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* BewareTheNiceOnes: Tendi is one of the sweetest and most helpful members of the ''Cerritos'', but she is fully capable of kicking seven shades of green shit out of fully armed and trained soldiers with her bare hands. There's some pretty heavy implications that she was once a fearsome pirate, which are confirmed in "Hear All, Trust Nothing."
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* BewareTheNiceOnes: Tendi is one of the sweetest and most helpful members of the ''Cerritos'', but she is fully capable of kicking seven shades of green shit out of fully armed and trained soldiers with her bare hands. There's some pretty heavy implications that she was once a fearsome pirate, which are confirmed in "Hear All, Trust Nothing."" And then it's revealed in "Something Borrowed, Something Green" that she was trained from childhood as her family's ''assassin''.
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* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: You wouldn't know it from her quirky, ditzy personality, but she's more than capable of ''demolishing'' close to a dozen armed Romulan guards, ''with her bare hands''. "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" implies these combat skills come from a DarkAndTroubledPast that she's loathe to talk about.
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* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: You wouldn't know it from her quirky, ditzy personality, but she's more than capable of ''demolishing'' close to a dozen armed Romulan guards, ''with her bare hands''. "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" implies these combat skills come from a DarkAndTroubledPast that she's loathe to talk about. In "Something Borrowed, Something Green" said DarkAndTroubledPast come to light: She was literally trained since childhood to be an actual assassin.
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** Becomes even funnier when we see him in live-action on ''Strange New Worlds''. Jack Quaid definitely inherited both of [[Creator/DennisQuaid his]] [[Creator/MegRyan parents]]' good looks, but Boimler is still the same clueless dork no matter the medium.
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* DefectorFromDecadence: As more of her past is uncovered it becomes apparent that she was a prominent and skilled member of an Orion crime family, with all the ruthlessness that implies, that wanted nothing more than to be the furthest thing from that as she pursued scientific endeavors in Starfleet.
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* DefectorFromDecadence: As more of her past is uncovered it becomes apparent that she was a prominent and skilled member of an Orion crime family, with all the ruthlessness that implies, that wanted nothing more than to be the furthest thing from that as she pursued scientific endeavors in Starfleet.
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* DefectorFromDecadence: As more of her past is uncovered it becomes apparent that she was a prominent and skilled member of an Orion crime family, with all the ruthlessness that implies, that wanted nothing more than to be the furthest thing from that as she pursued scientific endeavors in Starfleet.
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* IHatePastMe: Tendi is super embarrassed about her pirate past and she hates bringing it up. This is easily seen in "Something Borrowed, Something Green" as she tries to deflect ''everything'' about who she is.
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[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Beckett Mariner]]
!! Lieutenant (j.g.) Beckett Mariner
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beckett_mariner_4.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"Sometimes, you have to do what's wrong to survive."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/TawnyNewsome
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the command division, and the daughter of [[TheCaptain Captain Carol Freeman]].
----
* TenMinuteRetirement: After the events of “Trusted Sources”, where she is accused of trying to wreck the reputation of the ''Cerritos'' and is sent to Starbase 80 in punishment, she resigns her commission and takes up Petra’s offer to be an independent exoarcheologist. She ultimately realizes doing things like this isn't her thing and she belongs in Starfleet, with her returning to the ''Cerritos''.
* TheAce: {{Zig Zagging|Trope}}. While she excels at most of the practical skills it takes to be a Starfleet officer, she has a horrible attitude and resents most authority figures. Season 2 shows that she basically has no life skills other than what's necessary to be a badass and leans into it to build an emotional wall around herself and others.
* ActionGirl: {{Deconstruction}}. Beckett can throw down the best of 'em and has saved her ship time after time, but she struggles when she encounters a problem she can't punch away.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Mariner will date anyone of any gender (or species), so long as said gender has "bad" before it. This includes bad as in ''evil'', since "ruthless alien masterminds" are on her list. This is subverted in Season 3 when it's revealed she has been "babe-ing" with Jennifer, who seems pretty far from a bad girl based on her appearances.
* AlmightyJanitor: Incredibly competent at every skill applicable to being a Starfleet officer, she nevertheless prefers to be an ensign on the [[TitleDrop lower decks]] rather than on the bridge. When she's promoted, she is still very adept -- but also incredibly ''miserable'' from all the bureaucracy required of the role.
* AMFMCharacterization: Mariner is a big fan of Klingon acid punk.
%%* AnythingThatMoves: She is pansexual. She likes bad boys, bad girls, bad non-binaries, bad Bynars...
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther:
** In "Moist Vessel", she and Freeman briefly put aside their long-standing animosity and hug each other after they save the crews of the ''Cerritos'' and the ''Merced''. When they realize that they're in an embrace, they quickly let go and pretend like nothing happened.
** Her plot in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" is all about her being desperate to keep her best friend (Boimler) safe from what she's convinced is an insidious plot by his girlfriend to kill him.
** In a backwards way, "Crisis Point" demonstrates this too. Although the real Mariner is dead-set on thrashing holo-Freeman (after violently tearing through the rest of the crew), she is thwarted when holo-''Mariner'' beams Freeman away and holds real-Mariner off long enough to trigger the self-destruct while delivering a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech about how much she really loves her mom, the ship, and Starfleet. Mariner really can't refute this as Boimler used the crew's personal logs as a template for their personalities in the program.
* BelligerentSexualTension:
** With Ransom in "Temporal Edict". After an intense argument, he stabs her foot with a crystal battle blade, and she [[EatingTheEyeCandy finds him hot]] while he fights shirtless during his TrialByCombat. Amusingly, both her ''and'' Ransom are visibly disturbed by this development.
** Also implied in "First First Contact" between Beckett and Jennifer, who the former claims dreams about her every night with her "stupid little butt". She later admits that she goes out of her way to put distance between herself and the people she likes.
* BloodKnight: {{Deconstruction}}. Mariner loves having her back to the wall with a bat'leth in one hand and a phaser in the other, but she works for an organization that veers into SuicidalPacifism more than once. In her recreational activities, she uses intensely dangerous scenarios for her calisthenics and can go from 1 to 100 on a dime in martial arts.
* BookDumb: She has her experience and street smarts... and figures that's really all she needs.
-->'''Mariner:''' ''(regarding whether she actually read a mission briefing)'' I skimmed almost most of it, and read some of the captions, so...
* BreakingTheFourthWall: While LeaningOnTheFourthWall is par for the course for this show, Mariner so far appears to be the only character who outright breaks it. She mutters Khan's dialogue in her sleep; drops titles of old ''Trek'' episodes, and refers to characters from series that never made it to production. How she is able to do this is never explained.
* BrilliantButLazy: She knows the regulations even better than Boimler does, and she used to have a higher rank, but she just doesn't like the work or Starfleet's bureaucracy, so she's been kicked back down to ensign and has no desire to earn a promotion again.
* BrokenAce: She's incredibly competent at nearly everything she does with a wide breadth of galactic knowledge despite her young age, but she's so contemptuous of Starfleet's VastBureaucracy that almost no one wants to work with her (''including her parents''). "Much Ado About Boimler" reveals that she was actually a straight-laced student in Starfleet Academy who was predicted by her classmates to be the first among them to reach Captain, but something happened that changed her attitude.
* TheBully: Mixed with HeroWorshipper of all things. Mariner is a huge fan of the legendary James T. Kirk, even modelling her entire identify off of him, or at least his reputation that has survived the generations. This translates to little more than Becket trying to bully her way to getting whatever she wants and hiding behind her parents from consequences, something her own mother calls her out on as she points out that, while Kirk was daring, he always tried diplomacy first and had confidence in his comrades. Mariner on the other hand just turns everything into a fight and tries to push people away, something that she's forced to acknowledge in the Season 2 finale.
* BullyAndWimpPairing: Mariner's dynamic with Boimler. At the start of the series Beckett treated Brad as little more than her ensign shaped stress ball rather than a friend and Boimler viewed Mariner as someone to escape rather than impress and earn respect from. All the while calling each other their best friend. The {{Deconstruction}} part comes in where even years into their partnership both still readily believe the worst in the other, Boimler easily seeing Mariner as someone who sells weapons or a murderous black ops agent based on rumors alone while Mariner refuses to see Boimler as anything other than a green newbie right up until he phasered her and saved both their lives from starvation.
* ButtMonkey: Whenever Boimler isn't around to take the heat, this is what Mariner turns into. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Ranging from being part of a group that accidentally caused a war due to bringing the wrong artifact to a peace summit, to setting off a labyrinth of death traps on a collector's ship, to even being a magnet for the bridge officer's hazardous trash.
* CantTakeCriticism: Mariner will tell anyone to their faces that she's always right and outright despises being disagreed with. Something her own mother, the captain, calls her out on. When she's proven wrong, Mariner will do anything possible not to admit it. Even something so small as sharing funny stories with an acquaintance sets her off, but only if she's the butt of the joke. Everyone else is fair game.
* ChaoticStupid: She may have street smarts, but almost no common sense. She gets drunk on Romulan whiskey and wildly swings a ''bat'leth'' around in a corridor, raises and lowers a blast shield on a shuttlecraft rather than get work done, and fires a phaser at someone behind a force field in order to test its field strength ''without'' first making sure that her firearm is actually set to 'stun'. In every case, the recipient tends to be [[ButtMonkey Boimler]].
* CharacterDevelopment: In Season 1, Mariner glories in being a pain in the ass to her superiors and twice sabotages herself to avoid promotion, insiting that she's a "cool, Kirk-style badass" until "Crisis Point" forces her to acknowledge that there are deeper issues motivating her behavior. Over the next two seasons, Mariner starts to repair her relationship with her mother, opens up more to her crewmates, and becomes a more reliable officer (although she's still a MilitaryMaverick, she's a more directed one). When she gets an ultimatum to shape up or ship out, Mariner takes it seriously and ends up with a glowing performance review. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew--apart from her close Beta Shift friends--haven't forgotten her initial attitude. Ultimately, being able to leave Starfleet and do things without people telling her what to do convinces her that Starfleet ''is'' her home and she returns, even requesting Ransom to be her mentor.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Her EstablishingCharacterMoment in "Second Contact" has her injure Boimler while drunkenly swinging around a bat'leth. While Mariner's irresponsibility remains a consistent part of her personality, later episodes depict her as never intentionally trying to harm her fellow crewmates nor as someone who would be that reckless with a weapon.
