LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS! Best Trek is back, and up to its usual shenanigans even as our favorite ensigns start to move forward with their lives.
For try-hard Boimler, the promotion he’s been so desperate for since the beginning is finally within reach, something he’s tipped off to by a winking Ransom. Can it be?? Will the show even still be Lower Decks if the famously un-famous main characters actually start moving onward and upward? Can the show about the “lowest ranking crew members on the least important ship in the fleet” keep that spirit once the crew starts advancing?
We’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the season pans out to answer that question. We are in Season 4, though, and after four years on the Cerritos, it seems about time that some ensigns should get promoted to lieutenant. This ain’t Voyager, home of the most un-promotable ensign in Starfleet, poor Harry Kim.
But wait, actually it is! Like last season’s tribute to Deep Space Nine, this episode indulges in some unabashed nostalgia and fan service, this time for the wacky yet beloved Voyager, where, as Mariner mentions, “shit got freaky.” Ain’t that the truth… I recently rewatched that show, and oof, some of those episodes were downright bizarre. And “Twovix” leans right into that absurdity.
Voyager, the ship, has been converted into a museum commemorating its seven-year adventure in the Delta Quadrant, and the crew of the Cerritos is tasked with transporting this piece of history to Earth. The crew is super enthusiastic about it… except Boimler, who’s so terrified of screwing up his promotion that he becomes uncharacteristically timid instead of his usual fanboy self. All he has to do to ensure he gets it is avoid screwing up anything historic…
And of course, screwed up, things get. “Twovix” digs up Voyager‘s wackiest moments — starting with the infamous episode where Tuvok and Neelix get combined into one being, Tuvix, who begs to remain as he is but is forced by Captain Janeway to be revert to Tuvok and Neelix, essentially killing Tuvix. It’s an episode that still inspires fan debate to this day — did Janeway commit murder? Why when T’Ana and Billips are the ones smashed together this time, and Captain Freeman goes searching for Janeway’s solution, you know things are going to get gnarly.
Further shenanigans ensue… a dormant “macro virus” from another one of Voyager’s weirder entries — basically, enormous flying viruses attack people — escapes. Holodeck characters Chaotica and Michael Sullivan appear. And of course there’s a salamander running around, a tribute to what is probably the worst episode in Star Trek history, “Threshold,” where Tom Paris and Captain Janeway “evolve” into the amphibians.
All in all, “Twovix” is a raucous re-introduction to Lower Decks and promises another loud, humorous, helter-skelter season. Fans of Voyager will be especially delighted by all the references to what, in hindsight, is a deeply weird show. Yet amid the chaos, Lower Decks never loses sight of what makes it special: the crew friendships that form the heart and soul of the show.
4/5 stars
