It’s one thing to have Uber competent captains or bridge officers, one would hope so for the sake of the crew, and another thing to have a super annoying generation z type ensign arrogantly proclaiming how great they are. It’s akin to Wesley Crusher showing up the bridge crew on TNG.
probably nothing other than parody a highly successful show that'd been around for decades... it was just the first decent parallel to pop into my head.
Her father is an admiral and her mom is captain... she is Wesley without the neurosis. And let's face it, the grunts in any work place culture take great pride in being grunts. Why wouldn't Mariner-who notably disdains the hierarchy-celebrate the ones who get shit done?
It ain't bragging if you can do it, and so far, Mariner can do it. I assume at some point they will show her out of her depth, but who knows. So one key difference between Wesley Crusher and Mariner is that Wesley -- despite supposedly being in his early teens at the beginning of TNG and having no prior Starfleet experience was depicted as being better than not just recent Starfleet graduates, but veteran officers in Starfleet's pride and joy. (Personally, I think I would have preferred a Wesley who was written as cocky as befitting the prodigy he was to the Wesley we got. Like if he was the Star Trek equivalent of Damian Wayne. Part of what was so annoying about him was that he was such a genius about some things but then so naive about things like, "Why do people take drugs anyway" and "We're Starfleet. We don't lie." But I digress.) Mariner, despite her pedigree, has yet to be described or shown to be better than anybody but Boimler, who is a noob. What she has done so far has not shown a particularly high level of skill for a galaxywise former lieutenant, daughter of a captain and an admiral, with service on five ships. Through the first two episodes, she has brought and drank contraband, snuck away to give farming equipment to people she'd met before, run away from a giant spider and jumped on it, conned a transdimensional being into giving her a fancy tricorder (and power crystal), flew a shuttle (with BLAST SHIELDS!), sparred a little with a Klingon, spotted one alien, stole money from another alien, and threatened to beat up people in a bar brawl but bought drinks instead. (OK, taking the money was impressive because we saw it go one way and the alien seemed to recover it, so either there was a bait-and-switch or she was lying about stealing). But that is the rub: the notion of her being better at anything than Boimler is tough for some people to swallow, and it can't just be about one character being better. No, it has to be perceived as SJWism. Admittedly, at some point they should flip the script and show that Boimler's protocol-and-homework loving nature has its upsides too. I imagine that will come up a couple times in this first season.
Seriously, if POC or women or LGBTQ+ were as sensititive to the many many times over the years when someone meeting their demographic was portrayed not as good as a straight white male as some people are over the handful of times when a white male character was shown to be flawed and a POC/female/queer character was depicted favorably to them, we would have either not been able to leave the bed or we would have burned Hollywood to the ground by now.
Did you say this about Jim Kirk when he violated the Prime Directive every other week? Or when Picard and Worf were willing to accept a cover-up to protect the House of Duras? Or when Sisko used WMDs on a Maquis planet or lied to the Romulans to get them into the war? If only her name was Rick Sanchez or Miles O'Brien or Galen Tyrol, you'd be creaming your shorts.
I have been watching Rick and Morty because of STLD. I've been trying to figure out if as "Sanchez" he is supposed to be Latino or if that is just random.
"I've always wanted to try that." Well, I'm so glad that never happened. Nor did an android helmsman show up a chief of security in close combat, or a shrewd diplomat teach an empath to read people, or a command track officer explain physics to a genius scientist.
I explained this way back on TrekBBS. It's really simple. Two hearts, two kinds of blood. The red kind does all the oxygen and immunity stuff. The purple kind is grape.
I think I see what they are doing here... Mariner is supposed to be a Kirk like figure trapped in the TNG era Star Fleet. I'd imagine JTK would have a lot of problems rising the ranks amid all that bureaucracy but be in it just for the thrills. She's had a front seat view of Star Fleet command from her parents, is naturally talented just like them but rejects the pencil pushers. It seems like senior command will take credit for all of the great things the LD crew will contribute. It's funny how some people can't see that because race and gender are blocking their view. Question... Was Ensign Castro mentioned in Ep 2 depicted in TNG? At first I thought of the engineering Ensign who spilled her Hot Chocolate on Picard in QWho, but her name was Sonya Gomez.