* CommitmentIssues: Implied in [[Recap/StarTrekLowerDecksS3E03MiningTheMindsMines "Mining the Mind's Mines"]]. When the telepathic spy-orbs start turning the Ensign's dreams into reality, Mariner's takes the form of her new LoveInterest Jennifer acting seductively towards her. When they start conjuring up their nightmares, on the other hand, she is replaced by a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf-ized]] version of Jennifer who starts chasing her while talking about spending their lives together.
* CoolBigSis: Mixed with BigSisterBully. {{Deconstruction}}. Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time and is qualified to be an [=XO=] or even captain of a starship but for her refusal to get promoted. Which means that for the majority of her career most or all of the co-workers on her shift are either green newbies about to leave her behind or demoted screw-ups on their way out. The few people Beckett does see as her peers refuse to see her as such. This causes Mariner to be condescending even on a good day and it takes being phasered to even register that her closest friend has grown to be her equal.
* CoveredWithScars: Mariner's body is riddled with scars, according to "Temporal Edict".
-->'''T'Ana:''' Want me to clean up those disgusting scars?\\
'''Mariner:''' Uh, no way. No, [[EveryScarHasAStory these are my trophies]].\\
'''T'Ana:''' Congratulations, you look like a [bleep]ing scratching post.
* CryingWolf: Gets hit with this as part of a {{Deconstruction}} of her rebellious space-explorer persona. Having a lifelong history of blowing off orders and bucking authority not only means that her superiors will immediately look at her when things go wrong, but also won't believe her when she tries to set the record straight. When the bad track record of the ''Cerritos'' is passed on to a reporter, blame is immediately pinned on her based on her trouble-making personality and nobody's interested in what she has to say to defend herself. When her mother apologizes to her and asks why she didn't trust her, Mariner straight up admits "Maybe it's because I spent years making sure you didn't."
* CustomUniform: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. She wears a standard-issue uniform, but with the sleeves rolled up, which Ransom points out is against regulation, and has the collar open most of the time unless she's on a mission. It shows that she'll subtly thumb her nose at authority in any way she can, while also establishing she's not afraid to do hard work and get her hands dirty.
* DatingWhatDaddyHates: She once dated an [[LizardFolk Anabaj]] just to piss off her mother.
* DeadpanSnarker: Mariner has a dry, sarcastic sense of humor, and is willing to take cracks at most of the people on the ''Cerritos'' and others, especially her mom and the bridge crew.
* DecliningPromotion: An extremely common Star Trek trope, Exaggerated and Deconstructed with her. Many Starfleet characters turn away promotions that would take them away from things they love (Kirk, Picard, Riker), but these still leave them in prestigious positions. Mariner intentionally sabotages her career so she can remain at the ''lowest possible rank.'' The problem is that what keeps her from getting promoted is that she (sometimes on purpose) instigates every situation she gets in and bucks rank. Characters who don't know how capable she is treat her like her rank suggests and blow her off as an overeager ensign, and characters who ''do'' are often too exasperated by her attitude and lack of responsibility to take her seriously. Season 4 reveals that Mariner self-sabotages herself on the belief that everyone who promotes her wants to bust her back down and she decides to give it to them. When Ransom refuses to take the bait when she's promoted to Lieutenant junior grade, she's forced to confront this.
* {{Determinator}}: {{Zigzagged|Trope}}. While Mariner is the most intense, connected, and experienced character on the show, whenever there's not enough action or there's too much effort to a task she will call it a day. That said, if it looks like someone's in genuine trouble, she will not abandon them and try to help them to the best of her abilities. This contrasts with Fletcher, who was willing to let the ship be destroyed if it means avoiding trouble for a problem created by his attempt to slack off.
* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Tells Q right to his face to piss off because she (and Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi for that matter) doesn't have time for any of his "Q bullshit" at the end of a particularly rough day on the ''Cerritos''.
* DidYouThinkICantFeel: Comes up more than once in Season 2 because she has trouble opening up to people. Since she looks like a tough, smart-mouthed rogue, her friends don't realize when she's upset (or don't question why) until it hits a breaking point.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Two in "Second Contact"; the first time we see her, she's drunk on Romulan ale and carelessly wielding a Klingon bat'leth. Later in the same episode, Boimler discovers she's been secretly delivering farming supplies to some impoverished Galardonians who need them, bypassing the bureaucracy so they can comfortably survive. She may be a loose cannon who doesn't care much for regulation, but she sincerely cares about helping people wherever she can.
* EveryScarHasAStory: In "Temporal Edict", she explains the history of her scars to Ransom.
-->'''Mariner:''' See this bad boy? Tentacle guy, bunch of arms. Stabbed me with a barnacle blade. Check it out -- Magus III, Nanibia Prime, Scottsdale. That was a ''mess''. I earned every one in high-concept fights just like this one.
* EveryoneHasStandards: Mariner has been all over the galaxy, seen every quirk to every culture, and goes out of her way to be as audacious as possible when she can get a way with it. But even this rogue was outright disgusted when she realized she was holding an unwashed Caitian libido post with her bare hands.
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Any photos or flashbacks of Mariner all have different hairstyles. Apparently she changed them whenever she was shuffled to a new assignment, and she's been reassigned a lot.
* ExtremeOmnisexual: She likes her romantic/sexual partners [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys to have the word "bad" in front of their gender]] (whatever it may be), but other than that everyone is fair game for her.
* FanOfThePast: Her particular fascination is with Khan, she often quotes ''Wrath of Khan'' and says he was the biggest villain the ''Enterprise'' (all five) ever faced. Hell she even escapes one holo-sim piloting a ''Miranda''-class like ''Reliant'' and clearly models Vindicta after him.
* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: It's revealed at the end of the pilot that Captain Freeman is her mother.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Well, her ''current'' friends like her, but Mariner has a long history of pissing people off, so any time we see her talking to old contacts, they do stuff like charge her double for a repair job or try to trick her into being arrested for carrying contraband. Even as-is, the main reason she's still on good terms with her current group of friends is because of her CharacterDevelopment, which has led to Mariner being more able to admit her mistakes with them, show her vulnerable side, and listen when they put their foot down with her.
* GiveGeeksAChance: Non-romantic version, probably. When Mariner and the rest of Shax's search team were captured by Ferengi poachers, the moment that Boimler and Rutherford showed up to negotiate their freedom Mariner happily announced 'those beautiful nerdy men' were saving them all with the power of math.
* GenderBlenderName: Beckett is a unisex name, so, on its own, it's difficult to tell the character's gender.
* GoingCommando: This appears to be Mariner's default. As while we've seen her wearing underwear in the first episode, she considers the simple fact of putting on underwear enough of a reason to power through station security and threaten criminals. Indicting that, aside from field missions, Mariner usually just wears the Starfleet uniform and nothing else.
* HasAType: As she says in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", it's [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys bad boys, bad girls, and bad gender non-binary people]]. In a physical appearance sense, she's had [[EatingTheEyeCandy an immediate reaction]] to characters with big muscles on multiple occasions on screen.
* HaveIMentionedIAmSexuallyActiveToday: While Mariner has claimed to have been with everything from outright villains, to gender nonbinary babes, to borderline {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, she's never actually been seen dating anyone. The only confirmed person Mariner has dated was Captain Amina Ramsey, and that was back in their academy days, along with one awful date with a ConspiracyTheorist on the ''Cerritos'' a year before the series started. Averted in Season 3, where she's in a relationship with her former SitcomArchNemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
* HeIsNotMyBoyfriend: With Boimler. They both claim that they're nothing more than friends, though Mariner can come off as possessive due to her own past trauma (like the time [[ItMakesSenseInContext she saw a colleague get devoured by her boyfriend.]]) All the same, while this trope often serves as cover for BelligerentSexualTension, Mariner really ''is'' upset seeing Brad in any sort of sexual situation and even professes at one point to view him more as a pet than anything else. And the thought of ''other'' people finding Brad attractive makes her dump an entire bottle of alcohol in her glass.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** Is greatly annoyed that the senior officers do not treat her as a peer when she butts heads with them, despite the fact that the ''only'' reason that she is still an ensign is because ''she'' actively resists promotion.
** Also says repeatedly that the reason she hid that she was the captain's daughter was to avoid special treatment, and how much she dislikes her superiors trying to kiss up to Freeman by using her a proxy. At the same time, the only reason she wasn't kicked out of Starfleet years ago was because of her connections, and a major reason she hates the idea of her Mom being transferred to another ship is because she knows another captain won't give her anywhere close to as much leeway.
* IJustWantToHaveFriends: Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time. Because of that and how crew members are moved around every couple of years to new posts and positions, Beckett has never had a friend longer than a term of service on a starship, or even less when they're promoted and get transferred even faster. It's gotten to the point that Mariner even thinks its better not to make friends in the first place than to lose them, making her one of the loneliest crew members on the ''Cerritos'' if not all of Starfleet. The fact that her own mother, the captain, can barely stand to be around her does not help.
* ImproperlyParanoid: “I Have No Bones And Yet I Must Run” suggests that Mariner’s seemingly eternal promotion-demotion dance is this: whenever Mariner gets a promotion, she becomes convinced that, in secret, they’re looking to turn around and bust her down, so she decides to give it to them. Ransom realizes this and refuses to play Mariner’s game, forcing her into a HeelRealization.
* InternalReformist: The first season finale has her becoming one, with her deciding to work together with her mother to help pull Starfleet out of its LawfulStupid ObstructiveBureaucrat policies that allow for stuff like the Pakleds becoming a NotSoHarmlessVillain. While the alliance ends rather quickly next season when Mariner and Freeman realize how much they hate working together, Mariner will continue to try and find loopholes for said policies to help people.
* JabbaTableManners: She's a messy eater. In "Envoys", she spills broth all over the shuttlecraft's consoles while enjoying a noodle soup.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: She might be an [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist obnoxious prick with an almost pathological inability to follow the rules]], but sincerely cares about both Starfleet and her crewmates, and is [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight furiously dedicated to doing the right thing]].
* JerkassHasAPoint: Mariner is abrasive and obnoxious, but it's hard to deny that she's dead on about a lot of Starfleet's failings. Alongside Freeman, she's one of the only people to note that Starfleet's habit of leaving planets behind after dealing with the problem of the week will inevitably cause massive problems in the future - which becomes a frightening reality when the Pakleds graduate into being {{Not So Harmless Villain}}s.
* KickedUpstairs: In "Moist Vessel", Ransom and Freeman try to make her transfer by assigning her terrible duties, but Mariner finds a way to make them all fun. What ''does'' make her miserable? Being promoted back to Lieutenant with all the bureaucratic busywork and agonizing social events that entails.
