Logline
Who knows? They never released one.
Edit: They finally released one - how novel to release the actual episode first!
Captain Freeman assigns the Lower Deckers an overly safe mission to try and keep a self-destructive Mariner out of danger.
Written by: It’s a secret (it was Mike McMahan)
Directed by: We’re not tellin’ (it was Brandon Williams)
This may be Lower Decks finest penultimate episode yet. I definitely feels at this point like McMahan has a five season plan. At least for the OG Lower Deckers.
Definitely an episode that plays the emotional fiddle for TNG fans with the Sito reveal as well. Currently weighing up whether to get my partner to watch First Duty and Lower Decks before we watch it together later.
Laughed out loud at the Endor Moon base inexplicably being on this random insane weather planet.
Great to have Robbie McDunc back as Locarno as well. If nothing else this may finally kill the urban myth that they didn’t use Locarno in Voyager due to royalties once and for all. I can but only hope.
I also like that they’ve let Freeman come into her own as a Captain more than previous this season. She’s really demonstrating not just top tier tactics and diplomacy but also actually clearly keeping tabs on her crew and addressing out of character behaviour. With that said, Rutherford felt included just for an excuse to follow Freeman which was a shame.
Billups as the masked pilot surprised me. I expected it to be Locarno.
The fake out Balok puppet had be howling.
Rutherford hanging out with Freeman is presumably setup for the finale, giving us three perspectives without compromising the focus on the main gang. He did feel a little tacked on though.
It’s not an urban myth at all that Tom Paris was a renaming of Nick Locarno.
Kirsten Beyer (now a senior producer in the Secret Hideout shows) verified this point with Jeri Taylor (creator of Voyager) back when Kirsten was writing the Voyager Full Circle Treklit books. It’s covered in an afterward. Doubt that would have been cleared for publication if not true.
That said, whatever the meta situation, onscreen canon can be whatever the current EPs want. So, I’m curious where they’ve decided to take this.
Given the mention of Thomas Riker, I wondered if they were going to reveal that Locarno was a transporter clone and Paris’ dadmiral covered it up. But that would also mean Beckett kept quiet about it, and that seems like something she would have mentioned when they interacted with Tom Paris.
Secret information is shared on a need to to basis, not as background on a visiting officer.
She may absolutely know this.
I felt like Freeman included Rutherford because his “gee whiz! lookee there!” naïveté added to her misdirection.
“Robbie McDunc”? Really? 1
I thought that was a well-executed fake-out, and enjoyed the heck out of it. I thought it really made the B-plot work–Freeman is very rarely at her best when around Mariner, which means we see her screw up a lot, so I was very happy to get a reminder that she’s the sort of officer Starfleet would give a command to.
“Robbie McDunc”? Really? 2
1: see 2.2: it's a question worth repeating.I don’t understand the reasoning here. Why would Locarno’s return for one or two episodes kill the theory that Paramount didn’t want to pay Moore and Shankar ongoing royalties for seven years?
That isn’t a theory, that’s true isn’t it? Original show notes were for Paris to be Locarno, but it was going to be far too expensive for them over the years (total cop out IMHO). Think of Locarno coming back as this; Moore and Shankar are finally getting some of that skrilla
I think the official explanation is that they thought about it and judged Locarno as irredeemable - “a bad guy in the guise of a good guy” whereas Paris was supposed to be “a good guy in the guise of a bad guy”. But I tend to agree that money was the determining factor, as it so often is.
Both. The answer to that is both. Two of the finest TNG episodes.
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