Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Premiere: 'Twovix' / 'I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee'

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It's a double-dose of 'Lower Decks' to launch Season 4.
by Jeremy Fogelman

Star Trek: Lower Decks starts its fourth season with two strong, if not amazing, episodes that legitimately move the characters forward. In “Twovix”, we get essentially an extend homage to the Star Trek: Voyager show, although sadly no voice cameos from that cast this time. The crew is involved in transporting the original Voyager ship in space to Earth to be a museum for the now famed mission, and naturally things go awry.

The main screw-up is an accidental merging of Billups and T’Ana, explicitly referred to here as being “Tuvixed” in a reference to that classic, bizarre episode. Of course at the same time we get some holodeck gone amok as per usual, including Chaotica, the weird evil Clown, and Irish fake boyfriend Michael Sullivan -- on top of this is an escaped leftover Borg nanoprobe and a macrovirus, leading to one of my favorite jokes -- a nano-macrovirus! Although I did also enjoy “T’illups” proclaiming “I love being alive!”.

The new pairing of T’Lyn and Tendi is showcased here very well, with a great rapport -- both are scientifically gifted but are entirely opposite emotionally speaking. T’Lyn is funny with her Vulcanisms as per usual, and all of the bizarre Tuvix-joins are pretty amusing too, with the final giant mass of flesh the perfect nonsensical endpoint of it.

The main dramatic plot though is the worry from Boimler about screwing up his promotion, but due to his saving of the ship, he gets promoted along with Tendi, T’Lyn, and surprisingly, Mariner -- whose self-sabotage Ransom has completely recognized and refuses to comply with. This was a pretty fun episode with a great resolution, and it was great to see such love for the oft-derided kooky Voyager show, even those stupid “Threshold” lizard things.

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The connective tissue of the season so far is some mysterious ship that is shown blowing up our old friend Ma’ah the Klingon (I guess that’s it for him) and then a Romulan ship in episode two -- I have to say that although all the backstabbing talk was a little silly it was still quite funny. The line “Assassination plots against me are one thing, but sabotage?” was a particular standout.

But the main heft of the episode is Mariner trying to self-sabotage again while Ransom tries to support her anyway, while Boimler has an absurd side plot that at least has one funny scene (the holodeck sandwich, even if the idea that rooms aren’t soundproof defies reason) and the other is Rutherford trying to get promoted only to be thwarted at every turn by new Ensign Livik.

The resolution of that subplot was pretty satisfying, as Tendi simply asks Rutherford to be promoted based on all of his ship saving business, and this gets immediately approved -- leading to Livik doing the same growl of “Rutherford... and also Tendi!” which was pretty funny. Their relationship remains pretty sweet although sadly no T’Lyn this episode.

We got a few bits from metaphorical Kayshon -- I did like his “Unzak, when he guided the florkas to their roost” for the sheer silliness of it. Otherwise the resolution to the Mariner/Ransom one was decent enough, and it’s nice to see that this crew is actually progressing -- still Lower Decks, but they aren’t Ensigns anymore. It’s the sort of continuity you don’t always get from Star Trek shows.

Note: We support the current WGA/SAG strike and emphasize the importance of writers and actors and ensuring they and fellow creatives are compensated and treated fairly for their work. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn't exist.