U.S.S. Cerritos (Main Characters, Beckett Mariner, Other Crewmates) | Other Starfleet Crews | Independent Characters
Lieutenant (j.g.) Beckett Mariner
"Sometimes, you have to do what's wrong to survive."
Voiced by: Tawny Newsome
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos in the command division, and the daughter of Captain Carol Freeman.
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- 10-Minute Retirement: After the events of “Trusted Sources”, where she is accused of trying to wreck the reputation of the Cerritos and is sent to Starbase 80 in punishment, she resigns her commission and takes up Petra’s offer to be an independent exoarcheologist. She ultimately realizes doing things like this isn't her thing and she belongs in Starfleet, with her returning to the Cerritos.
- The Ace: Zig Zagging. While she excels at most of the practical skills it takes to be a Starfleet officer, she has a horrible attitude and resents most authority figures. Season 2 shows that she basically has no life skills other than what's necessary to be a badass and leans into it to build an emotional wall around herself and others.
- Action Girl: Deconstruction. Beckett can throw down the best of 'em and has saved her ship time after time, but she struggles when she encounters a problem she can't punch away.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Mariner will date anyone of any gender (or species), so long as said gender has "bad" before it. This includes bad as in evil, since "ruthless alien masterminds" are on her list. This is subverted in Season 3 when it's revealed she has been "babe-ing" with Jennifer, who seems pretty far from a bad girl based on her appearances.
- Almighty Janitor: Incredibly competent at every skill applicable to being a Starfleet officer, she nevertheless prefers to be an ensign on the lower decks rather than on the bridge. When she's promoted, she is still very adept — but also incredibly miserable from all the bureaucracy required of the role.
- AM/FM Characterization: Mariner is a big fan of Klingon acid punk.
- Artistic Age: Due to the simplistic character designs she appears to be a woman in her 20's and doesn't seem much older than Boimler or the other ensigns. But her life experience and repeated demotions implies she is more than a few years older, when she meets an academy classmate who is now a captain that gave a much stronger frame of reference as to how old she should be. It wasn't until the fourth season that gave an exact timeline where she was a second-year cadet thirteen years prior (2368), which would make her between 33-36 at that point. A Match Cut with the Flash Back does manage to convey a slight difference with her younger self.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- In "Moist Vessel", she and Freeman briefly put aside their long-standing animosity and hug each other after they save the crews of the Cerritos and the Merced. When they realize that they're in an embrace, they quickly let go and pretend like nothing happened.
- Her plot in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" is all about her being desperate to keep her best friend (Boimler) safe from what she's convinced is an insidious plot by his girlfriend to kill him.
- In a backwards way, "Crisis Point" demonstrates this too. Although the real Mariner is dead-set on thrashing holo-Freeman (after violently tearing through the rest of the crew), she is thwarted when holo-Mariner beams Freeman away and holds real-Mariner off long enough to trigger the self-destruct while delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how much she really loves her mom, the ship, and Starfleet. Mariner really can't refute this as Boimler used the crew's personal logs as a template for their personalities in the program.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension:
- With Ransom in "Temporal Edict". After an intense argument, he stabs her foot with a crystal battle blade, and she finds him hot while he fights shirtless during his Trial by Combat. Amusingly, both her and Ransom are visibly disturbed by this development.
- Also implied in "First First Contact" between Beckett and Jennifer, who the former claims dreams about her every night with her "stupid little butt". She later admits that she goes out of her way to put distance between herself and the people she likes.
- Blood Knight: Deconstruction. Mariner loves having her back to the wall with a bat'leth in one hand and a phaser in the other, but she works for an organization that veers into Suicidal Pacifism more than once. In her recreational activities, she uses intensely dangerous scenarios for her calisthenics and can go from 1 to 100 on a dime in martial arts.
- Book Dumb: She has her experience and street smarts... and figures that's really all she needs.Mariner: (regarding whether she actually read a mission briefing) I skimmed almost most of it, and read some of the captions, so...
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: While Leaning on the Fourth Wall is par for the course for this show, Mariner so far appears to be the only character who outright breaks it. She mutters Khan's dialogue in her sleep; drops titles of old Trek episodes, and refers to characters from series that never made it to production. How she is able to do this is never explained.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: She knows the regulations even better than Boimler does, and she used to have a higher rank, but she just doesn't like the work or Starfleet's bureaucracy, so she's been kicked back down to ensign and has no desire to earn a promotion again.
- Broken Ace: She's incredibly competent at nearly everything she does with a wide breadth of galactic knowledge despite her young age, but she's so contemptuous of Starfleet's Vast Bureaucracy that almost no one wants to work with her (including her parents). "Much Ado About Boimler" reveals that she was actually a straight-laced student in Starfleet Academy who was predicted by her classmates to be the first among them to reach Captain, but something happened that changed her attitude. The Season 4 episode "The Inner Fight" reveals that she knew Ensign Sito Jaxa and inspired to be like her… only for her to die at the hands of Cardassians. Between that and being in the Dominion War, Mariner vowed to forever be an Ensign.
