Recap / Star Trek: Lower Decks S2E02 "Kayshon, His Eyes Open"

Following Shaxs' heroic demise, the Cerritos needs a new chief security officer and receives one in the form of Kayshon, Starfleet's first Tamarian officer. The Cerritos is then tasked with doing inventory on a Collector's Guild vessel, with Kayshon being assigned to lead a team consisting of Mariner, Tendi, Rutherford, and Jet. Things quickly head downhill when a trap transforms Kayshon into a puppet and leaves the ensigns to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, Boimler finds himself tiring of the constant action on the Titan due to being overwhelmed by the much more stressful and high-danger environment on a frontline ship.

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Tropes:

• The Ace: Zigzagged. While on a mission to help catalogue a "Collector's Ship", Mariner, Tendi, Rutherford, and Jet all get trapped by some killer security systems pretty quickly. Mariner sees Jet as a rival for being the dominant, "cool" member of the group, and so she predictably acts like she’s in charge until things go horribly wrong. Ironically, it was neither Mariner nor Jet that solve the problem, but Tendi and Rutherford.
• Air Vent Escape: Rutherford and Tendi combine their knowledge to break into the engineering ducts on the Collector's ship, bypassing the trapped galleries entirely.
• Aliens Speaking English: Lt. Kayshon is a Tamarian, and, while he does use metaphors, he is more-or-less fluent in Federation Standard and thus can speak normally with the crew, with only occasional lapses.
• Asshole Victim: Siggi is rude to the ensigns and racist to Tendi, constantly calling her "Orion" and trying to pin the defense system activation on her when he was the one who stole something.
• Attack Pattern Alpha:
  Riker: Mr. Boimler, Attack Pattern Delta! Target the aft shields!
• Body Horror: Kayshon's body contorts uncomfortably before becoming a puppet.
• Boring, but Practical: Boimler realizes that he doesn't like the constant action of the Titan, and appreciates the more mundane missions of the Cerritos; it comes with more exploring and downtime, and concerts!
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: The Titan away team all initially seem like stone-cold badasses, but Boimler eventually gets them to admit that they joined Starfleet to be nerdy Science Heroes.
• Bus Crash: Spock 2, the gigantic clone of Spock created back in TAS's "The Infinite Vulcan", apparently died long ago enough prior to this episode that all that remains of him is his bones. Though given how the Phylosian cloning and mind-transfer was explained to work in that story, there's a good chance that he cloned himself into Spock 3 at some point, with his previous body somehow being acquired by Hauze.
• Call-Back:
  • Kayshon is a Tamarian, the species that speaks in nothing but metaphors from "Darmok". Universal translators can now mostly translate Tamarian metaphors to Federation standard and back, but there are some lapses.
    Kayshon: Rapunki, when he joined the seven. ... Ah, sorry. The universal translator doesn't always— what I meant was, uh, it is my honor, Captain.
  • It's mentioned how someone tried to collect Data.
  • Boimler recalls how Riker was duplicated by the transporter, and ends up suffering the same fate.
  • As Boimler leaves his transporter duplicate and Riker together, the latter asks the computer to play "Night Bird". In the same episode where Riker met his duplicate, Troi asked Riker to play this during a performance in Ten-Forward (because she knew that he had never made it through the solo).
  • Among the collection of skeletons is a giant humanoid skeleton wearing the tattered remains of a TOS-era science officer's uniform. This is most likely the remains of Spock 2 from "The Infinite Vulcan" and fake space Lincoln who still had the spear sticking through him from "The Savage Curtain".
  • Also among the collection is a game headset from "The Game".
  • Boimler praised the Enterprise-D for fighting the Borg, and mentions that they "insurrected". The first officer counters that they had string quartets.
• The Cameo: Migleemo appears in two scenes, but is merely there to set up or deliver the punchline for jokes.
• Clone Angst: Played for laughs with Boimler's transport clone. When Boimler returns to the Titan and sees he was accidentally transporter cloned, his clone remarks "I'm the transporter clone? Boo." He doesn't seem to mind afterwards though, when he gets to stay on the Titan while the original is transferred back to the Cerritos.
