Recap / Star Trek: Lower Decks S1E09 "Crisis Point"

"I am Vindicta, vengeance personified! At last, Freeman, I will bathe in your blood!"

Boimler decides to prepare for an interview with Captain Freeman by creating a hyper-realistic simulation of the ship's crew using their personal logs. Mariner, who is furious about have been assigned to therapy, decides to blow off some steam by casting herself as the villain Vindicta in a holomovie featuring the crew, created using Boimler's program.

In the movie, Mariner stages a bloody boarding of the Cerritos, culminating in a battle against her mother. Meanwhile, Rutherford tracks down his superior Billups to vent some private thoughts, Tendi has growing concerns about how much Mariner is enjoying disintegrating her way through the ship's crew, and Boimler desperately tries to gather information on what the captain likes in her crew members.

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Tropes:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Vindicta makes a point of addressing the captain as "Free Man", a common trait of various alien races.
• Advertised Extra: In-Universe, Winger Bingston Jr. is the last name in the opening credits of Crisis Point: The Rise of Vindicta, but he's only in one scene before getting smooshed by Vindicta's boarding pod.
• Affectionate Parody: The episode is largely a spoof on the tropes used by the Star Trek films, done through a holodeck roleplaying with the Cerritos crew.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Mariner violates the Prime Directive by liberating the lizard people from rat oppression, only for Freeman to get on her case for it and send her to therapy for being a loose cannon.
  Mariner: Screw the Prime Directive!
• Anachronism Stew: Tendi and Rutherford shooting skeet with Leonardo Da Vinci.^note Although gunpowder, firearms, and ceramics did exist during Da Vinci's time, the sport of skeet shooting is recognized to have been created in the 1920s.
• Animation Bump: The Cerritos gets a wide, panning shot of going to warp... clearly meant to mimic the Money-Making Shot of a movie.
• Appeal to Obscurity: When Mariner calls Boimler a "Xon":
  Boimler: Who's Xon?
  Mariner: Exactly.
• Art Shift: The "movie-ized" holodeck simulation is portrayed with sharper lighting, LOTS of Lens Flares and even an Aspect Ratio Switch.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The Show Within a Show is in a wide aspect ratio to make it look cinematic.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Both Holo-Mariner and Freeman admit to being willing to do anything for the other. Holo-Mariner even says that Freeman being a hardass is her way of looking out for her daughter.
• Bait-and-Switch: Rutherford jumps at the chance to tell Holo-Billups whatever he wants, corners him, and then... starts praising him profusely.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi run off to get into costume, Boimler demands that the credits end. They do... and he is immediately dropped into a lake.
• BFG: The holographic Shaxs wields a two-handed phaser bazooka that fires giant phaser blasts.
• Boarding Pod: Vindicta uses this to board the Cerritos while its crew is busy watching a recording of her ranting.
• Book Ends: The episode has a therapy session at the start and end of the episode, although with different people.
• Brick Joke:
  • Holo-Ransom dies trying to tell Boimler what Freeman is allergic to. It turns out to be chocolate, which gets Boimler tackled by Holo-Jet for attempting to give Holo-Freeman chocolate chip cookies.
  • Da Vinci returns at the end of the episode to shoot Vindicta.
• Chekhov's Gun: Boimler mentions early on that he used the crew's private logs to develop extremely accurate simulations of them. This means that the simulation knows private facts about them, which in conjunction with Mariner's movie leads to Holo-Freeman blurting out her relation to Mariner.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The episode features species similar in dynamic with the Selay and the Anticans, the lizard-people and rat-people, who were introduced as throwaways in TNG: "Lonely Among Us".
  • Vindicta's ship combines features of TOS-era Romulan vessels, namely the painting on the underside and aft section design, with Klingon vessels, in the placement of the nacelles and shape of the prow.
  • Holo-Shaxs tells Vindicta that he'll send her to Hell, and to tell the Pah-Wraiths that he sent her there. Pah-Wraiths are the equivalent of devils in the Bajoran belief system.
  • Bingston, who put on a one-man show in "Moist Vessel", returns for essentially a cameo in the movie.
  • When Tendi leaves the holodeck, the virtual blood disappears from her body. Holographic material can't exist outside the holodeck.
  • Jet returns, saving Freeman from getting "poisoned" by chocolate chip cookies, since she's allergic to chocolate.
• Cape Snag: When Vindicta emerges from the boarding pod, her cape gets caught when the doors close. She decides to discard the cape after that.
