Headscratchers / Star Trek: Lower Decks

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• What would it take to get Mariner thrown out of Starfleet for good?
  • Maybe causing permanent harm to another officer? Committing some act of insubordination so great it cannot be overlooked even if she’s put in the brig for while? Violating federation law?
  • Since joining the Maquis isn't an option anymore, her best bet would probably be the Ro/Paris/Locarno method: Get someone killed during a mission. Though even that might not be permanent, as Ro and Paris demonstrated.
  • Basically anything she does on a daily basis, but only under the authority of another captain who wouldn't cover for her. Mariner is being kept in by support of a superior and her skill where as her skill alone simply isn't enough to get her out of trouble due to her emotional issues.
  • And now in season 3, Freeman and Ransom have made it clear to her that her career is hanging by a very fine thread.

• Why isn't every woman fawning over Brad when he has a neural parasite that gives him super pheromones? Speaking of which, why isn't Tendi having that effect on the male crew members?
  • Perhaps the parasite only targets what it deems is the ideal mate. The presence of Orion citizens in Federation space is repeatedly mentioned and established, sometimes explicitly on screen. If Orion women had the same effect in all males without control all these situations would be quite different, so they (and by extension Tendi) must be able to control it to some degree.
    • As of "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" we now know that some Orion females (like Tendi) just don't produce the pheromones.
  • It's possible Mariner is being affected by the parasite and that's why she's going to such great lengths to keep Barb Binson away from him. She may just be in denial about her attraction to him in that moment.
  • It simply heightens an attraction that was already there, as Barb indicates that she's still at least a little into him with it gone. A woman who's not attracted to Brad at all (i.e., most of them) isn't affected.

• Is the Cerritos really the worst ship in Starfleet? Some of the time the crew seems to be utterly incompetent, and other times they're pulling off TNG-level successes.
  • As is mentioned in one episode, there's a floor for how bad you can be and still qualify for Starfleet. The rest of the fleet is just that good that the Cerritos is bad by comparison. And, until "buffer time" was revoked, things on the Cerritos were still running smoothly; just not quite as smoothly as, say, on the Enterprise.
  • Some of it may be bias because the Cerritos is a low-end starship during a time when Starfleet was cranking out new and better designs very rapidly. So they end up doing "second contact" missions to worlds that have already been explored and contacted by Starfleet, sometimes a century or more in the past. This is why Freeman gets the Stealth Insult treatment from captains with higher-end ships.
  • Also it's worth noting that the Cerritos is a California-class ship which means that while they might be pulling off impressive feats they're also considered a purely support vessel and not of particular notes. As a result actions that would be considered amazing under Picard on the Enterprise go largely unnoticed or are marred by the Cerritos having less operational latitude to justify whatever they did.
  • Also, in Season 3 it's repeatedly noted by crews of other California-class ships that the Cerritos crew is a legend to other Cali class crews. So clearly, they're not the worst; more like the Enterprise of the anonymous support staff of the fleet.

• How can they not have sand on Orion? Sand is a natural part of erosion that is bound to happen on any rocky planet that contains Earth-like life.
  • Could be environmental issues, or they used it all up building things (we're using all our sand up for concrete). Alternatively, 'no sand' means 'no BEACH (aka useful) sand'.
  • Another possibility is that Orion "sand" is very different from Earth sand. It's not the softer, fine grains that Earth has, but perhaps something closer to gravel or shards of rock.
    • This is confirmed in "A Few Badgeys More". Tendi states the beaches on Orion have only jagged pebbles, not sand.
  • Also of note is that if Orion has a different water cycle then Earth, say no large oceans, sand would be a relative rarity and may only occur in places nobody bothers to look. Say the bottom of a cenote that is very rarely if ever visited while the only other open water sources never managed to be running long enough to reduce rock to anything smaller then gravel.

• Why is the transported Boimler treated as the clone and the one that stayed behind as the original? Wasn't it the opposite with Riker?
