Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Two Finale Proves Humanity In All Its Imperfections Trumps AI, For Now

What a finale.

We’ve got Mariner out on the galactic Antiques Road Show stealing artifacts for Picard, Admiral Les Buenamigo and his fleet of HAL wannabes blowing people up, a reporter who’s undoubtedly moved on from FNN to a higher-paid gig at a celebrity news channel or at something that rhymes with Box Pews and Lt Shaxs living out his dream. And that’s all in under 30 minutes. Damn.

When a visiting reporter gets the low-down on the Cerritos crew members’ candid feelings about their jobs, fellow officers, and more, Beckett gets unfairly blamed for the report and resulting backlash and is kicked off the Cerritos. While in transit to star base 80, an absolutely worthless, gross, and useless hole in the wall Beckett resigns and teams up with an artifact thief who literally flys around and robs museums, temples, and caves of artifacts that are either just there or who have been stolen and need to go back to their rightful owners, an enterprise that Beckett eventually finds out is funded by none other than Jean Luc Picard but that’s another TNG story for another time.

Meanwhile, project Swing By, Captain Freeman’s new concept on how to handle Second Contact with outer planets Star Fleet hasn’t visited in some time, gets the green light from Star Fleet and, thanks to Admiral Les Buenamigo, goes down in flames when the Admiral’s new AI controlled starship the U.S.S Aledo has to save the Cerritos from an attacking alien force. When Admiral Buenamigo pushes to have the Cali class ships decommissioned and replaced by a fleet of his ships, Star Fleet quickly agrees (rather odd since they never do anything quickly) but before they do, Star Fleet allows the Aledo and the Cerritos to have a Second Contact race to see who can service the needs of the three closest planets the quickest and it does not go well. First, the Aledo wins, then Star Fleet says no you broke protocol, Uncle Les snaps, then the Aledo does, and before you know it you have three AI-controlled ships who are very focused on killing all humans but with poetry in their hearts. Or was that heartburn? We also learn the real reason why Rutherford is, well, Rutherford, and let’s just blame it on an unchecked ego.

When the three wise ships of Buenamigo descend onto the star base where the Cerritos was being repaired from its last battle, they chase after the Cerritos and in the end, it is Leutient Shaxs that saves the day. Well mostly. One ship survives the battle and goes after the Cerritos again, only to have the entire fleet of California class ships drop out of warp and end the attack once and for all. It’s an all-around satisfying wrap-up to another epic season that opens the doors for a whole lot of new adventures and revisit some old ones.

The new team of Ransom and Mariner is also going to be a blast to watch.

All episodes of seasons 1&2 can be streamed right here on Paramount+.