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Star Trek: Lower Decks and Picard share a key Starfleet location that may possess the universe’s undoing if things on the planet go out of control.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 7, “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie,” streaming now on Paramount+.
While Star Trek: Lower Decks focuses on the Cerritos cruising Federation space on relatively low stakes missions that are deemed too tedious for the more important starships in Starfleet, one mission has the crew entrusted with cargo of devastating potential. And in escorting this destructive passenger to its final destination, the animated series may have just revealed the most dangerous single location in the Star Trek Universe and one that has similarly been teased in the live-action series Star Trek: Picard: The Daystrom Institute of Advanced Robotics.
The Cerritos recovers a sentient supercomputer from a planet in Federation space that malevolently pitted two organic civilizations against each other in a lengthy war before being exposed. Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler are tasked with transporting the still-active computer to the Daystrom Institute for further study and to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands or it escaping to cause more havoc. With considerable difficulty, Mariner and Boimler are able to deliver the computer to the Institute where it is revealed that the facilities house a whole archive of malevolent, self-aware computer programs all plotting to wipe out all organic life in the universe and are still kept active. And Picard revealed that the Daystrom Institute houses even more than just sentient computers.
Following a cataclysmic disaster on Mars blamed on synthetic beings having gone rogue and targeting organic life, the Daystrom Institute housed many synthetic beings that weren’t scrapped, including the remnants of B-4, the android model upon which Data and Lore were based off of. With the first season of Picard centered on the Romulan Star Empire compromising synthetic systems to turn them against the Federation and infiltrating multiple levels of Starfleet Command, the Romulans are likely well aware of what the Daystrom Institute houses. And having been exposed and forced to retreat by the Picard Season 1 finale, the Romulans have the perfect target in the Daystrom Institute should they decide to return.
Named after Richard Daystrom, who played a prominent role in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Ultimate Computer,” the Daystrom Institute of Advanced Robotics was introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Starfleet’s facility that stored and studied robotics and synthetic life. Based out of Okinawa, the facility became a franchise staple, with direct references made to it in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, where it was revealed to also be examining holograms that had grown self-aware like Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram and other artificial intelligence advancements.
Whether running the risk of being targeted by Federation enemies, like the Romulans, or having one of its captive computer programs escaping and taking advantage of all the other malevolent programs stored in the facility, Starfleet is potentially sitting on a ticking time bomb with the Daystrom Institute located on Earth. Mariner and Boimler were able to outsmart a computer that preyed upon their insecurities as it attempted to transit itself to claim its destructive potential, but future Starfleet officers may not be so lucky should the programs attempt to escape from custody as the heart of the Federation is sitting on one of the greatest liabilities to all organic life in the universe.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+, with new episodes released on Thursdays.
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