Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2, episode 3, “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.
Characters have consistently died and resurrected on Star Trek and it turned into a bit of a joke long before Star Trek: Lower Decks made light of it in season 2, episode 3, “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris.” One of Captain James T. Kirk’s (William Shatner) famous quotes is, “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life,” but for Star Trek as a franchise, the deaths of many beloved characters were only temporary and they were resurrected by whatever sci-fi means necessary as soon as possible.
There have been fake-out deaths in Star Trek going all the way back to The Original Series, such as when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) believed he killed Kirk in Vulcan ritual combat only to be overjoyed that it was a ruse planned by Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForrest Kelley). Of course, Spock’s own death and resurrection were the focus of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, and the Vulcan’s sacrifice and comeback is the gold standard for the dead coming back to life in Star Trek. Other major deaths that were walked back (at least temporarily) include Kirk perishing at the beginning of Star Trek Generations only to be transported to the Nexus so he could die (for real) at the end of the film. Data (Brent Spiner) also died in Star Trek: Nemesis but Star Trek: Picard retconned that his mind continued to live thanks to his positronic neuron so that Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) could properly say goodbye to his favorite android. And Picard himself died only to be immediately resurrected in a synthetic body at the end of Star Trek: Picard season 1.
Star Trek: Lower Decks tackled the subject of bridge officers coming back to life when Ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) is aghast that Lt. Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) is suddenly alive in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris.” The joke, as Ensigns Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) casually remind Rutherford, is that in Starfleet, “bridge officers come back to life all the time” but, as Lower Deckers, they’re not privy to know how their superior officers cheat death. Mariner and Boimler even hilariously run down the possibilities of how Shaxs resurrected, from Borg assimilation to his Katra being restored to a Mirror universe double to Shaxs being trapped in the Nexus. Star Trek: Lower Decks slyly pointed out that the hows and whys ultimately don’t matter, and in Starfleet, a dead officer coming back to life happens so often, it’s just business as usual.
Still, Rutherford is overwhelmed by his curiosity, especially since Shaxs sacrificed his life to save the cyborg Ensign in Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ season 1 finale. But Rutherford ends up regretting the answers he receives when Shaxs explains he was brought back thanks to dark science, which left Rutherford emotionally scarred. But the hows of Shaxs’ resurrection, again, aren’t the point. The greater issue Lower Decks humorously addressed is that in Star Trek, the dead coming back happens often enough that it’s not even worth getting worked up about.
There are deaths in Star Trek that have been permanent. When Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) was killed off in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, she stayed dead, although a Yar from a different timeline appeared later in TNG. The most tragic death in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), although, as a Trill, Jadzia’s memories lived on within the Dax symbiont’s new host, Ezri (Nicole DeBoer). And when Kirk perished at the end of Star Trek Generations, the legendary Captain really did stay dead and there’s been no canonical resurrection of Kirk ever since.
Star Trek: Lower Decks took an ingenious direction in mocking how impermanent death can be in Star Trek, and acknowledging how Starfleet’s Lower Deckers regard their superior officers’ resurrections was especially clever. Star Trek has certainly killed off heroes with powerful emotional resonance in the past, but it seems that for every Jadzia Dax who is killed off for good, there’s a Jean-Luc Picard who dies and comes right back in an android body, and stunts like that are what turn death in Star Trek into a joke.
Star Trek: Lower Decks streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
