Star Trek: Lower Decks dropped the fifth episode of their final season this past week. The episode, entitled "Starbase 80?!" focuses on the often-mentioned, but never-seen starbase of the same name. It's the episode that finally brings us to the long-told starbase and with it, a series of interesting callbacks and references.
Lower Decks may over-rely on callbacks and mentions to previous series and films of Star Trek but it is fun to try and find all the little references. So this week, we opted to point out our three favorite references or callbacks from the episode.
El Aurian
The El Aurians are one of the more mysterious aliens in the entire history of Star Trek. A sworn and mortal enemy of the Q, they were powerful enough to make the Q Continuum take notice off them but not powerful enough to handle the Borg. With them comes a laundry list of questions because of that fact. They're rarely seen these days and when we do see them, it's more of a callback, much like we got this week.
The Enterprise Uniforms
Star Trek: Enterprise has a sweet spot in my heart. The actors, the sets, the music. It's all so wonderful. The one thing people are split on (besides the theme song) is the uniforms. They're blue with their respective designation colors used as trim. They're not bad, but not great. We haven't seen them too much since the show ended, so seeing them pop up in this episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks was a neat treat.
A Piece of the Action
In a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, you can see the hats used by James Kirk and Spock in the famous Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action" in one of the shops. In that episode, the USS Enterprise ends up on a planet where the world is in the middle of a 1920's era of Earth. Complete with the gangs, guns, and style of the era.