Phasers Set To Stun: Lower Decks S5.E5 Starbase 80

0:01 Space the Final Frontier. Join us for a bold conversation our prime directive to recap our favorite Star Trek shows, both new and old, to engage in debate about all things Trek. Prepare to energize with Phasers Set to Stunt. Hello everyone, Welcome back to Phasers Set to Stunt, where we continue to show our love for everything Star Trek.

0:46 In this ongoing series from a film by podcast, we explore every quadrant of the expanding universe of Trek by covering television, animation, movies, directors, and much more. Plotting the course, as always is your Core Trek crew. I'm Scott Hoffman. Burns and I'm Wayne Whitey. And then this episode we're drawn back into the animated side of Star Trek with one of our favorite fresh news series, Lowered Decks, which is unfortunately back for its final season, which is back for more. Before we talk about the latest adventures the uss Soritos, we're calling for a red alert. This episode is full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the latest episode, please go watch it and then come back to join us. We'll be waiting right here for you. All right, let's break down the latest episode Star Bass eighty.

1:29 Dave wanted to tell us what it's all about, It'd. Be more than happy to. Written by May Darman, directed by Bob Soarez, Boymer's facial hair continues to grow and amaze us all. However, something manages to short out the ship's navigation processor, which must be fixed before they can continue on, and the only place they can get that completed is the dreaded and much hated Star Base eighty. Yeah, it's a fear filled and gel coded episode. I gotta tell you, I laughed so hard at the creepy music every time they show starbas. Yeah right, Yeah, it feels like Bob Suarez and May Darmond probably had a lot of fun with this one.

2:13 Wayne. Would you agree, Oh, I definitely agree. You know this every season has had like one episode where I just laughed from beginning to end. I probably consider it my favorite episode of the season, and this could very well be the seasons because I didn't laugh from the beginning to end of this episode. Yeah. Yeah, everybody on board is afraid of Starbas eighty, not so much for the curse aspect, and more so for the overall smell and maybe the threat of tetanus I guess when we first see Starbas eighty from the outside, it looks like a place that con probably would have ravaged back in the early. Days and abandoned on the inside. It kind of reminded me of a cross between Deep Space nine and the early pilot episodes and the apartment complex that Mama ran in Carl Urban's Dread.

3:00 Anybody else get a twinge of dread. In this one? Yeah, yeah, I kind of did. You're right. Yeah it's creepy, please, that's for sure. Yeah. Well, it's got all these shops, it's like it's all promenade. Yeah, right, it's all like and I don't know. A little CD. I mean, did you notice the adult theater and right right past that the store with all the uniforms from dead people. And yeah, yikes, and and yet not a Ferengi to be found. That kind of surprised me, although it's also like the ferang You don't want to touch this place, hy steer clear. I will say, one of one of the pleasant surprises with Stephen Rude, yes as Chief Engineered Jack about Yeah, his name is ridiculous, but yeah, it was nice to have him back in this episd because it was like, what thirty years ago he was in that next Generation two parter.

3:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. So it was really neat as soon as he started speaking, like, oh my god, it's Steven Rude. Yeah. Well, and I was happy to see cetacean ops. I always am, and this one absolutely gave me everything that I would want from it, which was a lot more focus in it, but kind of an odd circumstance. They find them in. I just think it's brilliant to have dolphins with their own deck, speaking their own language, and there's subtitles like I don't know if the subtitles are for our benefit or if they have like subtitles that they need to I don't know. It feels like the. Universal Translator should probably just turn it into text or turn it into speech.

4:40 But I don't know. Is it sad that I laughed hysterically when they got shocked? Yeah? What do you have against dolphins? Things? I don't, But it was just so funny. And then once we finally got on there, let's talk about uniforms a bit. Yeah, God, they got enterprise era uniforms. Right. There's a lot of these strikes that obviously will dig into later, but it was. It was a great use of different uniforms and so much different technology, like we had the.

5:21 Wall comes. And the twisting turbolift controls. Yeah, there was so much going on in this episode. I'm telling there's probably stuff I would have missed, you know, yeah, to go back and watch it again just to pick it up. But what I thought was cool was the Tibakowski was wearing the the air vest over his jumpsuit like Scotty did in Star Trek five. Oh yeah, in Relics he did for the next Generation. So I caught onto that right away. All looks pretty cool. It's a nice nod. Nice. My favorite bit you was talking about the turbolift was when Ransom and Freeman get in it and he sees those those old style turned twist handles and he asks her if if she remembered them from being an incident.

