7 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Lower Decks 5.1 — Dos Cerritos

Squabbling over the validity of an alternate universe? Hmm, there's something vaguely familiar about that. Surely not Star Trek fans! In the first instance, Captain Becky's, "We don't have time to argue about whose universe is original and which one is clearly freakish" was, no doubt, a nod to the 'Abramsverse sucks' brigade. In the second, it humorously highlighted a rather good point.

If you're anything like me, the relative taxonomies of parallel dimensions is the stuff that keeps you up at night. One Billups' 'real' is another Billups' "fake," or "Hey! This is the Prime universe," as the alternate Commander Ransom insisted in Dos Cerritos, angrily pointing down. After all, each universe is 'Prime' — a concept itself (at least in name) from Star Trek (2009) — if you're from it. Though they branched off from our own, it would be pretty weird for the Kelvin lot to name their entire existence "the Narada Incursion".

Use of "The Prime Universe" does… prime, however, as if there is only one (see Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: Prodigy's The Devourer of All Things, Part I). Everything's relative to the observer, but, I suppose, when in alternate Rome, just call it Rome as their Romans do? We'll see how long that lasts here!