Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 4x10 - "Old Friends, New Planets"

[Tallguy]

Can someone who wanted Sito Jaxa to be revealed as alive tell me, like, why? What would Sito being reveled as alive this whole time or resurrected or whatever have added to the episode or to the universe?


And 'orion' itself is an Earth term. Probably "Mistress of the Winter Constellations" is just a close enough translation to English.

I believe you'll find that it's pronounced "OR-ee-on".

 

[The Wormhole]

Can someone who wanted Sito Jaxa to be revealed as alive tell me, like, why? What would Sito being reveled as alive this whole time or resurrected or whatever have added to the episode or to the universe?

Wish fulfilment is my guess. People have always wanted Sito to be found alive somehow. Indeed, when word (probably an urban myth) began circulating that DS9's Second Skin, where Kira wakes up on Cardassia surgically altered as a Cardassian that the original draft had it be Sito instead, many began crying about what a missed opportunity it was they didn't go through with that in the aired version.

 

[Oddish]

Can someone who wanted Sito Jaxa to be revealed as alive tell me, like, why? What would Sito being reveled as alive this whole time or resurrected or whatever have added to the episode or to the universe?

It's kind of what Star Trek does. Picard might call death the "ultimate boundary", but it's actually pretty crossable in both directions.

Glad they didn't do it with Sito, though.

 

[Tuskin38]

Originally Sito's death in 'Lower Decks' was written to be ambiguous, and Jeri Taylor wanted to bring her back later in Season 7, but Michael Piller was against it as he thought it would ruin the ending.

Ironically, Michael Piller would later be the one to suggest she be brought back in DS9, after watching the aired episode, and being influenced by fan mail he received. While the Sito DS9 story was never made, one aspect was used in the episode "Hard Time", the ending where O'Brien kills his cellmate.

The DS9 story ultimately wasn't made because the rest of the DS9 staff thought it would ruin the ending of 'Lower Decks'.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sito_Jaxa#Background_information
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wik...ek:_Deep_Space_Nine_episodes#Sito_Jaxa_return

 

[Starkers]

Do we think the fact that Shannon Fill retired from acting might have played into that decision also?

Apologies if this has already been posted but some info on how they tracked her down/convinced her to do it Link

Sito is one of those rare instances of a minor character whose death really knocked me for six. I'd barely even registered her in The First Duty but in Lower Decks she blew me away. For a long time I imagined that somehow she wouldn't be dead and I did kinda hope that Nick would have found a way to save her. That being said I'm not sure I'd wish ten years in a Cardassian prison on anyone!

 

[Oddish]

I wondered about that. Ms. Fill had left acting over a quarter century before.

But it made sense for LD to be the show that brought her back, given that she was one of the four characters on whose adventures the show was based.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Boimler rocked the Captain's chair.

I liked the Captain's Yacht joke.

It was good. Very good show is LDS and it doesn't get said often enough.\\

Not just other worlds. Several people (including Queen Elizabeth II) hold the title of Admiral in the Nebraska Navy.

Even after death?

 

[cooleddie74]

 

[Kraig]

Was Nick going warp 10 after the Genesis Torpedo detonated? Cause I'm pretty sure that's how you get giant salamanders.

 

[Oddish]

Going warp 10 turns you into a salamander... but other things might do it as well.

 

[cooleddie74]

Having to serve in Sickbay alongside Kes, for instance, and having to listen to her yap on and on about her and Neelix.

 

[The Wormhole]

I have it on good authority that particular salamander is one of the Paris-Janeway love children.

 

[Kraig]

I have it on good authority that particular salamander is one of the Paris-Janeway love children.

Love Newts. They mostly come at night, mostly!

 

[Charles Phipps]

Looking forward to Tendi’s Mistress of the Winter Constellations arc.

And just pointing out how silly that title is.
It’s of course a reference to the Orion constellation as seen from Earth and actually being a winter constellation for half the planet.
!

So you're saying that Tendi has the Earth constellation as her name?

 

[firehawk12]

Do we think the fact that Shannon Fill retired from acting might have played into that decision also?

Apologies if this has already been posted but some info on how they tracked her down/convinced her to do it Link

Sito is one of those rare instances of a minor character whose death really knocked me for six. I'd barely even registered her in The First Duty but in Lower Decks she blew me away. For a long time I imagined that somehow she wouldn't be dead and I did kinda hope that Nick would have found a way to save her. That being said I'm not sure I'd wish ten years in a Cardassian prison on anyone!

The fact that they really did have to track her down makes me wonder why they didn't get the other actress who played the fourth cadet. She's clearly active, or tries to be, so I feel like there's a story there. lol

 

[Michael]

^ My guess is they just felt her character wasn‘t as essential to the flashback. I mean, this was about contextualizing Locarno and Sito and what they meant to Mariner. Tbh, I wouldn‘t even be able to tell you what her name was without looking it up. This was about Mariner, Locarno and Sito. And that they got Wil Wheaton too was a nice tie-in/nod to “The First Duty” in particular and TNG in general. I wouldn‘t think there‘s anything more to the non-appearance of the actress portraying that cadet.

 

[Farscape One]

Might have been as simple as a matter of budget.

They nabbed Robert Duncan McNeill for the episode AND Wil Wheaton for the cameo, and even though Shannon Fill might have been cheaper because she essentially came out of retirement and didn't have many credits to her name to begin with, adding Walker Brandt might have been just outside the price range. And since the heart of Mariner's issues was Sito, she was the more important actress to nab... especially when we see how Mariner was with Sito in that scene.

And Ariel Winter was back as D'Erika... she likely wasn't exactly cheap, either, as she was Alex from MODERN FAMILY.

Plus, there was never any follow up with Hajar anywhere else in the franchise while Sito got a redemption episode for herself in TNG... the episode this series in named and modeled after.

This was probably a case where the narrative and budget were at play for the reasons.

 

[tomalak301]

I agree with Boimler. They look nothing alike.

 

[Tuskin38]

So according to Robert Duncan McNeil, Locarno was originally going to be teased more through out the season, based on his description, I'm guessing similar to how Sela was teased in TNG

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-lower-decks-nick-locarno-original-plan/

So he called me and was like, “I’ve got this idea but I don’t wanna do it unless you really agree to do this. I don’t wanna do it unless you’re interested. Call me.” So I called him and he sort of pitched out this thing. We’re gonna have some sort of dark side… He pitched out this whole idea of some kind of anti-Starfleet, mysterious thing, and then it would be revealed that it’s Nick Locarno… In his pitch, I think it would have been more episodes, and they were gonna tease in my voice as a sort of mystery voice, and so that the audience might initially think, “Oh, Tom Paris has gone bad.” And then when you finally see him, it’s Nick Locarno and not Tom Paris. But I think that they shrunk the number of episodes. ‘Cause I think that’s a hard one to sustain, to make it last six or eight or whatever the original idea was, to really string it out for a long time.

 

[The Wormhole]

Probably best they didn't go through with that. We would have figured out it was Locarno before the reveal. Instead, the reveal turned into a genuinely surprising plot twist, which is very hard to come by in TV or movies or any narrative form these days.