Star Trek: Lower Decks S04E05: 'Empathalogical Fallacies'

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‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ gives us some valuable insight into the newest, greatest character in a very funny episode.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The most recent episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called “Empathalogical Fallacies” which is a play on “logical fallacies” and “empaths” -- which ties very cleverly into the actual realization and twist of the episode. The episode starts off with T’Lyn being highly annoyed by three visiting Betazoid diplomats (voices of Rachel Dratch, Janelle James, and Wendie Malick, all great) as they love to party and T’Lyn very much does not love to party.

She’s also pretty invested in wanting to get back to her ship, where “such infectious frivolity would never be tolerated” -- another great line from her. But something odd is happening, and nobody can send messages due to the sensitivity of the mission -- the crew is behaving far more emotionally than normal, everything is heightened.

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Thus we get Migleemo smashing a replicator, Ransom crying about getting rejected, and Tendi being so overly friendly she demands that a mob “make” T’Lyn her friend, while seemingly only Mariner and her mother realize something’s going on. Naturally the initial thought is that the Betazoids have “Zanthi Fever”, which caused problems in that terrible but great episode of DS9 “Fascination” where everybody inappropriately lusts after everyone else.

But this is in fact a trick on us as it’s a logical fallacy of a sort, as T’Lyn realizes that she is to blame -- she references “Bendii Syndrome” which affected Spock’s father Sarek, although she mentions she is far too young for it. This leads though to a really well done scene where Mariner builds T’Lyn back up about how she’s an epic Vulcan and her captain was a fool to let her go -- leading to the great bleeped-out line of her admitting that by the transitive property she is “Vulcan as a mother ***er”.

The Betazoid stuff gets well integrated too, as it turns out they’re actually secret agents, leading to some action scenes, and also integrating with the other subplot -- which is the security team hanging out with Boimler, who has been overly stressing himself to know everything. This is all pretty funny, but the really great part is at the end where Shaxs simply explains that the security team isn’t just about kicking ass, but also protecting the crew’s emotional well-being.

It’s an absolutely perfect Star Trek idea and an example of how this show manages to thread the needle of homage and elevate the canon. And it worked very well to have all the plotlines converge as one on the ship’s bridge as the security team saves the day after Captain Freeman is legitimately competent.

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It’s a great episode of Mariner and T’Lyn, which is another specific pairing paying tremendous dividends. A very funny episode too, with the absurd idea of Caitians hunting Betazoids, “I allowed a single embrace”, and of course the delightful line from the Romulans of “we’ll lurk over there”.  Honestly I need more Romulans in Lower Decks because they’ve been consistently hilarious.

The episode even ties into the season long arc about the mysterious ship blowing things up, so this episode really hit a lot of things really well. A hopeful sign for the rest of the season after two strong episode in a row.

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