  • Thomas Riker was created when the transporter beam was reflected back to the planet. William Boimler, despite being the one transported first, was also created via similar circumstances. As for being "treated as a clone", note that the Rikers got to spend time talking and establishing different identities while Boimler didn't have that luxury. Hence, being referred to as a clone is simply a temporary method to disambiguate.
  • The trick with Riker is that there was no original. Both were identical a pair of transporter beams attempting to return to the ship and the only difference is that William made it back while Thomas didn't. In Boimlers case the original managed to return to the ship via shuttle craft without technically leaving the surface by transporter while the copy was accidentally created by having his pattern copied during a failed transport.

• Why did Dr. T'ana send Tendi to collect that box? Couldn't she get a suitable container replicated or set up a holodeck program? She clearly didn't care about privacy, since she was indulging in box activities in her sickbay office.
  • If Dr. T'ana like real-life cats, then it might be a matter of smell. It's something T'ana has probably marked her scent on before in the past and has used for comfort during her past hormonal spikes. A replicated equivalent wouldn't provide her the same relief, as it wouldn't have the comforting familiarity of her scent on it.
  • Also, cats are assholes.

• Why did Niko, the Harvongian shape-changer, not only revert back to his normal form the moment that Mariner mentioned that he possibly could be one as a joke, but proceed to try and eat his girlfriend?
  • The Harvongian was only passing for human by mimicry, laughing when other people laugh and reading the mood, so when Mariner made the joke it assumed she was serious. Obviously it was already planning to devour the human female as it was getting close to her in a way that would allow them unsupervised time together so when it seemed to be caught it tried to dine and dash so to speak.

• Why are you not allowed to replicate certain dishes if you're of lower ranks? Starfleet ships, unlike real-world ones, aren't strapped for space or resources, and even if they are, surely replicating say, grilled lobster is no different from replicating mac and cheese energy-wise? From an objective efficiency standpoint it seems to have no benefit.
  • A sense of elitism? It's been demonstrated before that, despite Starfleet values, there does come an inherent sense of superiority and arrogance for some members over others. Ranging from large scale issues like the whole of the Cerritos and it's whole crew often being snubbed for their less than glamorous work, despite it still being important to the Federation. To smaller scale issues, like arbitrarily giving extra comforts to higher ranking officers, despite their being no practical reason for such exclusivity.
  • Having a wider variety of dishes available requires more memory space from the replicator, so the lower decks probably have a cheaper model with less memory. Note that when the ensigns get a replicator with better options, it's not just a matter of adding new recipes to their old machine, they literally get a new machine. So their old model probably didn't have enough memory for any new dishes.
    • I just thought of some Fridge Brilliance that supports this logic. In DS9, Weyoun 6 (the one who defected to Odo) samples the runabout's entire replicator menu. The fact that he was able to eat even a few bites of every single recipe suggests that, yes, memory space is a limitation. The only detail that still feels strange to me is that each replicator on the Cerritos has its own separate database of food patterns when it would be more sensible to get them from the main computer. (It actually does make some sense for replicators to have their own internal storage; food falls under life support, and that sort of redundancy is a good idea in case there's a problem with the main computer, but why would that be the primary means of pattern storage when it ought to just be a backup?)
    • It's possible food replicators are like ATMs, where they're mass-produced as independent units because it's logistically simpler than trying to ensure the right model gets to the right location. That is, they all come with network attachments, even the ones that aren't planned to be networked (for example, a street vendor or private kitchen equivalent), and they're all installed with a default library of meals. Expanding that library is possible, but obviously only officers could authorise it (allowing anyone to synthesise any object they want is obviously an enormous security risk, even more so from a connection to the ship's central computer) and slightly expanding the crew menu is probably such a low priority that it might never happen during a starship's entire commission. And besides, reserving some things for special occasions is a useful morale tool.
• When Mariner was temporarily ranked up Moist Vessel, why was she given a yellow uniform? Since she mostly wears red, shouldn't she be command (well, as much command as an ensign could be)? Yellow uniforms, if they're following the standard from TNG, are for either engineering, security or operations, which she doesn't seem to actually do.
