After stranding herself in space two seasons ago, Peanut Hamper returns, finding herself on a pre-warp planet inhabited by bird people.
Chronologically follows Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S2E07 "Those Old Scientists".
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: The Drookmani think the robot who contacted them might have been called Peanut Butter.
- Anti-Climax: With her ruse exposed and the Drookmani defeated, Peanut Hamper goes full Villainous Breakdown and tries to summon the Borg to assimilate everyone out of spite... and then Tendi just pushes her antenna down and captures her easily.
- Ascended Extra: Peanut Hamper was an Exocomp crewman in the first season finale "No Small Parts" that revolved primarily around the gag that she had the exact abilities needed to save the day, but decided that was too risky and bailed on the crew. She went unmentioned for nearly two seasons before this episode fills in the gaps of what happened to her.
- Bait-and-Switch: Kaltorus pulls out a knife while greeting Peanut Hamper, making her think he's about to disassemble her, but he just uses it to clean her casing after reentry has done a number on her.
- Bait the Dog: Peanut Hamper's time with the Areore seems to be setting her up for a redemption arc, but alas, no. Very very much no.
- Ballroom Blitz: the Drookmani attack in the middle of Peanut Hamper and Rawda's wedding.
- Beyond Redemption: The Cerritos crew obviously consider Peanut Hamper this after she callously uses and betrays the Areore, and then tried to contact the Borg to get everyone assimilated. She's shipped to the Daystrom Institute and filed with all the other homicidal AIs.
- Big Damn Heroes: Rawda is able to pilot one of his people's ancient ships into orbit to take out the Drookmani's stolen fighter and save the Cerritos.
- Bird People: The Areore are owl-like anthropomorphic birds. Peanut Hamper derides them as "the poor man's Aurelian", a similarly avian species from Star Trek: The Animated Series.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: The AI bearing the CBS logo is still with the other homicidal AI at the end.
- The Bus Came Back: Peanut Hamper returns nearly two seasons since her previous appearance.
- Call a Human a "Meatbag": Even when she's pretending to redeem herself, Peanut Hamper seemingly can't go five minutes without making some passive-aggressive insult toward the organics around her.
- The Chief's Daughter: Gender-inverted. Rawda is the son of the village chief and falls in love with Peanut Hamper.
- Companion Cube: While stuck in space in the debris field, Peanut Hamper makes an Exocomp-shaped companion she names "Sophia" to keep herself company. She originally planned to take Sophia with her, but when Drookmani scavengers warp into the area and start hoovering up the debris, Peanut sacrifices Sophia to save herself and escape.
- Continuity Nod:
- Not only do we see the return of Peanut Hamper, but also the Drookmani scavengers from "Terminal Provocations".
- Peanut Hamper is stored at the Daystrom Institute along with AGIMUS, who notes that "Peanut Hamper" is a mathematically perfect name, which is exactly how and why she picked it.
- The cave paintings where the Areore keep their starships appear to depict TOS-era Klingon and Romulan ships.
- Crying After Sex: Peanut Hamper callously admits that Rawda cries during sex after he cries over her betrayal of the Areore.
- A Day in the Limelight: Peanut Hamper returns and gets an entire episode dedicated to herself with the Cerritos crew only coming in near the story's end.
- Didn't Think This Through: Peanut Hamper's habit of throwing other people under the bus at a moment's notice destroys whatever goodwill she may have gotten from the Areore or Starfleet. Attempting to call the Borg would similarly have backfired too, because while they turn humanoids into cyborg drones, they eat technology and she'd be dissected along with the organics.
- Double-Meaning Title: "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" not only riffs on Peanut Hamper's "mathematically perfect" name, but also foreshadows that her supposed "redemption" was calculated.
- Engineered Heroics: It turns out that Peanut Hamper contacted the Drookmani scavengers so they would come to Areolus to take the ancient ships, and then Peanut Hamper would contact Starfleet for help and have them witness her saving the inhabitants so that they would take her back into Starfleet. Were it not for the ancient ships still being functional, she would have succeeded. Her whole ruse is blown when the Drookmani take one of the fighters over, and they reveal that she contacted them and led them to the planet under the pretense that they could take the ships without resistance.
