Comment by hnlmorg
9 hours ago
The Pakleds weren’t as dumb as they pretended.
Yeah Lower Decks played on their stupidity. But everything about Lower Decks was an exaggerated form of cannon.
But the actual behaviour of the Pakleds was to mislead people into thinking they were harmless through playing on their own stupidity.
Now I’m not saying they were a smart race comparable to (for example) the Romulans. But they weren’t as stupid as they portrayed themselves.
Lower Decks is canon, not “a form” of it (exaggerated or otherwise) but just as canon as any other show, and it’s my opinion (of course you may disagree) that it enriches Star Trek’s lore. Yes, that means the Koala is canon (it even shows up in the intro on the Strange New Worlds crossover episode!), but when you think about it, that’s not any more silly than Q or the myriad other bizarre things on other Star Trek shows.
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/q0udro/comment/hf...
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. They’re fictional shows so all that’s important is that we enjoy them in our own way, but I don’t think Lower Decks exaggerated how dumb the Pakleds are, I think it explored them so much because them being dumb made them a good comedic fit. When I watch the TNG episode and Lower Decks, I see consistency. More than comedy, Lower Decks has an immense respect and care for the lore.
That’s a very uncharitable reading of my comment when I literally said it was canon.
The “exaggerated” bit is clearly meant to highlight that Lower Decks is written to be a comedy first. So certain parts of canon are amped up for comedic effect.
The rest of your post seemed to imply that I was unimpressed with Lower Decks, and Star Trek in general, when it has comedy episodes. Nothing about my comment suggested that. I actually think Lower Decks (post season 1) was the strongest spin off in new Trek. And I even loved the SNW / LD crossover episode too.
I regret that you took my comment as negative, please believe that was not my intention. I tried to be exceedingly clear about what was opinion and that I think we’re fine to disagree as long as we’re enjoying ourselves.
There was certainly no implication directed at you¹. I don’t know you and wouldn’t assume your tastes. Rather, I was sharing my excitement at Lower Decks. I’m glad that you liked it too.
I wish you a nice Saturday.
¹ And it saddens me that these days so many people on HN constantly assume implications which aren’t there, and always negatively, instead of taking comments as they’re written and defaulting to assuming kindness.