Star Trek: Lower Decks S2E03 – We’ll Always Have Tom Paris Review
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE TOM PARIS not only honours one of STAR TREK VOYAGER’s more memorable characters, it also marks the first time I’ve felt STAR TREK LOWER DECKS stumble a little. There’s an odd self-consciousness to the shenanigans this week, a lack of polish that means you can almost hear the writer’s room discussions that created the episode. It picks and pokes at the usual gift basket of STAR TREK tropes but there’s a lack of follow-through – especially around the decision to bring back a presumed-dead character for a lazy joke that doesn’t quite work.
Excited by the impending visit of Lieutenant Tom Paris, Boimler struggles to adapt to life back aboard the Cerritos, especially as the crew roster database hasn’t been updated to include him yet. Meanwhile, Rutherford is freaked out by the fact that Shax, who died saving his life, is suddenly back on duty as the ship’s head of security.
It’s a nice touch that the episode pairs up Mariner and Tendi, although their metatextual back and forth about how it’s an unusual and overdue pairing overplays its hand a little. Less Easter Egg-laden than KAYSHON, HIS EYES OPEN – it would be hard not to be – there’s still plenty of background lore to enjoy but this tripartite episode never feels like it’s quite balanced. Boimler’s increasingly frantic and frazzled quest to get his commemorative plate signed by Paris despite the Cerritos’ computer refusing to acknowledge his existence is fun but doesn’t stick the landing where he finally comes face to face with his idol only to be mistaken for a Kazon. Paris – voiced by Robert Duncan McNeill – is a fun cameo but doesn’t really lead anywhere and his quick-to-fists attitude seems utterly at odds with his time on STAR TREK: VOYAGER. Likewise, Tendi and Mariner’s “girls trip” mission is plenty fun until it devolves into a bit of a farce and then is resolved by the laziest cat joke ever, a disservice to the character of Doctor T’Ana.
Ultimately, though, it’s the storyline of Shax’s return from the grave that lands the most awkwardly, mainly because characters returning from the dead in the way that Shax does isn’t that big of a STAR TREK trope. It’s happened maybe two, three times in the franchise’s history and given WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE TOM PARIS is STAR TREK’s 800th episode of television, it feels like too much of a reach to make it such a big target in this episode especially as its much more of a movie trope.
So, a middling episode of STAR TREK LOWER DECKS – it’s first by my reckoning – but that still puts it ahead of at least a third of its live-action counterparts, which isn’t bad by any measure.
6/10