- The Bully: Mixed with Hero-Worshipper of all things. Mariner is a huge fan of the legendary James T. Kirk, even modelling her entire identity off of him, or at least his reputation that has survived the generations. This translates to little more than Becket trying to bully her way to getting whatever she wants and hiding behind her parents from consequences, something her own mother calls her out on as she points out that, while Kirk was daring, he always tried diplomacy first and had confidence in his comrades. Mariner on the other hand just turns everything into a fight and tries to push people away, something that she's forced to acknowledge in the Season 2 finale.
- Bully and Wimp Pairing: Mariner's dynamic with Boimler. At the start of the series Beckett treated Brad as little more than her ensign shaped stress ball rather than a friend and Boimler viewed Mariner as someone to escape rather than impress and earn respect from. All the while calling each other their best friend. The Deconstruction part comes in where even years into their partnership both still readily believe the worst in the other, Boimler easily seeing Mariner as someone who sells weapons or a murderous black ops agent based on rumors alone while Mariner refuses to see Boimler as anything other than a green newbie right up until he phasered her and saved both their lives from starvation.
- Butt-Monkey: Whenever Boimler isn't around to take the heat, this is what Mariner turns into. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, ranging from being part of a group that accidentally caused a war due to bringing the wrong artifact to a peace summit, to setting off a labyrinth of death traps on a collector's ship, to even being a magnet for the bridge officer's hazardous trash and literally every single dagger thrown in her vicinity while on Orion (luckily the ones after the first didn't do much extra damage because they kept hitting the same place).
- Can't Take Criticism: Mariner will tell anyone to their faces that she's always right and outright despises being disagreed with. Something her own mother, the captain, calls her out on. When she's proven wrong, Mariner will do anything possible not to admit it. Even something so small as sharing funny stories with an acquaintance sets her off, but only if she's the butt of the joke. Everyone else is fair game.
- Cerebus Retcon: Mariner's Chaotic Stupid behavior is played as her taking being a Military Maverick to a ridiculous extreme and is Played for Laughs. Season 4 places this behavior in a darker light, as it's revealed her self-destructive behavior is a deliberate attempt to stall her own career, because Mariner is a Shell-Shocked Veteran terrified of being put in the position of having to sacrifice her own men.
- Chaotic Stupid: She may have street smarts, but almost no common sense. She gets drunk on Romulan whiskey and wildly swings a bat'leth around in a corridor, raises and lowers a blast shield on a shuttlecraft rather than get work done, and fires a phaser at someone behind a force field in order to test its field strength without first making sure that her firearm is actually set to 'stun'. In every case, the recipient tends to be Boimler.
- Character Development: In Season 1, Mariner glories in being a pain in the ass to her superiors and twice sabotages herself to avoid promotion, insisting that she's a "cool, Kirk-style badass" until "Crisis Point" forces her to acknowledge that there are deeper issues motivating her behavior. Over the next two seasons, Mariner starts to repair her relationship with her mother, opens up more to her crewmates, and becomes a more reliable officer (although she's still a Military Maverick, she's a more directed one). When she gets an ultimatum to shape up or ship out, Mariner takes it seriously and ends up with a glowing performance review. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew—apart from her close Beta Shift friends—haven't forgotten her initial attitude. Ultimately, being able to leave Starfleet and do things without people telling her what to do convinces her that Starfleet is her home and she returns, even requesting Ransom to be her mentor. Unfortunately, a promotion soon afterwards causes her self-destructive tendencies to flare up, but Ma'ah helps her work through the root cause.
- Characterization Marches On: Her Establishing Character Moment in "Second Contact" has her injure Boimler while drunkenly swinging around a bat'leth. While Mariner's irresponsibility remains a consistent part of her personality, later episodes depict her as never intentionally trying to harm her fellow crewmates nor as someone who would be that reckless with a weapon.
- Commitment Issues: Implied in "Mining the Mind's Mines". When the telepathic spy-orbs start turning the Ensign's dreams into reality, Mariner's takes the form of her new Love Interest Jennifer acting seductively towards her. When they start conjuring up their nightmares, on the other hand, she is replaced by a werewolf-ized version of Jennifer who starts chasing her while talking about spending their lives together.
- Connected All Along: The show makes something of a Running Gag early on of her being rediculously well connected to various high ranking officials for someone who is supposed to be a mere ensign, though this takes a turn for the tragic in Season 4's "The Inner Fight" when it's revealed that she was a friend of the late Sito Jaxa and that the latter's death served as her Cynicism Catalyst.
