Below Deck with Lower Decks: Look in the Mirror, Dayton

That’s right! Two new episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks means an extra helping of…well, this. On the bright side, it’s gluten-free. That’s all I’ve got.

Anyway….

The second episode of this still very minty-fresh fourth season, “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,” sees newly-promoted lieutenants Boimler and Tendi packing their belongings so they can move to new quarters on the Cerritos. No more sleeping in the hallway bunks! No more group sonic showers! No more listening to Boimler updating his personal logs and polishing his collector plates during all the weird hours! We’re not actually sure those last two things happened all that often, but we’re totally going with the whole “It’s canon until it’s not” vibe.

Lower Decks viewers know Boimler channels his love for all things Starfleet and Federation history through some of the things he chooses to collect. Those aforementioned plates, for one thing. Everybody remembers the Tom Paris collector plate, right? What’s that? You say you don’t have one? Well, they’re still very much available from licensing partner Star Trek Unlimited just by clicking anywhere on this sentence that doubles as annoyingly long link to said plates.

But what else does Boimler keep on his knickknack shelf? Among his various mementos and tchotchkes is a statuette of Captain Spock from the latter part of his Starfleet career. Boimler also has a similar figurine of Jonathan Archer, famed explorer of the 22nd Century and the commander of Enterprise NX-01, Earth’s first interstellar starship capable of speeds up to Warp 5. But wait! There’s something fishy about this statue. It’s actually a representation of Archer from another reality, an alternate dimension, a….a Mirror Universe!

Fans know we were introduced to “Mirror Archer” in the two-part episode “In A Mirror, Darkly” from Star Trek: Enterprise’s fourth season. A Mirror Universe version of Archer and the Enterprise NX-01 discover that the U.S.S. Defiant, an advanced Starfleet ship from a century in the future and a different universe has somehow ended up in the hands of the Tholians. Archer hatches a plot to acquire the Defiant in the hopes that its superior weapons and other advantages will give him the power he needs to assume control of the Terran Empire.

Over the course of the episode, Archer and some of his people trade their environment suits or regular uniforms for those they find in Defiant crew-quarters, which of course are those seen in the original Star Trek series. Archer himself dons a uniform belonging to the Defiant’s captain, a variant often worn by Captain Kirk.

Now, this is cool and all, but here’s a question: How did Boimler come to have this statue? How does he even know there was a Jonathan Archer in the Mirror Universe? Has he been there? Is it possible he visited there while trying to make it back from that time he accidentally visited Captain Pike and the Enterprise in the 23rd Century (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' “Those Old Scientists”)? I mean, if I was writing such a story, that might be where I’d try to put it.

(Author pauses at this point, contemplating whether this might be why Secret Hideout never returns his calls. Then he remembers Secret Hideout already has plenty of reasons to let him go to voicemail. Moving on.)

Fine. Ignore me. Meanwhile, I’m going to be thinking about possible incursions from the Mirror Universe, and that Boimler might actually be a covert agent, forced to shave his three-whisker Mirror Universe Beard™ before coming here to spy on the Prime Universe for some as-yet unidentified master.

Okay, I see it now. I wouldn’t answer me, either.