Star Trek: Lower Decks (TV Series) Temporal Edict (2020) User Reviews

A step backwards...

[WKYanks · 7/10 · 21 August 2020]

I didn't enjoy this one so much. Made the CO look like an idiot.

Mariner is getting really annoying. I thought she was much better in 'Envoys', but she's off the deep end in this one. She's getting hauled off to the brig, so maybe we'll see a change. She is incredibly talented.

At least Ransom put her in her place. I see a relationship-a-brewing...

Loved the classic 2-handed punches.

I guess a way to look at this might be if this were 1987, we'd have just watched 'Code of Honor'.

"Miles O'brien is the most important person in the universe"

HAHAHA.... true lower decks perspective!!

I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Too Little, Too Late

[owen-watts · 6/10 · 29 August 2020]

After valiantly giving it a go on the strength of it not being as cringingly morose as Star Trek Discovery - and bringing the colourful existential silliness of Solar Opposites to an established universe-the first episode wasn't quite what I'd hoped. Unfortunately it rather carried on in that trend til we get to this point and I've given up on it.

The issue is - Discovery at the very least has a sprinkling of interesting characters - they're not front and centre a lot of the time (which is one of the main issues with it) but Lower Decks main four leads are barely defined and quite irritating. The Orville proved you could do a Star Trek style show with a comedy element and do it very well, but they did some heavy character work to make it all stick.

The fundamental issue, as many other reviewers have pointed out, is that it's two separate shows. One is Trekverse parody, heavy on the references to please the established fans, the other is an irreverent Rick & Morty style animated show aimed at fans of that in the hope to get them into Trek and it fully succeeds at neither. It's not sufficiently earnest enough to be Trek and it's not funny or characterful enough to work as a modern animated comedy. It's a lot brighter and more appealing to me than Discovery, but I'm far less willing to go along with it. Woe betide the Trekkies of 2020, all the content, none of it particularly good.

Trek for the working class...

[mr-jason-stoltz · 12 September 2020]

Loved this episode because I could relate to it more than any other trek episode in the entire canon. And it was funny!

An introspective depth with an extroverted expression

[anikadamg · 10/10 · 5 September 2020]

This is a commentary on modern times when CEOs can get so hung up on productivity that they kill it. This is Trek at its greatest, it's just that older fans like myself are less likely to appreciate it since we loved all the pomp and ceremony and that's kinda being taken for a ride right now. Here's some amazing observations they allude to in the episode which should be familiar to nearly all working adults and will be awesome

Command discovers buffer time and believing that this is a waste of time, orders tasks to be done according to a schedule they set. They never realised buffer time existed because they truly have no idea how long anything takes yet they decide to set the time table for those actually doing the work. Sometimes they get the times wrong Mostly the times don't even include walking to the place where the work is done, so everyone is running all the time. This also mentally exhausts people so they end up making exponentially more mistakes, to the extent that the ship is disabled at a crucial moment. Then when an externality crops up, they're expected to take care of that while still maintaining time on their already insufficient time table. This not only makes them totally ineffective at dealing with emergencies but also degrades even further their regular activities. The degradation of their regular activities directly causes things that normally would pass without incident, to turn into massive amounts of effort and injury. Tremendously increasing the actual work that it requires to do their operations. The mental exhaustion causes them to continue to escalate their own trouble by attacking each other instead of easily dealing with the situation at hand themselves. Meanwhile, the captain is absolutely overwhelmed and takes on tremendous work that their reports should be doing, she has to do it because now the others are incapacitated. "I need us working harder and faster and stricter" the captain says as she collapses into a chair. "You're a great captain, let them be a great crew" "Let people do whatever they need to do to get the job done" Just define goals and let them come up with approaches********

An absolute embarrassment

[Dave_05 · 1/10 · 21 August 2020]

If you want to make a space cartoon, fine but leave the name Star Trek out of it. This is a disgrace.

I could watch white noise and be more entertained

[metzelmax · 2/10 · 20 August 2020]

For a comedy it lacks jokes.

The only funny part was the Miles O'brien Statue. But only because of the in-joke that comes from reading the 'Miles obrien at work' web comic... which is 100 times funnier than this show and also portrays doing a dead end job better.

This was my face expression watching whole episode :-I

[MartyisGreat · 4/10 · 23 August 2020]

I felt nothing, no laughter, no sorrow, no anger.

Just an occasional "What?!" thought like when he stabbed her in the foot or how XO is switching between being diplomatic to being a gung-ho fighter.

What's with the two angry self-absorbed black ladies? Also I noticed StarFleet is run by women now similar to the show Picard. Star Trek universe is turning into some sort of SJW agenda themed show and not in a good way. I'm all for being progressive but this...

I'm done typing.

Boldly going its own direction...

[Rob_P · 1/10 · 25 August 2020]

What is there to say that hasn't been written already?

This is not Star Trek. Name-dropping and making reference to other Trek incarnations make it less interesting.

I do not know at whom this is aimed. The worst character is Mariner, lacking all the qualities expected of Star Fleet personnel.

The bad news is that All Access ordered two seasons before reviewing fan opinions.

I dont know to who this is made for

[lopo-38778 · 3/10 · 21 August 2020]

I have seen all Trek before it and only thing i have not watched was the animated show. I even watched all discovery and picard even tough i dont like them and these types of shows in streaming platform work maybe only when you ping watch them full season.

