarno — disgraced former Starfleet cadet, terrorist leader and Big Bad of season 4 — opens communications with the Cerretos to make his demands, several members of the crew can't help but mention how much he looks like Tom Paris. Indeed, this is a Mythology Gag, as in Star Trek: The Next Generation both Locarno and Tom Paris were played by Robert Duncan McNeill, who reprises the role as Locarno's VA here.
• Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Downplayed, in that the male and female Lower Deck crewmen share the same barracks. Despite a lot of Double Entendre humor on the show as a whole, nobody seems to have a problem with it.
  • A later episode has both genders using a communal shower (sonic showers, which use soundwaves instead of water) with no discomfort; well, until Mariner challenges Jet to a Macho Masochism duel by turning the up their intensity as high as they will go.