"How the [BLEEP] did I just get promoted?"
The Cerritos is on a joint mission with the USS Merced to tow a generation ship to a new destination. Frustrated by her inability to rein in Mariner, Freeman decides to try pressuring her into quitting by wielding the one thing that Mariner truly fears — a promotion and a life of dullness in command. Tendi attends an ascension ritual until it goes awry.
Tropes:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: The admiral overseeing the generation ship mission pronounces the word sensors as "sense-oars" among others. Mariner can't stop herself from making fun of this, and also Captain Freeman for imitating it to ingratiate herself, enraging the admiral because he's self-conscious about his inability to pronounce words correctly.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Freeman has no answer when Mariner points out that she has been acting immature.Mariner: Oh, you think I'm immature? You're the one trying to trick me into quitting. How is that mature?
(Freeman is silent)
Mariner: Yeah, that's what I thought, Carol. - Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Played for Horror. After lying about ascending all episode, O'Connor finally does so near the end. It results in terror and agony for him, and the episode is vague over whether he actually survived in any meaningful sense.
- Attack Pattern Alpha: Ransom orders Evasive Maneuver Alpha when the terraforming material threatens to engulf the ship.
- Big "NO!": Tendi screams "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" when O'Connor is dying from being crushed by a large rock.
- Blatant Lies: While arguing about bar stools, Billups knows that Shaxs is exaggerating when the latter claims that he has killed better men for less.Billups: No you haven't.
Shaxs: Well, I've threatened to kill better men for about the same. - Book Ends: Someone is yelling at Mariner for yawning while a non-Cerritos officer is on the ship.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: The Cerritos beams the Merced's crew to the generation ship to save them from their rapidly-terraforming starship.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: To annoy her mother, Mariner addresses Freeman by her given name Carol during an argument.
- Commonality Connection: After O'Connor admits that he's a jerk for pretending to be someone that he's not just so that others would think that he was unique and interesting, Tendi instantly latches on to the trait that they share in common.Tendi: We're both jerks! We wanted to be liked and lied about it. I think that means we're best friends!
- Continuity Nod: Both the Q and the Traveler are mentioned when the topic of ascension is discussed. These are two creatures with power over space and time who appeared in TNG.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Freeman promotes Mariner to Lieutenant and then forces her to participate in monotonous activities day after day to endlessly torment her with boredom. Mariner, however, knows what her mother is trying to do and refuses to take the bait.
- Cosmic Entity: When O'Connor undergoes the ascension process, he sees a vortex with a glowing, smiling koala at its center, and he tells Tendi that the universe is balanced on its back.
- Cultural Rebel: Freeman complains that Durango has been boring for 15 years; Tellarites as a species are known for constant vociferous arguing.
- Distracted by My Own Sexy: While in Freeman's ready room, Ransom at one point gets distracted by his own muscular arm and stares at it while flexing his bicep.
- Diving Save:
- Mariner saves Freeman from being impaled by a jagged rock by shoving her forward.
- O'Connor pushes Tendi out of the way of a falling piece of debris.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The universe being balanced on the back of a giant koala is reminiscent of the world turtle Akupāra from Hindu mythology, where the Earth is supported by four big elephants standing on the back of a gigantic turtle.
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty: The sci-fi equivalent apparently involves emptying out the holodeck's bio-filters, which contain all the byproducts of the less savory uses of the holodeck. Mariner nearly throws up doing so.Ransom: I've got her emptying [bleep] out of the holodeck's [bleep] filter!
(cut to the ready room)
Freeman: ...Ugh. People really use it for that?
Ransom: Oh, yeah. It's mostly that. - Dream Reality Check: Boimler slaps himself and pinches his cheeks when Mariner gets promoted, hoping that it's all a dream.
- Effeminate Voice: Boimler speaks in a high-pitched voice when he witnesses Mariner receiving a promotion because he's just so bewildered that a rule-breaker could be rewarded in this manner.Boimler: (shocked) Lieutenant? Lieu... Lieu... Lieutenant?! This is real! This is real!
