WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2, "Kayshon, His Eyes Open," streaming now on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Lower Decks has an open affection for Star Trek: The Animated Series. Its only precursor in the franchise’s animation wing remained an outlier for a long time, owing to its comparative obscurity and, at times, bizarre premises. But it remains canon -- despite the consternation of fans who find its Saturday morning concepts beneath the dignity of Star Trek -- and its confluence of elements becomes far too much of an easy target for Lower Decks to stay away from.
Season 2, Episode 2, “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” centers its climax around an Easter egg from The Animated Series. The giant skeleton the crew takes shelter behind during the episode’s big battle harkens back to The Animated Series Season 1, Episode 7, “The Infinite Vulcan.” It’s a sharp choice, not only for the sheer ridiculousness of the thing but also the way it binds The Animated Series to canon, whether fans like it or not.
The Animated Series' “The Infinite Vulcan” entails a planet whose plant-based lifeforms serve a gigantic human named Stavos Keniclius 5: the clone of an infamous participant in the Eugenics Wars who used his cloning techniques to create new versions of himself to continue his work. When the Enterprise visits, he determines that Spock is the “perfect specimen” for his work. After abducting the Vulcan, he creates a giant clone of Spock to serve as the forerunner to a “peacekeeping” army of similar creatures.
Like many episodes of The Animated Series, the notion came as a cost-cutting option. A giant Spock as a potential enemy meant that the animators didn’t have to conceive and design a new character. But beyond that, the episode feels very much like Star Trek. Its primary dilemma can’t simply be solved by phasers -- Kirk and the crew develop a “weed killer” to fight their plant-like foes -- and the situation is ultimately resolved without violence.
“Spock 2,” as the giant clone is known, possesses all of the wisdom and benevolence of the original model and thus stops the creation of the army simply by refusing to be a part of it. The episode was written by Trek alum Walter Koenig, despite the fact that he wasn’t a part of the vocal cast, and Chekov never appeared in The Animated Series. It even includes references to well-established canon events, such as the Eugenics Wars. Creatively, it inextricably belongs to Star Trek, and like it or not, the overall silliness of Spock 2 comes along with that equation.
Lower Decks loves those details in part because it lets them have a real laugh at the franchise’s expense without detracting from its strengths. It mines a lot of satire simply by holding up the things more serious-minded fans would prefer to forget and reminding them that they’re a part of this universe too. Said reminders don’t get bigger than Spock 2's skeleton still in uniform, which dominates a museum-like hall of bones on the Collector’s ship. Mariner and the rest of the team take cover behind it while the ship's security drones -- who are quite literally floating Roombas -- try to do them in.
The joke works not only by relying on the absurdity of a giant Spock wandering through the galaxy but also by using it as a real, practical solution to the episode’s principal threat. The writers could have put any number of viable things for the team to hide behind, and the rest of the episode wouldn’t change. The simple nod to a goofy visual is enough to elicit a laugh.
But it also digs at another favorite Lower Decks target: Starfleet’s lack of follow-through. The Original Series and The Animated Series were written with syndication in mind, which meant each episode needed to be self-contained and interchangeable in the timeline. The long-term consequences of the crews’ actions were never explored -- not until Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at the earliest -- which meant that wonders like Spock 2 were all but ignored after the initial encounter. Its presence of a Collector’s ship lets Lower Decks take aim at Starfleet’s lack of responsibility in certain matters while still letting Spock 2 contribute to the safety and well-being of its personnel.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 is now streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes premiering every Thursday.