The third season of Lower Decks has mostly felt like a regression, with characters re-treading familiar arcs with little rhyme or reason. As the season draws to a close, it sets the stage for a conflict that the show already covered.
Victoria Nuzé, a journalist from the Federation News Network, arrives on the Cerritos and causes character chaos. She is going to cover a program called "Operation Swingby," which is a flyby initiative in which California-class ships perform long-term check-ins on previously contacted civilizations to see if there are any new ones. When a state of paranoia sees her believe Nuzé is going to realize that her ship runs in a state of constant calamity, the opportunity for free, easy press becomes a nightmare.
She has spent a lot of her time recently trying to prove that she is a good officer and her own daughter is at the top of the list. It feels like a sea change in their relationship for the worse, even if Carol was frustrated enough at the beginning of the season to threaten Mariner with being assigned off the Cerritos if she didn't fall in line.
As far as access to Nuzé goes, Mariner is the number one enemy on the ship. While the bridge officers deal with their flyby check-ins on the planets, the Ornara's don't need any help after Picard "helped" them. In a fit of rage, she forcibly transfers her own daughter to Starbase 80, so that she can ask what she said to Nuzé.
The seeming backwards regression of their relationship aside, this uncharacteristic harshness is just the set up for the well-worn comedic trope of things getting worse when people don't actually talk to each other. It has been revealed that Nuzé's report is a damning investigation into the chaos on the ship, but not because of any truth Beckett told her. She talked about how her mother has given her crew a home and family that allows them to be good at what they do in the face of chaos and how she has grown as a person.
After trying to contact Starbase 80 and apologize to her daughter, it was too late and they discovered that Beckett had resigned from Starfleet in anger, hooking up with the archaeologist from a few episodes ago, Petra. Is she going to return to Starfleet? What are the consequences of Nuzé's report. Why does the admiral have a secret ship? After a season of mediocre retreads, will the finale be able to make this unnecessary divide between mother and daughter feel real? It will be determined by time.
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