Star Trek: Lower Decks recap: Episode 8, ‘Veritas’

Mariner and her friends are faced with their toughest mission yet, saving the senior staff on Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 is the first time our four protagonists spend a significant amount of time together. The senior staff of the Cerritos appears to be held captive by unknown aliens and it’s up to Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi to save them.

Can these officers succeed when they don’t even know why they’re on trial?

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 – Time to Testify

Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi wake up in a dungeon, before being elevated into a makeshift courtroom. The entire scene is a throwback to several Star Trek episodes and films in the past where our favorite crewmembers found themselves in alien kangaroo courts.

The alien questions the team about a specific stardate. Mariner is up first. The day in question begins innocuously. The four lower deck officers are cleaning a shuttle when Tendi discovers that the ship is on Red Alert.

But how is that possible when there’s no alert? Turns out Rutherford tried to make the alert louder and somehow turned it off in the shuttle bay. They rush to their stations, which for Mariner and Boimler is the Bridge.

The pair arrive just as Captain Freeman beams aboard. She is incensed because the aliens she was dealing with misunderstood her gratitude. Freeman had thanked them for providing her with a map of the Neutral Zone, but somehow, they’d taken offense to that.

She asks Boimler for advice, and he chokes on the situation. Then Freeman—believing she and her daughter are of the same mind—orders Mariner to send the aliens a message. Mariner fires off their bow, which is not what Freeman wanted. Apparently, these two are not on the same page.

Apparently, Mariner’s story is not to the alien adjudicator’s liking and he sends her to be attacked by eels. Boimler interjects and Mariner is saved from becoming fish food.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 – Secret Missions

The alien interrogates Rutherford about a different stardate. This is not a good day for Rutherford. He’d been ordered to upgrade his cybernetic implants to download the Neutral Zone map. Unfortunately, the sudden update messed with Rutherford’s systems.

Rutherford spends the rest of the day restarting his system and waking up to find he had nerve-pinched Vulcans, landed upon Romulus, was walking on a cloaked Bird of Prey and finally, crashed a Gorn wedding.

What does any of this have to do with the unknown alien? Nothing, apparently! Even the alien doesn’t understand what the officers are on about. He sends Rutherford to hover over the eels as well.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 – There’s Something About Tendi

Throughout the ordeal, Tendi’s been acting way too suspicious. She’s unusually jittery and seems to have some knowledge about the line of questioning. When it’s her turn to testify, Tendi explains that she was on a classified mission, so her report will be incomplete.

The previous events described by Mariner and Rutherford tie into Tendi’s accidental clandestine mission on Romulus. She was cleaning the conference room when Ransom walked in with his covert team. Believing Tendi was the Cleaner (and not just a cleaner), he commandeered her for the mission.

Tendi didn’t know anything she was doing, but the mission to retrieve a package from the Romulans was a success. But this story doesn’t satisfy the alien either. He wants the juicy details of what the senior staff did on these dates, but the lower deck officers don’t know anything.

Boimler unleashes an impassioned speech about the senior officers leaving their underlings in the dark about everything. There’s no transparency, so how can these subordinates testify on their senior officers’ behalf.

And that’s when the other shoe drops. Apparently, this is not a trial, it’s a party. The alien was looking for great stories to commend the Cerritos staff for rescuing him from the Romulans. It was him in the package that Tendi recovered. And now the lower decks have ruined it all by not sharing interesting anecdotes.

The alien and the Cerritos crew are kicked out of the party hall as the alien’s 22-minute time slot is up. Nice little meta dig at the runtime for Star Trek: Lower Decks.

As the crew reconvenes on the Cerritos, Captain Freeman commends the underlings for valiantly supporting Starfleet, and promises more transparency. She… uh, changes her mind two seconds later when Mariner and the others start asking way too many questions about how the Romulan mission was handled.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 – Final Thoughts

I liked this episode, and the little nods and jabs at previous Star Trek properties, but Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 wasn’t as funny as its predecessors. The suspense went up several notches, but it was undercut by the gags. Sometimes too much is just too much.

The best part of the show remains the character dynamics and this episode was missing that. Another giant flaw is that the episodic nature of the series sometimes means the character development is running in place.

The return of John D. Lancie’s Q was welcome—it ties in nicely with the era the show is set in. I worry that there’s an overreliance on in-jokes. The biggest problem with that is Star Trek: Lower Decks takes place before Star Trek: Voyager, so the characters almost always refer to the male captains we’ve heard of.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Official Trailer

Adventure has to start somewhere. Start now with the Star Trek: Lower Decks Official Trailer. New series August 6, only on CBS All Access. http://bit.ly/LDXTrailer

Posted by CBS on Sunday, July 12, 2020

I wish the writers would take a moment to stop paying homage to what came before and lay the path for what could come in the future.

Which was your favorite meta-moment on Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8? Let us know in the comments below.

New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks are available every Thursday on CBS All Access.