  • The command Ensigns seem to be grunts, doing whatever work needs to be done off of a generalized list of chores, with assignments easily swapped between crew with little care from above so long as the work gets done. By moving her to (presumably) Operations, she would be assigned specific tasks and responsibilities that she wouldn't be able to duck out of or trade with other Lieutenants.
  • Considering how abrupt her promotion was, it could simply be because the only department that happened to have an immediate opening for a lieutenant was a part of the ops division.
• Why is there an inconsistency between uniform styles? Riker wears the uniform that's from the films, while the Ceritos crew wear a different style. Shouldn't they all be wearing the same style of uniform?
  • Surprisingly, Reality Is Unrealistic. The Real Life US Army upon switching uniform styles didn't see the old ones fully deprecated until years later, when all of them became too worn out to continue using.
    • The fact that Starfleet headquarters personnel wore TNG-style uniforms during the DS9-era seems to suggest that it was considered a more formal style, akin to a service dress uniform, and that the DS9-style was more of a working/utility uniform. It would make sense if the same were true of these two styles: The crews of the prestigious ships that are most likely to have public-facing roles wear the more formal "First Contact"-style service uniforms, and the crews that work behind the scenes and tend to get their hands dirty get to wear the older styles and utilities.
  • Lower Decks is far from the first Star Trek installment to have mixed uniforms (though it may well be the most mixed). Starfleet uniforms underwent at least two changes during DS9 and not all ships caught up at the same time. Same in Discovery when the TOS-style uniforms were first seen but not yet universally adopted. In Generations, there were mixed uniform styles even within the same ship (the Enterprise-D). Honestly, I think it would be more of a headscratcher if the Lower Decks uniforms were all identical, given what we've seen.
    • Something like this gets mentioned in the book Ship of the Line, when the Bozeman runs into the Enterprise-D, and the former's crew first lays eyes on the crew of the latter. They immediately note the different uniforms, and Bateson muses that it wouldn't be the first time Starfleet HQ has done something like change uniforms and forgot to tell ships in a remote sector.
• When Mariner enters a virtual simulation of the Mirror Universe she's talking about the Terran Empire and the general conditions there as seen in TOS but by Mariner's time the Empire has fallen and the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance rules.
  • It was just a simulation of what conditions would be had Mariner been around during that time period as a test of her abilities. As a result, the current state of the Mirror Universe isn't relevant.
  • Also, given that the multiverse is a thing in Trek, there's nothing saying that another Mirror Universe might not be out there somewhere. Better prepared than sorry, perhaps.
    • There probably is, given the infinite probabilities of the multiverse. There are probably many universes with Terran Empires and Confederations of Earth.
• What kind of evolution would make a species duplicate itself every time it experiences uncomfortable emotions? Wouldn't that cause ecological collapse at some point?
  • No indication the splitting was supposed to be permanent. In fact, it's actually not a bad defence mechanism - predator trying to eat you? Split yourself, overwhelm your enemy with numbers.
    • And there's also the consideration that splitting into multiple beings means that even if you have no hope of fighting back even in numbers, the predator will get full before it eats all of your instances.
• This might be the key question of the entire series: just what the hell happened to Mariner anyway? What made her stop wanting to be a captain?
  • There's no defining incident as of yet, but the implication is that Mariner has a strong desire to help others through Starfleet, but the bureaucracy of it all and the constant procedures she'd have to follow built up enough frustration over the years to want to make her stop playing by the rules. Unless you happen to be a Trek-series lead with the rank of Captain (i.e. Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Burnham, Pike) or just an unlucky kid who took command of an abandoned Starfleet vessel like Dahl did, then you're expected to follow protocol or face severe consequences (such as when Burnham committed mutiny as a Commander and got fired and jailed for it). Somewhere along the way, Mariner realized this on some level and figured she can't help others through Starfleet if the Admiralty is watching over her shoulder and making sure she doesn't go all gung-ho on them. At least if she's an ensign, she's not under as much scrutiny, and she can do whatever she needs.
