One alternate reality version ofStar Trek: Lower Decks' Lieutenant Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) is a brilliant callback to a version of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) inStar Trek: The Next Generation. The penultimate episode ofStar Trek: Lower Decks, “Fissure Quest”, sees Lieutenant Brad Boimler’s (Jack Quaid) transporter clone, Captain William Boimler, leading a crew of doppelgängers from all over theStar Trektimeline. Whenthe crew of Boimler’s starship Anaximander rescue Ensign Beckett Mariner, clad in an operations gold Starfleet uniform, William finds that this Mariner’s temperament is milder than he was expecting.
InStar Trek: The Next Generationseason 6, episode 15, “Tapestry”,Q (John de Lancie)offers a dying Captain Picard the chance to go back to 2327 for a do-over of Picard’s early Starfleet career. After avoiding the fight with a Nausicaan that necessitatedPicard’s artificial heartin the first place, Q returns Picard to the present-day USS Enterprise-D in 2369.Instead of being the Enterprise’s captain, however, Lieutenant j.g. Picard is a mild-mannered astrophysicistthat Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) believes is too timid and risk-averse for command.
Star Trek: Lower Decks' Alternate Reality Mariner Calls Back To TNG’s Lieutenant Picard
Engineer Mariner And Astrophysicist Picard Are Both Risk-Averse Junior Officers
The alternate reality Ensign Beckett Mariner inStar Trek: Lower Decks' “Fissure Quest” calls back toStar Trek: The Next Generation’s Lieutenant Picard from “Tapestry”, and not just because they’re wearing the wrong colors. Like the blue-shirted Lieutenant Picard, Engineer Mariner does solid work and knows what she’s doing, but lacks the drive to push boundaries or take risks.That lack of initiative keeps both alternate versions of Picard and Mariner at lower ranks for a longer period of time, and far away from the red-shirted command track that they’re supposed to be on in the Prime Universe.
Beckett Mariner also wore a gold operations division shirt when Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) promoted Mariner to lieutenant as punishment inStar Trek: Lower Decksseason 1, episode 4, “Most Vessel”. After Mariner’s actual promotion to lieutenant inLower Decks' 4th season, Beckett still wears command division red.
Picard’s journey to the past in “Tapestry” posits that characters' choices at key points in their lives shape their realities, so the alternate Mariner must have made a different past choice, like Lieutenant Picard avoiding the Nausicaan. InStar Trek: Lower Decksseason 4, episode 9, “The Inner Fight”,Mariner realizes she recklessly self-sabotages herself so she doesn’t have to take responsibility for the deaths of others as a command officer. If Beckett changed career tracks and kept her head down instead of acting out, that would also keep Mariner from advancing in rank—and away from hard choices.
Image via Paramount+
Jean-Luc Picard’s do-over reality fromStar Trek: The Next Generation’s “Tapestry” might still exist inStar Trek’s multiverse. Ostensibly, the “Tapestry” universe with Lieutenant Picard only existed to teach Jean-Luc an important lesson, because the episode ends with Q returning everything toTNG’s status quo. RecentStar Trekshows fromStar Trek: DiscoverytoStar Trek: Prodigyhave spent more time on the concept of the multiverse, however, suggesting even one-episode alternate realities might betimelinesStar Trekcan’t erase. Instead, allStar Trekrealities still exist inStar Trek: Lower Decks' “bubble bath” of universes.
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So what doesStar Trek’s 24th century look like without Captain Jean-Luc Picard going quite so boldly? The resulting timeline bears out Q’s statement that Picard won’t “cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode,” but a single change can still have far-reaching ripple effects, like inStar Trek’s Kelvin Timeline. The “Tapestry” timeline’s timidLieutenant Picard certainly doesn’t have the same inspirational effect on the USS Enterprise-D crew. A version of Beckett Mariner that isn’t so reckless might also makeStar Trek: Lower Decks' USS Cerritos a vastly different—and far more boring—ship.