• Collector of the Strange: The Collector's Guild is an entire guild of people who collect random crap and fill their ships with museums' worth of miscellaneous exotica and with elaborate deathtraps for would-be robbers.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Boimler makes a note of Riker's puppet analogy, then writes down another note about Riker telling him that he doesn't need to write that down.
  • When trying to break down a door, the Pakleds say that they need the saw. However, instead of using it as intended, they just beat it against the door until it breaks.
• Description Cut:
  • Just like last episode, Tendi assumes that Boimler's having a great time on the Titan. Cut to Boimler once again freaking out during a battle with the Pakleds.
  • After being told by Starfleet command that she micromanages too much, she trusts that Lt. Kayshon is doing a fine job. Cut to the away team, specifically Kayshon being cradled as a puppet.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Kayshon is a Tamarian, a species encountered in the TNG episode "Darmok" whose species talks exclusively in metaphors and was impossible for the concurrent Universal Translator to parse out (everything was contextual based on the story being referenced, so others could understand nouns, verbs and adjectives but came across as unrelated phrases). Kayshon quickly reveals that he can speak English, but he frequently stumbles on certain terms and defaults to a Tamarian metaphor.
• "Eureka!" Moment: While telling the rest of the away team about Riker's transporter clone, Boimler figures out how to beam them back to the Titan.
• Fantastic Racism: Siggi initially blames Tendi for setting off the security, due to her being an Orion. Instead, he was the one who stole something all along.
• Fire-Forged Friendship: Boimler forms this with the rest of his away team. They initially talk like epic adventures and phaser battles are all that matters in Starfleet, and dismiss Riker's old adventures while he was on the Enterprise as "boring". When they prepare to make their Last Stand against the Pakleds, though, Boimler confesses how he joined Starfleet to be an explorer rather than an adventurer, and he loves the old adventures that Riker had because, even if they weren't as cool as the stuff that the crew on the Titan does, it is still Starfleet. This honesty touches his teammates, who reminisce about their own humble reasons for joining Starfleet and thank Boimler for reminding them that there is more to being in Starfleet than just kicking ass.
• Forced Transformation: Kayshon gets turned into a doll by the defense system on the Collector's ship. (He gets better by the end of the episode.)
• Gender Is No Object: The guys and gals of Beta Shift shower naked together with no hint of discomfort. Boimler apparently had reservations, but these were more due to a general discomfort with public nudity than anything else.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: After ordering fire on the rear of the Pakled ship, Riker says, "Let's see how they react to their aft hanging out." While aft is the correct term for the back end of the ship, the way this sentence is phrased sounds like it was meant to be "their ass hanging out".
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's mentioned that the Pakleds may be working on behalf of someone else, as their recent string of thefts have targeted materials that they cannot use themselves and have been using weapons and tactics beyond their normal capabilities.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: When Riker tells the Boimlers that he can only keep one and has to send the other back to the Cerritos as an Ensign, the real Boimler is tricked into going back when he believes that he and his clone would happily try to fight for whoever would go back. Instead, the clone ends up staying back when the real steps forward, and suggests changing his first name to "William".
• Hope Spot: After Siggi is crushed under the giant skeletal remains of Spock 2, Tendi gives a halfhearted suggestion that Kahless' helmet protected him. The skull then crashes down, all but confirming his death.
• Hyperspeed Escape: The Titan sends a Pakled ship retreating with a barrage of phasers and photon torpedoes.
• Hypocrite: The Collector's Guild representative harps on the crew about not stealing anything, only to snag Kahless's fornication helmet for himself when no one was looking.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Freeman decides to prove that she doesn't micro-manage by refusing to check up on the away team, assuming that they can handle things. When the escape pods are launched and Rutherford and Tendi reveal what happened to Kayshon, she takes this as proof that she should have been micro-managing to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Kerner Hauze boobytrapped his collection so that anyone who tried to plunder it for the more valuable items would become part of it — namely, by using some kind of energy beam to turn them into a hand puppet.
• Macho Masochism: Mariner and Jet try to one-up each other by dialing up the intensity of the sonic showers, eventually causing nosebleeds while everyone else flees.
