Star Trek: Lower Decks S04E03: 'In the Cradle of Vexilon'

© Paramount+

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ gives us a decent episode that’s more about minor lessons to learn.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks titled “In the Cradle of Vexilon” is about two entirely separate storylines and two connected -- the more impactful one is with Boimler and T‘Lyn, who is clearly already great with any combination of people so far with him and Tendi both working well.

Her delivery remains hilarious, and her accurate perception of Boimler’s abilities really helps him out, until she finds out that his real concern isn’t simply keeping his team alive, but feeling unworthy to decide who’s putting their life at risk when he was just at their level. T’Lyn gives a legitimate pep talk, always nice to hear from a Vulcan, and Boims (as he insists the ensigns call him) now works well especially because he knows the other ensigns so well -- and he even dies and sees our old buddy the mysterious Koala.

This is interconnected with the main thrust of the episode, an ancient computer running the artificial megastructure in a “bespoke star system” (a pretty silly term) with a bunch of jokes about old computer stuff that wasn’t the most clever really, but at least had some funny moments with the artists on the fake planet -- I liked the one lady who continued drawing right after clouds dropped from the sky (which was admittedly a funny image).

© Paramount+

The other storyline is Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford being hazed, pranking back, then being tricked into thinking they weren’t being hazed, only to reveal it was a hazing all along. That last reveal I didn’t really care for, because it seems unnecessarily mean, especially for Ransom who hasn’t really been that way.

There were some funny pieces here though, like most of what Rutherford says, and the absurd call back to that old Star Trek deep cut of the Wadi Chula that was in a lesser episode of DS9’s first season. That was cute, but what was more actually funny was all of the ridiculous jazz jokes -- sadly “brizzles flarps” is simply just a delightfully stupid phrase that is funny despite being stupid.

But overall the episode was really square in the “it’s fine” place, not really a standout in story or humor, although there were some standout pieces for sure. It does seem that so far they are handling T’Lyn well enough, and I’m glad to see how well she’s being integrated into things -- even if she hasn’t had any of her dreaded emotional reveals yet like she did on the Vulcan ship. I’m more curious to see if this imposter syndrome hits our heroes further after these events, but I do appreciate that we are seeing a sort of gradual growth and it’s legitimate growth too, a rarity in these sorts of comedic 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.