HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

While not a bad episode by any means, “The Spy Humungous” doesn’t really stand out. It’s the first entry in the season that didn’t strike me as being remarkable in some fashion. It represents a return to the formula from last season and considering that this season shines most when it breaks away from that formula, “The Spy Humongous” comes off as a step backward. Again, the episode isn’t a bad one, but it doesn’t do anything new or interesting either. I have said before that not every episode has to be a brand new, great exploration of deep issues or character motivation, and I stand by that. Episodes can just be fun, especially in Lower Decks, but the fun in “The Spy Humongous” never manages to elevate the episode from just an overall feeling of blah.

Plot Ahoy

Ensigns Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Mariner gather around breakfast in the mess to receive their work assignment, which is “anomaly collection duty,” which apparently involves collecting the random specimens the bridge crew have collected in their offices over the course of a year. As Mariner terms it, ACD is trash day, but it’s trash day in Starfleet. Moreover, it’s trash day on the Cerritos, so things are bound to go wrong. Rutherford experiences instantaneous molecular expansion. Mariner gets stuck to the ceiling in a pink goo prison. Nanobots eat off her fingerprints. Tendi gets swallowed by a slug, and after grabbing a mysterious cube, turns into a giant praying mantis.

Boimler, despite being originally slated to accompany them gets pulled aside by another group of Ensigns, including the Kzinti I mentioned last week. They offer to let him join their group, in which every member helps the others get promoted in exchange for him sharing some of Riker’s wisdom with them. Boimler is initially skeptical of the “Redshirts,” as they call themselves, but they promise him a shot at an acting captain spot. He goes along with it, and they proceed to give him a makeover and try to teach him how to give a speech.

Tendi, in her mantis form, runs rampant through the ship and storms the mess. Boimler and his new “friends” see her, and they rush in to give inspiring speeches. Frustrated with their unwillingness to do anything, Boimler asks Mariner to identify the cube. Then, he proceeds to make a fool of himself in order to break down Tendi’s literal “emotional armor.” He saves her and the ship from further destruction, but the Redshirt leader decides Boimler is no longer Redshirt material. However, Boimler points out that he actually saved the day, unlike his cohort, and the rest of the Redshirts side with Boimler. Back to normal, Boimler and the lower deckers get together to prank call Armus.

The bridge crew, meanwhile, has been dealing with Pakleds. Freeman and Shaxs beam down to Planet Pakled in order to negotiate a ceasefire while a Pakled Rumdar beams aboard to spy on the Cerritos. Freeman finds herself frustrated in her plans to negotiate that ceasefire because she has to find the Pakled with the biggest hat. Ransom and Kayshon immediately deduce that Rumdar is a spy, and they try to milk him for information. However, he mistakes an airlock for the restroom and spaces himself. T’Ana revives him, and Rumdar beams down to the planet triumphant in his spying. Freeman capitalizes on his glee to discover the Pakled plan to send a bomb to Earth. She beams back to the Cerritos and relays the information to Starfleet, securing a win for her record.

Analysis

The strongest aspect of “The Spy Humongous” is actually that it isn’t Mariner focused. Tendi and her near indefatigable optimism take center stage for the Trash Day plot line. She even gets to say what surely she must have been thinking at least a time or two when she yells at both Rutherford and Mariner for spending the entire day whining. Mariner makes a great point that at the end of the day, Starfleet is a job. Not everything can be glorious-saving-the-universe level adventures or discovering a new development in science. Some things have to get done , and sometimes, they aren’t fun. However, Tendi lives a solid counter-argument. By that I mean, she saw trash day as an opportunity to get her friends closer to the adventures, and perspective can make or break a situation. Mariner and Rutherford do drag her down, but Boimler saves the day precisely by embracing the suck, which is a very Tendi move.

The Redshirts as a group obviously call back to Red Squadron, which you may remember from Deep Space Nine’s “Valiant.” I mention that here rather than down in the Egg Hunt section because knowing Red Squadron’s history informs some of how the Redshirts land. Red Squadron was an elite group of cadets that get trapped behind enemy lines during the Dominion War, and despite being cadets, they continued to run missions after their supervising senior officers are killed. Cadet Tim Watters assumes command and becomes so obsessed with the following the mission and with the ideals of heroism that he gets nearly all of his squadron killed. Our Redshirt leader recalls Watters, if in a trademark Lower Decks way.

Boimler steps into Nog’s role with the Redshirts. Where Nog does become seduced by Watters and Red Squadron’s collective zeal, he eventually realizes that being a good captain doesn’t always mean choosing the heroic path. Sometimes, it’s about surviving. Boimler makes a similar realization in his lower stakes environment when he throws the dignity so treasured by the Redshirts to the wind and simply does what must be done. It’s a good look at the nature of leadership; the Redshirts and Watters understand the form but not the substance. Boimler understands the difference, which is why Casey finds himself the sole member of the Redshirts by the end. This story line also pokes affectionate fun at the tendency Trek captains have toward “speechifying,” which is cute.

Freeman skirts some of this line with her obsession with her record, but when the chips are down, she’s a good captain. At her heart, she has internalized the need to act, sometimes even by adapting to take advantage of a situation that could have gone south. Remember, she’s down there to negotiate a cease-fire, but she’s stymied at every turn by the overwhelming Pakled stupidity. As it happens, the Pakleds never intended to negotiate, which she quickly realizes, and then pumps Rumdar for information. It’s a very Freeman moment, but it does raise the question, why are the Pakleds such a threat? Riker hints that they have a hidden benefactor, but the entire joke of “The Spy Humongous” is that the Pakleds are almost awe-inspiringly stupid. Even the vacuum of space cannot defeat their level of stupid; I’m convinced Rumdar survived simply because he didn’t know he was supposed to die.

I understand why a Trek comedy would choose the Pakleds as a season foe because no way can they be taken seriously. The show doesn’t even want for you to take them seriously. They fit nicely into the overall vision Lower Decks portrays of its universe, but their continued success does not speak well of Starfleet. They did briefly get the better of Picard’s Enterprise crew, but their ability to sustain that success does not indicate competence on Starfleet’s part. I get it, but the joke isn’t quite landing for me yet. Perhaps there’s a bait-and-switch waiting for me at the end of the season. I hope so because I want a little more out of the Pakled Plot.

Rating:

A solid three cups of Earl Grey Tea, a touch on the tepid side.

The Egg Hunt

1. ”The Spy Humongous” riffs off of “the spy among us” and the size of the Pakleds. Dad jokes, this show’s got them.
2. Casey mentions wanting to learn how to “blow something brass,” which while ostensibly refers to Riker playing the Trombone is mostly a joke at his expense about his brown-nosing behavior.
3. Rumdar asks to see the crimson force field, which is something Geordi LaForge made up to cover his own actions during “The Samaritan Snare.”
4. Winger Bingston is self-referential.
5. The big Easter Egg is that they prank call Armus and call him a skin of evil. Armus killed Tasha Yar in the episode “Skin of Evil.”
6. Redshirts plays off of the perceived TOS tradition of killing off random security personnel. Security fell into Operations, so they wore red shirts.
7. Was calling out “Excelsior” both a Stan Lee reference and possibly a reference to Sulu’s ship? I think so.
8. The stage on the Cerritos comes to us from so, so many TNG episodes. So, so many.
9. The Kzinti’s terrible posture recalls their actual posture from the TAS episode “The Jihad.”
10. The Pakleds mistake Freeman for Janeway and the Cerritos for the Enterprise. Ha.