![]() ![]() And I think because of all the ‘Star Trek’ canon involved and because I knew the tone of ‘Lower Decks’ because I played Riker on that show, it made sense.” “But I’m told that the philosophy on ‘Strange New Worlds’ is that they try to assign a director to an episode that would be a good fit. “I didn’t campaign for it,” Frakes says of the gig. Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), meet the crew of the Enterprise when they travel back in time 120 years - and into live action, with Quaid and Newsome embodying their roles for the first time. Titled “Those Old Scientists,” the episode posed a unique directorial challenge: Two characters from the animated “Lower Decks,” Ens. That expertise was particularly important for his 222nd episode of “Trek,” directing last Saturday’s outrageously entertaining episode of “ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” Each of these shows have their own distinct dispositions and visual approaches - “DS9” skews darker, for example, while “Discovery” is more cinematic - but Frakes has managed to navigate each of them without ever losing sight of their innate “Trek”-iness. Perhaps the fact that he does know exactly how much time he has left will push him to put as much as he can into the relationships he has now, rather than worrying about things in days past or yet to come.All told - including his work on “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” “Star Trek: Picard” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” - Frakes has worked on 221 episodes of “Star Trek” over the past 36 years. But thanks to Boimler’s intervention-and insistence that Pike allow his crew to throw him a birthday party-it’s also a strangely hopeful moment. It’s a stark reminder of the painful foreknowledge Pike still has to live with day in and day out, even when the show doesn’t explicitly mention it or when he himself seems as though he’s not haunted by the knowledge he carries. Pike, flattered by Boimler’s obvious adulation of him, begins to wonder if his regard is somehow evidence that his future isn’t necessarily as dark as he’s been promised. Strange New Worlds season 2 hasn’t really dealt much with the looming specter of Pike’s dark destiny this season -the last time the topic even really came up was the season 1 finale “A Quality of Mercy”. However, “Those Old Scientists” also deals with more immediate concerns, in ways that will likely continue to play out over the rest of season 2. That’s the sort of knowledge that is…possibly a threat to the fabric of reality, but mostly it’s a gift, a broader exhortation to keep pushing forward to one day create the future that Boimler and Mariner now inhabit. Their adventures-triumphs, struggles, and all-will long outlive them. Spock…well, we all know the many necessary things he will go on to do, in this universe and others. ![]() “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” the phrase that encapsulated Una’s desire to join Starfleet in the first place, adorns recruitment posters. They also manage to provide a much-needed reminder for many of the Enterprise crew about why what they’re doing matters. Yet, the presence of the lower deckers is about more than just jokes, although there are plenty of those as the pair stumble through trying not to give away enough knowledge to irrevocably alter the future they left behind. Newsome, to her credit, is as much a fast-talking wrecking ball here as she is in cartoon form, as Mariner ogles young Spock and provides surprisingly sage advice over cocktails. Quaid has perhaps never gotten the praise he deserves for his voicework as Boimler on Lower Decks, but he is utterly charming playing his live-action counterpart, full of fanboy glee at experiencing the history he’s only read about in books and meeting the Starfleet heroes he’s idolized for so long. As the crew tries to figure out how to reactivate the portal to send Boimler home, a live-action version of Mariner steps through it, played by Tawny Newsome, and the Enterprise’s problems only get worse from there. (And turning him into a live-action character played by Jack Quaid in the process.)Īt this point, Pike and his crew are weirdly familiar with people getting sent to or otherwise experiencing other timelines, so they’re less surprised about this than you might expect. Cerritos are conducting a routine check on a dormant portal-famously discovered by Captain Pike over a century earlier-when they somehow manage to activate it, blasting Boimler back to a past in which Spock, La’an, and Number One just happen to be investigating the same artifact. The hour begins as though it’s an episode of Lower Decks, in full animated style. ![]()
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