Starbase 80 has been a running joke throughout the 5-season run of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Although we got our first glimpses of it in Season 3's "Trusted Sources," we finally get to visit the station in full in this Season 5 episode, "Starbase 80?!"
Episode summary
After a trip to the ocean planet Piskes IX, the crew of the Cerritos begins experiencing navigational issues. Captain Freeman confers with the navigation officers about the issue in Cetacean Ops, where we see green sparks coming out of the water and incapacitating the beluga whale officers. Without warp, the only starbase in range is Starbase 80.
Mariner—who was briefly assigned there—and Freeman—whose Alternate Universe counterpart commands it—are both apprehensive about visiting Starbase 80, but they decide they have to. When the Cerritos crew gets there, they meet with Commander Kassia Nox, who comments that the station is in need of several repairs.
Throughout the episode, Mariner is convinced that Starbase 80 is cursed, which is only confirmed (in her eyes) when members of the Cerritos crew start acting like zombies. Notably, it is only members of the Cerritos crew, because the zombification is happening by using commbadges (which spark green, like what happened in Cetacean Ops). Starbase 80, on the other hand, is too old to use commbadges.
Ultimately, Mariner and Commander Nox work together to find that an anaphasic entity, named Clem, had possessed one of the beluga officers on the Cerritos and was possessing other crewmembers to explore the environments. Mariner also learns that Starbase 80 is a place for second chances, and she and the rest of the crew help to repair the station.
Thoughts on the episode
Overall, this episode was fun and entertaining. It had numerous visual callbacks to previous iterations of Star Trek—especially The Original Series and Enterprise—and we got to see that Mariner really is growing as a person. That said, the pacing felt a bit rushed in this one.
Thanks to the visual cue of green sparks whenever problems occurred, it is easy to figure out (long before Mariner and Nox do) that the problem came from the Cerritos, not Starbase 80. Once this is finally discovered by the characters, the problem is just quickly resolved and the episode ends.
This episode also falls into one of Lower Decks' worst habits in that it makes Star Trek references that would not make sense for these characters to make. One is the decontamination scene, where Boimler says he feels "like a total T'Pol." The other is when Mariner asks if Commander Nox is like Guinan when she reveals herself as an El Aurian.
Granted, these references can be easily appreciated by Trek fans, and in the case of the Guinan reference, it may help clarify what an El Aurian is. At the same time, it's odd to have granular knowledge about characters who (to the Lower Deckers) are not only real people but strangers. Even if T'Pol is a major historical figure, her main association is seriously with decon chambers?
Rather than reinforcing the world of Star Trek, these kinds of references remind us that Star Trek is fiction. It makes the world feel smaller by highlighting its artifice. It also introduces continuity errors, as seen in this episode with Starbase 80's lack of commbadges, despite earlier episodes clearly showing SB80 crewmembers wearing commbadges from the TNG Era.
Of course, the references can be fun, and as a particular fan of TOS and Enterprise, I have to admit I liked seeing the TOS-style consoles or the Enterprise-era uniforms, but those elements helped set the scene of SB80 being old and dilapidated. Some of the other references were just distracting.
Lower Decks is at its best when it focuses on its characters and gives a humorous spin to classic Star Trek-style stories. It has been doing that more and more often over the past few seasons. This episode is not an example of this. Mariner does grow as a person, but any satisfaction from her emotional growth is diminished by inane humor and distracting references.
Also, it would be so cool to actually explore Cetacean Ops more seriously someday!