Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Premiere Review: Funny, Heartwarming, With The Promise Of Greater Peril
STAR TREK LOWER DECKS SEASON 4 PREMIERE REVIEW SCORE
Star Trek: Lower Decks is back and it’s exactly what you’d hope for, plus just a little bit more. Premiering with two episodes — “Twovix” and “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” — the new season is just as hilarious and heartwarming as we’ve come to expect, but it also adds a surprising amount of danger to our heroes in what promises to be a powerful new recurring adversary.
If you’re the kind of fan who groans whenever Lower Decks references and/or pokes fun at classic Star Trek stories… yeah you’re going to want to skip “Twovix.” The story finds the crew of the Cerritos assisting in transporting Kathryn Janeway’s former command, the U.S.S. Voyager, to its new home as a museum piece.
Lower Decks Season 4 has started off with a bang, a moopsie, and some very disturbing sounds from the holodeck.
The expected chaos begins with the Tuvix-like amalgamation of the Caitian doctor T’Ana (Gillian Vigman) and chief engineer Andy Billups (Paul Scheer) as T’Illups. Determined to not suffer the same fate as Tuvix, T’Illups begins turning the entire Cerritos crew into combo-characters.
In the meantime, aboard Voyager, the other Lower Decks heroes find themselves facing what amounts to a Voyager‘s best (or worst, depending on your taste) hits. Everything from flying viruses to Borg nanites to the greatest holographic villains Janeway and her crew faced harass the good guys. In fact, the bad guys are joined by animatronic versions of… well… let’s just say the most awkward moment ever between Janeway and Robert Duncan McNeill’s Tom Paris is not forgotten.
That’s followed up by “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,” in which the main Lower Decks heroes all find themselves wrestling with challenges resulting from unexpected promotions. Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) locks horns with a new rival, Boimler (Jack Quaid) can’t find a room that doesn’t drive him nuts, and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) is convinced Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) is conspiring against her.
The Miracle Of Moopsie
We all need to thank Lower Decks‘ “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” for the introduction of its new antagonist, Moopsie. The adorable little Pokemon-esque creature will have you saying, “Moopsie” for weeks.
This may give too much away but, well… remember the bunny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Yeah, turn that critter into the villain for a brief episode of sci-fi comedy-horror. That’s it. Moopsie.
Premiering With Two Episodes Was The Right Call
The two episode Lower Decks season premiere also introduces a mystery villain who promises to be much more challenging to the heroes than previous bad guys. We’re only teased the new antagonist at the end of episode 1 and the start of episode 2, but their appearance brings the deaths of at least a few heroes we’ve met before; a surprising move for Lower Decks.
The Lower Decks season 4 premiere is something of a first. Ever since the advent of Paramount+ — or its predecessor, CBS All Access — the only other series to have a two episode season or series premiere is Star Trek: Discovery, and that was something of a anomaly.
The first episode of Discovery released on CBS and ended on a cliffhanger, with the hopes that viewers would be hooked and subscribe to the new streaming platform, which was necessary to watch episode 2 and the rest of the season as it released.
You might also count Star Trek: Prodigy, though technically its series premiere was a two part episode rather than a two episode premiere.
But in the meantime while major franchises on other streamers like Disney+’s Marvel and Star Wars have been comfortable releasing two or even three episodes on day one, Star Trek has stuck to one episode at a time, until now.
Whether or not this new recurring Lower Decks villain was part of the reason for the two episode premiere, it certainly helped the delivery of the bad guy. Catching both teases back-to-back renders the mystery antagonist much more memorable. It seems likely this in connection to the many Section 31 teases in Season 3, though obviously we’ll have to wait until we know for sure.
Regardless, Lower Decks Season 4 has started off with a bang, a moopsie, and some very disturbing sounds from the holodeck. The Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover pushed expectations up high, and the premiere doesn’t disappoint.
