Below Deck with Lower Decks: It's Not Easy Being Green

Two episodes on "Season Premiere Thursday" means two "Below Deck" articles the next day! Lucky you!

Hey, don't look at me like that. I don't make the rules.

This latest adventure picks up not long after the previous episode, with D'Vana Tendi having chosen to remain with the crew of her Orion pirate ship. She feels responsible for inadvertently triggering a new war declared against the Orions by :: checks notes :: other Orions.

Okey doke. Let me try to explain!

Throughout the various incarnations of Star Trek on TV and in feature films, whenever representatives of the Orion race have shown up on screen, they've done so while sporting various shades of green skin. Their striking hue was introduced in the original series' first pilot episode, "The Cage," and continued up through recent episodes of each of the current crop of Star Trek television series airing on Paramount+. The notable exception to this trend, interestingly enough, comes from a single episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series in which their skin color instead appears as pale blue.

The Orions seen in these first two episodes of Lower Decks' fifth season actually look and dress pretty much just like those depicted in the 1970s animated Star Trek series episode "The Pirates of Orion." These "new" Orions also appear to represent a much more patriarchal society than previously established for this race on episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, where it's shown that women head up many more organizations and business ventures than men. Interestingly, the only other episode from the 70s animated series, "The Time Trap," features an Orion woman, Devna, depicted with green skin.

Lower Decks seems to take this notion and run with it, turning these "blue Orions" into a different sect that seems to have issues with their green counterparts. How very diabolical! This clan of Orions, identifying as members of House Azure dispute House Tendi's tactics of laying claim to vessels they've chosen to pirate for themselves. This has upset Sabor, the Orion Pirate Queen, who orders the two clans to settle their quarrel with an old-fashioned race using "Sailships" through a remote and dangerous region of space, the Excellon Nebula.

While this is a new addition to Orion culture, it's not new for Star Trek. Long time fans might recall the third-season Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Explorers," in which Commander Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake constructed a "lightship" of the sort used by Bajorans to achieve spaceflight 800 years previously.

And just in case you think Lower Decks is taking all of this a bit too seriously? The House Azure Orions refer to themselves as "Oreon." Why? This can only be a nod and a gentle, loving ribbing of the 70s animated series.

In "The Pirates of Orion," Captain Kirk and other characters pronounce the alien race's name as "Oh-ree-on," for reasons that remain a mystery to this very day. Could it be because someone was thinking of Lake Orion (pronounced "AW-ree-uhn"), Michigan? Maybe it's like that whole "Nevada" thing. Or "Data."

(Note to self: Remove the "Data" reference. You know what happened the last time you asked Dr. Pulaski about that.)

How will this spat between Orion houses end? Will Tendi return to the Cerritos and her friends? I guess you'll just have to tune into this newest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks and find out for yourself!