Lower Decks
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 7 February 1994
- ON
- First-run syndication
- STARDATE
- 47566.7
- DIRECTED BY
- Gabrielle Beaumont
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 267
WRITTEN BYTeleplay by René Echevarria; story by Ronald Wilkerson & Jean Louise Matthias
As promotion season arrives, four junior officers trade gossip and rivalries, and one of them is quietly singled out for a mission the senior staff will not discuss.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
Performance evaluations are under way, and four young friends, Ensigns Sam Lavelle, Sito Jaxa and Taurik and Nurse Alyssa Ogawa, swap theories in Ten Forward with the civilian waiter Ben. Lavelle and Sito are competing for the same promotion. Meanwhile the senior staff are clearly hiding something: a covert rendezvous near Cardassian space brings a wounded Cardassian aboard, and each junior officer glimpses a piece of the secret. Picard harshly questions Sito about her part in a cover-up at Starfleet Academy, and Worf pushes her to stand up for herself. Both turn out to have been testing her. The Cardassian, Joret Dal, is a Federation agent, and Sito volunteers to pose as his prisoner so he can return home with his cover intact. She is meant to escape back across the border in a pod. Later, intercepted Cardassian reports reveal that her pod was destroyed. Her grieving friends quietly mark Lavelle's promotion, and Worf joins them.
- 01Sito Jaxa first appeared as one of the disgraced Academy cadets in “The First Duty”. Shannon Fill returns to the role here.
- 02Its title was later borrowed for the animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks, which also follows junior officers.
- 03Russell T Davies cited it as an influence on the Doctor Who episode “Love & Monsters” (2006), which helped establish the “Doctor-lite” format.