Exactly! The impossible happens every single episode of Trek, but some people can't suspend disbelief that in an era of equality a more experienced black woman could be better at some things that draw on that experience than a white man. How sad. I would have to imagine that anybody who was an ensign on the Enterprise in the timeframe of the TNG show -- I think Lower Decks is supposed to be set just post-Nemesis, so lik e10-15 years after Nemesis -- has either gotten promoted, voluntarily left or washed out of Starfleet by now. (Although maybe there was another person on the Mariner career trajectory, LOL). Like maybe if they were an ensign in one of the movies, that would be a reasonable possible connection. But according to the below, they think it is made up. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-lower-decks-episode-2-easter-eggs-references/
And now for some thoughts and good old-fashioned nitpicking about Ep. 2: The transdimensional being bit Pretty unfunny. Tendi is right to bring up the notion of enslaving a sentient being as questionable. I mean they soften it somewhat by having this one be hostile, but still. The notion that Mariner can grab onto something that can phase through metal doesn't really make sense, nor does the notion that they can stuff it into a doodad, nor that they just so happen to have the doodad with them. That Mariner wished for a fancy tricorder, which presumably they could get at any time from anywhere on the ship, is pathetic. Surely they could come up with a better MacGuffin than that. That residue of the being seems to have merged with Captain Freeman means that there will be a followup to all this, maybe? I did sort of smile at the demand for the power crystal and the search for a catchphrase. The Mariner-Boimler plot Seems like one of the most decorated generals in the Klingon empire should a. not need the Cerritos to ferry him anywhere and b. should warrant more than a couple of ensigns to do the run. Also, we now have gone from Mariner not being able to spit out "bat'leth" and making fun of Klingons while drunk to knowing "cha'dich" in the first episode to actually being blood-bonded to this high-ranking Klingon and knowing at least one drinking song in Klingon. Seems inconsistent to me. I liked the relationship between her and K'orin and thought the jokes in the shuttle mostly hit (not the spilling ramen all over the controls). But she seemed to be surprised that K'orin was on board, and seemed to have to request to be on the escort detail. If they were such homies, shouldn't she have known about his presence? Shouldn't he have requested her as escort? Shouldn't Captain Mommy have assigned her to it? I think we need to have a face-to-face between Freeman and Mariner. Given that Mariner knew that K'orin had at least twice before pulled similar stunts to stealing the shuttle, she probably should have better anticipated him doing it. There presumably had to be a way easier solution -- going somewhere that they could make an authorized off-world transmission, like the embassy for example. A lot of stuff fell out of the shuttle when he took off. I guess that all got left there? Speaking of stealing, Mariner claims to have stolen a bag of money from one of the aliens that they encountered. I'm not sure how. We saw her take the bag and throw it away. The alien then went after the bag and we heard sounds as if it were picking up coins. Did the alien have two bags? Did she somehow manage some sleight of hand? Tough day for Boimler. Almost impregnated, wrongly intervened in something he had no business intervening in, kicked in the nuts, scared about court-martial, filled with self-doubt. That said, who loses a bar brawl when he starts off with a phaser in his hand? And why did he blunder into that situation in the first place? There's nothing very Starfleet regulations about prejudging that. Also, they do need to give him more of a spine in general. He should have pointed out that if they had done this by the book, K'orin would have been at the embassy, and they could have gotten gagh from the planet's equivalent of Domino's. I enjoyed the Ferengi acting like S1 TNG Ferengi, with the "hyu-mon" and the hand thing. But it's super racist to be like "the Ferengi are the least trustworthy species in the galaxy." The Rutherford-Tendi plot Again, this was all set in motion by something that was easily avoidable and that should have been better written. The notion that Rutherford would consider switching careers to keep a relatively minor promise to someone he just met doesn't make sense. Why can't he just switch shifts with someone, or use a personal day, or see the pulsar during the break? Or better yet, just tell her "Sorry it didn't work out this time, but we can do something next time?" Trek has been sort of weird about Orion women, but I think it is canon that at least some have a pheromone-based hypnotic effect. Is that what is going on here? Is Rutherford under the influence of Tendi-based delirium? It would have been much better if they just said that Rutherford was participating in a cross-training exercise where he gets experience with the different departments. I thought his experiences with the other departments (killing 105 percent of the crew and "How are you still alive?") were all pretty funny. Tendi not realizing the lengths that Rutherford went to means that she has a huge blindspot. I hope that they aren't trying to set these two up as a romantic couple, but I guess I know they are.