This Lower decks is making fun of the older treks but all the jokes are not in context where they are in this lower decks show. It's basically make a reference joke about just to use reference for old Trek shows and not that these reference jokes have anything in common what is happening in this episode.

If this is for new audience then how do these people understand the jokes if they have not seen any of the old Treks these jokes are made out of ?

I dont know maybe it's me but i cant understand the humor of this show. All jokes are always in a wrong time in a wrong place and none of them land a smile on my face. Basically producer is someone who is a fan of TNG but rest of the crew he is working with have no idea what so ever about trek and they have no clue how to make it funny so there for we have this type of a show that tries too hard to be funny but isn't

It is not about time travel

[gacsogergely · 1/10 · 23 August 2020]

I'm actualy not sure what this was about. There was no plot, nothing. This was literaly a single half-baked sentence stretched into length of an episode.

To add insult to injury, Green Chick and Cyborg From The DC-Universe are written out, they are no longer distinct in any shape or frorm from other background-characters. And the protagonist is somehow Black Chick. Who in every single episode, proves, has no place in ANY Star Trek. The cherry on top is, even her character becomes obsolate from the episode's view.

Giving 1 star is waaay too much to this garbage. Here is how you can rise this show to an acceptable level: fire everyone, gather all copies and burn them, finaly forget it ever tried to exist.

Rooted in Trek Culture, Still Not Funny

[lasher-michael-p · 5/10 · 22 August 2020]

This episode reminded me of "The Chain of Command," how Jellico tightened up the ship to everyone's maximum capabilities because he saw the Cardassians as an apex enemy. This captain... Was having a bad day? Half the characters don't seem to have motivation to their actions, as if the writers just said, "You know what would be funny... Lololololol!"

So we get to see 20 minutes of 99% of the crew being stressed and Mariner and Random trying to one up each other. Random is shaping up to be perhaps the worst character on the show; his lack of self-awareness is painful and doesn't make sense he would rise to an XO position.

The only redeeming factor was O'Brien being identified as the greatest example of Starfleet in history. If they said it Burnham or someone else on Discovery I would have been done with this show. Given everything O'Brien did from the Cardassian war up to teaching at the academy and all the suffering he was put through, he definitely deserves.a big honor like that.

The first episode that doesn't suck

[Janju76 · 4/10 · 20 August 2020]

In this episode Beckett has not as much screentime and does not interact with Brad that much. Beckett nerdshames Brad in the beginning of the episode, which clearly shows the mindset of the people behind the show and the target audience. It's a show from Jocks for Jocks. Laugh about it when a nerd is bullied. So much fun.

Beside this all the plots that happen are ok, with some actually good moments and scenes. The question is, "Is this star trek?" and i would say, no it isn't. It's silly nonsense for Jocks.

Temporal Edict

[Prismark10 · 5/10 · 12 March 2021]

An episode that shows what happens if the Captain does not cut the lower decks a bit of slack.

The crew enjoy a bit of buffer time, some extra time added on to their tasks.

When the Captain brings in a tight time schedule. The crew are run ragged, overtired and make a blunder when making contact with Galrek V a new planet to the Federation.

The Cerritos is boarded by a hostile party and the crew are too tired to fight back.

In a sense this is the kind of episode to show lower deck life. Also it also highlights what a squealer Boemler is.

On Galrek V, Commander Ransom gets to mimic classical Star Trek as he gets to do a gladiatorial combat.

I'm still unsure whether I can be completely onboard with cartoon Star Trek. One of the reasons is that so soon after after watching Picard and Discovery. You have to remember to switch your brain off for this.

How is this for children, Kurtzman?

[dean-202 · 2/10 · 26 August 2020]

This series keeps being defended for it's low quality by Kurtzman et. al saying it's "for children". This episode is full of profanity and borderline sexual violence. I think it's time for the CBS censors to get involved, because either Kurtzman is deliberately sexualizing children, or lying about who this series was actually intended for, and that since CBS failed to deliver anything clever, they went for crude.

Complete Garbage

[v0l4til3 · 1/10 · 26 August 2020]

I still don't know why this is called star trek its so far removed from anything star trek its embarrassing. They should really cancel this abomination before it gets worse, its supposed to be a comedy I don't remember anything star trek being a comedy, save your time into doing something more productive then wasting your life trying to make sense of this garbage.

A Senior Trekker writes.................

[celineduchain · 5/10 · 8 February 2022]

Star Trek Lower Decks is a (mainly) unfunny Star Trek parody and, as such, does not deserve an actual review but a few observations may resonate with older viewers. Those who have always taken the traditional Star Trek message of tolerance and inclusivity to heart may struggle to cope with a loud-mouthed, insubordinate bully as the lead character.

Irrespective of the race or gender apparently being depicted, IT IS NOT A PERSON, IT IS JUST PIXELS. A whole committee of people came up with Mariner and then spent ten episodes reinforcing that character's least sympathetic characteristics. They did it on purpose. Apparently, the expression used nowadays is "being triggered" and, once that is accepted, this entire venture can be understood as a minor and rather tasteless foray into the culture wars of the day.

Stay safe, stay kind and, above all, please do not give up on Gene Roddenberry's original, warm-hearted creations.