- Fantastic Flora: Alien vegetation grows all over the Cerritos and the Merced as the ships are being terraformed.
- Foreshadowing: The sand mandala that O'Connor makes has the image of a person within the image of a bird, and together they vaguely form the face of a koala.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Merced's serial number is NCC-87075. (This seems a missed opportunity, as the ZIP Codes for the city of Merced are 9534something).
- Generation Ships: The alien ship is referred to as one, but given that all the crew are in stasis, it's a Sleeper Starship.
- Glad I Thought of It: Freeman immediately repeats Ransom's idea to assign terrible jobs to Mariner as if it were her idea, which he just goes along with.Ransom: Why not reassign [Mariner] to all the worst jobs? That way, transferring would be her idea, not yours.
Freeman: Well, we could reassign her to all the nastiest jobs on the ship. That way, transferring her would be her idea, not mine.
Ransom: Brilliant plan. That's why you're the captain. - Glowing Eyes:
- O'Connor's eyes glow during the ascension process.
- There's a bright light emanating from the eyes of the giant koala who is balancing the universe on its back.
- Glowing Flora: There are pink bulbs that, when plucked from the large blue plant that they grow on, will glow and then explode.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: When O'Connor ascends.O'Connor: THE UNIVERSE IS BALANCED ON THE BACK OF A GIANT KOALA! WHY IS HE SMILING, WHAT DOES HE KNOW?!
- Green Is Gross: The green fumes that emerge from the holodeck filters serve as a visual aid to the audience that they're nauseatingly stinky.
- Hostile Terraforming: The alien ship has an molecular fluid that converts inorganic matter to organic matter, which is why Starfleet wants to study it. Unfortunately, it does so indiscriminately and was meant for a different species, which causes problems when it infests both starships.
- Idiot Ball: Captain Durango moves the Merced closer to the generation ship than the Cerritos because he insists on making sure that he's the one who gets credit for the mission. This causes his tractor beam to exert too much force on the hull, rupturing it and releasing the terraforming fluid. The irony is that he was saying in the Cold Opening about how slight deviations in the tractor beam could damage the ship.
- I Just Want to Be Special: O'Connor confesses to Tendi that he was merely pretending to want to ascend so that people would notice him more, and he hoped that this would boost his Starfleet career.O'Connor: Well, since we're gonna die here, I'll just tell you I was never going to ascend. I was faking.
Tendi: What, why?
O'Connor: It's hard to stand out in Starfleet. This gave me an edge. It was my thing. I was the ascension guy. - Immediate Self-Contradiction:
- Rutherford firmly states that he doesn't need to eat more, but then he suddenly wants to eat Tendi's pudding.Tendi: And you can finish my lunch.
Rutherford: It's okay. I don't need another lunch. Oh! Pudding! - Tendi still very much cares about what others think of her, despite her claims to the contrary.Tendi: It made me realize that life's too short to be hung up on whether everyone on the ship likes me.
Rutherford: That's great, 'cause I'm sure there's at least a few who don't.
Tendi: [chuckles] And who cares? Not me. (angrily) So who are these few people? What did they say? Do they not like me? You know what, I don't care. [grabs Rutherford by the collar] But if someone said something, I feel like I should know. WHO WAS IT?!
- Rutherford firmly states that he doesn't need to eat more, but then he suddenly wants to eat Tendi's pudding.
- Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Despite having some method of animating inanimate matter for terraforming that the Federation don't seem to have, the aliens apparently never developed Faster-Than-Light Travel.
- The Internet Is for Porn: Although censored, it's basically stated that the holodeck is mostly used for this purpose.
- I've Heard of That — What Is It?:Tendi: I'm about to go watch an ascension.
Rutherford: What? That's amazing! What's an ascension? - Kicked Upstairs: Since assigning her to menial tasks doesn't discourage her, Mariner gets promoted to Lieutenant as a punishment (assigning her to boring tasks) instead of a reward.