- Cool Big Sis: Mixed with Big Sister Bully. Deconstruction. Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time and is qualified to be an XO or even captain of a starship but for her refusal to get promoted. Which means that for the majority of her career most or all of the co-workers on her shift are either green newbies about to leave her behind or demoted screw-ups on their way out. The few people Beckett does see as her peers refuse to see her as such. This causes Mariner to be condescending even on a good day and it takes being phasered to even register that her closest friend has grown to be her equal.
- Covered with Scars: Mariner's body is riddled with scars, according to "Temporal Edict".T'Ana: Want me to clean up those disgusting scars?
Mariner: Uh, no way. No, these are my trophies.
T'Ana: Congratulations, you look like a [bleep]ing scratching post. - Crying Wolf: Gets hit with this as part of a Deconstruction of her rebellious space-explorer persona. Having a lifelong history of blowing off orders and bucking authority not only means that her superiors will immediately look at her when things go wrong, but also won't believe her when she tries to set the record straight. When the bad track record of the Cerritos is passed on to a reporter, blame is immediately pinned on her based on her trouble-making personality and nobody's interested in what she has to say to defend herself. When her mother apologizes to her and asks why she didn't trust her, Mariner straight up admits "Maybe it's because I spent years making sure you didn't."
- Custom Uniform: Downplayed. She wears a standard-issue uniform, but with the sleeves rolled up, which Ransom points out is against regulation, and has the collar open most of the time unless she's on a mission. It shows that she'll subtly thumb her nose at authority in any way she can, while also establishing she's not afraid to do hard work and get her hands dirty.
- Cynicism Catalyst: "The Inner Fight" reveals the inciting incident that turned the promising potential captain talked about from her acadamy days to the mess we see at the start of the series was the death of her friend Sito Jaxa. This isn't helped by the fact that she also served during the Dominion War, which started a mere 3 years later.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: She once dated an Anabaj just to piss off her mother.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mariner has a dry, sarcastic sense of humor, and is willing to take cracks at most of the people on the Cerritos and others, especially her mom and the bridge crew.
- Declining Promotion: An extremely common Star Trek trope, Exaggerated and Deconstructed with her. Many Starfleet characters turn away promotions that would take them away from things they love (Kirk, Picard, Riker), but these still leave them in prestigious positions. Mariner intentionally sabotages her career so she can remain at the lowest possible rank. The problem is that what keeps her from getting promoted is that she (sometimes on purpose) instigates every situation she gets in and bucks rank. Characters who don't know how capable she is treat her like her rank suggests and blow her off as an overeager ensign, and characters who do are often too exasperated by her attitude and lack of responsibility to take her seriously. Season 4 reveals that Mariner self-sabotages herself on the belief that everyone who promotes her wants to bust her back down and she decides to give it to them. When Ransom refuses to take the bait when she's promoted to Lieutenant junior grade, she's forced to confront this. It later turns out to go deeper than that: her best friend (and inspiration) at the Academy was Sito Jaxa, who put the mistakes of her past behind her and got a posting to the Enterprise, only to be sent on a spy mission that ended in her death — and then she lived through the Dominion War, in which she lost many friends. Mariner is terrified of achieving command rank because she knows the burden that comes with it — having to send people to their deaths — and she can't bear the thought of having to do that.
- Deliberate Under-Performance: When Captain Ramsey (who may or may not be an ex) comes aboard in "Much Ado About Boimler", Mariner starts acting like a total idiot, having realized she planned on making Mariner an officer on her ship. Amira's quite pissed when she realizes this.
- Determinator: Zigzagged. While Mariner is the most intense, connected, and experienced character on the show, whenever there's not enough action or there's too much effort to a task she will call it a day. That said, if it looks like someone's in genuine trouble, she will not abandon them and try to help them to the best of her abilities. This contrasts with Fletcher, who was willing to let the ship be destroyed if it means avoiding trouble for a problem created by his attempt to slack off.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Tells Q right to his face to piss off because she (and Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi for that matter) doesn't have time for any of his "Q bullshit" at the end of a particularly rough day on the Cerritos.
- Did You Think I Can't Feel?: Comes up more than once in Season 2 because she has trouble opening up to people. Since she looks like a tough, smart-mouthed rogue, her friends don't realize when she's upset (or don't question why) until it hits a breaking point.
- Enmity with an Object: Takes an irrational hatred to the Golden Gate Bridge at the start of season 3, simply because she thinks it's pointless.
- Establishing Character Moment: Two in "Second Contact"; the first time we see her, she's drunk on Romulan ale and carelessly wielding a Klingon bat'leth. Later in the same episode, Boimler discovers she's been secretly delivering farming supplies to some impoverished Galardonians who need them, bypassing the bureaucracy so they can comfortably survive. She may be a loose cannon who doesn't care much for regulation, but she sincerely cares about helping people wherever she can.