• Deconstruction:
  • Boimler made his interview prep program by accessing the personal logs of all the ship's personnel to recreate them with the highest degree of accuracy possible. Characters in other Trek shows have also recreated the crew for various reasons, but the other ensigns treat it as a creepy invasion of privacy rather than a mild irritant. It gets worse when Mariner gets way too into blasting up her crewmates (not unlike Barclay's programs when he routinely beat up on his superior officers) and drives Tendi to leave.
  • The Fantastic Racism that comes about by treating different species as a Planet of Hats turns out not to reflect well on Starfleet. Although Mariner does apologize for her behavior at the end, there's also a blink-and-miss it of one of the holo-crew making a disparaging remark about Orions that upsets Tendi. (And if Boimler's simulation is as accurate as it seems in all other areas, that guy really is prejudiced against Orions.)
  • The episode also shows why Percussive Therapy has fallen out of favour in recent years; Mariner is clearly heading towards an extremely unhealthy place by acting out her aggression on the rest of the crew, something that Tendi points out after the fight with Holo-Shaxs. In fact, her actual breakthrough doesn't come about until she's denied her chance to kill the Holo-Freeman by the Mirror Match with her holo-self and undergoes some literal self-reflection.
• Didn't See That Coming: Mariner didn't anticipate running into a simulation of herself, which leads to her defeat.
• Didn't Think This Through: Mariner-as-Vindicta confronts holo-Freeman for treating her like a child and being dismissive towards her— but since Mariner is playing the warlord Vindicta instead of herself, holo-Freeman has no idea what she's talking about.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Vindicta vaporizes Shempo for bringing her coffee instead of tea. Made worse because it was supposed to be Boimler in the role.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Tendi has this reaction the further they get into the movie. Mariner wrote her into a sexy Orion pirate role, something she has been trying to avoid in her Starfleet career. Then, during Mariner/Vindicta's assault on the ship, she seems to be having too much fun slaughtering holographic versions of real people, which causes Tendi to bow out.
• Evil Is Hammy: Mariner breaks out a buffet of ham in her role as Vindicta. Rutherford is also pretty hammy until he breaks character. Tendi... not so much.
• Extremely Protective Child: Holo-Mariner leaps to Holo-Freeman's aid, beaming her out and facing off against Vindicta.
  Holo-Mariner: Get off my mom, you bitch!
• Fake Shemp: In-Universe, Vindicta's third henchman, whom she kills for a minor infraction, is named Shempo. He was supposed to be Boimler before he decided to bail on the role.
• Fanservice: Tendi in a Stripperific Orion outfit.
• Fantastic Racism: Mariner goes pretty hard on the Orion Hat being "capitalist, hyper-libertarian gangster pirates," as Tendi puts it. Tendi herself, a Cultural Rebel and Token Heroic Orc, is rather offended at these requests to Start Being Stereotypical. One of the crewmembers also insults her as an Orion, since he's programmed not to recognise her as a Starfleet officer.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Snippets of Mariner's writing are visible on the screen as she programs in her new scenario, which plays out in the movie.
• Genre Savvy: Rutherford, knowing that he's in a movie, is able to teleport the surviving crew down to the planet before it crashed, using this as his justification.
• Hidden Depths: Turns out that Mariner likes the warp core, despite telling Boimler that it's lame back in the pilot.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  Holo-Freeman: This isn't a vacation, this is important scientific research. (checks PADD) Vacation over.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Upon discovering that Boimler has reproduced an exact replica of the Captain, Mariner hijacks the program to vent her anger.
• Internal Reveal: Boimler learns that Mariner is Freeman's daughter. It's enough of a shock for him to blow his interview, but Holo-Freeman saying that she would court-martial anyone who found out straight out of Starfleet might have been a factor.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: When Vindicta fights Holo-Mariner, she says that she knows everything about her, including how she fights, how she dressed as Toby Targ every Halloween, and how she knows that she actually loves the warp core.
  Holo-Mariner: Take that back! The warp core's lame!
• "Just Joking" Justification: This episode gets really close to the question of how much the holodeck can be a harmless fantasy with no lasting consequences when the fantasy is based on people that you know. Mariner justifies it as just being fake; she and Boimler consistently treat it as a fiction with no concern for the holo-carnage that they are inflicting or witnessing, but Tendi is clearly distressed by inflicting violence on simulations of her shipmates and especially by how much enjoyment Mariner is getting out of it.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The holographic Ransom is killed just before he can tell Boimler about Freeman's allergy.
