This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
“Star Trek: Lower Decks” season 5, episode 3, “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel,” sees Lieutenant Boimler (Jack Quaid) assigned to a covert, potentially dangerous spy mission. He is to join Commander Ransom (Jerry O’Connell) and Lieutenant Commander Billups (Paul Scheer) on a mission to the Cosmic Duchess, an ultra-swanky, high-end resort-like cruise ship, floating gently through deep space. His assignment is to penetrate deep into the hotel to retrieve Admiral Milius (Toby Huss), a Starfleet officer who has gone AWOL thanks to “a touch of vacation madness.” The writers of “Lower Decks” missed an opportunity in not saying that he had been infected with Paradise Syndrome.
The Cosmic Duchess, however, is such a massive ship that it incorporates artificial recreations of every possible vacation-ready biome. There’s a tropical beach biome, a skiing resort biome, and a water park biome. Boimler, Ransom, and Billups have to delved ever-deeper into the resort worlds and the heart of darkness, hoping to find the Admiral’s trail. They ultimately find him hiding out in a stone temple, surrounded by a cult of other rogue vacationers.
This “Lower Decks” plotline is, of course, akin to the story of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now,” with an unmotivated Admiral standing in for the horrifying Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). “Apocalypse Now” was, in turn, based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella “Heart of Darkness,” and all three of these stories involve an ambitious errand boy trekking down a fraught tropical river to retrieve a high-ranking yet highly unstable figure, all while teetering on the brink of disaster himself.
Of course, since “Lower Decks” is a comedy show, the “fraught tropical river” is, in fact, a Raging Waters-like river ride, while Boimler’s boat is just an indigo-colored inner tube. Oh yes, and Admiral Milius is clearly named after John Milius, the legendary filmmaker who co-wrote “Apocalypse Now.”
