9.1.1 Errors Of Comedy

Second Contact

A Star Trek situation comedy? You must be joking.

Laugh Trek

Writing up Lower Decks is going to be an interesting challenge. Not because the episodes are so short (though I'm going to be using the same minimum word count of 1500 per essay that I imposed for TAS). It's just going to be hard to get around the fact that the show's primary purpose is to make you laugh. I wouldn't say the mechanisms of comedy are proof against useful analysis, but I certainly would say I'm not the guy to get that analysis from. I've ever really gotten any further than grasping the rule of three.

In brief, then: yes, "Second Contact" is funny. It's also funny in ways which often require little or no knowledge of Trek to appreciate. I screamed at the joke about a yeti demanding Mariner's shoes in a Klingon prison because "he was just being a dick", but it wasn't until my third watch that it clicked that this was a callback to The Undiscovered Country. I did get the Gary Mitchell reference, but that line works just as well if you've never heard of him - indeed the whole the point is that Boimler doesn't think knowing who he is matters. In fact, there's probably no better encapsulation of Lower Deck's attitude to canon: it's fun to be aware of, but it doesn't actually make your opinions more valid, or that people should feel obliged to listen to you.

Given the show is clearly being written by Trek fans, this is a healthy attitude to take. This becomes even more true when we consider the show's format. A Trek comedy is taking the franchise where not even the most outrageous DS9 Ferengi episodes have gone before. Dialogue with Trek's past is necessarily limited, simply because Lower Decks isn't using dialogue for the same purpose.

This has proved something of a stumbling block to a lot of people. In almost every other way, the fact that this is Trek is unmistakable. Lower Decks is warm of heart and generous of spirit, Indeed, it frequently does a much better job of demonstrating the franchise's celebrated ethos than either Discovery or Picard (though in fairness we haven't reached where Discovery runs into problems just yet), and has the most familiar design language of the three shows, too. And yet, a lot of people bounced off it, because they found it impossible to believe it could be occurring in the same universe as any one of the eight Trek shows proceeding it.

Those people were absolutely right, of course. Lower Decks can't possibly be reconciled with anything that's come before.

Isn't that wonderful?

"Franchise Fatigue" Fatigue

It's time to talk about - *looooooooong sigh*- "franchise fatigue". Point one: it isn't real. Admittedly, this is true in the same way that "night air" isn't real, which is to say it's a completely wrongheaded explanation of a genuine phenomenon. But the nature of the misdiagnosis matters.

The problem with the idea of franchise fatigue is that it suggests one can tire of a fictional world; that's there's only so much can be done with a made-up reality before things start to go stale. But that isn't actually the issue. It can't be. You can do at least as many different things in a fictional reality as you can in, you know, "our" world. There's no inherent reason we should get bored of stories set in Trek's future, any more than we might tire of stories set on present day Earth. Or, given Trek has now set shows in four different centuries, let's say stories set on Earth at any point between present day, and the early 1600s.

Almost every non-genre story ever written could be reskinned and presented as happening somewhere in Trek's reality. So could plenty of genre ones. There's no limit to what one can do within this or any other stellar sandbox. The problem lies somewhere else. Not with what people could do, but what they're prepared to do, and what they can get away with doing. Franchises have to contend with the fact they're always being pulled in opposite directions. They have to remain within the territory people found enjoyable to visit in the first place, while making sure to roam over enough new ground that the experience doesn't become overly familiar.

This is extremely hard to do, particularly if the same creatives are in charge throughout. In fact, the oddness of the concept of franchise fatigue becomes quite clear when we consider how common - almost ubiquitous - it is to watch the quality of any sustained artistic output lessen with time. How many of your favourite artists remain (or remained) at the peak of their powers? And how many instead have either become stuck in a rut, or travelled so far afield that they've lost sight of whatever made their work work? And yet nobody talks about "George R R Martin fatigue" or "Rolling Stones fatigue", presumably because it's clear the problem with their later output isn't just that people had experienced too much of it already.

If "franchise fatigue" has any meaning, it's as a way of noting that franchises almost always fall afoul of the rut, rather than the roam. Other than hyper-cautious money men (who the very existence of Lower Decks proves don't always get their way), there are basically two reasons this keeps happening: terrible fanbases, and the need to honour canon. And really, the latter is best thought of as a symptom of the former.