* TheLastDJ: She's been in Starfleet for a surprisingly long time, and it's implied (later confirmed) she's been both promoted ''and'' demoted several times. She's got a strong sense of her own convictions and is extremely competent when she applies herself, but her laziness when she doesn't care and a general disdain for authority have severely limited her career advancement (which is a state she seems perfectly content with). None of the people who are her peers by age and experience have much respect for the insubordinate ensign with the sloppy uniform.
* LastNameBasis: Almost everyone just calls her Mariner. The only people who ever call her Beckett are her parents, and even Carol only uses it as a FirstNameUltimatum.
* MasculineGirlFeminineBoy: The masculine girl to Boimler's feminine boy.
* MeaningfulName: "Mariner" is another word for sailor, and Starfleet's basic command structure was inspired by the U.S. Navy. It also helps that any Federation starship is essentially [[RecycledInSpace a submarine in space]]. [[invoked]] This adds some extra FridgeBrilliance to her first scene where she's wasted on Romulan ale; [[JustForPun she's a drunken sailor]].
* MotorMouth: She tends to talk a light-year a minute.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Mariner is a born warrior with no patience for paperwork and a strong distaste for anything sentimental. Naturally she's in a Quasi-military that focuses on peace, bureaucracy, and cultural artifacts. Don't even get her started on Earth, which Mariner thinks is the most boring and dumb place in the galaxy.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: Most likely crew member to get naked for a gag instead of fanservice.
* {{Nepotism}}: While she definitely earned her way into Starfleet, her insubordinate attitude would have gotten her kicked out if it had not been for her family connections. Since her captain mother and admiral father don't want to have a washout for a daughter, her punishments are limited to demotion and brig time (which don't bother her anyway). While she resents being coddled and even considered transfer herself at one point, she does accept the protection of being on Freeman's ship. Subverted in her mother tells her that she and her father will not longer cover for her, and that from now on her being a member of Starfleet will be Ransom's call.
* NonuniformUniform: Among all the crew, she's the only one who wears her uniform with the sleeves rolled up. She also frequently has her uniform flap open, when she can get away with it.
* NoodleIncident: As the oldest and most experienced of the lower deckers, her backstory is full of unexplained incidents, including the matter of how she got demoted and transferred off the ''Quito''. She also appears to have an equal amount of apparently random intergalactic connections who either owe her a favor, or who bear an undying grudge against her.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Mariner loves everything about being in Starfleet, but has cultivated a MilitaryMaverick attitude and "cool" image that makes her reluctant to admit she gets excited about the same stuff that her fellow ensigns do--like the sight and sound of the warp core, or foraging off the bridge crew's conference snacks during cleanup.
** She also can't stand anything swamp related.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Mariner will go to some lengths to keep herself from adding another pip. She's actually qualified to be the XO of a starship, and her old Academy friend tries to get Mariner to be hers, so Mariner pretends to be a flake until an actual crisis forces her to stop. She also has no problem calling herself a Federation dog to get information from a Klingon and gets herself demoted from lieutenant by embarrassing Freeman in front of an admiral.
* OlderThanTheyLook: Or at least, older than she acts. If, as her flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" implies, she was already in Starfleet by the time of the events of ''TNG'''s "Descent"[[note]]or the very least the Dominion War considering the uniform she wore at the time came out in 2373- this gets more muddled as we see the ''Titan'' are still using those uniforms[[/note]], then she'd have to be at least in her mid-thirties. "Much Ado About Boimler" appears to confirm this, as one of her Academy contemporaries is already a ''starship captain''.
* OutOfFocus: Downplayed, as she remains the lead character, but she is much more clearly the main protagonist in Season 1 than in Season 2, which focuses more on the ensemble and makes Boimler and his arc more prominent, both at her expense. Although she gets a new arc in season 3, she still has to share focus with Boimler (again), Rutherford, Tendi, and even her own mother Captain Freeman, all of whom get their own arcs as well.
* PercussiveTherapy: Mariner has issues. But because of the emotional walls and reputation she's built for herself over the years, not to mention the incompetent therapist assigned to her ship, Beckett has no one to talk to about them right up until the breaking point. The only time Mariner has any kind of breakthrough is when there's some kind of physical catharsis. She only makes progress on her issues during an action-filled holodeck simulation or a mission that's gone south--during which time everyone around her is preoccupied with terror, disgust, and/or survival. By the beginning of the second season, we see that she's made this her ''hobby''. Regular workouts are too boring so she stages Cardassian prison breaks in the Holodeck while spilling her guts to an interrogator about her personal problems. It seems to work better than talking to Migleemo...
* PermissionToSpeakFreely: When she asks this in "Temporal Edict", Ransom points out that nobody can ''stop'' her from speaking freely.
* PlatonicLifePartners: What Mariner insists she and Boimler are. Though to everyone else it looks like they're dating. Even Tendi, a close friend of hers on the same shift, thinks the two practically share the same bunk.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: While playing the villain in the holodeck movie in "Crisis Point", she casts Tendi as a character that amounts to a stereotype of her species which seriously upsets her causing her to leave. While she apologizes at the end of the episode, she still doesn't see a whole lot wrong with casually referencing the stereotypes of other species in the galaxy, or sometimes even exploiting them for her own ends.
* ProperlyParanoid: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", she goes off the deep end a bit when she finds out Boimler is dating a woman who seems way out of his league and spends the entire episode trying to unmask Barb. It turns out she ''is'' right to suspect the relationship, [[RightForTheWrongReasons but her focus was on the wrong half of the couple]].
* PsychologicalProjection: Mariner has issues. A lot of them and whenever she runs into something she doesn't like she immediately attaches it to those issues. Even people and things Mariner does like, she attaches stuff she doesn't like about herself to them. Something Beckett awkwardly admits when she asks out her SitcomArchNemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
* RankUp:
** Promoted to Lieutenant (''full'' Lieutenant - that's two pips on her collar) in "Moist Vessel", incensing Boimler, as part of a plot by Freeman to convince her wayward daughter to resign or request a transfer. She is busted back down to Ensign at the end of that episode after mocking an Admiral's pronunciation of the word "sensors".
** She is promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in the first episode of season 4, despite her objections. We subsequently learn in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee" that she has been promoted, and then demoted again, ''a dozen times'' in the course of her Starfleet career, with Ransom saying he's going to make sure that this promotion will be the one that sticks.
* RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Boimler's Blue, being carefree and insubordinate compared to his desire to stick to the rules and not rock the boat.
* ReformedButRejected: In Season 3, Mariner takes her last chance in Starfleet seriously and it seemed that she was doing much better. However, when a reporter seemingly changes her tune around Captain Freeman and Commander Ransom reveals that Mariner was interviewed, she stands accused of ruining the ship’s reputation and, heartbroken, resigns after she is transferred to Starbase 80.
* RejectionProjection: Mariner has this tendency.
** After treating Boimler like crap for much of the first season (albeit, what she regarded as a VitriolicBestBuds friendship), she gets ''pissed'' when he accepts a transfer to the ''Titan'', calling him a "backstabbing little weasel" and threatening him with bodily harm. She's still mad at him come Season 2, but after he gets transferred back to the ''Cerritos'' they talk things out and make up.
** This also applies to Mariner's SitcomArchNemesis, Jennifer the Andorian. Mariner has a crush on her, which manifests in one-sided BelligerentSexualTension, which causes Jen to dislike her, which leads to Mariner disliking her back.
* SacrificedBasicSkillForAwesomeTraining: Mixed with WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer. Mariner is a fighter. Possibly the best on the ''Cerritos'', though she can be overpowered. The problem is that she has no other skills. When Beckett runs into a problem she can't punch away, she makes more problems that she can, leaving her teammates and commanders to fix the original problem and clean up her mess along with it. This is best shown in "Grounded", as Mariner almost destroyed the careers of the entire main cast while Starfleet brass had already resolved the conflict of the episode in spite of Becketts's actions instead of because of them.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Her character in a nutshell, and at least part of the reason why she has been demoted so many times. By the time of "Crisis Point", this is {{Deconstructed|Trope}} as she's seen as nothing more than a loose cannon by her own mother and is sent to therapy for it. This gets so bad that, by the time of “Grounded”, she’s willing to pull crimes in the name of “being right”.
* ShipTease: Mariner can generate this in prolific amounts:
** With Ransom in "Temporal Edict", leading to a now-infamous case of BelligerentSexualTension.
** With Captain Amina Ramsey in "Much Ado About Boimler". WordOfGod even confirms that it was left deliberately ambiguous as to whether they are platonic friends or AmicableExes, with Mike [=McMahan=] apparently favouring the latter explanation.
** With Jennifer after they resolve their SitcomArchNemesis feud in the Season 2 finale.
* SlaveToPR: Deconstruction and something she inherited from her mother, the captain. Though in the opposite way. Beckett has been in Starfleet most of her life and is fully qualified to take command if her mother is incapacitated. Mariner also has a strong desire to stay where she is and refuses promotion. The problem is to do that she must be viewed as a loose cannon to anyone that can promote her. Which means staged accidents, mistakes, embarrassing stories, borderline catastrophies, and of course open insubordination to superiors. All of which reflect bad on friends and family alike, which pushes them away and isolates Beckett more and more over time.
* SpoiledBrat: Her main problem and glaring flaw. Beckett Mariner is Starfleet royalty in all but name. By her parents own admission they have covered for, excused, and protected her from any form of consequence. Because of that Mariner has nothing but open contempt for the rules and regulations, breaking them even when following procedure is in her best interest. This led to her developing a major case of arrogance and entitlement and prevents her from learning her lesson and overcoming her many issues, let alone a being better member of Starfleet. Deconstructed in that it has done nothing but cause trouble at best and put people in danger at worst, ultimately landing her in a 'shape up or ship out' with the person who hates her the most.
* StreetSmart: Combined with TaughtByExperience. She doesn't care much for studying, but she can handle herself competently in almost every situation, largely because of these two tropes.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Beckett chooses good. And like most things with Mariner, deconstructed. Beckett has a strong drive to help people. From random locals on the planets her ship visits, her fellow crewmates, to even people that have crossed her- though the latter only to an extent. The problem is that she chooses to do all this under the radar because Mariner can't stand going through the rings of bureaucracy to do it legally. Which means no one- aside from a select few, know why Mariner breaks so many rules. So most of Starfleet views Mariner as little more than a spoiled brat that keeps getting in trouble for the sheer fun of it. Even Boimler at first is fully willing to believe that Mariner is selling weapons than helping farmers before they're let in.
