‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Recap – ‘First First Contact’

Written by Shae Rufe

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the season two finale of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’.

The season finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks has finally dropped and so did my feels! Right into the trash because I was not ready for this. To be honest, I was never going to be ready for this season to end. The good news is that season 3 has already been announced, so we have hope to look forward to! The one thing I love most about this show is how they slowly build their plot, bit by bit, throughout the season in such a way that it just wraps up in a perfect way.  The episode starts with the Cerritos being assigned to help make first contact with the Archimedes, which is pretty amazing! We then promptly find out that Captain Freeman has gotten a promotion. The problem is she can’t take her command crew with her and also hasn’t told them yet.
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Mariner overhears this and decides to do the most Mariner thing about it and tells the command crew. The bridge crew holds it in until they’re en route to their destination. That’s when Ransom really breaks out the sarcasm right before Captain Freeman commands them into Warp. Shaxs and Billups do very little to hide their own animosity towards the captain. It’s Mariner who stokes the fire even more by openly admitting on the bridge that she told them about the captain’s promotion. Carol demands everyone into her Ready Room. Clearly, her crew feels betrayed. Especially since she can’t take any of them with her. Mariner is the most upset, considering this is her mom, so it’s a bit deeper of a betrayal.  Maybe Ransom has the right to be the second most upset, he is the Captain’s Number One after all. 

The drama is put on hold when Red Alert sounds. The sun in the system they just entered has sent off a giant solar flare that ends up destroying a nearby planetoid. Not a huge problem, right? Well, the planetoid was heavily charged, and when its blast wave hits the Archimedes, the ship is shut down completely. The Cerritos narrowly avoids being hit by any of the planetoid pieces, only from sheer luck at first. They were well behind the Archimedes and saw what happened. They can’t go through the new asteroid field the destroyed planetoid caused without risking the same fate. As it is the Archimedes is plummeting towards the planet it meant to make First Contact with at an alarming rate. The impact will cause catastrophic damage. It’s a scary situation. The crew of the Archimedes only has 20 hours to get the ship back online. The Cerritos is their only hope of survival, but they have to figure out how to get to the Archimedes without getting shut down.

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As for Rutherford and Tendi? Well, Rutherford has been getting an error message all day in his implant. And Tendi was summoned by Dr. T’Ana, apparently, she’s being removed from medical and transferred off the ship. Upon seeing her file deleted by Dr. T’Ana, Tendi freaks out and runs to Rutherford who says they should explore their favorite places on the ship one last time before she leaves. They end up in the Captain’s Yacht which is where Mariner and Captain Freeman end up coming in to fight. Captain Freeman plans to take the shuttle in hopes of reaching the Archimedes and Mariner thinks her mom is being a reckless idiot. When Carol explains her plan, and the desperation the situation, Mariner loses it even further, telling her mom that she never wants to work with her again. Tendi and Rutherford make themselves known and Rutherford has the idea to strip the outer paneling of the ship off. It makes the ship vulnerable but at the same time it doesn’t magnetically draw the pieces of the planetoid towards the ship. It takes the entire crew of the Cerritos to pull off the outer paneling removal, but eventually they do. Well, all but one panel remains. The Cerritos has to move now or there won’t be enough time to save the Archimedes and her crew. 

It’s up to Boims, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi to save the day.  Mariner is about to dive into the water pool that has the panel switch at the bottom of it, for some reason, when she has a panic moment. They might fail and they might lose everything and the last thing to happen between her and her mom was a fight. Rutherford sends her off to make amends and sends Boims down to get the panel detached from the inside of the ship. Mariner manages to make things right with her mom and helps to navigate the ship through the new asteroid field while Boims struggles to get the panel unlocked. He finally does manage to get it detached, in the nick of time, of course. He almost drowns in the process, but he’s saved. It’s actually Tendi who ends up doing CPR on him and gets our Boimler breathing again.

The Cerritos narrowly makes it in time and saves the Archimedes from crashing into the planet they were meant to make First Contact with. It’s Captain Freeman who beams down with a landing party and makes her first, first contact. Everything goes well and she returns to the Cerritos a bit drunk. Oh, and Tendi? Well, she’s being moved to the Science division. Dr. T’ana thinks her quick thinking and skills of mastering things quickly are much better suited for science than medical. Rutherford unlocked a memory he wasn’t supposed to know about. Looks like he didn’t volunteer for that implant of his. As for the Captain and her promotion? She’s turning it down. She loves her crew too much to ever leave them. She plans to tell Starfleet this when some members beam on to her ship, except they aren’t here for her promotion, they’re here to arrest her. Captain Freeman is being blamed for the bombing of Pakled Planet, in a twisted conspiracy with the Klingons. We all know it’s not true, and she knows she didn’t do it. But Starfleet doesn’t. They arrest her and we’re left with the biggest cliffhanger of the series! What’s going to happen? How will this get cleared up? When will season 3 premiere!? All the questions!

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