There are many reasons why glorifying canon is a terrible approach, which has harmed multiple franchises in myriad ways - we've talked about some small fraction of them on the blog before. One of its most damaging aspects is how it continuously narrows the possibility space. Not in the sense of there being an ever-increasing list of things which have happened - that no more limits the idea-space of an ongoing sci-fi show than six thousand years of recorded history proscribes Eastenders. The problem lies in the need for each new entry in a franchise to maintain a sufficiently similar tone to what's gone before, to maintain the illusion it all takes place in a single fictional universe.

This is the true foe. The Imagination Death. The creeping entropic decay that will ultimately smother each franchise in turn (however temporarily). It's also the dark killing god that heeds the prayers of those who'd rather see what they love die than see it change. In Trek terms, it's the people whose Prime Directive is that fifty-plus years of television and film all be imaginable as being a single story.

Lower Decks knows the score, and who needs to end up winning. This is the first show in Trek history to say "to hell with trying to make this fit in". There's simply no way to watch "Second Contact" and not know that if the Cerritos and the Enterprise-D met, with each crew acting as they do in their respective shows, the tonal dissonance would tear both ships apart [1].

For the servants of stasis, this was simply too much. No amount of Easter eggs and sly nods could replace the continuation of continuity. The degree to which Lower Decks fully embodied the heart and soul of Trek - in ways Discovery often struggled with, and Picard barely bothered to attempt - mattered nothing in the face of a questionable family resemblance.

The rest of us, I hope, know better. The idea every previous Trek series can be reconciled was always a lie, and a harmful lie at that. Sooner or later something like this had to arrive. An expansion not just of what stories Trek could tell, but how they could tell them. We're just lucky it happened with a show as good as this one; full of love, delighting in difference, and boasting a brilliant voice cast.

And did I mention it was funny?

Once On The Way Down, Once On The Way Up

Like I say, I'm not sure I have a huge amount to contribute on the subject of why comedy works. In this case, though, I'm sure it's a big help that second contact is just fundamentally funny as a ship's specialty. The Cerritos is an interstellar admin office; absolutely critical to Starfleet, but constantly ignored because all anyone wants to hear about is thrilling adventures out on the final frontier.

It's more than just a funny concept, though. It's also an effective base from which to launch criticism. I mentioned when covering "The Vulcan Hello" that every Trek show from Deep Space Nine onwards includes a route by which Starfleet/the Federation can be unsympathetically appraised [2]. Broadly, Lower Decks is no exception, but the angle of attack here is unusual. Up until now, the punches at the UFP have tended to target its obsession with rules it pretends are universally true and universally applied, despite the latter being questionable and the latter entirely impossible.

"Second Contact" pokes at that too. A major plot-beat here is that Starfleet's rigid protocols have left Galardonian farmers without help for the last year, with no obvious end in sight. There's something else going on here as well, though - an interrogation of Starfleet hierarchy from the perspective of the, well, of the lower decks. How does a supposedly egalitarian society deal with the fact there's a lowest rung to its highest calling?

One of the more common criticisms of Starfleet officers from those outside the service is that, to put it mildly, they tend towards the arrogant. The whole organisation is a blood-warm Petri dish for breeding egos that spread out of control. Almost certainly, this begins at the Academy. We looked at this in "Coming Of Age", where we learned Starfleet only allows a tiny proportion of the population to even attempt the entrance exams, and then flunks at least three quarters of those applicants, all irrespective of the actual performance of those involved. You're not being asked to prove you're good enough, you're being asked to prove you're better than a host of people who happened to live near you; a demand for competition ultimately no more justifiable than when Bigfoot tries to nick your boots.

Sure, you're the best of the best. Now go show us you're the best of the best of the best, or we won't let you into the school where only the best of the best of the best of the best get to graduate. With that done, we'll see which of you beats out their crewmates to be promoted to the best of the best of the - well, you get the idea. Even within the Academy you have guff like "Nova Squadron" and "Red Squad": "elite" teams which get to lord it over all the other poor schlubs of only middling levels of astonishing talent and phenomenal work ethic. This is all dangerously toxic, as literally every episode which features either group ably demonstrates.

Maxing out on competition breeds maximum competitiveness, with the end result being senior officers like those on the Cerritos. As Mariner tells it, the command staff need to believe that everything they do is of vital importance, and any vitally important thing that's done must be thanks to them. Mariner has her own bat'leth to grind, quite clearly, but there's no small truth to her position. Dr T'Ana dismisses Boimler as worthless, and Captain Freeman can't be bothered to learn his name, even while she's trying to pressure him into ratting out another ensign. Presumably this is a particularly problematic dynamic in the case of the Cerritos, given the glut of shoulder-chips over the total absence of glory involved in second contact missions. But then that in itself is just part of the problem. Focussing on how glorious a mission could be is a choice. Other metrics for fulfilment are available: think of Rutherford geeking out over unlikely systems failures, or Tendi delighting in having gotten to perform an impromptu heart massage, even while covered in zombie-vomit.

