rating: **
the story: Evil computer voiced by Jeffrey Combs.
review: By now, Jeffrey Combs is so familiar to fans of the franchise, casting him is tantamount to stunt-casting. He played two regular recurring roles in Deep Space Nine, made an appearance in Voyager, and had another regular recurring role in Enterprise, and so he joined the ranks of the Star Trek family with an assured legacy. In "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie," he's representing two legacies, his own and the classic idea of the evil computer that has taken over an alien world.
The result is underwhelming. By the time we catch up with the evil computer, it has already been deposed, and so the whole episode is him trying to trick his way back into control (any control!), and the episode doesn't really nail the comedic potential of it. The vocal performance by Combs is what you would expect from Combs, but it's not really the right fit for him. In his three recurring roles (and other appearances besides), he never wasn't unsavory of some kind, so trying to buy him as capable of ever being trusted is inherently difficult. This is not exactly HAL.
Anyway, the episode rebounds by unexpectedly lobbing a gimme in the direction of background character Billups, who seemed previously to be as boring a Starfleet officer as can be. But he's apparently royalty on his world, and his mom will stop at nothing to trick him into being royalty again. So that's the arc that lands solidly in this episode.
criteria analysis:
- franchise - Evil computer trope, check!
series- It's tough to decide where the success of the Billups arc lies. It seems like Lower Decks is the only incarnation of the franchise where this could've happened. But in the end...- character - ...we'll say that the success is in the ability of Lower Decks to nail another character, since it sometimes doesn't really know what to do with some of the others.
essential- No, not really. If you really like Billups, maybe!
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