Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3, Episode 1 - "Grounded"The season 3 premiere of season 2 finale cliffhanger when Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) is arrested by Starfleet for blowing up Pakled planet. While Freeman's daughter, Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), and her Lower Decker friends try to clear her name, Starfleet also mounts a secret operation to prove there was a conspiracy to frame Captain Freeman. Amazingly, the Pakleds' scheme mirrors when Captain Sisko attempted to deceive the Romulans to fight the Dominion on the side of the United Federation of Planets.
In one of the greatest DS9 episodes, "In The Pale Moonlight," Captain Sisko embarks on an illegal plot to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War. At this point, the Federation and its allies were reeling from the devastating losses inflicted by the Dominion, and Federation to wage war against the Dominion. Only Sisko and Garak knew the truth, and the Starfleet Captain was forced to live with the consequences of his actions.
Incredibly, the Pakleds' plot against Captain Freeman in Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 is remarkably similar to Sisko's gambit to bamboozle the Romulans. When Starfleet assembled an elite team led by Captain Morgan Bateson (Kelsey Grammer) to learn the truth about the Pakled planet bombing, their investigation led to a data forger who succumbed to "invasive interrogation" (i.e. a Vulcan mind-meld) from Star Trek: Voyager's Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ). Starfleet learned the Pakleds bombed their own planet to trick the Federation into letting them relocate to a better one, and they used a forged hologram to frame Captain Freeman as the bomber. With the conspiracy uncovered, Freeman was exonerated, and she returned to the USS Cerritos as her Captain. Like Senator Vreenak, Starfleet ultimately wasn't fooled by the forgery, and the Pakleds used a bomb on themselves while Garak used a bomb to dispose of Vreenak in order to mobilize the Romulans' military response.
Lower Decks' Season 3 Premiere Sets Up Its DS9 Episode
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 features an episode where the USS Cerritos visits Deep Space Nine, and the season 3 premiere lays the groundwork. Early in "Grounded," Mariner and Bradward Boimler (Jack Quaid) find their friends, D'Vana Tendi (Noël Wells) and Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), dining at Sisko's Creole Kitchen in New Orleans. Every DS9 fan knows that this is the Big Easy restaurant owned by Ben Sisko's father, Joseph (Brock Peters). Although none of the Sisko family, not even Jake (Cirroc Lofton), was spotted in the episode, post-Dominion War, Sisko's restaurant now serves bottles of Ketracel White Hot sauce as a condiment. Ketracel White is a narcotic used by the Dominion to keep their elite warriors, the Jem'Hadar, in line, but hilariously, there's now a hot sauce themed after it.
Along with the clever similarities between the unsuccessful Pakled conspiracy to frame Captain Freeman and Captain Sisko and Garak's plot to trick the Romulans into the Dominion War, which worked, Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 is already showing a lot of love to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It all just whets the appetite for when the USS Cerritos docks with the galaxy's most famed space station where, hopefully, some long-awaited DS9 familiar faces appear on Lower Decks.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.