    • If that's the case, why wouldn't she just work to rank up and become a captain herself? She clearly has the aptitude for command. Her Academy friend shows that it's possible. And having her own ship and a potentially loyal crew would give her much more latitude to... creatively interpret Starfleet regulations as she sees fit. Sure, she could simply lack the patience to deal with all the hoops she'd need to jump through in the meantime. But on a rational level, it simply doesn't make much sense.
    • It could just be poor self-image and self-sabotage. As noted in "Crisis Point", Mariner likes being in Starfleet a lot more than she lets on, and a lot of her acts of rebellion are just that, an act she's putting on to protect herself from high expectations. Similarly, in "Much Ado About Boimler," Captain Ramsey points out that Mariner is making mistakes that she is, frankly, way too good to make by accident.
  • One possibility is that she might have really ticked off someone in the upper brass who really has it out for her, making a promotion to Captain unlikely. You'd think that her father's influence would be enough to counteract that kind of vendetta, though.
  • Its also worth noting that Mariner has some clear emotional trauma and issues that aren't being handled thanks to her ship having an incompetent therapist as well as an unwillingness to seek help. The people shes seen killed and the times her world has been shattered weigh on her leading to trust issues where she pushes people away and has an automatic distrust of authority figures. This hampers her career because she can't bring herself to have any faith in the system as seen with her mothers trial and pushes away associates who could help her. Mariner has the skills for greatness but not the mindset as of now.
  • Mariner's Character Development over season 3 has shown that she acknowledges that her Military Maverick attitudes, while sometimes appropriate, need to be curtailed. She's a smart and capable officer, but until recently had trouble differentiating between "not blindly following the rules" and "blindly not following the rules". As of the end of the season, she seems to finally be where she needs to be to excel as a leader, and season 4 is right around the corner...
  • Season 4 eventually explains that she was friends with the ill-fated Ensign Sato, and her death broke her so badly that she swore never to get promoted above Ensign so she wouldn't have to order others to their deaths. Her cycle of self-sabotage and maverick behavior is all because she doesn't want to put everyone's lives in a position where she'd have to tell them they needed to die.
• Why would Section 31 be interested in someone like William Boimler? Other than the odd circumstances of his creation, he's should be identical to the original Boimler, who is blatantly not shady spy material. Or possibly more disturbingly, what happened to William on the Titan in a year that would convince someone like Boimler that joining Section 31 is a good idea?
  • Maybe Section 31 goes out of their way to recruit evil transporter clones because they'll be unburdened by any sense of conscience? In exchange, William doesn't have to pretend not to be a sociopath anymore. Could be a sweet deal from his point of view.
    • Or he could be infiltrating Section 31 on Riker's orders and faking being an evil transporter clone... Or, an evil transporter clone who's infiltrating Section 31 on Riker's orders. After all, being evil would make it harder to predict whose side he's actually on.
  • There are already hints that William Boimler is not identical to Bradward Boimler. I'm not just talking about their diverging lives — obviously they will become different people as their experiences shape them — but on the very same day they were split, William was already shown to be more bold and ambitious, choosing to keep his position on the Titan when Brad did not. He was also far more at ease with Captain Riker than the Boimler we know usually is around Starfleet legends. His Evil Laugh after being inducted into Section 31 is not what anyone would have expected, either. The point is, we clearly don't know this guy, which means there are any number of reasons why Section 31 might consider him a valuable agent.
  • Apart from that, having an operative who is an identical copy of an uptight Starfleet officer (now thought to be the only one alive) can be a huge bonus to cover their tracks. For instance, Section 31 could arrange for Bradward Boimler to be sent on a mission close to where William Boimler is operating, thus ensuring that any DNA or visual evidence left by William would be attributed to Bradward (causing more trouble for him on the way).