Remember in The Trouble With Tribbles where Scotty thanks Kirk for confining him to quarters so he can catch up on his technical manuals? Rutherford, like Scotty, is such a geek that his job really isn't work for him. So taking a day off isn't something that would occur to him. And Tendi does realize the lengths that Rutherford went for her, it's just that neither of them is willing to admit it yet.
I absolutely get that Rutherford loves his job so much that a day at work is like a vacation. But that's all the more reason why he should not even have contemplated a career switch, especially over something so minor as a passing promise to hang out. Not when easier solutions -- taking time off or switching shifts-- is right there. Engineers are problem-solvers and this isn't a particularly tough problem to solve. It's even more artificial if you think that -- as far as we know -- there's nothing about the pulsar that demands that it be observed at a given time. Surely in the course of 24 hours on whatever date Tendi wants to watch the pulsar, he gets time off? I'm not sure which is worse: if Tendi is oblivious to the lengths Rutherford went for her, or if she knows that she caused him these headaches and is pretending that she does not. Neither speaks particularly well of her as a person.
You have an almost Daytonesque-like inability to understand human behavior. Rutherford wants the transfer out of engineering so that he doesn't get himself so wrapped up in his work that he neglects Tendi and figures that if he slots himself into something that he's "just okay with" he'll be able to keep to a 40-hour week, instead of spending all his free time tweaking things to ever-higher levels of perfection. Tendi has known Rutherford, for at most, a few weeks. If either of them acknowledges to the other one what Rutherford did, that defacto means they're in a relationship. It's a bit of a big ask to make such a commitment if it's someone you barely know. Rushing headlong into a romance over what could be a superficial attraction is a very good way to get hurt.
I kind of wonder if Mariner has thing for Boimler. This episode, she interrupted a kiss between him and an alien trying to impregnate him yeah, but in the last episode, Boimler was obviously pretty enamored meeting Tendi for the first time... and Mariner steps in a puts him down a few notches. We'll see.
I said this when Captain Marvel came out. Fanboys were crying that she was too snarky, and jokey, and smug, but put those traits on a male character...it's Han Solo. Han Solo, they're like "oh, I want to be him! ". Captain Marvel? "Who does that uppity bitch think she is!!? ".
No humans I have ever met have reacted like that or would ever conceivably act like what you're suggesting. If the writers wanted us to read all of what you're positing into their interactions, they should have done a better job establishing it. As far as we know, Rutherford and Tendi aren't even dating. Hell, even if it were the case that they are in love, it is crazy and unhealthy to blow up one's life or to let someone blow up their life like this.
I don't want to belabor the point, but how many people do you know who have changed careers/divisions for the sake of a date with someone they have just met?
they're ensigns... I think it's more like changing a college timetable so your co-op placements line up. that, and the shamrock shake effect she has...
I could get taking a course that someone's not really interested in to because it allows them to spend time with a potential boyfriend/girlfriend. I can't get dropping a course that you love to take a course that you may or may not be interested in because it frees up time for a single date with a potential boyfriend/girlfriend. Not when there are obvious easier alternatives. I haven't seen people act like that, can't conceive of people acting like that, and if that makes me Daytonesque, then pass me the M&Ms.
a little... once again, she's Orion. Guys are gonna have a little trouble keeping focused on priorities around her.
I’ve known people who’ve abandoned their fucking children after a one-night stand. And these weren’t people in their late teens/early 20s, either.
Hell, even Asimov put a line about folk like that in 2010: Odyssey Two. The guy who won awards for designing spaceships but ended up working in a garage in Kiev because of a blonde.
