A girls’ trip to the Orion homeworld raises some old insecurities while Boimler and Rutherford discover cosplay dispute resolution.

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn’t exist.

D’Vana Tendi’s (Noël Wells) complicated relationship with her Orion heritage is quietly one of Lower Decks’ strongest recurring themes. Whether it’s her embarrassment at being acknowledged as the “Mistress of the Winter Constellation” in season 2’s “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” or her discomfort at a fellow Orion’s buccaneer boasts despite secretly being a pirate badass herself in season 3’s “Hear All, Trust Nothing,” her unease with her people’s culture and reputation is a rich vein for the show to explore. 

That’s especially true when exploring it means providing stalwart Star Trek fans with their first real look at the Orion home world! When Tendi is called home for her sister’s wedding, the audience can enjoy a double bonus. “Something Borrowed, Something Green” gives viewers a chance to dig deeper into Tendi’s low-key distress at returning to a place she once left behind. And at the same time, Trekkies get their closest look yet at the native land and culture of one of the franchise’s most iconic species. 

Plus, it’s a girls’ trip, which only brings extra fun! After some prodding, Tendi agrees to bring Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) along. On the one hand, their presence is good for Tendi because it means she has the support and solace of folks who know the person she’s become instead of those who only know the person she used to be. On the other hand, it adds to Tendi’s discomfort since she’s worried her new friends will judge her over the contours of her old life that keep popping up, much to her embarrassment and chagrin. 

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Unfortunately, circumstances prevent Tendi from simply limiting her Cerritos pals to gawking at her family’s syndicate-sponsored palatial estate or taking luxurious sedan rides around the compound. It turns out her sister, D’Erica, has been kidnapped, and it’s up to Tendi as the former “Prime” of the family, to go hunt her sibling down in time for the wedding. 

The kidnapping is a good excuse to send Tendi, Mariner, and T’Lyn traipsing through the Orion underworld, with glimpses of D’Vana’s former life peeking out at every turn. A run-in with an old high school frenemy at a hot club leads to an amusingly insane drinking game. (The challenge involves force fields and a chompy alien bug, naturally). A tip on the whereabouts of D’Erica’s ex leads them to a pheromone den, a loony setting where scent enthusiasts gather and insults about Captain Archer’s gullibility flow. 

All of it is a blast. The comic absurdity of an Ursula-like matron, the ‘mone maniacs in cages, and the threat of an anti-aromatic spray add to the bonkers joy of it all. The animators go delightfully wild in imagining all these colorful people and places that populate Tendi’s home world. 

The animators go delightfully wild in imagining all these colorful people and places that populate Tendi’s home world. 

While Tendi is plotting her way through the Orion underground while striving to rescue her sister, Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) strive to resolve…a dispute over who gets to use a bonsai mister. Look, the episode’s main plot is a little off-the-wall but still rife with character and meaning, while the B-plot is nothing but straight goofball lunacy. And it’s glorious! 

While Bradward and Rutherford (collectively “Brutherford”) generally get along famously as roommates, a minor debate over who gets to give their little plant a spritz is, amusingly, the thing that tears them apart. That is, of course, until they both pretend to be Mark Twain in a holodeck simulation. Because why not, right? In a goofy but winning turn, something about the southern accents and homespun aphorisms helps them to resolve their differences. The whole thing is just silly enough to work for both comedy and pure charm. 

Then, this being Lower Decks, the subplot ratchets up another level in ridiculousness. When Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) quarrels with a cantankerous Chalnoth over who gets to survey a nebula (problems you can relate to!), the two junior lieutenants offer their unique dispute resolution method to the captain. Seeing a pair of young lieutenants try to imitate Mark Twain is funny enough. But seeing the distinguished captain and a snarling alien don the white seersucker and bushy mustaches before imitating the former Mr. Clemens’ witticisms is downright hilarious. 

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The fact that the Chalnoth goes nuts amid this peculiar attempt at steamboat diplomacy, only to settle down with the opportunity to gobble up the bonsai and glug down the mister what caused all that there trouble between the roommates in the first place is a hysterical resolution. And the lip service paid to Boimler and Rutherford learning to talk out their feelings like adults, only for them to then devolve back into mutual Mozart imitations-as-mediation, is the cherry on top. 

The main story has its great comic moments as well. I’m over the moon for the running gag of Mariner getting knifed in the same spot on her shoulder, only to brush it off each time. The general sitcom-y awkwardness of taking your friends to your hometown while being embarrassed by your cultural quirks is both funny and relatable. In particular, there’s an amusing recurring bit where T’Lyn notes Orion’s rituals and practices based on their experiences while Tendi gets squeamish about what’s going into the official log. 

But the high point of the episode is more touching, even if it comes with comic elements of its own. And its success comes directly from Tendi’s mixed feelings about leaving the Orion homeworld behind. 

When D’Vana finds her sister, D’Erica challenges her sibling to an honor duel with appropriately cool fight choreography. But the true battle is an emotional one. D’Erica is resentful of her big sister because even though Tendi dreamed of going out beyond the stars, it meant her sister had to take on the responsibility of being the new “Prime” with all its assassin responsibilities, and left her feeling as though she could never live up to Tendi’s standards. While Tendi is wrestling with what she left behind, D’Erica is wrestling with living in her sister’s shadow. 

[T]he high point of the episode is more touching, even if it comes with comic elements of its own.

That dynamic makes sense. You can understand how hard it must be to step into a big role as “the spare” and still feel less than. You can understand how you can soar at the role expected of you, but still decide it’s not what you want. The mixed feelings on both sides are potent and earned. 

Yet, they end up in a good place. Tendi explains that D’Erica is even better as a “Prime” than she ever was, and the only reason D’Vana felt comfortable leaving to pursue a career in Starfleet was her knowing that the position was safe in her sister’s hands. The mutual understanding that follows leads to a sweet reconciliation, just in time for D’Erica’s wedding (with the help of a hotwired ship, of course — they’re still pirates, after all). 

But it also leads to some honesty and a renewed sense of ease between Tendi and her Starfleet pals. D’Vana’s worried that her colleagues will judge her if they learn about her past and find out who she really is. Instead, Mariner and T’Lyn reveal that they pretty much already knew that D’Vana used to be a badass space pirate assassin princess and that, along the lines of another great story about friendship and validation, they don’t care who she used to be. Because no matter Tendi’s insecurities, they know the science-loving, problem-solving, unfailingly kind person they’ve come to know is the real her. 

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It’s a kind note of affirmation to go out on. Mariner revels, rather than recoils, at the opportunity to understand the place and culture that helped make D’Vana the extraordinary person she is. In T’Lyn’s latest step toward some friendship and acceptance of her own, T’Lyn ditches her sociological log out of compassion, even if she chalks it up to Vulcan ethics. 

That’s the kind of friendship that travels. It’s understandably difficult for Tendi to be one of the few Orion in Starfleet. She’s insecure about the possibility her Federation colleagues will judge her by what she is, not who she is, in a way that resonates with her groundbreaking predecessors like Spock, Worf, and Nog. 

In that context, you understand why she fears her Starfleet chums might look down on her for her Orion heritage and worry over how her native culture will be perceived. But with the right friends, the right sister, and the right experiences, she’s able to reconcile where she came from with where she is now without having to lose either. That’s a beautiful story that helps resolve a strong personal situation Tendi’s been wrestling with since the show began.