Star Trek: Lower Decks S1E09 – Crisis Point Review

In order to prepare for the upcoming advanced diplomacy programme, Boimler creates a holodeck programme of the USS Cerritos in order to get the inside scoop on how to impress Captain Freeman but when Mariner is ordered into therapy after overstepping protocol once too often, she decides to repurpose Boimler’s brown-nosing programme into a thereputic anger management tool, casting herself as the villain in her very own STAR TREK movie: CRISIS POINT: The Rise Of Vindicta.

It’s another well-balanced episode that manages to be action-packed and character-driven as Mariner uses the programme to work out her resentment against her mother. It’s a superbly judged pastiche of the STAR TREK movies, including STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE’s iconically indulgent series of beauty passes. There are tongue-in-cheek references to most of the other movies up to and including the reboot films as the exterior and interior of the ‘newly refitted’ USS Cerritos dazzle with unnecessary lens flare.

There are so many great gags but they’re all in service of a damn good story as Mariner’s Vindicta manages to board and take over the Cerritos in order to quench her desire to get back at her mother. But along the way, she ends up learning more about herself and her friends, providing a new perspective to her world view. There are nice moments, too, for Rutherford and Tendi as she pushes back against the Orion capitalist hyper-libertarian gangster pirate stereotype Mariner’s cast her as.

CRISIS POINT may just be the best episode of STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS so far. The writing is sharp, the jokes come thick and fast and its affection for the series’ predecessors and its own characters is evident in every scene. It’s also long past time to acknowledge just how good the music is – and has been – on LOWER DECKS. Composer Chris Westlake has done a fantastic job with smart musical accompaniment to the antics and action on the screen. Homaging but never parodying previous iconic STAR TREK music and bringing a uniquely LOWER DECKS flavour to it, the decision to approach the score with sincerity and seriousness pays off in abundance, especially in this episode which so hews so closely to the Star Trek movie franchise.

9/10