We all have questions about some of them the banal things that happens Star Trek ships. One thing I’ve always liked to think about is that interaction when an officer somehow asks how long it takes what technobabbley thing, and they answer that it will take hours. Why it takes sa long to do things in this magical future? I’m good, Star Trek: Lower Decks had a hilarious response.
Most of “Temporal Edict” is focused on Mariner and Commander Ransom’s (Jerry O’Connell) incredible sloppy relationship, as they basically capture themselves in an episode of the originally Star Trek. A misplaced away mission leads to their second contact team being captured by a crystal-obsessed race called the Galracians, forcing the two officers to argue like children about which one of them – the Riker-esque pitch perfect haircut of the ideal, action hero First Officer as the rule breaker who has more than a few years of experience on brawls for knockout beams – gets get their “Arena” in a trial by fighting. So far, so good heel Star Trek.
But why their away mission goes wrong is the heart of the episode. One of the exhausting signatories on the team accidentally picked up the wrong diplomatic gift for the Galracians, because last week the Cerritos has one of the unspoken rules of Star Trek even: Captain Freeman has discovered the existence of “buffer time.” And after she forbade it, everything on board the ship immediately went to hell.
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Buffer time, as Mariner explains to Tendi, is but why we have always been told in the past Trek TV shows that adjust the plasma folds, degenerate the warp core, or calibrate the insulating chips – which are daily tasks required to fly a Starfleet ship through space – initially take hours and hours. Bridge officers, who spend all their time telling other people to do things instead of doing themselves, have forgotten how long it actually takes to do all these things. The lower-ranking officers, now that they are doing their job, take the opportunity to fumble for the time it will take to complete the task at hand to get some relaxation in. Or, in our heroic cases, some replicated margaritas.
But Boimler accidentally rattles the existence of this “buffer time” out to the captain, while jokingly repeating all the jobs he was ready for, an angry Freeman, after being burned by the Cerritos by constantly deviating from large, important missions to perform second contact checks, it immediately instructs that all crews should now complete assigned tasks in a set, short time, and immediately proceed to the next article as needed. This of course breaks the crew completely.
With no free time and a need to get everything done as quickly as possible, of course everyone but Boimler. They are approached and run to snip together to get in the way. Everything is a mess, because the minute one thing is ready, another thing goes wrong, so that everything drops to handle it. They are so distracted by doing every little thing that there is no room for creativity or even defense. The Galrakians on the surface shut themselves in and encircled the Cerritos for the casual light of the outing, and they’re too busy to do anything about it – the only ridlik way a Starfleet crew should ever lose to a civilization that still ran with crystal-dotted spears. As Boimler notes, they have phases. This should not be a problem. But it’s because buffer time is not just about slacking off.
As Lower Decks were equally cynical about something Star Trek is really almost like some understand it to be, that would be the end of the joke. It is not. While Boimler explains to a frazzled Captain Freeman in the climax of the episode, everyone quietly agrees not to fuss the numbers exactly for the time they get, but because the crew like the Cerritos‘to do their jobs (that she clearly doing love as much) as creatively as possible. Sure, they could do the shortcut. Or they can nerdily dive deep, inventing creative solutions not found in one academic handbook like Starfleet regulations. It makes them passionate and proud of the way they approach a job, and that in turn reflects in a happy, unstressed crew that is psyched to do Cool Shit in Space. Which is what Star Trek is actually about!
Maybe then, Lower Decks‘meta-commentary is a warning: if we choose at the tropics of Star Trek a little too hard, the whole thing falls apart in a spectacular way. But it also recognizes that while seeing the falling apart can actually be fun as hell, by seeing some of the sillier parts us to see these heroes fly in the first place.
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