• Kirk Summation: Holo-Mariner and Vindicta each give one to each other, which allows actual Mariner to come to terms with her being onboard the Cerritos and understand her relationship with her mom.
• Lens Flare: Mariner programmed a truly excessive amount of lens flares into her movie.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Tendi and Mariner get splattered with a LOT of blood and gore after the latter uses a severed Borg head as an explosive against Shaxs. Mariner suggests that Tendi wear Shaxs' Bajoran earring that landed nearby (despite having some of his ear still on it), but Tendi is just horrified.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Lampshaded by Boimler. In the holomovie, when the Cerritos is sent on a mission to investigate a ship claiming to be Starfleet, called the San Clemente, Boimler points out that, in reality, Starfleet would be more likely to send the Enterprise.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Mariner, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold with some Pet the Dog moments, plays an Ax-Crazy phaser-happy villain. Rutherford and Tendi play her henchmen, and they are the nicest characters on the ship.
• Minion with an F in Evil:
  • Shempo doesn't even try to be evil. Of course, he's not around for very long.
  • Even when Rutherford is playing one of Vindicta's minions, he can't stop being a Nice Guy, gushing to Holo-Billups about his love of engineering and helping to save the crew of Cerritos.
  • Tendi tries to be evil, but decides that Mariner is going too far with the carnage and calls it quits.
• Mirror Match: Vindicta ends up fighting the holographic Mariner in the movie. Having an actual fight with herself allows Mariner the self-reflection that she needs to appreciate the whys of her behavior, leading to an epiphany that improves both that and her outlook.
• Ms. Fanservice: Tendi's role in Mariner's "film" is mean to play on both Orion stereotypes: First, that all Orions are pirates, and second, that Orion women are all sexy seductresses. As such, her costume is noticeably skimpier than the others', showing a lot of cleavage and midriff.
• Mythology Gag: A ton relating to the Star Trek movie series, to the point where the only movie not to be referenced in any way, shape, or form is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, continuing the franchise's long tradition of politely ignoring that entry.
  • Before the movie begins, Mariner screams "Therapy!" as the camera pulls back, akin to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  • As a Freeze-Frame Bonus, Mariner writes that Holo-Shaxs is using a "massive phaser bazooka", which she describes as "movie budget" weapon, a nod to Worf using a similar weapon in Star Trek: Insurrection.
  • During the movie program, there's a Motion Picture-style flyover of the Cerritos, which carries on for quite a while. It's also done in Spacedock via a shuttlepod, much like how the crew got their first glance of the Enterprise-A in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • When Boimler complains that he didn't want to do a movie, Mariner brushes it off, claiming that he was "kind of a Xon" and wouldn't have made the final cut. Xon was the Vulcan character meant to replace Spock in the cancelled Star Trek: Phase Two series, and then cut from early drafts of The Motion Picture.
  • Rutherford and Tendi hang out with a hologram of Leonardo da Vinci, like Captain Janeway.
  • Vindicta revives in a pod a la Spock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, only to be abruptly shot by Da Vinci.
  • The opening credits are done in the style of The Next Generation, albeit the starfield and theme tune more resemble those of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  • The end credits are rendered as signatures, just like in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
  • The crash-landing of what's left of Cerritos (especially the saucer coming to rest at an odd angle) is reminiscent of a similar scene from Star Trek Beyond. The ship being forced down by an exploding warp core is also reminiscent of what happens to the saucer of the Enteprise-D in Star Trek: Generations.
  • The warp effect is similar to that from Star Trek Into Darkness.
  • At the start of the movie, the senior staff are water skiing on a retreat. This is similar to Picard driving a dune buggy around in Star Trek: Nemesis for no good reason.
  • Migleemo the counselor wears civilian clothes instead of a Starfleet uniform, kinda like Deanna Troi.
  • According to Mariner, Vindicta's final confrontation with Holo-Freeman was supposed to occur on a rickety metal catwalk, like the infamous bridge from Star Trek: Generations. Vindicta also attempts to impale her with a hollow metal tube, the same thing that Picard used to kill Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis.
