WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 6, “The Spy Humongous,” streaming now on Paramount+.
As the Cerritos receives an unexpectedly important diplomatic mission in the midst of Starfleet’s continuing conflict with the Pakleds, the starship’s junior officers are stuck with one of their most hated menial tasks. They’re enduring the perils of the cosmos firsthand as they catalog and dispose of all the hazardous materials the Cerritos has gathered over its past several missions. And as Boimler becomes caught up in another fast-track-to-promotion scheme, even Tendi admits that not everything about serving on a Starfleet vessel is all it’s cracked up to be.
The Pakleds continue to attack Federation trade routes, with the Cerritos tasked to travel to Pakled Planet to negotiate a ceasefire on behalf of Starfleet. While Captain Freeman is honored by the opportunity, she is mistaken for Kathryn Janeway by the Pakled envoy and detained on the planet when one of the Pakleds seeks political asylum on the Cerritos. Back on the starship, the junior officers are tasked with consolidating anomalies — compiling research from the bridge crew’s recent missions — with Boimler excited by the prospect while Mariner sees it as something of a glorified trash day for handling the senior officers’ clerical work.
Boimler is approached by a group of redshirts who have formed their own club to look out for each other for advancement opportunities throughout Starfleet. Impressed by Boimler’s service on the Titan, they present him with an offer to join them, which he accepts. As Boimler gets pointers on how to better prove himself worthy of promotion, Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi embark on a series of hijinks from the strange and potentially dangerous objects and artifacts the bridge crew has accumulated over the past several months. Mariner grows frustrated at how happy and excited Tendi is to spend their time cataloging, snapping at her after being electrocuted, stung and knocked around. But after having her own harrowing experience with the dangerous materials left to consolidate, Tendi finally agrees with Mariner and Rutherford.
While Boimler changes up his appearance and demeanor to make himself more captain-level material, as deemed by the redshirt club, the redshirts insist that Boimler must leave his friendships with his junior officers behind if he wants to progress in his career. As Boimler contemplates this, Tendi comes into contact with a strange cube that amplifies her negative emotions and causes her to transform into a giant scorpion, leading her to rampage throughout the Cerritos. Rather than helping save Tendi and the crew, the redshirts prefer to grandstand like the captains they aspire to be, with Boimler stepping up instead. Realizing that the key to restoring Tendi is by making her laugh, Boimler douses himself in various foodstuffs created by the replicators while the redshirts are visibly appalled by the slapstick lengths Boimler is subjecting himself to.
The Cerritos’ Pakled visitor receives a full tour of the ship from Commander Ransom and Lieutenant Kayshon and insists on viewing the ship’s warp core and defense systems. Annoyed that Ransom and Kayshon are denying this request, he slips both of them while Freeman and Shaxs find themselves caught in the middle of a bloody civil war among the Pakleds. The Pakled seeking asylum is revealed to be a spy, with the ceasefire offer merely a ruse for the Pakleds to learn more about Starfleet. Freeman easily outsmarts the Pakleds into revealing their master plan of planting a bomb on Earth, with the spy convinced that he was infiltrating the Enterprise and pulling a fast one on Janeway the whole time.
Boimler is booted from the redshirt club, though the group dissolves under its leader’s boorish, self-serving outlook while he finds himself relegated to menial tasks on the Cerritos instead of a genuine shot at becoming acting captain. Having completed their anomaly consolidation, Mariner reveals one object that she kept for herself: a shard from the planet Varga II, providing her with a direct line to Star Trek: The Next Generation villain Armus. With Armus trapped on the planet since TNG, the junior officers use the shard to prank call the old enemy mercilessly as the Cerritos cruises to its next adventure after saving Starfleet from the Pakled plot.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+, with new episodes released on Thursdays.
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