- Evil Is Petty: After the Areore cast out Peanut Hamper for her betrayal and the Cerritos crew refuse to welcome her back as a crew member, Peanut Hamper tries to summon the Borg to assimilate everyone there.
- Falling into the Cockpit: While
Rawda may have perhaps had some previous familiarity with his people's ancient technology, the Drookmani are able to effortlessly pilot and use the weaponry of the fighter they steal within seconds of taking off. All and all, it seems the Areore must have had a gift for incredibly intuitive user interfaces at some point in their history. - Five-Second Foreshadowing: Once Peanut Hamper is locked in the Daystrom Institute with the other evil computers, next to her is another computer that has a familiar design to a certain computer that previously antagonized Mariner and Boimler, and it's none other than AGIMUS.
- Foreshadowing:
- Rutherford's original implant can briefly be seen drifting in the debris field during the opening. It briefly flickers, indicating it's still active and online despite the damage from the Pakled ship explosion. Whether or not Badgey's program is still active and intact inside won't be revealed until "The Stars at Night".
- Peanut Hamper created Sophia for company, but quickly disposes of "her" to save her own chassis when convenient. She never grows out of this in spite of all appearances.
- Even though the Areore seem like a pre-warp, agricultural civilization, none of them act too unfamiliar with Peanut Hamper being a technological being. This is because they still know about technology, they've just decided not to use it.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: This is A Day in the Limelight for Peanut Hamper, the Exocomp crewman whose main action was to be introduced and then abandon the Cerritos crew in the same episode when things got tough. About 3/4ths of the episode is just on Peanut Hamper and her interactions with the Areore, with the Cerritos crew showing up for just the last few minutes. The opening sequence is also missing, using original footage focused on Peanut Hamper as the title and credits play over it.
- Get Out!: After Peanut Hamper tries to fool the Areore into thinking her betrayal was part of her plan to help them, Rawda and his father tell her to zip it and leave their planet.
- Gunship Rescue: When the Areore fighter has the Cerritos on the ropes, Rawda arrives in a Areore capital ship and easily shoots the fighter down.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Some people are genuinely irredeemable and will refuse to change even when given the opportunity, but that still doesn't mean you should let fear consume you and refuse to trust others.
- Heel Realization: Peanut Hamper seems to have this at one point, admitting to Rawda that she abandoned her "flock" in order to save herself and needs to make amends. Subverted when it turns out she was deliberately faking her Character Development all along.
- Higher-Tech Species: Even though they haven't used technology in generations, an Areore ship has weapon systems completely unknown to the Cerritos, and outclasses them in firepower and shielding.
- Jerkass: Peanut Hamper. Seriously. After spending months with the Areore, supposedly falling in love with their civilization, and falling in love with Rawda to the point where she's ready to marry him....and then it's revealed it was all engineered by her and she's been stringing along her fiance while planning to have their village destroyed for her own selfish purposes.
- MacGyvering: Impressively, even for an Exocomp, Peanut Hamper makes a rudimentary starship out of the broken-off Cerritos warp nacelle and some power units.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Apparently all animals on Areolus have wings, resulting in goats and pigs with wings (and owl beaks). And that's not even getting into the skysnake...
- Mourning a Dead Robot: When Peanut Hamper offers to disable the Drookmani ship, Rawda begs her not to go. When the ship is destroyed with her seemingly inside, Rawda breaks down crying, only for the Drookmani shuttle to crash land in front of him with Peanut Hamper emerging unscathed.
- Never Trust a Title: The title implies Peanut Hamper will redeem herself, but in fact she progresses from abandoning those in need to deliberately putting people in danger to open malevolence. It may refer instead to her calculated attempt to appear reformed in the eyes of Starfleet via Engineered Heroics.