• How is it possible that Boimler owns a Mirror Archer action figure with the green uniform from "In a Mirror, Darkly"? That episode took place entirely in the Mirror Universe, how could its events have become public knowledge?
  • Clearly someone at Starfleet Command has being doing some SCIENCE in investigating the interactions with the Mirror Universe, probably since Deep Space Nine kept reporting intersections with it, and Boimler being the major Starfleet nerd that he is had heard about it. It is hinted at, since one of the training scenarios in "I Excretus" featured a Mirror-verse scenario. Clearly Starfleet is a little interested in it in some way. Starfleet has a lot of projects going on in the background which we never see, this was one of them.
  • In Discovery, the Emperor of the Terran Empire herself ended up working for Starfleet, so they probably learned about the history of the MU straight from her. The information she provided was probably classified back then, but a century later it could have become common knowledge, at least among Starfleet personnel.
• Why was it that- during Boimler's Borg Escape drill- despite getting caught by the Borg and assimilated, his simulation didn't end and he had to be broken out of his simulator holopod? Getting assimilated should've counted as a failure state.
  • Boimler's entire program is pretty divergent from the others. It's the only one that doesn't have a specific objective ("resist the Borg" is his only instruction) and, in contrast to the others, has apparently no Railroading whatsoever. I'm wondering if maybe his program was from a different category and wasn't meant to be included.
• How did Goodgey appear when the whole reason Badgey exists as a character is that he doesn't have a good side?
  • Badgey did have a good side, he was just actively repressing it out of anger and spite toward others. Rutherford brought that part of him to the surface but Badgey willed himself not accept it splitting that part off into a separate instance of his program.
• Mariner clearly has a very deliberative case of PTSD brought about from the death of her friend Ensign Sito and having to fight in the Dominion War. The Cerritos has one of the most unqualified therapists in Starfleet, and his "help" has failed to get Mariner the means to break out of her self-destructive cycle. Why does Captain Freeman not have Mariner sent to another councilor if she doesn't trust Dr. Migleemo? Surely, even in a franchise that scoots around the There Are No Therapists issue sometimes, that there would be at least someone capable of helping her over it. Hell, it's clear that Mariner knows Troi; why doesn't Freeman ask an old family friend for a favor?
  • Migleemo isn't that ineffective as a counsellor in general, it is just that all therapy is ineffective if the specific subject is non compliant. Therapy requires the subject be willing to listen and change, it requires active cooperation and participation. Sending someone to therapy is a waste of the patient's time and therapist's if the patient isn't willing to be there. Up until very recently Mariner has been completely unwilling and too closed off to be reached by a therapist, and should really have been suspended from duty until such time as she was willing to participate but her mother and father protected her from that.
• Regarding the duel in the season 4 finale, why was everyone acting like Migleemo lost badly when that fight reasonably could've been considered a draw? Not that it would've accomplished much, but it seems odd that none of the Cerritos crew tried to protest D'Erika immediately claiming victory.
  • Starfleet rules aren't Orion Rules. D'Erika did "win", but only because Migleemo was too dumb to move out of the way when his opponent fell and was crushed, thus he was unable to battle even if his opponent was knocked out— and she did "technically" fell him first. They probably didn't protest out of concern that D'Erika might have decided to just slit their throats and take their ship for being sore losers, and the last thing they wanted to happen was a diplomatic incident when they were already at risk of causing another. If D'Erika killed them all, Starfleet would have raised hell on the Orions for killing their officers, and that might have pissed off some other galactic powers in the process.
  • It could be as simple as a tie going to the defender or some other such rule. Since the crew was the one asking for the favor, that would make D'Erika's champion the defender.
• Why not put Landru in the Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage facility? It would make more sense than just leaving him on the planet to continually influence the gullible natives.
  • The Federation only does it to computers that are either from within the Federation, or where they have a treaty/permission with the planet the computer was oppressing. Clearly the Betans still value Landru, or, more likely, slip back to worshipping it before any such treaty is ever signed.