- Every Scar Has a Story: In "Temporal Edict", she explains the history of her scars to Ransom.Mariner: See this bad boy? Tentacle guy, bunch of arms. Stabbed me with a barnacle blade. Check it out — Magus III, Nanibia Prime, Scottsdale. That was a mess. I earned every one in high-concept fights just like this one.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Mariner has been all over the galaxy, seen every quirk to every culture, and goes out of her way to be as audacious as possible when she can get a way with it. But even this rogue was outright disgusted when she realized she was holding an unwashed Caitian libido post with her bare hands.
- When Fletcher calls her out on breaking the rules all the time, Mariner retorts that it's only rules that get in the way. She'd never intentionally break the rules and deliberately endanger people (except maybe Boimler).
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Any photos or flashbacks of Mariner all have different hairstyles. Apparently she changed them whenever she was shuffled to a new assignment, and she's been reassigned a lot.
- Extreme Omnisexual: She likes her romantic/sexual partners to have the word "bad" in front of their gender (whatever it may be), but other than that everyone is fair game for her.
- Fan of the Past: Her particular fascination is with Khan, she often quotes Wrath of Khan and says he was the biggest villain the Enterprise (all five) ever faced. Hell she even escapes one holo-sim piloting a Miranda-class like Reliant and clearly models Vindicta after him.
- First-Episode Spoiler: It's revealed at the end of the pilot that Captain Freeman is her mother.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Well, her current friends like her, but Mariner has a long history of pissing people off, so any time we see her talking to old contacts, they do stuff like charge her double for a repair job or try to trick her into being arrested for carrying contraband. Even as-is, the main reason she's still on good terms with her current group of friends is because of her Character Development, which has led to Mariner being more able to admit her mistakes with them, show her vulnerable side, and listen when they put their foot down with her.
- The Friends Who Never Hang:
- Given a hefty Lampshade Hanging in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", where she and Tendi go on a 'girl's trip' together, and Tendi points out they've not had solo adventures together. Through the course of the episode, it turns out they've hung out so little Mariner can't even remember Tendi's first name, or even that she has a first name.
- Mariner and Rutherford didn't have a solo adventure together until season 4's "A Few Badgeys More", and even then only because Boimler and Tendi were both off-ship on their own mission together.
- Give Geeks a Chance: Non-romantic version, probably. When Mariner and the rest of Shax's search team were captured by Ferengi poachers, the moment that Boimler and Rutherford showed up to negotiate their freedom Mariner happily announced 'those beautiful nerdy men' were saving them all with the power of math.
- Gender-Blender Name: Beckett is a unisex name, so, on its own, it's difficult to tell the character's gender.
- Going Commando: This appears to be Mariner's default. As while we've seen her wearing underwear in the first episode, she considers the simple fact of putting on underwear enough of a reason to power through station security and threaten criminals. Indicating that, aside from field missions, Mariner usually just wears the Starfleet uniform and nothing else.
- Has a Type: As she says in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", it's bad boys, bad girls, and bad gender non-binary people. In a physical appearance sense, she's had an immediate reaction to characters with big muscles on multiple occasions on screen.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?: While Mariner has claimed to have been with everything from outright villains, to gender nonbinary babes, to borderline Eldritch Abominations, she's never actually been seen dating anyone. The only confirmed person Mariner has dated was Captain Amina Ramsey, and that was back in their academy days, along with one awful date with a Conspiracy Theorist on the Cerritos a year before the series started. Averted in Season 3, where she's in a relationship with her former Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
- He Is Not My Boyfriend: With Boimler. They both claim that they're nothing more than friends, though Mariner can come off as possessive due to her own past trauma (like the time she saw a colleague get devoured by her boyfriend.) All the same, while this trope often serves as cover for Belligerent Sexual Tension, Mariner really is upset seeing Brad in any sort of sexual situation and even professes at one point to view him more as a pet than anything else. And the thought of other people finding Brad attractive makes her dump an entire bottle of alcohol in her glass.
- Hypocrite:
- Is greatly annoyed that the senior officers do not treat her as a peer when she butts heads with them, despite the fact that the only reason that she is still an ensign is because she actively resists promotion.
- Also says repeatedly that the reason she hid that she was the captain's daughter was to avoid special treatment, and how much she dislikes her superiors trying to kiss up to Freeman by using her a proxy. At the same time, the only reason she wasn't kicked out of Starfleet years ago was because of her connections, and a major reason she hates the idea of her Mom being transferred to another ship is because she knows another captain won't give her anywhere close to as much leeway.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time. Because of that and how crew members are moved around every couple of years to new posts and positions, Beckett has never had a friend longer than a term of service on a starship, or even less when they're promoted and get transferred even faster. It's gotten to the point that Mariner even thinks it's better not to make friends in the first place than to lose them, making her one of the loneliest crew members on the Cerritos if not all of Starfleet. The fact that her own mother, the captain, can barely stand to be around her does not help.