* TooMuchAlike: With her mother, the captain. They're both committed to helping people, but they have a strong need to be in charge of whatever group they're working in. When they have to work together ''personally'', they immediately start butting heads until Freeman pulls rank. This comes to a head in "Strange Energies" where the two are forced to admit that they just can't work together on a regular basis.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: She's the {{tomboy}} (sassy, forceful ActionGirl) to Tendi's GirlyGirl (naïve, sweet-natured [[TheCutie cutie]]).
* TookALevelInKindness: Over the course of the series, Mariner slowly works on improving her behavior and treating the people around her better. While still somewhat acerbic, by the end of Season 3 she's much more amicable and accepting of her loyalty to Starfleet, contrasting greatly with her Cavaliere and reckless attitude at the beginning of the series.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: She encourages her lower decks friends -- typically Boimler -- to do things the ''non''-Starfleet-approved way, which she insists is better and more fun in spite of all the chaos.
* TraumaButton: Overly-perfect romantic partners. She witnessed her good friend Angie being ''eaten'' by one. (It's still PlayedForLaughs.)
* {{Tuckerization}}: Mariner is named for creator Mike [=McMahan=]'s sister, Beckett Mariner [=McMahan=].
* UnaffectedBySpice: In "Grounded", she dumps at least half a bottle of [[BlazingInfernoHellfireSauce 17,000,000 Scoville hot sauce]] (1,000,000 higher than ''pure capsaicin'') into her food, and after tasting it casually remarks that it has a "nice little kick". A little dash of the stuff was enough to make Boimler pass out after about 30 seconds.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: She's deliberately disrespectful to her superior officers (including her own mother who even tries to force Mariner into requesting a transfer in "Moist Vessel"), and she frequently jibes and emasculates Boimler. This is taken up to eleven in "Crisis Point", where she uses the holodeck to roleplay as a villain and kills the entire crew, dead-set on killing her mother. As she starts working on her issues over the course of the first season, she tones this down and begins to treat Boimler as a real friend.
* UptightLovesWild: {{Inverted|Trope}}. Though her stated preference is [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys bad]] ''[[ExtremeOmnisexual anything]]'', she used to be in a relationship with Captain Ramsey and has BelligerentSexualTension with Ransom, both of whom are ''far'' more by-the-book than her.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Reconstruction, and surprisingly not with Boimler but with her mother and captain- Carol Freeman. These two have so much in common it's downright scary sometimes, for both of them. They have been forced to admit that they can't work together personally on a regular basis because they constantly end up fighting inevitably each time. While they avoid each other when they can, the few times they share their off time together isn't much different. The reconstruction part comes in that is these two actually do enjoy spending time with someone who shares their interests, history, and on equal footing when off the clock. Something exceptionally rare for the both of them.
* WeHelpTheHelpless: In "Second Contact", it initially appears from her suspicious behavior that she's selling Federation weapons, but in fact she was giving agricultural tools to two Galardonian farmers who desperately need them.
* WorkoutFanservice: She's shown in her workout clothes at least once a season, potentially invoking this.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Brad Boimler]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) Bradward "Brad" Boimler
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bradward_boimler.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"We all joined Starfleet to dive headfirst into the unknown. We're explorers. Of course we don't always know what's going on!"'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/JackQuaid
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the command division, fresh out of the Academy.
----
* TheAce: As of Season 2, he is slowly becoming this over the course of the series thanks to his time serving as a lieutenant on the U.S.S. ''Titan''. He has become so skilled in fact that in "I, Excretus", not only was he the only member of the crew to pass any of the training simulations, but he was eventually able to increase his score to a perfect 100% and only ended up failing because Captain Freeman ordered him to not finish the program in order to stall for time. This becomes even more impressive when it's revealed that [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation the training simulations were rigged to make sure everyone failed]] and Boimler was able to not only pass but get a perfect score despite that, something not even ''James T. Kirk'' was able to do without resorting to cheating by reprogramming the simulation.
* AffectionateNickname: Mariner sometimes calls him "Boims".
* AlliterativeName: '''B'''radward '''B'''oimler
* AmbiguouslyHuman: A running joke through several episodes now, most notably "I, Excretus", is that Boimler is in fact not actually human, merely some sort of very human-presenting species. Whether this is just a joke at his expense, or hinting at another truth entirely has yet to be seen.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: He gets the promotion to the ''Titan'' he wanted. But the reason the ''Titan'' is so prestigious is because it's essentially a battleship, and being a helmsman on a ship that is in constant combat with a captain who eagerly dives into space anomalies is ''really stressful''. [[SubvertedTrope That said]], Boimler is still disappointed when circumstances force him to transfer back to the ''Cerritos''.
* BerserkButton: Do not touch his rank pips or insult Starfleet's uniforms to his face.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: For the most part, Boimler is very passive and unwilling to engage. However, even Boimler has his limits and he ''will'' flip out when he's pushed past them.
* ButtMonkey: He's on the receiving end of constant humiliation and abuse, mostly because of Mariner.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: Fitting for a ButtMonkey, on the occasions Boimler ''does'' try to break the rules, it often blows up in his face.
** Trying to lie to the Farm attendants about being a freak is immediately exposed, and he's tossed on the next shuttle off-planet.
** Attempting to use Mariner's status as the captain's daughter for blackmail only results in it being broadcast to the entire crew, rendering the information useless and landing him in hot water with the captain.
** Lying about being from Hawaii causes him anguish, and he comes clean, causing all the other officers who've been lying about this to do the same... only for them to immediately bond over being from moons and shun Boimler for trying to get in on that.
--->'''Ransom:''' Modesto is ''not'' a moon.\\
'''Benzite:''' If you ''were'' from a moon, you'd know how deeply offensive that is.
** Even trying to be bold in a tabletop game ends in misery for him; a simple act of confronting a Klingon bartender has his character brutally killed, dishonorably at that, since the bartender beat his character to death with his character's own severed arm, thus technically dying by his own hand.
* CantLiveWithThemCantLiveWithoutThem: Despite Boimler and Mariner's frequently tense friendship, Rutherford notes at one point that Bradward seems noticeably more unhinged without her around.
* CharacterDevelopment:
** Boimler gets a great deal of this in Season 2. While he's still something of a nebbish and needs backup often, he's found a spine and is a much more capable character overall. Best demonstrated in "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie", a Mariner/Boimler two-hander away team mission (which made up the plot of several Season 1 episodes) where Boimler successfully comes up with a plan to defeat the episode's villain and executes it on his own without any help from Mariner despite her having him re-assigned so that she could look out for him.
** In Season 3, he's convinced to take up a new way of thinking when he's being hunted and decides to become "Bold Boimler", becoming more vocal and taking more risks. Despite Mariner thinking "Bold Boimler" is gonna get him killed one day, it gives Boimler more confidence -- he blows up at a bunch of hecklers while defending Starfleet's actions, becomes an amazing Dabo player and ultimately gets the entire bridge crew of the ''Cerritos'' to listen to Shaxs' idea of ejecting the warp core.
* TheChewToy: To a literal extent in the series premiere, "Second Contact", where he's bodily employed as a pacifier to calm down a giant alien spider (which is itself livestock).
* CluelessChickMagnet: In Season 3, he's completely oblivious to the flirtations of all the vineyard girls, taking their questions seriously, though it's implied later in the season that he is aware of it and ignores it because that would mean being stuck on the raisin farm. It's played straight in regards to fellow ''Cerritos'' crewmembers, as Mariner pours herself another round when two of the other girls at Jennifer's sleepover ask whether he is single, something Boimler likely would reciprocate since they're fellow officers.
* CowardlyLion: His first instinct in mildly-dangerous situations is to run away [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl screaming]], but when his back's really up against the wall, or if someone ''else'' is in danger, he'll step up to save the day, even at the risk of his own life. You know, like a Starfleet officer!
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Despite being TheChewToy who frequently finds himself out of his league when dealing with aliens, he's a crack shot with a phaser. He's also the only person on the ''Cerritos'' who can function perfectly without [[ScottyTime buffer time]] (even the captain herself struggles to uphold her own directive). Appears to be drifting slowly towards HiddenBadass as he's pulled the wool over both Mariner's and Agimus' respective eyes more recently.
* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: Slowly revealed to be suffering from this over the course of Season 3, which nicely informs his MarriedToTheJob status. It's revealed that he was raised on a vineyard for raisins, which he found unbearable, and tried to find a greater purpose by joining Starfleet. As an ensign he's clearly discouraged by his career seemingly hitting nothing but roadblocks, and tries to compensate by doing his menial job to the best of his ability. This comes to a head when his transporter clone is seemingly killed in a random accident, which sends him into existential despair at the apparent meaninglessness of his life.
* {{Deuteragonist}}: As in most ''Star Trek'' series, ''Lower Decks'' is a clear two-man show, with Boimler as the deuteragonist to Mariner. When he isn't sharing the A-plot with Mariner, he is usually the focus of the episode's B-plot. He even gets an episode named for him ("Much Ado About Boimler"), a rare honor among ''Star Trek'' regulars. He turns the trick again in Season 2 (although we only learn this at the very end, when he mentions that "Excretus" is his assimilated Borg identity in the simulation). Season 2 also sees his story arc becoming more prominent at the expense of Mariner, the protagonist, whose arc formed the throughline of Season 1.
* {{Determinator}}: When Boimler puts his mind to something, nothing will stop him from doing it. Usually through non-violence, though the little guy is more than happy to whip out his phaser when the situation calls for it. Getting beaten up, humiliated, his life threatened is little more than standard operating procedure for this guy.
* DontCallMeSir: Played for laughs in the season one finale when Mariner, attempting to act more professional, keeps calling him sir on the grounds he technically outranks her. He finds it gross and disturbing, and keeps asking her to stop.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Downplayed. From the neck up, Boimler's design had no change at all from the initial piece of concept art.
* EasilyForgiven: Mariner gladly takes him back into the gang when he returns to the ''Cerritos'', despite having been pissed at him for "abandoning" her by accepting a transfer to the ''Titan''. A few episodes later, she admits that she actually is still upset about it, but once he apologizes for how he handled the situation she accepts it without any further drama.
* EffeminateVoice: Downplayed since it's not his normal voice, but when he's overly anxious, he speaks in a high-pitched tone.
* EndearinglyDorky: {{Reconstruction}}! Once people get past the straight laced professional butt kisser persona, this is essentially him. Each and every time Brad has managed to get noticed- not just potential suitors but friends and superiors- they note that his non-violent and friendly nerdy personality does so much for them. Ranging from saving the ship itself to simply brightening up their morning after receiving a bad work assignment. All this in a vast organization where everyone is forced to be an action survivor at the very least just to survive, this allows him to stand out.
