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As the USS Cerritos explores a collection of artifacts from Star Trek history, a sly nod to a surprising original series team-up is revealed.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2 “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” streaming now on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Lower Decks has been a celebration of the entire history of Star Trek, including some deep cuts for hardcore Star Trek fans, but the Season 2 episode “Kayshon, His Eyes Open” kicks things up a notch given its inciting premise. The U.S.S. Cerritos is tasked with assisting the Collectors Guild in cataloging the contents of a vast archive and disposing of any dangerous materials that are inevitably inside, with the extensive collection providing even more Easter eggs and allusions to Star Trek history than ever. And one such display amidst all the cosmic clutter is a direct nod to Captain Kirk’s strangest team-up from the original series with President Abraham Lincoln.
The third season episode “The Savage Curtain” had the U.S.S. Enterprise travel to a volcanic planet Excalbia for a routine geological survey only to encounter a being that claimed to be Lincoln who escorted Kirk and Spock to the planet’s normally uninhabitable surface. There, the trio teamed up with the Vulcan philosopher Surak and took on an ensemble of the most sinister figures in history in a brutal fight to the death so the native Excalbians could better comprehend the differences between humanoid concepts of good and evil. Kirk and Spock emerged victorious from the showdown, at the cost of Surak and Lincoln’s deaths, with Lincoln being killed by a large spear hitting him in the back.
Over a century later, Lincoln’s skeleton appears to have been recovered from Excalbia by the Collectors Guild and stored in one of their archives. After the archive’s security system is accidentally triggered and registers the landing party led by Lower Deck‘s Beckett Mariner as a threat, the group is forced to flee for their lives. Taking refuge among museum displays, one of the displays is a recreation of the makeshift battlefield on Excalbia complete with the model of an Excalbian in the background. And in the foreground of this callback to the original series, Lincoln’s skeleton is prominently displayed, with his usual presidential garb and spear still in his back.
Lincoln’s skeleton and the Excalbian model are far from the only callbacks to Star Trek history in the Collectors Guild vault, with everything from an array of Klingon blades and armor to a menagerie of beasts from throughout the cosmos, even a large skeleton of a familiar Starfleet officer hanging over the proceedings. And while Lincoln’s skeleton doesn’t figure prominently into the Cerritos‘ adventure with the Collectors Guild, the artifact’s inclusion further underscores just how eclectic and far-reaching the Collectors will go to add to their extensive hoard of often ill-gotten gains.
Kirk and Spock’s adventure on Excalbia left the two not completely certain if their bizarre team-up on the planet’s surface with historical figures had actually taken place or was a projection created by the Excalbians for their trial. The inclusion of Lincoln’s skeleton in the Collector Guild vault over a century later suggests that the events of “The Savage Curtain” actually took place, with the tangible evidence recovered sometime later. The only question that remains is how exactly the Collectors Guild was able to obtain the preserved Lincoln skeleton from Excalbia and its normally magma-covered surface and add it to their collection.
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 is now streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes premiering every Thursday.
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