Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4’s Premiere Is a Big Voyager Tribute Episode

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back and it kicked off its fourth season with an episode paying tribute to Star Trek: Voyager. SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 1, “Twovix” follow. The Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 premiere episode sees the lower deckers put in position for promotions, but they have one more mission to complete successfully before decisions are made. That mission involves moving USS Voyager — the same ship that bore Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew for years through the Delta Quadrant — to its final resting place in orbit. What could go wrong?

It turns out, everything. Voyager isn’t empty. It has been turned into a museum itself and is stuffed full of artifacts from its time in the Delta Quadrant. That includes the flower that turned Neelix and Tuvok into Tuvix, a problem that was controversially solved by Janeway forcibly separating Tuvix’s component molecules to reconstitute her two crew members, a “murder” that has become a meme in Star Trek fan communities.

“Twovix” takes it all much further. First, T’Vaana and Billups get put together. Then, they begin combining others until, finally, all of the hybrid characters are merged into one fleshy blob. In the meantime, a dormant macrovirus is found behind a panel on the ship’s bridge and begins creating additional chaos, setting loose troublemaking holograms like Chaotica, the Clown from “The Thaw” episode, and holographic bartender Michael Sullivan (as Ransom says in the episode, “It’s Voyager. S*** got freaky”).

Eventually, the crew is separated, the orchid safely stored, and the holograms deactivated. The lower deckers get their promotions (except for Rutherford, for reasons that go unexplained), and everything is back to normal. But for Voyager fans, this is a tribute on par with the visit to Deep Space 9 in the previous season of. Of course, as Mariner whispers to Boimler early in the episode, it was nothing compared to “that Pike thing they aren’t supposed to talk about.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Cast

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars “lower decks” crewmembers of the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Ensign Tendi (Noël Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Provisional Ensign T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) joined the crew in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3. The U.S.S. Cerritos‘ bridge crew includes Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O’Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore),  and Doctor T’Ana, (Gillian Vigman).

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites) created Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, “an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galactic peace. Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos isn’t important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Provisional Ensign T’Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolent computers and getting stuck in a couple caves – all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way.”

How to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4

CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4. Secret Hideout’s Alex Kurtzman, Roddenberry Entertainment’s Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) are executive producers with showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) also serves as an executive producer. Titmouse (Big Mouth) serves as the animation studio for the series.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America. In Canada, Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Lower Decks will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Korea later this year.