This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Lower Decks 4x04 Something Borrowed, Something Green.
Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.
I’m surprised there was still a working spaceship left at the junkyard, I would have figured all the useful working parts would be scavenged.
What made this episode wonderful was finally taking a look at Orion culture. It’s one of the oldest races in cannon, first showing up in TOS, but we know so little about them. It was fun to dig into that a little.
While Tendi is one of my favorite characters, I do find her backstory a little cliched. Having her and Billups with essentially the same backstory seems lazy. I’m happy they called that issue out with a joke, but it feels unnecessary for Tendi.
That said, I did like how they investigated how this impacted her sister, and created good character tension there. I do hope we get more backstory at some point on all of this about why Tendi hated Orion culture so much, and why so few Orions choose starfleet.
All that said, I found this to be a mostly forgettable episode. It had its moments, but the jokes felt a little off and the plot didn’t draw me in like some of the other episodes.
I went down a rabbit hole and watched the Orion TOS episodes, the TAS episode (blue instead of green Orions!), and the Enterprise episode where watching it as just showgirls controlling everybody. Lol. They also made a joke about the one guy with the shaved head and metal coming out in Enterprise. Rabbit hole dives are the best way to enjoy Lower Decks.
