Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 7 - "A Few Badgeys More"
Summary
- Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4, episode 7 brings back the hilarious and malevolent character Badgey seeking revenge.
- Lieutenant Rutherford experiments with adding ancient Starfleet technology, grapplers, to the USS Cerritos' shuttlecrafts, resulting in comedic mishaps.
- Grapplers, a touch-and-go technology in the era before tractor beams, have become a fun throwback and crossover joke in Strange New Worlds. Star Trek knows grapplers are cool.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 brought back the funniest tech from Scott Bakula's Star Trek: Enterprise era. Lower Decks season 4, episode 7, "A Few Badgeys More," saw the return of the malevolent Badgey (Jack McBrayer), who was bent on revenge on his "father," Lieutenant Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), and the USS Cerritos. But before the Lower Deckers learned of Badgey's return, Rutherford was busy experimenting with adding a very old and primitive Starfleet technology to one of the Cerritos' shuttlecrafts: grapplers.
Star Trek: Enterprise took place in the 22nd century, two hundred years before Star Trek: Lower Decks. But by virtue of being the first Starship Enterprise to explore the galaxy in what Lt. Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) feels was "the golden age of exploration," Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise hold a legendary status. Incredibly, Archer's Enterprise survived dangerous encounters with the Suliban, the Xindi, and all manner of other hostile aliens with technology that was primitive by later Starfleet standards. Instead of shields, the NX-01 had polarized hull plating, it had phase cannons instead of phasers, and Enterprise had no tractor beam. Instead, it had grapplers.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Hilariously Brings Back Enterprise’s Grapplers
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4, episode 7 saw Lt. Rutherford installing a grappler to the shuttlecraft Sequoia that he and Lt. D'Vani Tendi (Noel Wells) have been working on for quite a while. Of course, the grappler wasn't as precise as Rutherford hoped, and it shot past the apple it was supposed to catch and pinned Tendi to the wall. Later, despite Sam adding an A.I. upgrade with Goodgie, the grappler nailed Boimler to the bulkhead too. Still, despite these mishaps, Boimler insists grapplers aren't stupid, and Lt. Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) agreed that "grapplers are sick."
The NX-01 Enterprise's grapplers were a touch-and-go technology in the era before Starfleet had tractor beams. In Star Trek: Enterprise's premiere episode, "Broken Bow," the grapplers worked as intended. But later on in Enterprise season 1, the primitive grapplers failed when they were needed to rescue a shuttlepod containing Lt. Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) and Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery) from the icy crevice of a comet. Still, the grapplers have taken a new poignance thanks to repeated mentions in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Grapplers Were A Great Strange New Worlds Crossover Joke
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds hilariously brought Star Trek: Enterprise's grapplers back into the conversation. In Strange New Worlds' crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks, Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) surprised everyone when she suddenly admitted, "I love grapplers." This was part of an overall appreciation Strange New Worlds showed Star Trek: Enterprise and, indeed, the fact that a piece of Captain Archer's fabled NX-01 was placed inside Captain Christopher Pike's (Anson Mount) 23rd century USS Enterprise is what enabled then-Ensigns Brad Boimler and Beckett Mariner to time travel back to their proper 24th century.
Grapplers are a fun throwback Star Trek tech, sort of the franchise's version of Doctor Octopus' arms. Grapplers are more tactile than tractor beams, and their occasional malfunctions created story opportunities in Star Trek: Enterprise as well as opportunities for comedy as in Star Trek: Lower Decks. Why Lt. Rutherford insists on installing a grappler on one of the USS Cerritos' shuttlecrafts isn't clear, and he even admits the shuttle "doesn't need" grapplers. Still, grapplers are cool, and Star Trek knows it.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.