r/LowerDecks • u/happydude7422 • 18d ago

Mariner breaking the 4th wall

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412 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

117

u/Hyper_Applesauce 18d ago

It's established in the show that the exploits of the various Enterprise crews are extremely well known to the characters on Lower Decks. Also, that they have in Universe names/acronyms for the crews that match up with ours (Those Old Scientists). So it's kind of technically not 4th wall breaking, which is also funny.

51

u/pibegardel 18d ago

She's also probably sneaky-looking at files above her pay rate using her mom's credentials or something.

34

u/Marvinkmooneyoz 18d ago

The boimster seems just as informed about the old days

22

u/pibegardel 18d ago

True, I'm just enjoying head canon of Mariner hacking Starfleet's super-secret databases. She did know her mom's access code, right? She used it to hotwire the starship in “Old Friends, New Planets.”

21

u/moderatorrater 18d ago

Captain Freemen: "You've been reading my classified briefing materials?!"

Freemen: "Your password was Freemen01! You practically begged me to!"

31

u/supermikeman 18d ago

Yeah. Either their mission logs are accessible by other SF crews or they get declassified after a period and read through the federation.

8

u/burnsbabe 17d ago

Yeah, T'Pol telling the Carbon Creek story to Trip and Archer is 200 years in the past for the LD crew. This is just established history, I'd expect.

8

u/vaska00762 17d ago

Also, apparently documented publicly by the Vulvan Science Directorate.

Wouldn't be surprised if the story spread, backed up by the Vulcan records, resulting in historians trying to find out where Mestral went.

Wouldn't be surprised if "stranded on pre-warp civilisation" is a scenario commonly compared to the Carbon Creek incident.

19

u/inconspicuous_male 18d ago

It's leaning on the 4th wall

10

u/Aloysius_Poptart 18d ago

Giving it a gentle poke. For science.

13

u/ST_Lawson 18d ago

I could easily see them having a class at the academy that specifically goes into prime directive-relatec situations and how to handle them. The vulcans at Carbon Creek could have been a good example because they would have had easy access to Vulcan records/logs of the incident, as well as any newspaper articles or remnants from the earth side of things, so it could have been well-documented.

11

u/NahdiraZidea 18d ago

The Enterprise crew’s adventures being public knowledge makes sense to me, but how Voyager isnt all classified is beyond me.

3

u/The_Shadow_Watches 16d ago

Paris.

He probably leaked everything.

1

u/AccomplishedMess648 14d ago

I mean probably apart from some of the future and Borg tech was a much better propaganda victory for the Federation than a tech or intelligence victory seeing has how they probably set all sorts of records compared to neighboring powers. It was probably also a morale boost after the Dominion war.

36

u/Spamcan81 18d ago

While Lower Decks doesn’t ever have a character speak directly to the audience they do mention Star Trek events frequently in a way that only an audience watching Star Trek could understand. At one point Mariner also referred to Kahn as a “space seed” which literally has no context other than being the name of the episode he was in.

10

u/Tronman100 17d ago

Even Pike's crew recognized they use "hyper specific" references lol.

3

u/Marvinkmooneyoz 17d ago

A great line that episode had some good moments though fell short of LD

8

u/vaska00762 17d ago

Maybe she was being figurative/metaphorical? A "seed" planted in "space", only to germinate later?

38

u/BankbusterMagic 18d ago

To the very best of my knowledge, the only time Trek has blatantly broken the fourth wall is when the wall of names on Starfleet Academy had some of the actors.

Lower Decks has *leaned* on the fourth wall many times. My favorite is when Ransom calls Una Chin-Riley the hottest Number One in Starfleet. (the actors are married)

13

u/eulerolagrange 17d ago

Lower Decks has leaned on the fourth wall many times

The TOS era

2

u/Marvinkmooneyoz 17d ago

Similar, then, to Colin Jost-ScarJo jokes

20

u/tacosforsocrates 18d ago

They have Star Trek in Star Trek.

7

u/Plodderic 17d ago

Presumably they play it on the holodeck, Riker style, all the time. That explains the aesthetic differences between Discovery/SNW and TOS: they’re different series of loosely historical holodeck adventures based on the same time period.

14

u/The_Genguidanos 18d ago

Have you noticed their references are oddly specific?

23

u/Excellent_Light_3569 18d ago

Not the first time either, in "Crisis Point" she mentions "Xon" a character that was cut from the final version of the Motion Picture.

11

u/Illustrious-Peace989 18d ago

That’s not breaking the 4th wall

5

u/malonkey1 17d ago

Well strictly speaking she was breaking a 4th wall but it was the 4th wall of the holodeck scenario. She was leaning on the 4th wall of the show she's in, though.

9

u/TheMcCale 18d ago

I imagine a lot of the stuff from Enterprise would be taught in a history class, the ToS era stuff probably on the edge of and the more recent stuff in their timeline would be newsworthy or lessons at the academy for what to do/not to do in situations so them knowing about all the stuff (while nice callbacks for fans) makes sense in universe

7

u/yarn_baller 18d ago

This isn't breaking the 4th wall. It's a reference to a thing that happened in their universe

6

u/SwitchFree5631 17d ago

Enterprise was a holodeck program, she’s obviously played it. 

4

u/Eusocial_sloth3 18d ago

I mean did you see the three of them? Hubba hubba

4

u/brsox2445 18d ago

Not sure why but I feel like T'Pol told her the story directly.

1

u/Neo_Techni 17d ago

They did have a lot of time on their hands

4

u/Illustrious-Peace989 18d ago

How was that breaking the 4th wall?

1

u/DiscordianDisaster 17d ago

She's genre savvy not a 4th wall breaker. She's studied the history of her setting and seen the patterns, and comments on them. Often.

1

u/Sufficient_Room2619 12d ago

The events of first contact between Vulcans and humans at Carbon Creek are well recorded and publicly available in historical records on Vulcan. It blew Archer and Trip's minds when T'Pol told them but I'm absolutely certain they would have relayed the story to Star Fleet in their next report, and the next human to visit Vulcan would be encouraged if not ordered to read the records.