  • When initially contacting the holographic Cerritos, Vindicta's actions are reminiscent of two Klingon villains from the TOS movies — aside from using a Klingon Bird-of-Prey as her vessel of choice, she distracts them by hammily quoting Shakespeare (a la General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and blasts a subordinate on the bridge so hard that he visibly disintegrates after said subordinate screws up (reminiscent of Kruge from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Vindicta finally attacks the bridge, she constantly drops character and talks to Holo-Freeman as Mariner. Since Holo-Freeman is programmed not to recognise actual-Mariner, she's left confused as to why this random space pirate is acting as if she should know her.
• Overly Long Gag: The senior officers and Boimler spend an excessively long time staring at the Cerritos as they fly towards a ship that they've known quite well.
• Painting the Fourth Wall: When Tendi talks to Mariner from outside the holodeck, the aspect ratio bars are visible inside the holodeck doors.
• Planet of Hats: Mariner insists on casting Tendi as a stereotypical Orion Space Pirate. She objects that many of her species haven't been pirates for almost five years, and that she's different.
• Post-Processing Video Effects: The Crisis Point holoprogram has a film grain effect to evoke old fashioned reel-fed theatrical movies, even including cue marks.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: An interesting variant where Mariner delivers one to herself, with the holodeck version of her cutting through all of her BS and laying out all the issues holding her back.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Mariner-as-Vindicta goes overboard with the violence, Tendi calls it quits, clearly disturbed.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism:
  • Vindicta uses a remote control to overload her ship's warp core, disabling the Cerritos with the resulting explosion.
  • Holo-Mariner takes out Vindicta and herself using Cerritos's self-destruct mechanism.
• Sequel Hook: Subverted. The end has Vindicta rise out of a stasis pod, only for Da Vinci to shoot her before she can plot something.
• Ship Tease:
  • Rutherford and Holo-Billups bonded over the course of the movie, and their final scene hints at them "getting a ship together".
  • As Boimler fumbles through his interview with Freeman after learning about her relation to Mariner, he says "Mariner is... hot?" while trying to avoid the subject of her being Freeman's daughter.
• Shout-Out: When Mariner is about to stab Holo-Freeman, her hologram pulls an Aliens:
  Holo-Mariner: Get off my mom, you bitch!
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Vindicta quotes The Tempest before invading the ship.
  Vindicta: Hell is empty and all the devils are here. [...] Our revels now are ended.
  Ransom: Is she quoting "The Tempest"?
• Skewed Priorities: In-universe Boimler spends the entire movie trying to suck up to the senior staff rather than repel the actual threat of Vindicta and her minions. Justified because none of it is real, but the characters react to him as if it were.
• Something Only They Would Say: When Boimler boasts about how accurate his holo-recreations of the bridge officers are, Rutherford decides to test it.
  Rutherford: (to holo-Shaxs) Hey buddy, how's it going?
  Holo-Shaxs: Don't talk to me, I'm pissed off!
  Rutherford: Whoa! Amazing! We had that exact same conversation an hour ago.
• Stealth Pun: The Cerritos's counsellor is some kind of bird alien species. That combined with him being a lousy therapist clearly makes him a quack.
• Take That!: The excessive use of lens flares in "Crisis Point" is clearly a shot towards the J. J. Abrams series of Star Trek movies.
• Taking You with Me: The holographic Mariner allows Vindicta to beat her up as a distraction until the ship's self-destruct kills them both.
• Technobabble: Used at one point to hide two back to back references to marijuana
  Rutherford (as Bionic 5): If we bypass the indacontrols and suppress the sativents, it should function as a...
• Teleportation Rescue:
  • Holo-Mariner calls in an emergency transport on her mother's combadge, beaming Holo-Freeman to safety while Mariner faces Vindicta.
  • Rutherford explains to Holo-Billups that he created a rapid teleportation program to beam everyone off the ship before it crashed, because it's a movie and you can make up any nonsense you want.
• Therapy Is for the Weak: Mariner initially seems to feel this way, especially with the counselor aboard the Cerritos, but after working her issues out on the holodeck, she proudly proclaims that therapy really does work.
• Unfortunate Implications: In-universe. Tendi is deeply unhappy about Mariner casting and costuming her as a scantily-clad Orion space pirate and slave trader, the kind of stereotype that Orions in Starfleet have to constantly struggle against.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Mariner wants to use the holodeck to inflict the most gruesome deaths on the holographic characters, with the added twist that they are all representation of real characters.
• We Need a Distraction: As mentioned above, the holographic Mariner allows Vindicta to beat her up as a distraction to buy time for everyone to get off the ship before the self-destruct timer went off.
• You Have Failed Me: Vindicta phasers Shempo for bringing her coffee instead of tea.

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