Our blue and gold ensigns remind us of what Starfleet is supposed to be. The two of them are just out there having fun, seeing space travel as an amazing experience irrespective of the fact they're advisedly going where someone has gone before. It's abundantly clear that the show approves of this attitude. This is a big part of why Mariner spends so much time giving Boimler crap for being too obsessed with the captain's chair (and, for some reason, the warp core) - he should be revelling in what he's getting to do right now, not obsessing over how quickly he can get away from doing it. It's not quite as simple as that, of course. Mariner is command division too, after all, like both her parents, the desire to be in charge is rooted within her as well, however strangely it expresses itself.

It'll take four years for the show to fully explore just why Mariner wants to climb a ladder she hates the idea of reaching the top of, of course, but some aspects of this are clear right from the beginning - much of her contempt is for a specific model of senior officer, as represented by Commander Ransom. And to be sure, he's the absolute worst here. His arrogant self-regard and need to charge at everything ego-first leads to him dismissing an alien bug-bite, simply because he figures he must be man enough to shrug off whatever the wee beastie might have been carrying. Insects are just too small, and he's just too bad-ass.

This is a lovely little detail (if you'll forgive the pun); Ransom dismisses the importance of something he considers entirely beneath him, and it almost brings about disaster. The inciting incident for the plot is also a comment on just where the Cerritos senior staff are going wrong. "Second Contact" is full of these clever moments, in which one idea is pulling double-duty. The zombie outbreak is a savvy choice of opening storyline for people not necessarily all that familiar with Trek; a common genre trope with which to ease people into this reality. But it's also saying something specific about what makes Trek different. The survivors of the outbreak aren't aiming for heat-shots to put their former friends out of their misery, they're stunning the zombies in the hopes their friends might be saved later. On the other side of the coin, Boimler's log-recording intro is a deliberate paralleling of how practically every Trek story pre-Discovery opens, but it's also a briefing on what the show is about and a character beat giving insight into what Boimler most wants.

It's astonishing how much is crammed into a single twenty-six minute episode. Introductory plots for all four main characters, along with sketches of the relationships between them, and the broad strokes of four senior officers as well. Compare this with "Remembrance", which in almost twice the length manages to partially flesh out precisely one character other than post-retirement Picard, and then promptly kills her.

"Second Contact" is spectacular. It's delightful. Plus there's that whole being funny thing This show is precisely what we all needed. The last time we looked at an animated Trek show, it was in the context of a franchise relegated, reduced to celluloid because nothing else was still feasible. Lower Decks is precisely the opposite - a breaking out of the patterns which simply aren't working anymore. The Animated Series was very nearly the grave of Star Trek. Lower Decks is its best hope for any kind of future.

The only problem was the proportion of the Trek old guard who just refused to engage. Lower Decks was the franchise's way out of its rut, but too many fans had turned those ruts into trenches, from which they defended their impossible vision of what Trek needed to become. Give us an astonishingly new and daring approach that is also exactly the fucking same in all respects, or give us death.

Lower Decks was the cure for the disease which had been killing the franchise for decades. You can only get so far with cures when the people spreading the sickness refuse to take it, though. Tar-spewing space zombies have nothing on entitled sci-fi nerds. Saving Trek was a project its self-proclaimed greatest fans had no interest in taking part in. Too many of the old guard were simply beyond help.

So Trek did the only thing it could. It looked elsewhere for where it could apply its treatments. It abandoned the festering plague houses of established fandom, and went to work preparing a vaccine that could be offered to the next generation.

It named this vaccine Prodigy.

[1] I loved the Lower Decks/Strange New Worlds cross-over in the latter's second season, but it's extremely telling how tamped down Mariner and Boimler are when they arrive in live-action mode.

[2] Picard also continues this tradition, albeit via the cack-handed method of rewriting Starfleet to be a bunch of racist arseholes.

Ordering:

1. Emissary 

2. Encounter At Farpoint 

3. Second Contact

4. The Vulcan Hello

5. Broken Bow

6. Beyond The Farthest Star 

7. Remembrance

8. Caretaker 

9. The Man Trap