‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Recap – ‘The Least Dangerous Game’

Written by Shae Rufe

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 302 of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’. To revisit the season three premiere, click here.
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Imagine Dungeons and Dragons, with Klingons. Yes, it’s literally as cool as it sounds. Except Mariner isn’t having a good time playing this game. Because Ransom is taking his duty beyond seriously in making sure that Mariner stays in line, in doing so he’s really driving her up a wall and testing her patience. He even has her arrive an hour early for an away mission briefing. The mission itself is easy. A planet’s orbital lifts are malfunctioning, needing two Starfleet Engineers to fix the problem. Mariner will accompany Ransom to maintain relations with the planet’s people while Rutherford and Billups are to fix the fancy space elevator. Easy, right? Would be if Ransom didn’t decide to switch things up last minute.
 
He sends the engineers down to the planet while he and Mariner fix the problem. Which is more than a bit of a mistake considering they aren’t engineers and don’t know what they’re doing. It’s a misstep that might cost them the lives of the engineers. Relations on the planet aren’t going so well, and the two Starfleet engineers soon find themselves in increasing trouble. Ransom refuses multiple times to step in. Mariner is dead set that he’s just doing this to get under her skin and push her into breaking the rules. Of course, she ends up being right.
 
When Ransom can’t seem to fix the elevator and realizes their friends are in actual danger, he coms Mariner to meet him, so they can go save their friends. Unfortunately, Mariner is already on her way down to save them when she gets the com. She has to stop and get back up in time to meet Ransom before he realizes she’s disobeyed him. While Ransom apologizes for making this some weird test, stating that Mariner needed to learn to trust her commanding officers, she’s trying not to pass out. In the end, they make it down to the planet in time to save Billups and Rutherford from death by sentient volcano.

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As for Boimler, well, he’s taken to saying yes to things lately. This gets him into a game of Springball where he then gets invited to join a choir. High off saying yes to things and gaining favors for the Bridge Crew, he ends up doing something he’s most assuredly going to regret. When an alien named K’Ranch asks for prey, Boimler says yes. He agrees. To being hunted. Aboard the Cerritos. It seemed like a perfectly good thing to say yes to, really it did. At the time. Right? Wrong. K’Ranch is taking this as seriously as Boimler is not.
 
He tries to get out of it, only to fail, and now he’s running for his life. He even informs the captain of what’s going on, only to have her side with K’Ranch. It is, after all, important to respect the cultures of others. Boims puts up a good run, until he decides he doesn’t want to be prey anymore. He stands up to K’Ranch, not willing to be the hunted but the hunter now… annnnnnnnd gets stabbed through the shoulder with a spear. K’Ranch’s species practices catch and release though, and that’s exactly what is going to happen here. After he gives Boims some notes on his performance and snags a selfie with his prey to share with the boys back home.
 
All in all, the crew of the Cerritos seems to be back in its flow. Mariner even manages a compliment to Ransom, who is impressed with her, but is not going to ease up. Maybe there’s hope for Mariner after all.

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