- My Beloved Smother: At least some of the resentment that Mariner feels for Freeman stems from this, with Freeman often questioning Mariner's choices and generally being overprotective.
- Mythology Gag:
- When Boimler forgets to turn off his comm channel, he blames his rogue comment on Moriarty. Moriarty was the first known self-aware hologram program.
- As O'Connor ascends, he reports that he can see Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a form that one of the aliens took in TOS.
- Word of God states that Mariner's uniform switch is a nod to Geordi La Forge, who was one of two to jump from red to yellow with a big promotion.
- No Ontological Inertia: The terraforming fluid tears through the Cerritos, creating all sorts of messes both in the corridors and on the hull. Yet when Mariner and Freeman technobabble up a solution, all the growths revert to orange dust with nary a sign of ship damage. (This includes O'Connor's injuries from having a huge rock fall on him). Averted with the Merced, which is beyond saving and has to be abandoned.
- Oh, Crap!: Mariner is horrified when she gets promoted. Boimler is also shocked and nearly reduced to hysterics due to how it flies in the face of his own attempts at getting promoted.
- Painful Transformation: O'Connor's ascension is an ordeal of constant agony. He can feel his physical form burning away as his mind is overloaded with the secrets of the universe.
- Palette Swap: The Merced is another California-class starship with her hull lined in blue whereas the Cerritos is lined in yellow. Word of God says that this indicates that the primary mission profiles for the Merced are scientific and medical assistance for new Federation worlds, while the Cerritos handles engineering problems.
- P.O.V. Cam: We briefly see Rutherford's perspective when his cybernetic implant informs him of the "Unauthorized terraformation" that's happening around him.
- Power Gives You Wings: During O'Connor's transformation into an Energy Being, he's surrounded by light that forms an image of a bird, which includes two large wings.
- Punctuated Pounding: O'Connor when he smashes the metronome that Tendi gets him."I! Don't! Want! Your! Help!"
- Reassignment Backfire: Zigzagged with Mariner's first punishment detail. Purging the holodeck biofilters was
nasty, but she manages to have fun while scraping the carbon filters by turning it into a contest with the other crewmembers. - Shout-Out:
- "Hotchie motchie!"
- While it's likely intended as a reference to Hindu Mythology as noted above, the universe being balanced on the back of a koala might also be a sneaky allusion to Discworld and how the titular Discworld is balanced on the backs of four elephants who in turn ride on the back of a giant turtle.
- Skyward Scream: Tendi's head is tilted towards the ceiling when she yells a Big "NO!" as O'Connor's life is slipping away.
- Sleeper Starship: Despite being called a "generation ship," the stranded alien vessel has all its passengers "mummified" in suspended animation capsules.
- Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: The whole reason why Tendi obsesses with helping O'Connor to ascend isn't out of guilt, but out of her desperate need to be liked by everyone.
- Sound-Effect Bleep:Ransom: I've got [Mariner] emptying [bleep] out of the holodeck's [bleep] filter!
O'Connor: Holy [bleep], I was so ready to die! - Status Quo Is God: One of the four Ensigns promoted to Lieutenant? A main character getting a costume change? We already know that it's not going to last, especially because it's Mariner.
- Stealth Pun: The command crew of the Cerritos always folds in their weekly poker game. In other words, one of the least important ships in Starfleet is run by people who never takes risks.
- Smooch of Victory: Tendi and O'Conner kiss after they both survive almost getting killed.
- The Teaser: Unlike the previous three episodes, in which the opening scenes are comedy skits that are unrelated to the main story, this one performs the traditional purpose of establishing the episode's conflict.
- Teleportation Rescue: Freeman and Mariner perform an emergency transport on the Merced crew when that ship's life support is failing, and they're all beamed safely to the stasis chamber of the alien vessel.
- Unishment: After showing disrespect to an admiral, Mariner is demoted back to ensign, which makes her very happy.
- Visible Odor: The foul stench from the holodeck filters is illustrated as green vapor.
