While Captain Freeman and Lieutenant Shax attempt to make headway in establishing a ceasefire with the Pakleds. Mariner Rutherford and Tendi are forced to clean up after the bridge crew. Boimler capitalises on his improved standing among his fellow ensigns and gets some pointers on how to be “Captain material” from the ironically named Redshirts.
1. Cultural Barriers
Captain Freeman’s negotiations with the Pakleds almost immediately get off on the wrong foot with the Pakled Ambassador believing Freeman to be Kathryn Janeway and accusing The Cerritos of giving asylum to a prisoner who stowed away on the ship.
As the episode unfolds Freeman continues to look for a Pakled leader who has the authority to negotiate peace talks with her acting as the Federation’s Ambassador. After continuously being handed off to someone with a bigger hat, and therefore more authority, she eventually watches a insurgent force kill the Emperor in order to end the hat based hierarchy on the Pakleds home world; only to put on the Emperor’s large hat before he can finish the sentence.
Despite the confusion and frustration Freeman feels going through this rigmarole, she is determined to capitalize on her previous Pakled-related success and craft her reputation as Kirk did with the Klingons. Only the Pakleds, despite their threatening presence in Federation space, seem to be profoundly dumb as an alien race.
2. The Worst Job For Lower Decks
The job assigned to the four ensigns in this episode is a typical “I bet the bridge crew never even think about us” kind of job. Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford, and Tendi are all assigned “Anomaly Consolidation Duty”. This job involves disposing of the extra-terrestrial residue from the commanding officer’s more action packed adventures.
The most engaging part of this is that Mariner points out that most of this highly dangerous space trash wouldn’t even exist if the Bridge Crew followed protocol and did their job properly. Of course they don’t have to think about that and ensigns like our four main characters are left to pick up the pieces.
What is so engaging about watching the ensigns do this is that the stakes are sufficiently raised as every tricket that will be disposed of has the potential danger worth an entire episode of the original series or . But that makes it no less degrading of a job to clean up after your boss, only more dangerous.
3. Tendi’s Positive Attitude Put to the Test
Much like Boimler, Tendi is looking forward to tackling the anomalies faced by the bridge crew in their own small, degrading way. But unlike Boimler who is genuinely excited about the job itself, Tendi is merely trying to make the best of it once she realises how awful the job is.
Her can-do attitude and glass half full mentality eventually gets on Mariner’s nerves who would rather revel in the awfulness of it than pretend it’s anything else. This rant somewhat breaks Tendi who we later learn volunteered them for the job after the third or fourth mishap begins to unfold.
Adding to her emotional breakdown is the cosmic cube which seems to tap into her negative emotions and transforms her into some sort of giant praying mantis type creature. Ironically, positivity wins the day as Boimler puts himself in a series of slapstick situations in order to make her laugh, which causes the cube’s effects to wear off. Mariner apologises and Rutherford admits that they both should have been building on her positivity rather than tear it down. In these three character’s struggle we get a very interesting story about how positivity on occasion can make hard situations easier while negativity (although cathartic) can actually be more damaging than it may initially feel.
4. The ‘Red Shirts’
It really must be said that Boimler’s character progression from a straight laced teacher’s pet into a very principled (but still rules-oriented) Ensign has been a treat to watch. In this episode, Boimler capitalises on his increased reputation from working on The Titan and hangs out with a group of aspiring captains who call themselves “Redshirts”. Despite being the only one who was really looking forward to anomaly consolidation duty, he skips it in order to practice being a Captain with them.
Continued belowAlthough his capacity for speaking like a captain improves and his make-over gives him a new sense of confidence, he eventually realises that the “Redshirts” are just elitist posers who think giving speeches is more important than doing the actual work of an Ensign.
Boimler sees through this immediately and stands by his actions in calming Tendi down while the rest of the Redshirts did nothing more than talk over eachother’s inspiring speeches. He even wins over the Redshirts with the exception of the ring leader; who pathetically wins the assignment of sitting on the Captain’s chair for a brief moment in between the two higher ranking officers Ransom and Shax.
5. The Pakleds are still kind of a joke
We realise by the end of the episode that the Pakled stowaway, Ramdar was in fact sent on a mission to spy on the Federation. Despite being shown no information of actual value, his mission is deemed a rousing success and he is praised by the supposedly brand new regime.
Once all pretense is out of the way, Freeman asks what information Ramdar kept from her, just so she can know how smart he truly is. Ramdar brags that the Pakleds plan on smuggling a Veruvian Bomb onto Earth.
It is an interesting and wholly appropriate choice for the show to have an antagonist this unthreatening yet threatening. The fact that Freeman’s reputation as a Captain is built on this conflict and that Starfleet now considers them a genuine threat is very much in keeping with the shows elegant balance of compelling action laced with a sense of humour.