- Noble Savage: Deconstructed. Peanut Hamper arrives on Areolus, finding the place a pre-warp civilization. After getting together with Rawda, she learns that they are actually a warp civilization that abandoned that technology. It seems that Peanut wants to stay with the people and marry Rawda, but it turns out that she had called in both the Drookmani and the Cerritos for her Engineered Heroics. Even more, she’s not the one to save the day - Rawda is and he even convinces his people to reembrace their heritage.
- Once More, with Clarity: The episode opens on Peanut Hamper's last scenes and the battle with the Pakleds, showing us what the Exocomp did after her emergency beamout.
- Out of Focus: Mariner and Boimler barely appear in the episode, being present on the bridge when the Cerritos shows up near the end.
- Planet of Hats: Every animal on Areolus is winged, the livestock seeming to never land. Their equivalent to goats are even airborne while being milked.
- Porky Pig Pronunciation: When the Cerritos gets Peanut Hamper's signal, Boimler tries to say the name of the planet, but stammers and stutters a few times before just calling it a "pre-warp civilization".note
- Previously on…: This is the first LD episode to start with clips from a prior one (though it's also a P.O.V. Sequel as it shows the Battle of Kalla from Peanut Hamper's perspective).
- Ragnarök Proofing: The ancient Areore ships are still functional centuries after being left to gather dust in a cavern beneath the ground. Just a single fighter is able to hand the Cerritos its ass.
- Redemption Rejection: Even after Peanut Hamper's plot is revealed, Tendi suggests that she can still be a hero by saving the Cerritos from the Drookmani. The Exocomp flatly refuses, only wishing to be seen as a hero if it happens on her terms.
- Robosexual: Rawda and Peanut Hamper, at least twice. They almost marry before the Drookmani show up.
- Sequel Episode: To "No Small Parts", picking up Peanut Hamper's ultimate fate after bailing from the Cerritos and being left adrift during the Pakled attack.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Aside from the Areore deciding to embrace tech again instead of living in fear, this episode counts as one of these because all of Peanut Hamper's character development was a fraud.
- Shout-Out: Peanut Hamper is stuck in the middle of a debris field for what can be assumed to be weeks or months building a rudimentary ship to move somewhere (basically a warp nacelle with a platform to sit on). She had constructed during that time a Companion Cube named Sophia, which is treated much like "Wilson" the volleyball from Cast Away.
- Space Amish: The Areore were once a spacefaring race, but after fighting multiple devastating wars against other hostile species, they rejected all technology.
- Space "X": Peanut Hamper lampshades the redundancy of the Areore calling a flying snake on their world a Skysnake, because every animal is already winged so it should just be known as a snake.
- Special Edition Title: Instead of the usual opening sequence, it's just several scenes of the scraps from the Pakled battle where Peanut Hamper was left, with credits and a more subdued version of the main theme overlaid on top of them.
- Summon Bigger Fish: What Peanut Hamper attempts to do at the end, by trying to contact the Borg out of spite, but the Cerritos crew prevent her from doing so.
- Tempting Fate: In the flashback, Peanut Hamper is confident that she won't get left behind... unless the Titan forgets to scan for mechanical lifeforms.
- Treetop Town: The Areore village is built on platforms attached to Areolus' immense trees, as the gaps and height are little obstacle to the Areore or their winged livestock.
- Villain Has a Point: Subverted. While Peanut Hamper may be correct in that it may have been somewhat unfair to expect her to risk her life for her crewmates after spending only three hours on the Cerritos, there's really no justification for the way she uses and betrays the Areore after they accept her into their community. Her treatment of her would-be husband Rawda is particularly (and unnecessarily) cruel.
- Villain Team-Up: After Peanut Hamper is locked up in the Daystrom Institute, AGIMUS introduces himself to her and suggests that they both could do awful things together. As they do their Evil Laugh together to signify their partnership, other evil computers join in, and she complains to them that they weren't invited to do so and tries to get them to stop.
- Would Rather Suffer: While Peanut Hamper dismissed the idea of sending a distress signal at first, knowing she'd be punished for abandoning her crew, after spending a few minutes on Areolus, she notes in her personal log that it's starting to sound really tempting.
