Movies - TV
Attention Ship Nerds: Star Trek: Lower Decks Introduces A New Class Of Starship
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Spoiler Warning!
This story contains spoilers for
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Season 3, Episode 9
At the climax of "Trusted Sources," the latest episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," the U.S.S. Cerritos is beset by a fleet of attacking Breen warships, when a heretofore unseen Starship called the U.S.S. Aledo flies into the fray, phasers blazing. However, When Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) tries to hail their savior, the ship doesn't answer.
Vice Admiral Buen Amigo (Carlos Alazraqui), then appears on a video screen to explain that the Aledo is a fully automated ship, the first in a new fleet of space-bound Starfleet drones called “The Texas Class.” This will, of course, set off the red alert klaxon in the brains of any Trekkie as an armed, unmanned starship could certainly be used for nefarious purposes.
Hopefully, it won't go that route, because an automated ship could be useful as a sentry for diplomatic standoffs, as a scout for other, less-equipped ships, or for transporting hazardous materials like antimatter and viral samples. Provided they are treated like mechanical workhorses, and not given any form of artificial intelligence or misused.