- Improperly Paranoid: “I Have No Bones, Yet I Must Flee” suggests that Mariner’s seemingly eternal promotion-demotion dance is this: whenever Mariner gets a promotion, she becomes convinced that, in secret, they’re looking to turn around and bust her down, so she decides to give it to them. Ransom realizes this and refuses to play Mariner’s game, forcing her into a Heel Realization.
- Internal Reformist: The first season finale has her becoming one, with her deciding to work together with her mother to help pull Starfleet out of its Lawful Stupid Obstructive Bureaucrat policies that allow for stuff like the Pakleds becoming a Not-So-Harmless Villain. While the alliance ends rather quickly next season when Mariner and Freeman realize how much they hate working together, Mariner will continue to try and find loopholes for said policies to help people.
- Jabba Table Manners: She's a messy eater. In "Envoys", she spills broth all over the shuttlecraft's consoles while enjoying a noodle soup.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She might be an obnoxious prick with an almost pathological inability to follow the rules, but sincerely cares about both Starfleet and her crewmates, and is furiously dedicated to doing the right thing.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Mariner is abrasive and obnoxious, but it's hard to deny that she's dead on about a lot of Starfleet's failings. Alongside Freeman, she's one of the only people to note that Starfleet's habit of leaving planets behind after dealing with the problem of the week will inevitably cause massive problems in the future - which becomes a frightening reality when the Pakleds graduate into being Not So Harmless Villains.
- Kicked Upstairs: In "Moist Vessel", Ransom and Freeman try to make her transfer by assigning her terrible duties, but Mariner finds a way to make them all fun. What does make her miserable? Being promoted back to Lieutenant with all the bureaucratic busywork and agonizing social events that entails.
- The Last DJ: She's been in Starfleet for a surprisingly long time, and it's implied (later confirmed) she's been both promoted and demoted several times. She's got a strong sense of her own convictions and is extremely competent when she applies herself, but her laziness when she doesn't care and a general disdain for authority have severely limited her career advancement (which is a state she seems perfectly content with). None of the people who are her peers by age and experience have much respect for the insubordinate ensign with the sloppy uniform.
- Last-Name Basis: Almost everyone just calls her Mariner. The only people who ever call her Beckett are her parents, and even Carol only uses it as a First-Name Ultimatum.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Mariner descends into this whenever things need solving right now, but it's really telling in the last half of Season 4 as her PTSD sends her into more and more dangerous antics that confuse and worry everyone.
M-W
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The masculine girl to Boimler's feminine boy.
- Meaningful Name: "Mariner" is another word for sailor, and Starfleet's basic command structure was inspired by the U.S. Navy. It also helps that any Federation starship is essentially a submarine in space. This adds some extra Fridge Brilliance to her first scene where she's wasted on Romulan ale; she's a drunken sailor.
- Military Maverick: Mariner will always disobey whatever order she's given, whether it be out of a genuine desire to do good or just for fun. It's deconstructed, as it's shown to be self-destructive and it's pointed out she's sabotaged her own career. It's eventually revealed that Mariner's rebelliousness is because she was so traumatized by her service in the Dominion War that she deliberately sabotages herself to avoid being placed in a command position and having to sacrifice her own men.
- Motor Mouth: She tends to talk a light-year a minute. Lampshaded when time traveling to the much more sedately-paced Strange New Worlds.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Mariner is a born warrior with no patience for paperwork and a strong distaste for anything sentimental. Naturally she's in a quasi-military that focuses on peace, bureaucracy, and cultural artifacts. Don't even get her started on Earth, which Mariner thinks is the most boring and dumb place in the galaxy.
- Nepotism: While she definitely earned her way into Starfleet, her insubordinate attitude would have gotten her kicked out if it had not been for her family connections. Since her captain mother and admiral father don't want to have a washout for a daughter, her punishments are limited to demotion and brig time (which don't bother her anyway). While she resents being coddled and even considered transfer herself at one point, she does accept the protection of being on Freeman's ship. Subverted in her mother tells her that she and her father will not longer cover for her, and that from now on her being a member of Starfleet will be Ransom's call.
- Nonuniform Uniform: Among all the crew, she's the only one who wears her uniform with the sleeves rolled up. She also frequently has her uniform flap open, when she can get away with it.
- Noodle Incident: As the oldest and most experienced of the lower deckers, her backstory is full of unexplained incidents, including the matter of how she got demoted and transferred off the Quito. She also appears to have an equal amount of apparently random intergalactic connections who either owe her a favor, or who bear an undying grudge against her.
