WARP FIVE: The Cast of Star Trek: Lower Decks Sees Their Alternate Paths Laid Out for Them

Welcome to Warp Five, StarTrek.com's five question post-mortem with your favorite featured talent from the latest Star Trek episodes.

In the latest episode of , the crew finds themselves on the "cursed" Starbase 80 — according to Ransom, the "worst starbase in the quadrant" — when the U.S.S. Cerritos encounters their nav systems down and that's the closest base they can get to for repairs. This puts a pause on their priority this season, which is to close all the "space potholes," AKA subspace rifts, that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant.

Ahead of the premiere of the fifth season, StarTrek.com had the opportunity to chat with the stars Tawny Newsome (Beckett Mariner), Jack Quaid (Brad Boimler), Noël Wells (D'Vana Tendi), and Eugene Cordero (Sam Rutherford) about their characters' journey across the series and what's in store for these lieutenant junior grades.

On Their Personal Journey This Season

Following their promotions last season, that saw Mariner addressing the root cause of why she acts out towards Starfleet, and Tendi upholding her end of the bargain with her sister and leaving the crew to return home to Orion.

Summing things up in a sentence without spoilers, the cast states the following.

"Finding one's voice in leadership for Mariner," says Newsome.

Wells notes, "Putting leadership skills in action and seeing what works and what doesn't work."

"I think it's a lot of growth and individuality that Rutherford finds in this season," replies Cordero.

Quaid remarks, "Finding his confidence I'd say, and learning not to steal the successes of others."

As Cordero jokingly adds, "I guess in a way. And I think for all of us, starting a sentence with 'finding,'" before the rest of the cast echoing, "Finding lower decks."

On Tendi Making Peace with Her Orion Self

While Tendi never got to meet his alternate self, viewers were treated to learn more about through her adventures as the Mistress of Winter Constellations with House Tendi in "Dos Cerritos" and "."

Tendi learns that D'Erika shielded her pregnancy from her in order for her sister to return to Starfleet where she belongs, allowing them to still be away but still care for one another, as Tendi embraces her Orion and Starfleet sides to herself.

Addressing this development, Wells posits, "Tendi got to go to Starfleet and be the lovable science geek that she is. Then she was having to go back and embrace her pirate ways and not really having a choice but trying to blend the two. We see her getting to test it out. Can she take what she's learned from Starfleet and have an impact on Orion?"

"[This season is] definitely showing her that maybe she doesn't have to completely cut out this part of herself that she maybe hid or didn't want to be a part of her life," states Wells. "She's getting to embrace it and once she embraces it, she sees that she might actually ultimately have more of an impact. Being able to balance the two. "It was also really fun for me personally, playing Tendi who's always very exciting to get the register of like, 'All right, fine, I'm sexy.'"

"If you need me to, I will do it," quips Wells, as Quaid jumps in, "Begrudgingly accepting her thing," and Cordero adds, "Begrudgingly sexy." Wells concludes, "She had to be like, 'Fine, fall at my feet.'"

On Coming Face-to-Face with with His Alternate Self

In "," a spatial anomaly forces the Cerritos crew to come face-to-face with themselves. On the alternate Cerritos ship, the crew is under command of a version of Mariner instead Carol Freeman — the extremely buttoned up Captain Becky Freeman — who keeps her ship in line through fear.

Our prime officers learn that alternate Carol Freeman has been relegated to Starbase 80 after one too many mistakes, alternate Boimler is always on away missions with the bridge crew and gets to be acting captain frequently, and that "Otherford" purged all memories of alternate Tendi upon her departure to become full pirate. Seeing these alternate versions of themselves kicks the crew into high gear as we navigate the first half of this season.

Boimler begins to crib some notes from his confident counterpart's PADD and begins growing a beard.

"For Boimler, it's funny, his dream has always been to get to that captain's chair," reflects Quaid. "He had a taste of it last season at the end, and then he meets this other version of himself with a full big purple beard. And that guy is so confident and has been acting captain like a bajillion times, and Boimler sees this path laid out in front of him."

"He steals Beard Boimler's PADD, and he's just like, 'If I just follow this path to the letter, then I will be like him,'" Quaid continues. "And I just love how awkward that is for him and how he just takes all the wrong lessons from it initially. I also loved playing Beard Boimler, who isn't panicking constantly. It is really funny."

On embodying Beard Boimler, Quaid reveals, "I just loved reading all of his lines, just being like, 'Hey buddy, nice to meet you.' He's just a really cool guy, friendly guy, and I just thought that was the slightest difference, but very funny to me. I just love that Boimler's weird, terrible beard keeps coming in episode by episode. And look, I'm going to shout out the animators. I know that wasn't easy to do because certain episodes, he has just a horrible patchy thing, and then one time, he has a mustache then like a Van Dyke, is that what you call that? It's growth all the time until he gets to full beard. And it's just one of my favorite through lines that I've ever seen for a season of Lower Decks. I loved it. I thought it was great."

On Being Rutherford Minus Tendi

As for Rutherford, it's been an adjustment period of trying to cope without his best friend Tendi around that he misses T'Lyn's attempt to connect with him in "Shades of Green." How does he view the extreme actions of "Otherford," who permanently deleted memories of his former bestie from his mind?

"For Rutherford, a big thing in his personality is to really try his best to be the best and what that would mean and how far he can go," explains Cordero. "So going full Cyborg or full A.I. or full machine is interesting to him."

"I mean, the third arm is cool," Cordero adds. "But ultimately what it is, I think he's looking for that more because he misses some of the interaction with Tendi and to take some of that away. But he realizes that it's just all part of the growth and that his human side is the more important side. That reflection goes deeper into this whole season and moving forward to hopefully more after that."

On Becky vs Mariner

As for Mariner, witnessing Becky Freeman in command is the other full scale end of the spectrum. Her path was even too extreme for Becky herself as she tries to pull a switcheroo and replace her alternate self in order to be "charmingly insubordinate."

"Mar definitely learns from Becky Freeman," sums up Newsome, "what kind of boss not to be. I think we all do. I think once everyone sees Becky Freeman, everyone is going to go, 'Ooh, I don't want to be that. I don't don't want to do that.'"

Maybe not everyone...

BONUS: The Wrong Lesson

Wells jokingly adds, "I watched, I was like, 'Oh, that's how you get people to cooperate.'"

Newsome responds, "Wow. You took the wrong lesson," with Cordero echoing, "Wrong lesson."

Wells retorts, "You have to lead with fear."

"Are you watching our show," jokes a scandalized Quaid. "Your pirate's coming out. She's in this room with us right now."

" I just thought, it's a little bit more efficient. I'm just saying," says Wells, before concluding, "Just because she's a diabolical person doesn't mean that her methods weren't effective."

"Noël's villain origin story going on right now," confirms Newsome.