* {{Fanboy}}: Boimler is a rabid fan of nearly every famous figure from Starfleet history and can't resist gushing about them whenever the subject arises.
* FantasticRacism: He's clearly prejudiced against the Ferengi, believing them to be ObviouslyEvil and AlwaysChaoticEvil.[[note]]This is probably from being warned about the Ferengi in the academy, a CallBack to the first episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.[[/note]]
-->'''Boimler:''' He could not be any more Ferengi -- the big ears, the beady eyes, the greedy thing they do with their hands. Ferengi are the most untrustworthy race in the galaxy. He probably just wants to lure us over there so he can mug us.
* FearlessFool: In the third season he declares himself "Bold Boimler" after realizing his cautious nature may be slowing his career advancement, but is quite bad at judging the difference between "bold" and "suicidally reckless."
* FishOutOfWater: He's great at following the rules, but out of his depth when the situation calls for flying by the seat of one's pants.
* HappyEndingOverride: The first season ends with Boimler getting a promotion and being transferred to the ''Titan'', his dream job. He is shown to be much more in his element on the ''Titan'' and seems like things are looking up for him. At the start of the second season though, three months have passed and he is constantly freaking out due to the intense battles he finds himself in. A position on the ''Titan'' is more prestigious than most other ships, but much more stressful because it is essentially a battleship instead of an explorer ship. This is zig-zagged at the end of "Kayshon, His Eyes Open", when Boimler is forced to return to the ''Cerritos'' and demoted back to Ensign: though a bit annoyed by this turn of events, he now has a better appreciation for his old position, with Riker even encouraging him to enjoy it while it lasts, and he immediately reconnects with his old friends.
* HatedHometown: He ''hates'' his family's vineyard in Modesto, and he hates making raisins.
* HeroicBSOD: In "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus", he slips into one when he learns his transporter clone was killed in a freak gas accident and tries to use his holodeck movie to search for TheMeaningOfLife. When he doesn't find them, he slips even further before passing out and having a dream meeting Captain Hikaru Sulu... or being clinically dead from lack of water, one or the other.
* HiddenDepths: He can play the violin incredibly well, although his songwriting skills need some improvement because he bored the audience during his performance.
* {{Hypochondriac}}: A weird InvertedTrope case: Boimler is host to a wide variety of anomalous medical conditions as one of his running gags (lots of allergies, "sensitive corneas," and so on) but he's such a workaholic he pushes through and keeps working in spite of all these weird little problems.
* InformedDeformity: At least according to inorganic beings, Boimler has been described as 'pimply faced' by an evil computer and 'almost human' by a simulation of the Borg queen. Though to everyone else he's rather ordinary, even seen as 'mousy sweet and soft'. Though the latter was under influence from a mating parasite. Of course thanks to the minimalist art style to the show, the viewers can't verify any of this. In live action he is of course played by his voice actor Jack Quaid, who inherited his parents' movie star good looks.[[note]]Though to be fair Quaid often plays nerdy/geeky characters in live action as well.[[/note]]
* TheKlutz: While normally Boimler is the epitome of straight laced, he's naturally clumsy and prone to bad luck on a good day. So much so that even the nicest of people and closest of his friends can't help but laugh at his expense. He uses this to save Tendi from her transformation into an angry scorpion by pratfalling repeatedly, making her laugh, which also earns him a compliment from Ransom.
* ALessonLearnedTooWell: In Season 3, he decides to stop being so risk-averse and become "Bold Boimler". This ends up getting him into different scrapes he might've otherwise avoided, much to everyone else's exasperation, with Mariner figuring it's going to end up killing him.
* MarriedToTheJob: Ditches his friends and cuts contact with Mariner following his promotion to U.S.S. ''Titan''.
* MommasBoy: For the ship's Talent Night, he performs two violin pieces ("Essence" and "Requiem for a Hug") he wrote about his mother.
* MyHoverCraftIsFullOfEels: He gets his metaphors a bit mixed up talking to Kayshon and accidentally calls him fat (at least that's apparently what happened based on context).
* NakedPeopleAreFunny:
** In "Second Contact", he and Mariner are forced to strip so that she can use their uniforms as a decoy for the spider, but he's irritated that it only goes after ''his'' uniform. Then he loses his underwear when the spider uses him as a pacifier. He returns to the ship in a pair of too-short farmer overalls.
** In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Mariner finds him in an orbital platform completely naked, because he was expecting his girlfriend.
** In "I, Excretus", seeing a simulation of Brad going spread eagle during the "Naked Time" simulation is what starts to break Mariner into a complete failure of her simulation training, where she was previously skeeved out at seeing everyone in a sex frenzy but not willing to quit.
* NewMeat: In contrast to Mariner, he actually is fresh out of the Academy, although he wants to be promoted as soon as he can.
* NoRespectGuy: He's repeatedly belittled by Mariner and treated as a worthless non-entity by his superior officers. {{Subverted|Trope}} toward the end of the first season, when his accomplishments finally pay off and he's promoted and transferred to the ''Titan''. Even after returning to the ''Cerritos'' in Season 2, he's treated with more respect than before and Ransom, at least, openly recognizes him for his accomplishments.
* NonActionGuy: Like many things with Boimler, {{Reconstruction}}. While Brad isn't afraid to whip out his phaser when its called for, Boimler is proud to admit that he's an explorer over an adventurer because it allows him to actually enjoy his service in Starfleet, an organization whose job it is to do exactly that. He even inspired the SpaceMarine types on the ''Titan'' to rediscover their love of "boring" Starfleet things and figured out a non-violent way for them to escape certain death. Conversely, his time on the Titan has made him a more capable fighter and officer, which becomes more obvious when he returns to the ''Cerritos''.
* ObfuscatingDisability: He pretends to still be a patient at "the Farm" in order to flirt with the attendants, which works until one of the actual patients calls him out.
* ObliviousToLove: Season 3 shows that he may be more attractive to the opposite sex than he realizes. Jennifer's friends ask Mariner if he's single (to her bafflement), and he's completely oblivious to the fact that all the female employees on his family's vineyard want to have sex with him (no matter how overt they get).
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: In "Envoys", Mariner knows something is very wrong with Boimler when he loses the will to carry out their mission.
-->'''Boimler:''' I don't even care anymore.\\
'''Mariner:''' What? Oh man, how much blood did you lose?
** There's also his RageBreakingPoint in Season 3's "Reflections", which occurs after a couple of outpost scientists make fun of Starfleet's uniforms, then ''take his rank pip and stomp on it''. He goes ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHVQ2BckZn4 completely apeshit]]'' and wrecks most of the other booths at the job fair while [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech ranting at the other booth runners]] and [[ClusterFBomb swearing up a storm]]. Ransom's taken aback to see Boimler on the rampage and Mariner calmly signing people up for Starfleet.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: He's transporter-cloned in the second season and feels betrayed and hurt when his other self does ''not'' self-sacrificially volunteer to leave the ''Titan'' with him -- and also starts sucking up to Riker. That said, Brad DOES experience some intense grief when he thinks William's been killed, though it's up to the viewer if it's actual mourning for his other self or if it he's just been painfully reminded of his own mortality.
* ThePerfectionist: He desperately needs his efforts to be rewarded, and strives for perfection in whatever task he's assigned. On the one hand, this makes him efficient and he's the only one who can function without "buffer time", on the other, this means he won't stop ''until'' he makes a perfect score. This actually ends up saving the ship in the second season; not only does he ''pass'' a rigged simulation, his repeated attempts to bump up his score and avoid TheBGrade mean that the bureaucrat trying to disband the ship can't submit the crew's score until he's done. This may also explain why he failed the infamous Kobayashi Maru test ''17 times'', if a line from his rant in "Reflections" is any indication (presumably [[ComicallyMissingThePoint he didn't realize it was supposed to be a no-win scenario]] and kept trying it over and over).
* PurpleIsTheNewBlack: Averted. "Grounded" confirms that his hair is in fact purple, not just a HollywoodDarkness style of black, and that he dyes it that way to cover up his true hair color. What that color is, however, is conveniently not revealed.
* ProfessionalButtKisser: He does his best to curry favor with senior officers and dignitaries, though usually without much luck. He cheerfully admits that he's looking forward to kissing Ramsey's ass when she's assigned temporary captain, although he would have phrased it differently. Ironically Boimler is always noticed by his superiors when he's ''not'' doing this, particularly Commander Ransom (who ''hates'' bootlickers in general and is never impressed by Boimler whenever he sucks up to him).
* ProneToTears: He tends to break down into tears whenever he feels unappreciated or helpless.
* RageBreakingPoint: In "Reflections", after spending the entire time trying his damnedest to prevent Mariner from going rogue, a pair of scientists mock the Starfleet uniform, then one of them pulls off and tosses away his rank pip, leading it to getting it stepped on. That was the ''last straw'' for Boimler and he goes ''apeshit''.
* RankUp:
** Gets promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (j.g.) at the end of the Season 1 finale. [[StatusQuoIsGod It doesn't last]], he ends up getting demoted back to the rank of Ensign at the end of the second episode of Season 2.
** Gets promoted to Lieutenant j.g. ''again'' in the season 4 premiere, "Twovix", and this time it sticks.
* RapidFireNo: Occasionally prone to this when things are ''very'' bad (e.g.: three Pakled ships warping in in the Season 1 finale, or facing death by drowning in the Season 2 finale).
* RedOniBlueOni: The Blue to Mariner's Red, constantly being browbeaten by her into actions he'd rather not do.
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: He has a very high-pitched scream when he's in trouble (which is often).
* SocialClimber: Of the main characters, Boimler is the most concerned with getting promoted.
* TheStoolPigeon: When the fed-up patients of a medical ship he's on decide to mutiny, Boimler pretends to side with them and immediately tells the captain, although it's mostly out of his belief that they're making a mistake. (Which is--eventually--proven true.)
* StupidSexyFriend: Boimler has admitted that he finds Mariner 'hot'... at the worst possible time, during a performance review with the ships captain- Mariner's own mother.
* ThrowTheDogABone: {{Zig Zagging|Trope}}.
** After being the resident ButtMonkey of the ''Cerritos'' and having all his attempts at currying favor and advancing himself blow up in his face throughout the first season, the finale has him earn a promotion to and a transfer to the U.S.S. ''Titan'', where he seems to have made new friends and is liked by Captain Riker... Then he gets transporter cloned and his clone steals his promotion and gets him sent back to the ''Cerritos''.
** Ransom acknowledges his talents at the end of "wej Duj" by recommending him to give pointers to a new cadet who was having trouble maintaining his work schedule.
