Summary
- Lower Decks adds a fresh perspective by focusing on the lower-ranking officers in Starfleet.
- The series finale pays homage to TNG’s “Lower Decks” episode through a recreated poker scene.
- Lower Decks remains true to its unique storytelling style while honoring Star Trek’s legacy.
After more than four years of serving up laughs, clever deep cuts, adventure, and heartwarming storylines, Star Trek: Lower Decks has come to an end. In the final episode, now available to stream on Paramount+, Lower Decks gave fans everything they expect from an excellent episode of Star Trek and paid homage to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that inspired the show.
Every Star Trek series prior to Lower Decks focused on the senior Starfleet officers serving on a particular ship. Fans rarely got to see the day-to-day activities of the hundreds of other officers on the ship. The only exception was the seventh season episode of TNG entitled “Lower Decks.” This episode follows four ensigns as they await the results of their performance evaluations and the final word on whether they’ll get their hoped for promotions. The narrative switches between the senior officers, showing the events from their perspective, and the lower deckers.
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One classic scene from that episode switches back and forth between the senior officers’ weekly poker game, which is frequently shown throughout the series, to the lower deckers’ weekly poker game. The scene perfectly highlights both the similarities and the differences between the senior officers and the lower deckers, and how they perceive daily life on the Enterprise-D. In its series finale, “The New Next Generation,” Lower Decks recreated this scene with its own twist, honoring its namesake.
The Poker Scene
After an action-packed and emotionally charged series of events — finding out their quantum reality might be destroyed, intervening in a brewing Klingon civil war, saving their quantum reality, and saying goodbye to Captain Carol Freeman — the Lower Deckers gather in the bar for some much-needed drinks. As they process everything they’ve just been through, Lieutenant Junior Grade Beckett Mariner explains why she loves the Cerritos so much, a stunning turnaround from where her character began four years ago.
When she says “the Cerritos crew is stacked with amazing officers,” the scene changes to four ensigns sitting around a poker table. Though the scene only lasts for a few seconds, it packs in a lot of significance.
Avid Lower Decks fans recognize them as the Delta shifters Amadou, Asif, Karavitus, and Moxy. Karavitus wears a green poker visor, a nod to the poker visor Data usually wore during the senior officer games. The tableau mirrors TNG’s senior officer poker games as well, with Amadou as a stand in for Geordi, Asif as the cavalier Commander Riker, Karavitus standing in for Counselor Troi, and the red-haired Moxy a vision of Dr. Crusher.
However, the scene’s small details make the poker game entirely Lower Decks. Karavitus isn’t in uniform, a clever signal of the differences between the Cerritos and the Enterprise-D, where officers were often in uniform even when off-duty. Instead, she wears a Chu-Chu t-shirt, a wonderful callback to the season 1 episode, “Terminal Provocations.”
A Perfect Nod to “Lower Decks” and Signoff for Lower Decks
The links between Lower Decks and TNG’s “Lower Decks” are well-established enough that they could have focused on these connections much more in the series finale. The writers could have brought back a legacy character from that episode, like Nurse Alyssa Ogawa or Ensign Sam Lavelle. Mariner’s friendship with Ensign Sito Jaxa and their time at the Academy could have been a major part of the storyline, as it was in season 4.
Instead, the episode pays homage to its namesake with one elegantly recreated scene that contains both the Easter eggs Lower Decks is famous for, and the unique details that make Lower Decks its own Star Trek story. The short scene encapsulates what Lower Decks has always done best — creating artful tributes to all the Star Trek episodes that have come before while telling its own stories.
Star Trek: Lower Decks