HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

“Veritas” hits strongly on one of this season’s most recurring themes, that things are not as they seem. While in any other context, “Veritas” would be a clever take on the trope, we’ve simply seen too much of it in Lower Decks for the episode to be anything other than retreading extremely familiar ground. However, “Veritas” works, if it does, precisely because the ground is familiar. “Veritas” is an episode very much in dialogue with previous Trek canon, and it is not one that pushes the envelope. That failure may be the episode’s point, but it does not make for particularly scintillating viewing.

Plot Ahoy

Ensigns Brad Boimler, Beckett Mariner, D’Vana Tendi, and Sam Rutherford find themselves shoved into a dark room just as bars slide across the only door. While they all panic because they’ve determined they’re in an alien dungeon, the floor begins to rise. Their destination is a dark chamber, illuminated with spotlights on the ensigns and on the bridge crew, who are suspended in a beam of light. A reptilian alien begins to badger the ensigns to recount what they know of the events on a particular stardate.

Mariner begins by recalling how Captain Freeman beamed back to the Cerritos with a map of the neutral zone, only to annoy the species from whom she acquired said map. Freeman orders Mariner to send the alien a message, so Mariner fires on the alien, which was evidently not what Freeman had in mind.

Rutherford testifies into the aptly named Horn of Candor next, but his memories of the relevant stardate are spotty because Billups and Shaxs required him to update his implant. Unfortunately, even Vulcan technology cannot smooth out the update process, and Rutherford’s implant restarts Rutherford.exe several times (Windows Updates, anyone?). He keeps losing and regaining consciousness in various scenarios, including on Vulcan where he, Shaxs, and Billups not only steal an antiquated Bird of Prey (from “Balance of Terror“) but also then warp away to interrupt a Gorn wedding. In fairness, Rutherford’s sequence is pretty hilarious.

Ensign Tendi apparently knows a touch more about the mission because she participated in…something. Having been assigned to clean the conference room, she identifies herself as “The Cleaner” when Ransom brings his secret strike force into the room. Convinced, somehow, that Tendi is the final member of her team, he and his commandos storm Romulus to retrieve a mysterious package. Tendi wipes the floor with various Romulans along the way.

The alien “prosecutor” suspends Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi above a conveniently placed vat of screaming eels and demands that Boimler acknowledge that as members of Starfleet, they are each the best of the best and fully aware of everything that happens aboard the Cerritos. He pushes Boimler to recite the actions of the bridge crew, and Boimler simply snaps. Boimler can’t tell the alien what he wants to hear because as a member of the Lower Decks contingent, he simply doesn’t know. However, Boimler rants that not knowing is not only okay but par for the course in space exploration. He insists that whatever the bridge crew did, they did for the good of the universe and declares this trial unfair.

The alien, shocked, brings up the lights and reveals to Boimler et al that they aren’t present at a trial but rather at a party, and Clar himself was the package. Romulans kidnapped Clar and held him prisoner for a year, and the Cerritos crew staged a successful rescue. Clar therefore invited the Cerritos crew to celebrate with him. Clar raises the lights to reveal a congenial party atmosphere that Boimler’s rant has now ruined. Back aboard the Cerritos, Freeman grumbles at how spectacularly the ensigns ruined the event but praises Boimler for his defense of Starfleet.

Analysis

“Veritas” is not the first Lower Decks episode to lift concepts from previous Trek. “Terminal Provocations” invoked the holodeck trope. “Much Ado About Boimler” pulled a secondary plot directly from a TNG episode. What “Veritas” does, unlike those two episodes, is rely on our knowledge of that canon in a significant way, or Boimler’s rant doesn’t particularly work. For example, if you don’t know that the set up for “Veritas” mirrors the courtroom in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country or that Boimler borrows some of Picard’s thinking from “The Drumhead,” Boimler’s attempt to defend Starfleet ideals from Clar’s spurious prosecution seems wildly out of place. That’s especially true if your only exposure to Trek is Lower Decks. Moreover, the success of the gag—that Clar is throwing a party, not a trial—relies on the believability of Clar’s “event silo” being a courtroom rather than a party space. Granted, knowledge of Star Trek VI isn’t necessary for that believability, but using the same set piece drives home that conclusion. If you happened to know about how the Romulan Dissident Movement smuggled Vice Proconsul M’Ret and his two aides out of the Romulan Star Empire, then seeing the “package” Tendi, Ransom, and Starfleet’s extraction team bring back to the Cerritos gives you just enough time to anticipate the joke before Boimler’s rant and the ultimate reveal.

The problem with the episode is that the joke is largely the same it was in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow” or even “Temporal Edict” to a lesser extent (the enforcer turns out to be a bookish sort). Boimler et al have a set of expectations, and the episode sets out to subvert those expectations. “Veritas” does that very well, even if Clar lacks much in event-planning skill. Unfortunately, the episode uses the same set-up to make the same joke. No matter that “Veritas” demonstrates that Lower Decks can tell the joke very well, the joke loses something in the repetition.

Boimler’s defense of Starfleet does raise the level of quality in the episode because it serves as a valuable reminder of what Star Trek does especially well—portray flawed people trying to be their best in the face of the unknown. Trek doesn’t do subtlety especially well, and “Veritas” is no exception to that as Boimler’s speech renders the episode’s message explicit, shades of Picard’s monologue in “The Drumhead.” “Veritas” also reminds us that Trek doesn’t have to be subtle to work; some of the very best episodes in canon beat you over the head with their message. “Veritas” does just that, but rather than raising “Veritas” to the level of “The Drumhead,” the message gets a bit lost in the episode’s attempt at a punchline.

Rating:

Three cups of Earl Grey Tea and a Saucer

Reference Round-up and Stray Thoughts:

1. John de Lancie reprises his role as Q in an almost criminally under-used cameo. Q appears in his judge outfit, appropriate to the episode’s theme, but more importantly, he’s a reminder of just how capricious the universe can be. Mariner refuses to deal with him, stomping off because she can’t deal with any more weirdness, which is another of the primary themes in Lower Decks.
2. Kurtwood Smith lends his voice to Clar. You may recognize those dulcet tones from That 70s Show, but he happens to be a longtime Star Trek alum, portraying the Federation president in Star Trek VI and Annorax in Voyager.
3. The salt vampire is from “The Man Trap.”
4. Roga Danar and Khan are both super soldiers. Props to Mariner for working “Space Seed” into the conversation.
5. The rescue plot was lifted from “The Face of the Enemy.”
6. Mariner’s quip regarding Klingon dungeons could be a reference to Rura Penthe (also from Star Trek VI)
7. The giant Vulcan is a reference to the “Infinite Vulcan,” the Animated Series episode penned by Walter Koenig.
8. Rutherford’s fan dance comes to us from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and the less said about that the better.
9. The reference to Dr. Crusher and green smoke comes from “Sub Rosa,” one of the absolute worst episodes of TNG.
10. Mariner mentions wine-making and soul food on Earth. The wine-making is a nod to Picard, though Lower Decks is set before the destruction of Romulus, which kicks off the events in that series. The soul food is probably meant to recall Sisko’s Creole Kitchen, Captain Sisko’s father’s restaurant, but Creole food isn’t the same as soul food. That line was a bit awkward.
11. ”Can someone give us some context here, please?” is such a great line.
12. The Gorn come to us from “Arena.”
13. The screaming eels scream Princess Bride to me.