** In the aftermath of deciding to be bold in Season 3, it seems to be paying off: his [[RageBreakingPoint rage-induced rampage]], while landing him in the brig for a night, impressed Ransom to the point the latter offered to have a drink with Boimler after he's released. Then, during the crew's visit to [=DS9=], he gets ''absurdly'' lucky at Quark's dabo table, to the increasing horror of the pit boss; when the boss offers Boimler a gift voucher for Quark's gift shop instead, Boimler gladly takes it (since as he points out, Starfleet doesn't use money) and gets to walk away with no debt ''and'' a bunch of Quark's merchandise.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Boimler (almost) always goes lawful. He knows the rules and regulations of Starfleet forward, backward, and upside down, following each of them to the letter. The problem that it's left him with little real world experience and initiative to think on his own when he runs into something the regulations didn't cover or handle wrong. More than that, because he sticks to the rules so much, he's seen as a wet blanket by his fellow lower deckers and boring by the higher ups to such an extent he's seen as part of the background at best and outright worthless at worst. To be fair, in 'Second Contact', he did choose not to rat Mariner out for giving farmers aid without waiting for Starfleet's approval.
* TookALevelInBadass: After returning from the ''Titan'', one would be excused for assuming that Boimler would backslide to becoming the same nebbish load that he was for most of the first season. And he CAN be... a bit... but also has become a much more capable and well-rounded person during his time on the bigger ship, and is more capable of taking charge, commanding others (including, at times, Mariner herself), deception, trickery and even physical combat. He's also a much more quick-thinking and capable officer.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Beckett at first makes fun of the fact his name is "Bradward", but he treats it as if it's no big deal.
* {{Workaholic}}: If it were up to him, there would be no breaks in Starfleet. "Temporal Edict" demonstrates that he excels in a hectic work environment which has strict, jam-packed scheduling, and he effortlessly completes the menial tasks assigned to him in the allotted time (with some tasks even being completed ''ahead of'' schedule). He tells Freeman that it has been the greatest week of his life after she eliminated [[ScottyTime buffer time]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) D'Vana Tendi]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) D'Vana Tendi
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dvana_tendi.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"WE are your family! We will always be there for you! And right now we're headed for pile of crazy dangerous space debris. Just trust us!"'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/NoelWells
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the science department.
----
* TheAce: A unorthodox example, but Tendi's natural curiosity and [[{{Determinator}} relentless zeal]] for whatever she's doing means she can accumulate new skills and knowledge very quickly, plus [[HiddenBadass she's far more capable in a fight]] than she looks.
* AchievementsInIgnorance: She started practicing DNA sequencing in her off-time, and she ended up creating a dog that could shapeshift, fly, and speak English. Turns out she had no idea what regular dogs were like since they don't have them on Orion, so she didn't think it was weird to add new features.
* AlienBlood: The show establishes in canon that Orions aren't just [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe green-skinned space babes]], but green-muscled and green-blooded as well.
* AudienceSurrogate: She seems to be written as this, as her reaction to serving aboard the starship is, at least initially, pure {{Squee}}. She's also the NaiveNewcomer, so ship protocols can be explained to the audience through her.
* BoyishShortHair: Her hairstyle is very short (it's shaved around the sides and the back, so her locks are limited to the top of her head), unlike the [[LongHairIsFeminine long hair]] that's typically associated with Orion women.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Tendi is one of the sweetest and most helpful members of the ''Cerritos'', but she is fully capable of kicking seven shades of green shit out of fully armed and trained soldiers with her bare hands. There's some pretty heavy implications that she was once a fearsome pirate, which are confirmed in "Hear All, Trust Nothing."
* BreakTheCutie: Tendi loves Starfleet. She loves the ship, the crew, the adventures and especially her friends. The green medic tries to pack as much fun as she can into her job. But when Tendi unwittingly volunteered her and her friends for the most demeaning and dangerous job on the ''Cerritos'' she was smacked down bit by bit until she had an emotional breakdown and wished she never left Orion. Luckily Boimler was there to give her the slapstick CooldownHug she needed.
* TheCaptain: Reveals in "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" that this is her ultimate goal.
* CompellingVoice: She may not have the mood-altering pheremones certain other types of Orions have, but she has a "bossing everyone around voice" that she uses on other Orions in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris." It only works on people willing to listen to her in the first place, however, and it initially disturbs her to use it. As she grows more confident, however, [[CharacterDevelopment she learns how to draw upon her more decisive side]] to make herself a more effective officer.
* CreatingLifeIsAwesome: As a personal project she engineered a dog from scratch with no prior experience with one. The result is physically identical to a normal dog, with a ''lot'' of random extra abilities.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: You wouldn't know it from her quirky, ditzy personality, but she's more than capable of ''demolishing'' close to a dozen armed Romulan guards, ''with her bare hands''. "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" implies these combat skills come from a DarkAndTroubledPast that she's loathe to talk about.
* CulturalRebel: Every other Orion we've seen in the prime timeline has been either a murderous pirate (male) or a voracious sexual predator (female). Conversely, she's a socially awkward medic.
* CurtainsMatchTheWindow: Her hair and her eyes are green.
* TheCutie: Big eyes, freckles on her cheeks, a light and sweet voice, and an inherently kind-hearted demeanor; she fits this trope to a tee.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: She comes from a clan of [[TheDreaded feared and infamous]] Syndicate SpacePirates, and it's implied that she was involved in the family business to some degree before joining Starfleet. She inherited the title of "Mistress of the Winter Constellations" from her grandmother, and presumably her mother, and is fully capable of living up to its fearsome reputation when she needs to.
* {{Determinator}}: {{Deconstruction}}. Much like Boimler, when Tendi gets an idea in her head she will not stop until she does it. The problem is when this happens it always results in more danger, bodily harm, and unnecessary complications than are necessary. Ranging from hunting friends down to remove body parts, to visiting violent pirate dens, to even willingly cracking open her own limbs.
* TheDitz: For as lovable as Tendi is, she admittedly is this when it comes to Earth-related matters, such as believing that all dogs can shapeshift, fly, and talk.
* DesperatelyCravesAffection: Kinda. Tendi NEEDS to be liked by anyone she meets. When someone dislikes her, this cute medic describes it as 'ants on her brain'. Tendi will go to any lengths to making someone like her. It really says something that her attempts at this starts at stalking and ends at removing someone's brain and trying to rewire it neuron by neuron.
* EnthusiasticNewbieTeacher: Though not an educator by trade, Tendi seems to be the go-to liaison for new recruits aboard the ''Cerritos'', and she's nothing if not enthusiastic about it both times.
* GenkiGirl: As energetic as she is upbeat.
* GirlyBruiser: She may be bubbly and sweet, but she's ''devastating'' in hand-to-hand combat.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: [[PlayingWithATrope Played With.]] She's a member of the TropeNamer species and is certainly attractive, but she doesn't wear revealing clothing (outside of the movie in "Crisis Point") and endears people to her with her kind, cute, and optimistic personality rather than by being an overt seductress the way Orion women are portrayed as. Tendi is admittedly rather upset by the stereotyping of her species as this trope.
* HiddenBuxom: Tendi heavily downplays the cliché fanservice elements seen in Orions up until now, because she doesn't want to play into the GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe stereotype, and is usually just seen in her Starfleet uniform. However, she's noticeably curvier than Mariner.
** This is obvious when both women are in uniform, but even more noticable when Tendi is out of a uniform, as in "Crisis Point" when she wears the usual Orion space pirate outfit, or other situations that put her in either civilian clothes or undergarments.
* IJustWantToBeLoved: In "Moist Vessel", we learn that Tendi has an obsessive need to be liked by everyone. In "Strange Energies", she is willing to extract Rutherford's brain rather than risk losing him as a friend.
* InstantExpert: Well, "instant" may be a stretch, but she dedicates herself to any task she gets with 100% enthusiasm, and takes up numerous side projects in her off-time. She has the same dedication for cleaning the conference room as she does running a secret Black Ops mission with her executive officer. It makes Dr. T'Ana take notice and recommend she take the bridge exam to become Science Officer.
* LetsGetDangerous: Thanks to the training she received from her pirate family, when Tendi decides to kick ass, she goes ''hard.''
* LivingAphrodisiac: Averted hard. Tendi does not produce pheromones and is annoyed at the stereotype that all Orion women have this ability.
* MadScientist: She shares this role equally with Rutherford. As a member of the medical staff her first day started with her pumping a fully awake patient's heart with her bare hands, creates a borderline eldritch abomination dog in her spare time, and when she's worried about a friend's behavior she tries to hunt him down to remove his brain.
* TheMedic: Among the main cast, she started off as a medical officer who assisted Dr. T'Ana in sickbay.
* MinionWithAnFInEvil: On the occasions she has to pretend to be a bad person, she's not very good at it, using G-rated swears and half-heartedly talking about robbing people. If the implication she used to be a pirate is true, this is probably why she isn't one anymore.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Up until now, Orions have been portrayed as vicious space pirates and seductresses. Tendi isn't either of those things and [[DamnedByFaintPraise insists that Orions haven't engaged in piracy for, like,]] ''five years'' now (mostly).
* NewMeat: She's fresh out of Starfleet Academy and new to the U.S.S. ''Cerritos''.
* NiceGirl: She's the most consistently kind-hearted and good-natured of the four main characters, aside from perhaps Rutherford.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Tendi is the nicest person on the ''Cerritos'', if not all of Starfleet, and tries to get along with everyone. But even the heart of Beta Shift can't help but laugh when she sees the resident ButtMonkey make a mess of himself. Because of this and her love of slapstick, she's able to bounce back from her worst day on the job, which sees her tortured by space trash and turned into a man-eating bug.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Tendi is usually cheerful and upbeat, but even she has her limits.
** After a whole day of suffering injuries handling "Anomaly Consignment Day", and Mariner and Rutherford's complaining, an increasingly frazzled Tendi, influenced by a mood-altering cube, reaches her breaking point and starts ranting about how much everything sucks, alarming her friends. Things get so bad she even yells she wishes she was back on Orion.
** After Peanut Hamper betrays everyone ''again'' in "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" she goes into a state of TranquilFury and is distinctly unamused with Peanut Hamper's attempt to call the Borg to their location.
* PluckyGirl: No matter how dire the situation is, nothing seems to dampen her enthusiasm.
* ThePollyanna: At the end of the pilot episode, Mariner jokingly asks if she's still excited to be there. Tendi's response is an enthusiastic "Yes!" because she got to hold a heart (as in, one still attached to a patient that she had to manually pump) on her ''first day!'' And in the Season 1 finale, she does not despair over Rutherford's amnesia making him completely forget her... she sees it as an opportunity to become his bestie all over again.
