WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 4, episode 7, "A Few Badgeys More."
Summary
- Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 reveals a weirder, more positive alternative to Star Trek: Picard's Daystrom Station at the Daystrom Institute's Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage facility.
- The Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage facility offers rehabilitation to evil computers through talk therapy, gardening, and movie nights, contrasting with the heavily guarded and dangerous Daystrom Station in Star Trek: Picard season 3.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks inherits the trope of evil A.I. from the original series, but the redemptive arcs of the evil computers in "A Few Badgeys More" provide hope for the future of artificial intelligence.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 reveals more about the Daystrom Institute's Self-Aware Megalomanical Computer Storage facility, and it's a weirder, more positive alternative to Star Trek: Picard's Daystrom Station. Lieutant JGs Bradward Boimler (Jack Quaid) and D'Vana Tendi (Noël Wells) travel to the facility to be reunited with two evil A.I.s from their past – AGIMUS (Jeffrey Combs) and Peanut Hamper (Kether Donohue). With Peanut Hamper up for parole and AGIMUS claiming to have information about the recent mystery attacks, Boimler suspects that the two rogue A.I's are scheming to escape from prison.
The Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage facility is just one Federation institution designed for housing some of the worst things from the Star Trek universe. Star Trek: Picard's Daystrom Station was a Federation black site that housed some of the darkest secrets of the Federation. Interestingly, Daystrom Station's secure A.I. was created using the essence of Star Trek: The Next Generation's most notable self-aware megalomaniacal artificial intelligence – Lore (Brent Spiner). It's unclear if Lore ever spent time in Star Trek: Lower Decks' Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer storage facility, but he may have had a genuinely positive psychological breakthrough if he had.
