“Shades of Green”

A step down from the first episode of the season, I thought.

In a reversal from the first episode, here Tendi has the A plot. I could not enjoy this for one reason and one reason only - it's all conflict based on miscommunication between Tendi and her sister. Like many people, I absolutely loathe artificial conflict based on miscommunication. It made every scene where Tendi tried to be overly protective of her sister cringeworthy. Worse yet, the reason D'Erika hides it from Tendi makes no sense at all. Tendi would be 100% aware of the normal cultural practices of Orions, and yet she seems only motivated for her sister's (and the baby's) safety, not considering the responsibilities she'd need to have to help train the child. And then, when she finds out, that responsibility means nothing - to her, to her sister, to her parents.

At least Tendi's actions - destroying her sister's chance at winning the race - actually have consequences. Even her last-minute rally doesn't do better than a tie, and in a tie, both sides lose. Except due to a deus ex machina, Starfleet gives them even more wealth back at the literal last minute. While I don't know what the season has in store for Tendi's clan later on, restoring the status quo here wasn't needed. This episode also ends with Tendi reunited with the Cerritos - exactly mirroring the Season 2 foray of Boimler on the Titan, which lasted all of two episodes. I'm just not a fan of this sort of artificial drama splitting the crew apart.

There's not a real B plot to speak of here, but on a planet giving up capitalism, Mariner and Boimler get into some shenanigans on an away mission. There's actually some humor here, and it makes a gesture towards an arc. Boimler seems still impacted by meeting the alternative "cool Boimler," trying to grow a beard and experiment with new command styles with ensigns. He retreats back into typical Boimler behavior soon enough, and ultimately discovers that he should trust his instincts. It's fine, but strictly space filling.

There's a tiny C plot here as well with Rutherford and T'Lyn. Basically just that we discover, once again (as the first episode of the season also reminded us) that Rutherford is (non-romantically) head over heels for Tendi, and dealing poorly with his absence. T'Lyn shows unusual emotional maturity understanding Rutherford's pain and needs for a Vulcan. I don't like going to the well with Rutherford on this yet again, but I loved seeing this side of T'Lyn.

In the end, I don't think this episode was actively worse than the first one. However, it was actively worse than the first one for me. Please, no more artificial conflict based on poor communication!

I chuckled at some of the Orion pirate material. Orions are strictly Lord of the Rings/Warcraft fodder within a sci-fi at this point.

I thought the Tendi/D'Erika material was decent enough, though I feel like women may get more out this portion. I suppose there's a good reason to hide something personal like pregnancy and we don't really know what Orions generally think about it. It's conceptually fun even if it didn't have any groundbreaking gravitas.

The capitalistic-gone-Starfleet planet (Targalus IX) had me the most engaged. It's really a common fan argument (here even) about how post-scarcity societies might deal with money. The light-hearted jabs like "No worries, we'll just replicate another!" are particularly on-brand. Obviously, there weren't any politics discussed in the episode. It was still fun to see Boimler's crew listen to him.

I guess that bat they used to fake their death was from "A Night in Sickbay". I've seen the ENT episode, but I got to admit there's no way I'd remember something so obscure.

Tendi's arc could've been longer, but in the final season it makes sense to have everyone together. Overall, 2.5 stars.

So no TAS fans here? I like the call backs to the Pirates of Orion episode; the hokey 70s cartoon villain uniforms, the same ship just better drawn, and how they pronounce it OR-ion; and D’Erica: “It’s pronounced o-RI-on!” Pretty funny.

I've been enjoying the Orion arc the last two episodes, it makes me want to see Tendi get her own spin off show now that LD is ending. Maybe they can turn it into a live action show like they did when Star Wars Rebels ended and then Ashoka got her own show with the Rebels characters now played by live actors. That would be awesome; I would watch that in a heartbeat and choose that over Tilly's Academy show. Not since Enterprise have we seen such exploration of Orion culture. It could be very interesting. Maybe someone should pitch that to Kurtzman and co.?

I enjoyed this two-part premiere for the character work, but I didn't laugh once. Does that matter? I'm not sure I care if I laugh if I'm engrossed into the story being told, and I was, because it was good character work. So these episodes were decent entertainment, anyway.

I gotta agree- I actually largely enjoy Lower Decks, but this episode was definitely not it. Tendi was dumb to the point where it was just kind of exhausting.

Actually, I found this episode a rather interesting study in showing how exactly the claim that Federation citizens (especially humans) "don't need money" could be true. On a somewhat contrarian note, I doubt the invention of replicators would actually be the end of "capitalism" if by "capitalism" you mean general markets for the exchange of goods and services; what it *would* bring to an end would be abject poverty, as replimats replaced all grocery stores, clothing outlets, and automobile dealerships while industrial-grade replicators pumped out all the standardized housing units anyone could use. Things that replicators can't make—like prime pieces of real estate, as shown in the Deep Space Nine episode "Progress"—would continue to be at least somewhat scarce and therefore valuable, and rather than being abolished altogether, currency would simply consist of credits based on units of energy and matter to feed the replicators rather than on fiat bills or coins.

Speaking of matter, something I notice about this episode is that while some of the metallic bars one sees the newly post-scarcity planet dumping along with the rest of its "treasure trash" may be made of gold, there's no way very many of the coins in the crates the ensigns under Boimler's command are carrying could be; gold is far too *heavy* for even an individual with three times a human's strength (e.g. a Vulcan or Klingon) to lift an entire cubic foot of it, let alone one of the entirely human-looking ensigns Boimler is shown assisting in his very first scene in this episode. I also notice that when he mentions the "treasure trash" ("jewels and crap") to Tendi at the end and she thinks to ask for it to be given to her family, she doesn't say anything about any of the coins or bars, but only "How many jewels?"

In a way, it makes some sense that the Orions still value jewels while having no particular use for formerly "precious" metals like silver and gold. Here and now in real life, aluminum (once more valuable than these other metals) is ridiculously cheap to mine and refine; while even though we now have the means to synthesize all the major gemstones, "natural" diamonds and emeralds and rubies (among others) are still deemed comparatively rare and valuable. The Orions are also shown to be somewhat picky about what constitutes "booty" in general, as a blink-and-you-miss-it moment back in "Something Borrowed, Something Green" shows one of the lower-decks Orion loot-sorters casually tossing an old Kirk-era Federation phaser in the trash the way someone might throw out a rusty old revolver nowadays.

I'm also noticing the formerly wealthy Targaleans who took those ensigns hostage did still own some prime real estate; like the Bajorans (and decidedly *unlike* the real-life Soviets and other Commies), nobody confiscated any of their property that still held some value in a post-scarcity society. One would think Tendi and her family would be a *little* more upset over losing their family's posh-looking planet-side estates, but it looks like the Queen left them their ships (or at least their capacity to make/acquire more of them quickly), and they were able to hire their former Azure rivals as servants, so they clearly were already rebuilding their wealth even before their favorite daughter got the idea to scoop up the Targaleans' "treasure trash" for them. It would be interesting to know what else does and doesn't count as "booty" by Orion (or at least the Tendi Family's) standards.

"labored" sitcom - lol iswydt