* PunctuationShaker: Her given name contains an apostrophe.
* RankUp: Promoted to Lieutenant j.g. in the season 4 premiere, "Twovix".
* RedBaron: In her former life (and to members of her family) she was known as '''"Mistress of the Winter Constellations."''' May also qualify for NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast status, as the person who uses this name for the first time seems ''rather'' frightened of her.
* RuthlessModernPirates: Eventually confirms that she grew up in a pirate family allied with the infamous [[TheSyndicate Orion Syndicate.]] It's ambiguous if Tendi was ever one of these herself (making her a ReformedCriminal) or if she was merely trained by her father. Either way, it's made abundantly clear that [[LetsGetDangerous just because she decided against going into the family business doesn't mean she wasn't GOOD at it.]]
* ShipTease: She gets some mild teasing with Rutherford throughout the first season, but it's especially heavy in "Terminal Provocations." They connect really well due to them being the two nicest and most pure-hearted crewmembers of the ''Cerritos'', their friendship is clearly healthier and more mutually respectful than Mariner and Boimler's, and Tendi often excitedly hugs Rutherford when she's happy with him. [[WillTheyOrWontThey Only time will tell, however, if they'll ever decide to become more than friends.]] For what it's worth, when Mariner asks her if the two are dating in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris," Tendi's response is an uncertain ''"Not really?"''
** There also fans who saw her interaction with T'Lyn as such. Since Vulcan have TouchTelepathy, Tendi grabbing T'Lyn hand is the equivalent of a french kiss.
* StepfordSmiler: Her insistence on always finding the bright side to any situation means she sometimes tries to force herself to be cheerful even when it's doing more harm than good, and she sometimes pretends to be more okay than she really is after a crisis.
* TokenHeroicOrc: She's the first Orion series regular in the franchise and the first Orion Starfleet officer seen in the prime timeline. Her species is mostly portrayed as villainous criminals.
-->'''Tendi:''' And the truth is, a lot of Orions ''are'' hyper-capitalist libertarian gangster pirates, just not ''this'' one. That's why I'm ''here''.
** She is also very uncomfortable with how abusive Orion females can get when talking to males.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: She's the GirlyGirl (naïve, sweet-natured [[TheCutie cutie]]) to Mariner's {{tomboy}} (sassy, forceful ActionGirl).
* TranquilFury: Implied. While she remains calm after Peanut Hamper reveals that her redemption was a sham and betrays and abandons everyone for a second time, she is visibly pissed and refuses to tolerate the Exocomp's efforts to call the Borg. She even forcibly jams her antenna back inside her body to stop her.
* VisualPun: Her skin color. In Season 1 she's "green" (short for greenhorn), as in a person who is inexperienced. In Season 2 she's jealous of Rutherford's relationship with Barnes and could be described as "green" with envy.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Kind of. In "Second Contact", when Dr. T'Ana starts giving her instructions, Tendi protests that she's not qualified and she's supposed to be reporting to a nurse rather than the CMO. T'Ana points out that the growling, slavering, rage-vomiting patient strapped to the biobed ''is'' the nurse. And it seems to stick -- from "Envoys" onward, she seems to report directly to Dr. T'Ana.
* YouthfulFreckles: She's the youngest member of the main cast, and her freckles reflect this.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Sam Rutherford]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) Samanthan "Sam" Rutherford
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/samrutherford.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"I belong in the tubes."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/EugeneCordero
A ensign, and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the engineering department.
----
* AmbiguouslyBi: It's confirmed that he finds Tendi cute and has gone on romantic dates with women, but "Crisis Point" shows hints that he might be attracted to Commander Billups ([[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything unless they really are just talking about engineering]]). Similarly, in "Mining the Mind's Mines", his illusion is Leah Brahms repeatedly trying to tempt him with engineering equations.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: He's dark-skinned and is voiced by Filipino-American actor Eugene Cordero, but his name does not suggest any particular race. "Reflections" hints that Rutherford is also Filipino, with his past self naming a racing ship ''Sampaguita'' after the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasminum_sambac national flower of the Philippines]].
* AmnesiacDissonance: Rutherford, before getting his implant, was actually a womanizing JerkAss who only wanted to race and flouted Starfleet rules and regulations. The LaserGuidedAmnesia that the implant also enforced on him turned him into the sweet and lovable guy he is now.
* CasualDangerDialogue: In "Second Contact", he and his date continue asking get-to-know-you questions and flirting after they get caught up in the firefight and emergency evacuation caused by the virus.
* {{Catchphrase}}: "Okeydokey!"
* {{Cyborg}}: He has a Vulcan cybernetic implant that aids his sight, making him somewhat of an {{Expy}} of [[Characters/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Geordi La Forge]] and his VISOR (notably, crewmembers actually wearing a VISOR appear in the background a few times). It occasionally malfunctions and tries to suppress his emotions, but only in the first episode.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Thanks to his implant, Rutherford can fight off a simulation of a Borg strike team (the purpose of said simulation being to [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation humble new recruits]]). Even without the implant, this is a guy who creates homicidal A.I.s in his off time that can destroy enemy flagships in minutes.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: In "First First Contact", he deletes redundant memories of Tendi in order to free up his memory. However, he then sees a memory of his implant being installed which suggests it wasn't voluntary. "Reflections" then reveals that he was injured working on a top-secret project, and his supervising officer had his memories of the project erased. "The Stars at Night" finally reveals that he was working on then-Lieutenant Commander Buenamigo's new ''Texas''-class prototype.
* DeathOfPersonality: The ultimate fate of his original personality. When he loses the race with the current Rutherford, he is fatally injured and fades out of existence. Rutherford offers to do a SplitPersonalityMerge with him, but he declines on the grounds that doing so would essentially kill them both.
* DecliningPromotion: Despite having been in Starfleet Academy during the TNG era (a flashback of his shows Admiral Buenamigo with the TNG-style combadge), he's still just an ensign post-''Nemesis''. Eventually, series 4 reveals that he has actually been offered a promotion, ''several times'' thanks to the various things he's done through the series, but he's turned them down simply to stick with his fellow Beta Shifters. If he wanted a promotion, he actually could ask for one and get it... a fact he was completely unaware of.
* TheEngineer: He serves in the engineering department, so he's this among the main cast. It's taken to an adorkable level when he forgoes romance as he wonders why a red alert would deactivate an emergency hatch.
* EyeScream:
** The implant isn't just covering an eye, it's replacing it. Then it turns out the medics who gave him the implant removed his eye. With a ''drill''.
** The reason he got the implant in the first place? An experimental engine ''[[FacialHorror blew up in his face]].''
* FanOfThePast: When Barnes tells him that she's a fan of a "classical band called Music/TheMonkees" (a group that is over ''400 years old'' from their perspective), he responds, "Let's just say I'm a believer." "I'm a Believer" is one of the Monkees' biggest hits.
* FashionableAsymmetry: His left eye, and much of the left side of his head, is cybernetic. The metal ear is pointed, reflecting its Vulcan origin, while his organic ear is rounded. Also, his right eyebrow has a gap.
* FlawedPrototype: Rutherford is enthusiastic and does have the skill, but his attempts to create or upgrade things independently tend to go wrong, mainly because he tried to run them before they were ready.
* GenderBlenderName: '''Samantha'''n Rutherford.[[note]]Which is especially funny if you know that the name "Samantha" is already a ''literal'' Gender Blender Name, originating in the 20th century from blending the names "Samuel" and "Anthea" and devised specifically so there'd be a feminine form of "Samuel".[[/note]]
* GreaseMonkey: In "Envoys", he's covered in black stains after working on the EPS conduits. He enjoys completing arduous tasks that other people would find extremely unpleasant.
-->'''Rutherford:''' Well, if you see an unaligned EPS conduit, don't call me. Mine are aligned as hell.\\
'''Tendi:''' Wait, aren't there like a hundred of those? How long have you been in there?\\
'''Rutherford:''' A solid week. Crawling through cramped ducts, prying open panels and adjusting red-hot power cables. Look, look, look, I've got blisters on my blisters.\\
'''Tendi:''' Oh wow, you must be so relieved to be done.\\
'''Rutherford:''' Oh, I'm not done. Now I get to recalibrate everything. That's another three, four days in the tubes!
* IHatePastMe: Having discovered what a JerkAss he was before, Rutherford really didn't like who he was.
* IKnowMortalKombat: His cybernetic implant allows him to [[CurbStompBattle vanquish]] an entire team of holographic Borg drones in unarmed combat.
* {{Jerkass}}: Prior to his accident, Rutherford was an arrogant, womanizing jerk who was rude to everyone around him. Buenamigo having his memories erased to cover up his illegal project resulted in Rutherford [[AmnesiacDissonance gaining his current personality]].
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: In "No Small Parts", due to his cybernetics getting ripped out, he suffers amnesia and forgets the events of the entire season. By Season 2, he's mostly back to normal, save for a few temporary personality changes (he likes pears when before he hated them). "Reflections" reveals that he was actually hit with this ''much'' earlier, his entire personality having been changed.
* LovedINotHonorMore: He chooses to investigate a broken emergency hatch over his hot date who had just passionately kissed him.
-->'''Rutherford:''' Who has time for romance when there's a level 2 diagnostic just sitting there waiting to be run?
* NewMeat: He's been in Starfleet a while (flashbacks show he was a cadet during the TNG days), but post-amnesia he's still figuring out his way in shipboard engineering.
* NiceGuy: Despite his awkwardness, he's always friendly and kind to everyone on the ''Cerritos''. In "Crisis Point", during the movie sequence, when playing the part of one of Mariner's minions, he ominously says that he wants to tell the simulation of Commander Billups "what he really thinks of him" and get away with it, as if setting up a nasty TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, only to instead tell the simulation of Billups how much he admires his engineering skills. It's a shame Rutherford thinks he can't tell the real Billups how much he respects him.
* NonActionGuy: Before he participates in Shaxs' combat training simulation in "Envoys", he panics because he's never fought anyone before ("I don't know how to fight!"). However, his cybernetic implant helps him to overcome his lack of experience.
* ObliviousToLove: In "Second Contact", he doesn't realize that his date for the evening is annoyed by his interest in a broken emergency hatch over her.
* RankUp: Promoted to Lieutenant j.g. in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee". He acknowledges that he has been offered promotion several times for his past heroics, always turning them down so he could continue serving alongside Tendi.
* RoboCam: We occasionally see from his perspective how his cybernetic implant functions.
** In "Envoys", it has a setting that can [[EnemyScan analyze potential targets and determine the optimal combat strategy to defeat them]].