6:08 She turns, I'm not that old. Oh that made me laugh hard. I think my favorite part of this was them with Freeman and Ransom. To be honest with you, I mean, the whole episode was fantastic. Like you, Wayne, I was laughing from beginning to end. But when they got down when they were trying to get to the arcade level, which was what level thirty three? Yeah like that. Yeah, and it took him to the basement and then they got out, and then she said something about the arcade and then the elevator said, oh, arcade level, yeah, yeah. And then they got the we found out about Ransom's love for stairs. Yeah, when they found out they'd have to climb in thirty flights and he's like, yes, you never get this kind of workout.

6:51 Yeah, and she looks like she's going to collapse at the at the top of it. Yeah, that's great. It was a nice touch that they had a star bas with no working replicators. So then you've got Chad the hot dog scan or the corn dog. Yeah, you just. Got like random food stands and engineering okay, of course. Yeah. And when we saw that when they got to the engineer and he was like asleep on that console. Right next to him was a little boat with a corn dog setting. Oh yeah, like a mall boat. Yeah, yep. He had to scoot it out of the way. The little catchup ramnekin and everything else like that. Come on in the trickery of having them fix Star Base eighty keep moving them around the ship basically.

7:36 Yeah, you know it was great. Yeah, that's probably how the alternate Freeman got stuck Star Base eighty, just like fixing all the stuff, catching all the bats. One of the lines waned it reminded me of you, because you turned me onto so much of the British stuff. But when he went he said, which one you're a doctor? Oh he gets that a lot, he's British. Yeah. I instantly thought of you, Wayne, Oh my gosh, that was hysterical. That's exactly what I thought too. You know you mentioned it earlier too. I also want to call out to Chrismas like score. You know, there was a lot of like Star Trek two elements, especially every time they showed that star bas But I also got that a feel of like Goldsmith's Alien.

8:21 Yes, yes, good good. I would love to hear this music separated again. I mean we need to soundtrack Paramount. Yeah, absolutely, you're right Wayne. That like once or twice when I saw that they were doing that music, I'm like, man, that really sounds like alien and a fantastic job. That's where I thought of Wayne. I was like, there's gotta be like musical Easter eggs in this thing. I think it was borrowing a lot of elements, but I was like, damned to this is part of like there are some wrath of con elements that I had heard. When they're on that. The starbus that they reach and there's everybody like hanging from the ceiling and things like that, that's where it went for me. Yeah, there was a bit, and I'm actually sure how it's but it's like when they when they instead of using the bow on the strings, that kind of slam their their hand against the strings and makes a real screeching sound. Horner used that a lot on Star Trek two, and now I heard it a lot on in this score.

9:12 Too interesting. Interesting. So here's something interesting. So we're halfway through the final season. This is this is episode five. You know, we've only got five episodes left. So do you think that we're gonna have like Balls of the Walls episodes for the next five episodes because they have to you know, wrap this up basically. So where are they going to go with this? I mean, I mean kind of this one kind of got away from the the theme that we have been seeing in the last few episodes kind of. But what I got out of this episode, and I've seen quite a few of these episodes, is the self acceptance piece that seems to be very heavy in this season.

9:55 If you guys haven't picked up on that, no, I'm. Sure you happy you brought I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, So that seems to be a major theme in this season. And I get that, you know, because these characters have goofed off so much, and you know, they kind of haven't you know, been you know, picky about themselves and each other and not taking themselves seriously. And this season it's starting to get real for them, you know. I mean even I think Mariner Mitches isn't here that she's starting to really enjoy being you know, responsible and wanting to become, you know, one of the crew or an officer and the kind of thing. So that's really starting to come out. In this season. And maybe that's one of the elements for this one. You know, I've been thinking about how does this tie into everything else besides maybe setting up Starbase eighty to be an important element in the last five episodes. But what you said about that idea of self acceptance, it does seem like everybody is gelling together every well, not in the gross way like that to apply to them, but everybody's understanding each other. Everybody has you know, good working relationship. Maybe it's that final tumbler that they had to trigger that gets the whole rest of the season able to just focus on here's the big climax, because we do have those you know rifts, those dimensional rifts that somebody is creating. So we have to have them explain who that is set up, whether it's a threat or something accidental, and then have enough episodes to dive

11:26 more into other versions or alternate versions. Of people coming over. Right, So there's gonna be a lot they have to work through, and maybe this is just the last episode to say like, all right, we've had the fun. Now we have to finish up the story and really wrestling through. Well, it looks like that, but you know, and on the surface, it does look like a self contained story. But I'm not willing to dismiss it quite yet, because you know, we've got five more episodes coming up. And I don't know if any of many of you listeners understand this reference, but remember the series Babylon five where something would appear in first season that looked like nothing, but then would become very later on in the season.