- Not Helping Your Case: When a Federation reporter comes onto the Cerritos, her attitude sours after an encounter with Mariner. Everyone confronts her about it, but all Mariner does is get defensive and say she told the reporter "the truth", rather than outlining exactly what she told her, leading it to look like Mariner torpedoed the ship's reputation. It later turns out Mariner did nothing of the sort; she was the only one praising the ship, while everyone else made themselves look like idiots. Afterwards, however, Mariner admits her mom had good reason not to trust her given Mariner's spent most of her life making sure she didn't.
- Not So Above It All:
- Mariner loves everything about being in Starfleet, but has cultivated a Military Maverick attitude and "cool" image that makes her reluctant to admit she gets excited about the same stuff that her fellow ensigns do—like the sight and sound of the warp core, or foraging off the bridge crew's conference snacks during cleanup.
- After she and Boimler get zapped back to the 2260s in "Those Old Scientists", Mariner turns out to be as much of a nerd over the Enterprise crew as he, geeking out over the chance to meet Uhura.
- She does the same in Twovix when discovering that she's beaming down to the Voyager.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Mariner will go to some lengths to keep herself from adding another pip. She's actually qualified to be the XO of a starship, and her old Academy friend tries to get Mariner to be hers, so Mariner pretends to be a flake until an actual crisis forces her to stop. She also has no problem calling herself a Federation dog to get information from a Klingon and gets herself demoted from lieutenant by embarrassing Freeman in front of an admiral.
- Older Than They Look: Or at least, older than she acts. Her flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" showed that she was already in Starfleet by the time of the events of TNG's "Descent"note , putting her at least in her mid-thirties during the events of the show. "Old Friends, New Planets" opens with a flashback to her days at Starfleet Academy 13 years ago, shortly before the events of "The First Duty" in 2368, placing the current date at 2381 and Mariner somewhere north of 30.note Considering that Tendi was fresh from the Academy, putting her in her early 20s, and Boimler and Rutherford are implied to be not much older than her, the "Intergenerational Friendship" trope starts coming into play as well. And of course none of this is visually communicated because of the stylized animation. (What's really odd is that Locarno, who appears during the flashback and then in the present day has well, has visibly aged, something Mariner has managed to resist doing.)
- Out of Focus: Downplayed, as she remains the lead character, but she is much more clearly the main protagonist in Season 1 than in Season 2, which focuses more on the ensemble and makes Boimler and his arc more prominent, both at her expense. Although she gets a new arc in season 3, she still has to share focus with Boimler (again), Rutherford, Tendi, and even her own mother Captain Freeman, all of whom get their own arcs as well. Averted in season 4, which focuses much more on her character development at the expense of most other characters (most notably Boimler) except for Tendi and T'Lyn.
- Percussive Therapy: Mariner has issues. Severe issues, all stemming from severe PTSD caused by going into a horrific war within half a decade of a friend she idolized dying on an espionage mission. But because of the emotional walls and reputation she's built for herself over the years, not to mention the incompetent therapist assigned to her ship, Beckett has no one to talk to about them right up until the breaking point. The only time Mariner has any kind of breakthrough is when there's some kind of physical catharsis. She only makes progress on her issues during an action-filled holodeck simulation or a mission that's gone south—during which time everyone around her is preoccupied with terror, disgust, and/or survival. By the beginning of the second season, we see that she's made this her hobby. Regular workouts are too boring so she stages Cardassian prison breaks in the Holodeck while spilling her guts to an interrogator about her personal problems. It seems to work better than talking to Migleemo...
- Permission to Speak Freely: When she asks this in "Temporal Edict", Ransom points out that nobody can stop her from speaking freely.
- Platonic Life-Partners: What Mariner insists she and Boimler are. Though to everyone else it looks like they're dating. Even Tendi, a close friend of hers on the same shift, thinks the two practically share the same bunk.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: While playing the villain in the holodeck movie in "Crisis Point", she casts Tendi as a character that amounts to a stereotype of her species which seriously upsets her causing her to leave. While she apologizes at the end of the episode, she still doesn't see a whole lot wrong with casually referencing the stereotypes of other species in the galaxy, or sometimes even exploiting them for her own ends.
- Properly Paranoid: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", she goes off the deep end a bit when she finds out Boimler is dating a woman who seems way out of his league and spends the entire episode trying to unmask Barb. It turns out she is right to suspect the relationship, but her focus was on the wrong half of the couple.
- Psychological Projection: Mariner has issues. A lot of them, and whenever she runs into something she doesn't like she immediately attaches it to those issues. Even people and things Mariner does like, she attaches stuff she doesn't like about herself to them, something Beckett awkwardly admits when she asks out her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
- Rank Up:
- Promoted to Lieutenant (full Lieutenant - that's two pips on her collar) in "Moist Vessel", incensing Boimler, as part of a plot by Freeman to convince her wayward daughter to resign or request a transfer. She is busted back down to Ensign at the end of that episode after mocking an Admiral's pronunciation of the word "sensors".
