Deconstructs Action Girl. Beckett Mariner can throw down the best of them and has saved her ship time after time, but whenever Mariner meets a problem her reaction- her only reaction- is to do 'actiony space adventurer' stuff to it. But when she runs into a problem that she can't punch away, she has nothing to fall back on.
Deconstructs Allergic to Routine. Beckett Mariner hates doing things by the book, preferring to do things her own way and only adhering to protocol when it's an absolutely necessary safety measure. As a lower decker, with few eyes on her, this isn't really a problem. But when put into positions of command or even increased attention Beckett seems to be incapable of staying within the lines even when doing so is in her best interest. Best shown in 'I, Excretus' when Mariner was put in her mother's position as ship's captain. Beckett failed each and every simulation because she couldn't stick to the rules or follow protocol, even managing to make the worst score on record by getting into a fight with her mother instead of focusing on landing the ship.
Deconstructs Blood Knight. Beckett Mariner loves action. She loves combat. Having her back to the wall with a bat'leth in one hand and a phaser in the other. But the problem is that she works in an organization whose desire for peace occasionally borders on the suicidal. Showing that this is just another line of isolation for her as whenever someone chooses to spar with Becket in the holodeck Mariner goes from 1 to a 100 on a dime. It's later shown that the only reason Beckett is so good at martial arts is because she considers it a sport that she can do by herself as she never has any friends who share her interest in action.
Deconstructs Bully and Wimp Pairing with Beckett Mariner's dynamic with Brad 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: Brad easily seeing Mariner as someone who sells weapons or is a murderous black ops agent; Mariner refusing to see Boimler as anything other than a naive green newbie right up until he phasered her and saved both their lives.
Deconstructs Cool Big Sis. Beckett 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.
Deconstructs Percussive Therapy. It's no secret that Beckett Mariner has... issues. 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, either through simulations on the holodeck or field missions that spiral out of control. Whenever someone stumbles onto or gets dragged into these periods they're either horrified, disgusted, or outright insulted by how over the top violent and twisted the situation is. Yet it's through these periods of intense danger and action that Mariner can make any progress on her issues and admit to things she's been hiding from herself. She's finally starting to get past this toward the end of Season 2, but we'll see if it sticks.
Deconstructs Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!. Beckett Mariner's 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.
Deconstructs Slave to PR. Deconstruction and something Beckett Mariner 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 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.
Deconstructs Military Maverick. As she believes Starfleet is too slow and lost in its bureaucracy, Mariner will go out of her way and stop at nothing to make things better, regulations or the Prime Directive be damned. However, by the time of "Grounded", this has gotten to the point where she believes her own mother would be treated as a scapegoat, thus she would go so far as to attempt to steal the Cerritos to find evidence to save her. However, for all of her paranoia, Starfleet had everyone's best interests and all it did was get her in serious hot water. This reaches a boiling point in "Trusted Sources". Mariner seeks an interview with a reporter covering with the Cerritos in spite of her mother's strict directions, and Freeman blames Mariner for the reporter's attitude changing from positive to critical. Even though Mariner is not at fault this time, her long history of disrespect and recalcitrance means that almost no one in the crew is inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, and stand by as Mariner is transferred to Starbase 80.
D'Vana Tendi Deconstructs Determinator. Much like Boimler, when she gets an idea in her head she will not stop until she does it. The problem is when this happens it always results in more danger, bodily harm, and unnecessary complications than are necessary. Ranging from hunting friends down to remove body parts, to visiting violent pirate dens, to even willingly cracking open her own limbs.
Capt Carol Freeman Deconstructs Slave to PR. Something she has passed down to her daughter, though in the more traditional way. Capt. Carol Freeman is fundamentally a good person, but she is ambitious and a glory hound with a strong desire to advance her career. While this is very much expected in a quasi-military organization like Starfleet, the problem is that Capt. Freeman has shown on many occasions a willingness to endanger her ship, her crew, and even her own life just for the chance of increasing her standing in Starfleet, only to be snubbed each and every time.
Much like Mariner's Military Maverick tendencies, this comes to a head in "Trusted Sources", when the sudden arrival of a reporter causes her to panic and go full Neidermeyer. She cancels leisure activities, suddenly changes shifts around, tries to enforce bedtimes, and hastily blames and punishes Mariner for seemingly making her and the Cerritos look bad in an interview. It turns out Mariner did no such thing, and Freeman's rash handling of the situation is seized upon by the reporter and used to paint her in an extremely negative light, which contributes to the Cali-class almost being decommissioned in "The Stars At Night".
Lieutenant Levy deconstructs Conspiracy Theorist. Believing that sort of thing causes you to come off as an Insufferable Imbecile, especially when you start espousing your beliefs to people who went through the events you're talking about and know you're talking complete nonsense. This has resulted in Levy being unpopular with his shipmates, on one occasion ruining a date with then-Ensign Mariner. It also leads to any genuine intuition you have being ignored because your "intuition" is historically not credible. Military and quasi-military organizations also don't want someone like that in charge of people for various reasons, meaning Levy's Starfleet career has hit a brick wall; it's implied that the only reason he still has a career is because he's, in Boimler's words, an "outside-the-box math genius", and notably, Boimler, a lieutenant junior grade, appears to be in charge of the mission despite Levy outranking him.
Tendi: Mariner didn't say anything bad about the ship; it was everybody else! Rutherford: They didn't even realize what they were doing!
"The Inner Fight" Deconstructs Mildly Military—or the specific type of the trope that Starfleet is. Cadets go in expecting to largely be exploring the galaxy, but then something like the Dominion War happens and suddenly they're unexpectedly forced to defend the Federation from a war of conquest and end up surrounded by death and destruction. Even in peacetime, they may hear that one of their Academy friends was killed in an espionage mission in hostile space without being adequately prepared for the devastating news. The former happened to Mariner right after the latter, and the result is severe PTSD that sent the poor woman into a self-sabotaging and self-destructive downward spiral designed to prevent her from having to send one of her friends to their death.