12:10 It could we could have saw something that was very important and we just glanced over it right now, So I'm going to keep everything in this episode in mind. And to that point, Starbuck eight has come up quite a bit this season. Yeah, so you might be onto something there, Wayne, for sure. Well, and we don't see Ella Loreans all that much, and when we do they're pretty significant. It seems like there will be something something tied to that. I believe this is only the fourth time we've ever seen one of their race. Yeah, Dinan, we've got Soren, We've got that guy from d Space nine, and then and her. Yeah. Yeah, well it was a very fun episode, a lot of Easter eggs all over the place. I'm kind of curious if you could spend a day on Star Base eighty just to explore the arcade, would you do it?

13:05 Play the bats and all this other kind of stuff, some fun games. Yeah, yeah, it looked like the gay Yeah. One cardboard Crazy. I'm curious just to play that one. Yeah. I saw one that was like half a ferrange head on the top of it. Yeah. I didn't catch many of the other details because there was so much going on, but I don't know. It looks like it's a bad infested somewhat smelly. Everything's a little gross, has a little bit of slam on it. But it looks like it could be a fun place to visit. Yeah, that's true, and it sounds like they're amazing. I don't envy the crew members that were licking the walls on the floor. That was an interesting touch. Like everybody goes possessed by this, you know, uh anti phasic energy, and the what it makes them do is to I guess, grab crew members and take them somewhere.

14:05 But we don't see them like eating anybody or her. No, they're just dragging them somewhere. They're just being weird. Yeah, right, just in general. I enjoyed that twitch. I enjoyed that twist like it was actually the crew of the Shirt Toast that was causing the problem. They were the curse. Not that that was awesome. Well, and it's it's what the mariner was afraid of, right, is that she would just get stupider and stupider. And yeah, and they're they're at the end when they get on the curritos and one of the heroes is Chad the corn dog guy, and he has that wolverine moment where he had a snack hand full of the corn dogs and yeah, good old Chad. I think he earned a fifth that day.

14:46 He did. He sacrificed himself for everybody else. Loved it. And that last scene, I mean, the episode ended with a big laugh with Freeman and Ran somewhere. You know, they're cleaning up the bats and then that big one appears out on the Internet and you know, all they have in their hands is the the broom and the dust band, you know, and then they that was the way they ended the episode. You gotta wonder, you know what happened. I think the biggest laugh for me was when they have clem the in a physic noncorporeal form. Well I think was voiced by Jerry O'Donnell, and.

15:26 This one could have been could have been. Yeah, so when he says, don't tell my bosses, Okay, they can kind of be dicks. We can we can all relate to that. Yeah, yeah, Well we always get into this idea of kind of a pip worthy moment and it feels like Dave going back to what you were saying before. They've kind of graduated beyond that. But it's something that we always talk about. I know. For me, uh, I'll go with Mariner. I feel like she was leading the wave through the entire episode, got over a lot of things and kicked but yet again. But yeah, Dave, what about you. I'm actually gonna go with Commander Knox. She I thought she did a fantastic job in Szepiso because she's the one that actually brought Mariner around to real life. And not judge the crew by their looks, don't judge, don't judge Starbay th eighty by its looks, and you know, with her able to bring that acceptance to Mariner and make her realize that. I really enjoyed Commander Knox in this one for sure, great great character, Wayne Er.

16:33 Well, yeah, I chose Marin or two because just like what you brought up earlier, David, I've noticed the same thing this season. You know, this whole season is about fife lessons, and this was hers. You know, we had last week it was Mahas, and then we before that was ten D's and then before that was Ruthaffords. Now you know, and then Boemler. You know, he's just doing his thing, doing his best to try to be like his ultnate universe self. But this was her, so yeah, yeah, good choice, Dave. As far as if you could be any character in this episode, who would it be and why. I'm gonna have to go with Ransom, I'm telling you.