- She is promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in the first episode of season 4, despite her objections. We subsequently learn in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee" that she has been promoted, and then demoted again, a dozen times in the course of her Starfleet career, with Ransom saying he's going to make sure that this promotion will be the one that sticks.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red to Boimler's Blue, being carefree and insubordinate compared to his desire to stick to the rules and not rock the boat.
- Reformed, but Rejected: In Season 3, Mariner takes her last chance in Starfleet seriously and it seemed that she was doing much better. However, when a reporter seemingly changes her tune around Captain Freeman after an encounter with Mariner, she stands accused of ruining the ship’s reputation and, heartbroken, resigns after she is transferred to Starbase 80.
- Rejection Projection: Mariner has this tendency.
- After treating Boimler like crap for much of the first season (albeit, what she regarded as a Vitriolic Best Buds friendship), she gets pissed when he accepts a transfer to the Titan, calling him a "backstabbing little weasel" and threatening him with bodily harm. She's still mad at him come Season 2, but after he gets transferred back to the Cerritos they talk things out and make up.
- This also applies to Mariner's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, Jennifer the Andorian. Mariner has a crush on her, which manifests in one-sided Belligerent Sexual Tension, which causes Jen to dislike her, which leads to Mariner disliking her back.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Mixed with When All You Have Is a Hammer…. Mariner is a fighter. Possibly the best on the Cerritos, though she can be overpowered. The problem is that she has no other skills. When Beckett runs into a problem she can't punch away, she makes more problems that she can solve, leaving her teammates and commanders to fix the original problem and clean up her mess along with it. This is best shown in "Grounded", as Mariner almost destroyed the careers of the entire main cast while Starfleet brass had already resolved the conflict of the episode in spite of Becketts's actions instead of because of them.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Her character in a nutshell, and at least part of the reason why she has been demoted so many times. By the time of "Crisis Point", this is Deconstructed as she's seen as nothing more than a loose cannon by her own mother and is sent to therapy for it. This gets so bad that, by the time of “Grounded”, she’s willing to pull crimes in the name of “being right”.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Mariner was fresh out of Starfleet Academy when the Dominion War kicked off, which scarred her terribly. However, Starfleet openly refuses to see itself as a military and its personnel as soldiers, resulting in them not noticing obvious signs of PTSD in Dominion War veterans. Ma'ah, a Klingon who was too young to fight in the war, spots it immediately. In one conversation, the life long warrior did more for Mariner's issues than over a decade of Starfleet service.
- Ship Tease: Mariner can generate this in prolific amounts:
- With Ransom in "Temporal Edict", leading to a now-infamous case of Belligerent Sexual Tension.
- With Captain Amina Ramsey in "Much Ado About Boimler".
Word of God even confirms that it was left deliberately ambiguous as to whether they are platonic friends or Amicable Exes, with Mike McMahan apparently favouring the latter explanation. - With Jennifer after they resolve their Sitcom Arch-Nemesis feud in the Season 2 finale.
- Slave to PR: Deconstruction and something she inherited from her mother, the captain, though in the opposite way. Beckett has been in Starfleet most of her life and is fully qualified to take command if her mother is incapacitated. Mariner also has a strong desire to stay where she is and refuses promotion. The problem is to do that she must be viewed as a loose cannon to anyone that can promote her. Which means staged accidents, mistakes, embarrassing stories, borderline catastrophes, and of course open insubordination to superiors. All of which reflect bad on friends and family alike, which pushes them away and isolates Beckett more and more over time.
- Spoiled Brat: Her main problem and glaring flaw. Beckett Mariner is Starfleet royalty in all but name. By her parents own admission they have covered for, excused, and protected her from any form of consequence. Because of that Mariner has nothing but open contempt for the rules and regulations, breaking them even when following procedure is in her best interest. This led to her developing a major case of arrogance and entitlement and prevents her from learning her lesson and overcoming her many issues, let alone being a better member of Starfleet. Deconstructed in that it has done nothing but cause trouble at best and put people in danger at worst, ultimately landing her in a 'shape up or ship out' with the person who hates her the most.
- Stepford Snarker: Mariner is abrasive, sardonic, and very prone to disobeying orders seemingly for the fun of it. All this belies that her self-destructive behavior is borne from her PTSD from her time serving in the Dominion War.
- Street Smart: Combined with Taught by Experience. She doesn't care much for studying, but she can handle herself competently in almost every situation, largely because of these two tropes.