• Mission Briefing: Riker leads a discussion regarding the Pakled attacks and the plan to infiltrate a mining colony.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Freeman mentions that numerous members of the Collector's Guild have tried to acquire Commander Data. Exactly how many attempts have been made and what happened each time is not elaborated on.
  • T'Ana says that this isn't the first time that someone's been turned into a doll under her care.
• No OSHA Compliance: Apparently, sonic showers can be set so high as to cause nosebleeds.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: We never see how the other Boimler managed to escape the Pakleds and get the shuttlecraft off the planet, all before the Titan warps away.
• Pixellation: The sonic showers helpfully vibrate everything in the midsection so it's all a blur.
• Puppet Permutation: Kayshon becomes a hand puppet during the episode.
• Seen It All: Transporter clones have apparently become somewhat more common since Riker first experienced the phenomenon. Starfleet now has protocols in place for it, and Rutherford even wins a bet that Boimler will return because of a cloning situation, much to Tendi's annoyance.
• Self-Deprecation: Rutherford notes that Jet has two pips on his collar at the end of the episode. He responds that it's just a corn kernel, and if it appears that someone has the wrong rank, it's because someone has corn on their collar. This is a response to some crew members having different ranks in different episodes of the season without it being mentioned.
• Sherlock Scan: One of the miners quickly outs Boimler as Starfleet because his hands are far too soft.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: Jet and Mariner sort of reflect this type of conflict, with Mariner being the slob (goofing off on the mission) and Jet being the snob (doing things by the book). In the end, neither of them were fit to lead, and they deferred to Tendi's and Rutherford's idea.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When Freeman expresses sympathy to Siggi, he snaps that Hauze wasn't his friend and his collection was far inferior to Siggi's own. It turns out that everyone in the Collector's Guild hates each other and are engaged in a constant war of one-upsmanship.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When Hauze's security system activates, Mariner suggests heading down to the reactor through the various bobby-trapped galleries so they can deactivate it. Jet instead suggests that they go to the escape pods, which are half the distance and carry less risk of death. As he points out, it's not their job to fix the problem, just survive it. Carried even further when Tendi and Rutherford ultimately suggest taking the engineering ducts to avoid the booby-trapped galleries altogether.
• Status Quo Is God: Starfleet doesn't allow duplicates to serve on the same ship, so one Boimler gets demoted and sent back to the Cerritos.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: At the start, it seems like Jet is going to be one to Boimler, as he's very by-the-book. However, this quickly gets subverted as he starts challenging Mariner in nearly everything.
• Take That!:
  • At the end of the episode, when the lower deckers ask him what the Titan was like, Boimler deadpans "It was a bunch of complex characters thrown into heavily serialized battles, which always ended in mind-blowing twists which made me question the basic tenets of my reality." You can read the line as Lower Decks poking fun at the season-long plot structures of its sister shows Discovery and Picard.
  • A subtle one is also delivered to the Actionized Sequel nature of the TNG movies, with the other Titan officers mocking the Enterprise-D's carrying families, its more scientific and exploratory mission profile, and the officers taking time out to do things like perform concerts. However, Boimler later reminds them that science and exploration have always been Starfleet's main priorities, and in a subsequent scene, Riker all but confirms that he has much fonder memories of his time aboard the Enterprise-D than he does of the Enterprise-E, which was much more of an out-and-out warship than its predecessor.
• Taking the Bullet: When the holo-message is about to shoot a beam at Tendi and Siggi, Kayshon pushes them both out of the way and gets hit instead.
• Teleporter Accident: Boimler is cloned by the transporter, similar to the incident that cloned Riker.
• Tempting Fate: Mariner scoffs at the Roombas turning hostile, sarcastically asking if they'll suck them to death. When one grabs her face hard enough to leave a bruise, she realizes that they'll do exactly that.
• Toy Transmutation: New security chief Kayshon get turned into a hand puppet during his first away mission.
• The Worf Effect: Kayshon is the only officer to be hit by the collection's security system (but only because he took the hit to protect Tendi, as per his job).

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