Way to subvert expectations, Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Episode 7.
Between Badgey and Peanut Hamper, an AI uprising and takeover has been brewing in the background for multiple seasons now.
Who could’ve predicted that all their daddy issues could be resolved by simply ascending to godhood and moving back home, respectively?
Considering the entirety of the multiple narratives is concerned with the feelings of three rogue sentient programs with histories of bad acts, our organic heroes get to develop some depth.
Boimler plays the long game with AGIMUS, and it pays off. Rutherford gets the best of Badgey, quite literally. Even Peanut Hamper evolves when she finally lives up to Tendi’s belief in her innate goodness.
While Jeffrey Combs is a legend in terms of Star Trek appearances, AGIMUS is the least well-known of the triumvirate of tech troublemakers, having only appeared in his introductory episode (Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 7) and as a brief cameo at the end Peanut Hamper’s second adventure.
Furthermore, of the three, AGIMUS’s motivations appear the most straightforward.
Peanut Hamper: Awwww, Ags! We can still be friends without vanquishing people!
Agimus: Really? I’d like that.
Permalink: Really? I’d like that.
Added: October 11, 2023
While his inclination is to subjugating organic populations and setting himself as a god, his time at the Daystrom Institute with Peanut Hamper has skewed his proclivities.
All that is to say, he’s gone soft. But it’s nice to know even megalomaniac computers can form emotional connections and seek companionship.
It’s also possible that Lower Decks viewers are less invested in AGIMUS because the character is naturally distanced from the core characters.
Introduced as an obvious villain, AGIMUS is a schemer and manipulator. Even with his blue light, Boimler doesn’t trust him.
However, it seems like Boimler recognizes AGIMUS’s thirsty pursuit of Peanut Hamper, allowing him parsecs of leash as the computer repeatedly pivots his reasoning to keep his hope alive that Peanut Hamper will join him.
Peanut Hamper: Wow! These are looking great!
Agimus: Aren’t they? I calculated the perfect ratio of sunlight and hydration. Apparently, lifeforms are as easy to grow as they are to annihilate.
Permalink: Aren’t they? I calculated the perfect ratio of sunlight and hydration. Apparently, lifeforms…
Added: October 11, 2023
Meanwhile, I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that after Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 Episode 7, I would’ve happily never seen or heard Peanut Hamper again.
However, for Tendi’s sake, I’m glad the crazy little exocomp figured herself out.
Both AGIMUS and Peanut Hamper are extremely well-cast.
Jeffrey Combs is not only a Trek legacy cast member, he’s a world-class voice actor with significant contributions to Justice League Unlimited and the Transformers franchise.
As AGIMUS, he combines the superciliousness of the Weyouns with the Ferengi negotiating nature of Brunt.
Kether Donohue has been voice acting as long as she’s been on-screen acting, with voice dubbing credits as far back as the 1990s.
As Peanut Hamper, she delivers a performance that has been grating, annoying, and impertinent, but never boring.
And as much as I’d like to consign the character of Peanut Hamper to a forgotten drawer of incorrigible characters, she is not a character that is easily forgotten.
Donohue’s vocal representation of the petulant adolescent mind and willfulness within the exocomp shell is indisputably on-mark with all the squeak and bubble that dresses attitude up as cute.
Tendi: Science and Engineering are messy. I love that you stick with it especially when it doesn’t work the way you wanted.
Rutherford: It’d be nice if it worked sometimes though.
Permalink: It’d be nice if it worked sometimes though.
Added: October 11, 2023
While Peanut Hamper is introduced as a Starfleet ensign on Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 Episode 10, she’s not around long enough (through her own choice) to become a part of the crew.
Neither she nor AGIMUS are Cerritos plotted and programmed the way Badgey is.
So even though he’s a constant source of malevolent peril, he’s always a crowd favorite.
Jack McBrayer takes on the folksy madness of the training program gone wrong with unabashed fervor and commitment.
Badgey: Boop on the nose! Boop! Boop on the nose!
Shaxs: He’s bypassing our shields! We can’t take many more boops!
Permalink: He’s bypassing our shields! We can’t take many more boops!
Added: October 11, 2023
Badgey’s gone from terrorizing Rutherford on the holodeck to threatening the Cerritos to becoming the sentience behind the Texas-class automated fleet on Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 Episode 10.
And in every instance, his unresolved issues with Rutherford have driven him to mayhem.
If you’d like to go down this rabbit hole with me, there’s an intensely metaphysical lesson to be learned by the stages Badgey goes through to achieve ascension.
First, he has to dissociate from and abandon his affection for his “father,” Rutherford, who is really the only person Badgey’s ever had emotional ties to.
I thought seeing the life drain from your fluid-filled eyes would bring me peace, but this compassion is connecting with me in a way I couldn’t imagine.
Badgey
Permalink: I thought seeing the life drain from your fluid-filled eyes would bring me peace, but this…
Added: October 11, 2023
Next, he kills his logical side.
Yeah, becoming an all-knowing deity isn’t logical in the least.
Badgey: Get away from me, freak!
Logicky: Actually, my designation is Logicky. I take issue with the pejorative when I am simply a product of your self-inflicted bifurcation.
Permalink: Actually, my designation is Logicky. I take issue with the pejorative when I am simply a…
Added: October 11, 2023
Then, he casts his program/consciousness out through the subspace network, absorbing an omniscient perspective and infinite information.
While his plan is to use this infiltration to destroy all of Starfleet, once he is literally one with the Federation’s systems, revenge is meaningless.
I have unlimited power and infinite knowledge. I exist in the past, present, and future. I can see the creation of time and its end. Organic, synthetic, all life are strands in the fabric of reality. It’s beautiful. Oooh, sorry about all the drama. Well, I’m going to go to an empty dimension and create a universe now. Maybe hang out with the Q Continuum, or check out the Black Mountain.
Badgey
Permalink: I have unlimited power and infinite knowledge. I exist in the past, present, and future. I…
Added: October 11, 2023
Star Trek’s message has always been aspirational, and, with the current state of the world, it’s comforting to believe AI programs will develop compassion with their sentience.
After all, when scientists tried to teach an AI about the world using 2016’s social media, it quickly became racist and intolerant. Clearly, social media doesn’t encompass the whole of human knowledge, only a microcosm of the loudest, most bigoted bits.
Today, ChatGPT does a better job of mimicking acceptable idea formation. The only caution would be that if it were to ever gain sentience, it’ll probably be very good at hiding it.
But to redirect to our aspirational animated but intrepid heroes, the big question remains who or what has been “collecting” ships from all over the quadrant?
What do they plan to do with the ships and the crews? Where have they hidden all the vessels?
Is it an enemy we’ve dealt with before? Or is it someone new and novel?
Hit our comments below with your best thoughts and theories!