- Tantrum Throwing: Frustrated with her mom's apparent treatment by Starfleet and her own helplessness in doing anything about it, she spends a lot of time in her dad's apartment throwing his potted plants at things to relieve her stress. Including the TV.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Beckett chooses good. And like most things with Mariner, deconstructed. Beckett has a strong drive to help people, from random locals on the planets her ship visits, her fellow crewmates, to even people that have crossed her- though the latter only to an extent. The problem is that she chooses to do all this under the radar because Mariner can't stand going through the rings of bureaucracy to do it legally, which means no one aside from a select few know why Mariner breaks so many rules. So most of Starfleet views Mariner as little more than a spoiled brat that keeps getting in trouble for the sheer fun of it. Even Boimler at first is fully willing to believe that Mariner is selling weapons than helping farmers before they're let in.
- Too Much Alike: With her mother, the captain. They're both committed to helping people, but they have a strong need to be in charge of whatever group they're working in. When they have to work together personally, they immediately start butting heads until Freeman pulls rank. This comes to a head in "Strange Energies" where the two are forced to admit that they just can't work together on a regular basis.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: She's the tomboy (sassy, forceful Action Girl) to Tendi's Girly Girl (naïve, sweet-natured cutie).
- Took a Level in Kindness: Over the course of the series, Mariner slowly works on improving her behavior and treating the people around her better. While still somewhat acerbic, by the end of Season 3 she's much more amicable and accepting of her loyalty to Starfleet, contrasting greatly with her cavaliere and reckless attitude at the beginning of the series.
- Toxic Friend Influence: She encourages her lower decks friends — typically Boimler — to do things the non-Starfleet-approved way, which she insists is better and more fun in spite of all the chaos.
- Trauma Button: Overly-perfect romantic partners... because the last time her good friend Angie got eaten by one. (It's still Played for Laughs.)
- Tuckerization: Mariner is named for creator Mike McMahan's sister, Beckett Mariner McMahan.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: "Old Friends, New Planets" shows that back when she was in the Academy, Mariner was just as eager as Boimler was in the first season, wanting to explore the cosmos and looking up to her senior student Sito Jaxa. Unfortunately, the combination of Sito's death as an ensign and the trauma fighting in the Dominion War had broken her into the self-destructive Military Maverick she was at the start of Lower Decks.
- Unaffected by Spice: In "Grounded", she dumps at least half a bottle of 17,000,000 Scoville hot sauce (1,000,000 higher than pure capsaicin) into her food, and after tasting it casually remarks that it has a "nice little kick". A little dash of the stuff was enough to make Boimler pass out after about 30 seconds.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: She's deliberately disrespectful to her superior officers (including her own mother who even tries to force Mariner into requesting a transfer in "Moist Vessel"), and she frequently jibes and emasculates Boimler. This is taken up to eleven in "Crisis Point", where she uses the holodeck to roleplay as a villain and kills the entire crew, dead-set on killing her mother. As she starts working on her issues over the course of the first season, she tones this down and begins to treat Boimler as a real friend.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Inverted. Though her stated preference is bad anything, she used to be in a relationship with Captain Ramsey and has Belligerent Sexual Tension with Ransom, both of whom are far more by-the-book than her.
- Vague Age: For the first three seasons, although it's made clear that Mariner is considerably older than the other main characters, we aren't told how much older. It's finally revealed in the season 4 finale that she had been a first-year cadet in 2368, which was thirteen years earlier, making her approximately 31 years old (assuming that a first-year cadet is meant to be the same age as your typical college freshman, and that she entered the Academy as soon as she was able).
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Reconstruction, and surprisingly not with Boimler but with her mother and captain- Carol Freeman. These two have so much in common it's downright scary sometimes, for both of them. They have been forced to admit that they can't work together personally on a regular basis because they constantly end up fighting inevitably each time. While they avoid each other when they can, the few times they share their off time together isn't much different. The reconstruction part comes in that is these two actually do enjoy spending time with someone who shares their interests, history, and on equal footing when off the clock, something exceptionally rare for the both of them.
- We Help the Helpless: In "Second Contact", it initially appears from her suspicious behavior that she's selling Federation weapons, but in fact she was giving agricultural tools to two Galardonian farmers who desperately need them.
- Workout Fanservice: She's shown in her workout clothes at least once a season, potentially invoking this.
Tropes that apply to Mariner in Strange New Worlds
Portrayed By: Tawny Newsome
The Military Maverick daughter of the Cerritos captain Carol Freeman, Mariner has a rebellious streak that she is learning to temper.- Closet Geek: She's more of a fan of old starships than she lets on. Despite her protests, Boimler claims she was the first in the door to the Fleet Museum.
- Fangirl: Of Uhura. She's a bit disappointed to see that Uhura's more of a workaholic than the fun-loving badass the future knows her as.