17:14 Geled up. Oh I know, I'm oh my gosh them, but just be with Threeman. They had so much fun even though they were going around this star based fixing things. But it was just the hysterical moments with Ransom, the gel scene, the going up the steps. But then come on, they get to go to the arcade. Come on, come on. That's true. That's true, Wayne, What about you? I Am going to go with Commander Knox because she's you know, in charge of start being sitting. I don't think it looks that bad. I mean, it's got that that retro style look to it. You know. If I was her, i'd fix it up and make it a victurist spot, you know, like a like a fifties diner or you or something like that. And then it's got the arcade. That's I'm want to be her in that place.

17:56 I was just going to be cleaning it. The whole time the print saying like, right, complain. My answer again is merin her because she was she knew enough to be careful about what she was getting into in the station. Everybody else is just like wow, fantastic and didn't seem to have too much controller, a little bit of kind of abandoned, but she eventually came around and started appreciating it. She also didn't get possessed by Clem, so she didn't have to lick any walls or any floors, which is a godsend. I like how when Boimler finally snapped out of it and he was like, what. Am I to him?

18:38 Well, we touched on a little bit earlier talking about Easter eggs. I know there's a ton of them in this one. The as far as a ton of Easter eggs, I noticed there was a giant pile of red shirts in that one store where they were taking them all from dead people, and it's like, wow, nobody's brutal, Wayne, What else did you pick up? Ah? There were so many of them that I had to scale back to some few important ones that I thought. But start off, the Critos was heading to Caspiria Prime when it was forced to be a detour. Caspira Prime was like the new vacation destination of the Alpha quaterrant.

19:19 It was mentioned many many times during Deep Space nine, but especially in the sixth season episode Inquisition. That was where Baser was going to go before oh gosh, the Spies took him and tried to make him an agent. And then, of course, you know, we talked about the Dicon chamber scene that was very similar to what was done in the ENTERPRISEES Pilot Broken Bow, but even mentioned to Paul in that scene. But there are quite a few next generation references here, so many of them. We have the l Allurans. We talked about that. There was a quick mention of Q the Acamarians. That was a race that we saw during the third season Vengeance factor, the chachar and parasites. That was the thing that invected Jeordie LaForge in the four season episode Identity Crisis, and the Unaphasian life forms. Of course, that was sort of sub rosa that Beverly Crusher had the hots for that.

20:14 I was proud there are no candles in this one, right, which it really was. And then of course we've got the shop and there are so much stuff in this if. We saw uniforms from the original series, the motion picture the Ratha Con both the uniforms and the awaiting jackets. We saw an original series kling On uniform, the gangster hats that Kirkanspot wore in the Piece of the Action. We saw clothing from Edo that was the Next Generation's Justice and Rock's uniform from water Little Girls made of. There were original series tricarders, communicators, Admiral Jameson's wheelchair, that cylinder like carrying case that Beverly crush Roys carried around on the Next Generation.

20:58 We even saw a Kelvin universe Starfleet Academy dress hats, which I have no idea how it got there. Well, CON's broken necklace was seen, and a lot of other things that I probably missed, you know. The whole scene was just a wealth of these raggs. That seems like a very pauseworthy episode. It was right like any one of these frames, if you just pause, you'd probably be able to pull apart a lot of different things. You definitely want to revisit this one so much, you know, because there's a lot of stuff that you miss. You want to go back and watch again and just to watch the background, you know. Yeah, this is this is one of those episodes that you're gonna watch over and over, get it enjoy. Yep, yeah for sure. All right, well we got five left to go. I don't remember seeing any kind of trailers for last week.

21:43 I'm not even trailer. I want to guess what's happening next. I just want to see it unfold. You know, just sit back and enjoy. Exactly. Yep. And I think we're in for a good and wild ride these last five episodes, just because you got to get into the big story and it's happened. Yep. Yep for sure. Well, thank you gentlemen for coming back on and talking through another episode. Of course, it's always great. As always, thanks to our listeners for joining us. Haling frequencies are always open for you to share your thoughts and questions on Facebook, Instagram, and your favorite social channels. Email us at a Film by Podcast at gmail dot com, find us online at a film by podcast dot com. And if you're looking for more exclusive content swag, send some latinum our way through Patreon. See you next time for another episode of Phasers.

22:27 Set to Sun and remember Chad Lives to dog another day, The right