** In "Moist Vessel", it warns him of the "Unauthorized {{terraform}}ation" that's taking place on the ship, so he has a slightly better chance than the average person to move out of harm's way quickly enough to avoid getting impaled by jagged rocks.
** In "No Small Parts", he breaks off a knob from his implant and finds a button that changes his attitude. We see the various moods as he switches through them.
* ShipTease: He gets some mild teasing with Tendi throughout the first season, but it's especially heavy in "Terminal Provocations" when he admits to Badgey that he thinks Tendi's cute and wanted to impress her. He doesn't explicitly state that he has a crush on her, but it certainly sounds like it when he says he wants to impress her with something he made in a simulation because she's cute, not that Rutherford would even need to do that, as Tendi already likes him for his good-hearted nature.
* TookALevelInJerkass: After having his implant damaged in "No Small Parts," he's notably more irritable and snappy in Season 2, even after Tendi stops trying to bring his old personality back. "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" suggests this is out of frustration for feeling like he's lagging behind where his old self used to thrive.
** Season 3's "Reflections" clarifies things: The levels in JerkAss he took were his original personality trying to reassert itself, and he TookALevelInKindness due to side effects of the procedures involved in giving him the implant... and erasing his memories of just what he was involved in that led to him needing one in the first place.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Viewers stopped dead in their tracks when it's revealed his full name is ''Samanthan''.
* {{Workaholic}}: Rutherford absolutely loves the endless monotonous tasks that keep the ship running. He's positively gleeful at the thought of spending days in the Jeffries tubes.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g ) (Provisional) T'Lyn]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) (Provisional) T'Lyn
[[quoteright:200:[[labelnote:As a member of the ''Cerritos'' crew.]][[/labelnote]]]]
[[caption-width-right:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tlyn_s4e1.jpg]]
[[quoteright:200:[[labelnote:As a member of the ''Sh'vhal'' crew.]][[/labelnote]]]]
[[caption-width-right:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/t_lyn_profile.png]]
[[caption-width-right:200:''"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/GabrielleRuiz
A female Vulcan crewmember, formerly serving aboard the Vulcan cruiser ''Sh'vhal'', now re-assigned to the ''U.S.S. Cerritos'' as punishment for not acting logically enough.
----
* AuthorAvatar: Was originally a cosplay character created by the writer of her debut episode, Kathryn Lyn.
* BigDamnHeroes: Her efforts end up saving both the ''Cerritos'' '''and''' the ''Sh'vhal'' from destruction. Also saved the ''Cerritos'' crew from becoming an army of Tuvixes.
* BreakoutCharacter: Originally a one-shot character, her unexpected popularity in Season 2 led to a regular role for her in Season 4 (Season 3 was mostly written by the time her episode was released).
* CulturalRebel: T'Lyn is more in touch with her emotions and instincts than most Vulcans, and believes her approach to be the superior one. Which is not to say T'Lyn doesn't still appreciate quiet time like any Vulcan. But being less bound by logic and unemotional detachment than her crewmates, is enough to get her kicked off the ''Sh'vhal''.
* CustomUniform: While aboard the ''Sh'vhal'', she wears her belt as a headband. After being transferred to the ''Cerritos'', T'Lyn wears color-coordinated headbands to match her clothing, since Starfleet hasn't included belts as part of their uniforms since the early 2300s.
* DeadpanSnarker: Practically given for a Vulcan, T'Lyn has quite an acerbic wit.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Despite being instrumental in saving the crew of the ''Sh'vhal'', she receives no recognition for her efforts, and is in fact booted off the ship because of them.
* {{Foil}}: Within seconds of arriving on the ''Cerritos'', her quiet demeanor is immediately contrasted with Tendi's bubbly personality as the latter literally drags her to meet the rest of Beta Shift.
* GadgeteerGenius: She is quite proficient with technology, as seen when she boosts the range of the ''Sh'vhal's'' scanners and later improves its shields. After being transfered to the ''Cerritos'', she easily hijacks the ship's transporter system to save the crew.
* HotBlooded: By Vulcan standards, at least. While she is outwardly [[TheStoic just as cool-headed and serene]] as any Vulcan, and she can be logical enough to sway her captain on several occasions, she also has a habit of allowing her emotions to dictate her actions; she pursues personal projects when she should be meditating and relies on her instincts rather than logical analysis, which her captain describes as "outbursts" and accuses her of acting like a child. The rest of the crew also berates her "passionate" actions.
* ImNotHereToMakeFriends: This is initially her attitude upon being transferred to the ''Cerritos'', making it clear her intention is to prove to the Vulcan High Council that she deserves reinstatement in their fleet, and has no interest in establishing personal connections (plus, you know, ''[[TheStoic Vulcan]]''). However, although it takes a while, she does start warming to Tendi's efforts to befriend her.
* MirrorCharacter: She is essentially a Vulcan version of Mariner. She's a rebellious young woman whose outside-the-box thinking saves the day, and she even wears her uniform informally compared to everyone else. Unlike Mariner, her violations are minor with a more direct benefit to the ship, but committing them at all eventually gets her transferred, just like Mariner.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: T'Lyn is berated by her peers for exceeding her duties and experimenting with ways to improve the systems on the ''Sh'vhal'', because they're otherwise operational. Even though in both cases her innovations were functional and improved systems, she's still transferred to the ''Cerritos'' by her captain, because she's considered too headstrong for doing so in the first place.
* RankUp: Promoted to (provisional) Lieutenant j.g. shortly after transferring to the ''Cerritos'', presumably having taken her service aboard a Vulcan vessel into account.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Despite her saving the day in "wej Duj", the captain of the ''Sh'vhal'' has her transferred off the ship, recommending she serve on a human Starfleet vessel instead as punishment for her disruptions. She is eventually assigned to the ''Cerritos'', and intends to work her way back onto a Vulcan vessel as soon as possible.
* SarcasticWellWishing: Departs the ''Sh'Val'' on a "Live long, and prosper" so barbed it would make Kelvin timeline Spock proud.
* SmugSmiler: {{Downplayed}}. T'Lyn gives off a smirk when the captain of the ''Sh'vhal'' is unable to refute her logic, but is otherwise fairly stoic.
* TheStoic: As a Vulcan, T'Lyn is the very definition of the trope. She rarely lets her emotions show, and even when she does, it's not much more than a slight raising of her voice and adding a slight emphasis to her words. However, she's much more in tune with her emotions and instincts than her fellow Vulcans, who regard her as HotBlooded.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: T'Lyn has no compunctions about disregarding protocols and orders if she believes they are interfering with her mission.
* {{Workaholic}}: When ordered to meditate by her captain, she briefly attempts to comply before giving up and returning to her work. This is one of the many marks against her character on the ''Sh'Val'', as everyone questions the logic of working to improve already serviceable and functional systems.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: T'Lyn's transfer to Starfleet at the end of her debut appearance suggests she'll play a major part in Season 3, but she only makes a small cameo appearance at the end of the season finale, having been re-assigned to the ''Cerritos''.
** Creator Mike [=McMahan=] explained that T'Lyn's absence from Season 3 is because "wej duJ" was written as a one-off episode, with no intention of continuing her storyline. By the time "wej duJ" premiered and went on to become the most acclaimed episode of ''Lower Decks'' to date, Season 3 had already been written, with zero expectation that both "wej duJ" and T'Lyn would become so popular.
** T'Lyn appears in the final minutes of Season 3 to introduce her presence in Season 4, then begins working alongside the the four main characters (especially Tendi) in the show's fourth season.
[[/folder]]
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[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Beckett Mariner]]
!! Lieutenant (j.g.) Beckett Mariner
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beckett_mariner_4.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"Sometimes, you have to do what's wrong to survive."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/TawnyNewsome
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the command division, and the daughter of [[TheCaptain Captain Carol Freeman]].
----
* TenMinuteRetirement: After the events of “Trusted Sources”, where she is accused of trying to wreck the reputation of the ''Cerritos'' and is sent to Starbase 80 in punishment, she resigns her commission and takes up Petra’s offer to be an independent exoarcheologist. She ultimately realizes doing things like this isn't her thing and she belongs in Starfleet, with her returning to the ''Cerritos''.
* TheAce: {{Zig Zagging|Trope}}. While she excels at most of the practical skills it takes to be a Starfleet officer, she has a horrible attitude and resents most authority figures. Season 2 shows that she basically has no life skills other than what's necessary to be a badass and leans into it to build an emotional wall around herself and others.
* ActionGirl: {{Deconstruction}}. Beckett can throw down the best of 'em and has saved her ship time after time, but she struggles when she encounters a problem she can't punch away.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Mariner will date anyone of any gender (or species), so long as said gender has "bad" before it. This includes bad as in ''evil'', since "ruthless alien masterminds" are on her list. This is subverted in Season 3 when it's revealed she has been "babe-ing" with Jennifer, who seems pretty far from a bad girl based on her appearances.
* AlmightyJanitor: Incredibly competent at every skill applicable to being a Starfleet officer, she nevertheless prefers to be an ensign on the [[TitleDrop lower decks]] rather than on the bridge. When she's promoted, she is still very adept -- but also incredibly ''miserable'' from all the bureaucracy required of the role.
* AMFMCharacterization: Mariner is a big fan of Klingon acid punk.
%%* AnythingThatMoves: She is pansexual. She likes bad boys, bad girls, bad non-binaries, bad Bynars...
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther:
** In "Moist Vessel", she and Freeman briefly put aside their long-standing animosity and hug each other after they save the crews of the ''Cerritos'' and the ''Merced''. When they realize that they're in an embrace, they quickly let go and pretend like nothing happened.
** Her plot in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" is all about her being desperate to keep her best friend (Boimler) safe from what she's convinced is an insidious plot by his girlfriend to kill him.
** In a backwards way, "Crisis Point" demonstrates this too. Although the real Mariner is dead-set on thrashing holo-Freeman (after violently tearing through the rest of the crew), she is thwarted when holo-''Mariner'' beams Freeman away and holds real-Mariner off long enough to trigger the self-destruct while delivering a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech about how much she really loves her mom, the ship, and Starfleet. Mariner really can't refute this as Boimler used the crew's personal logs as a template for their personalities in the program.
* BelligerentSexualTension:
** With Ransom in "Temporal Edict". After an intense argument, he stabs her foot with a crystal battle blade, and she [[EatingTheEyeCandy finds him hot]] while he fights shirtless during his TrialByCombat. Amusingly, both her ''and'' Ransom are visibly disturbed by this development.
** Also implied in "First First Contact" between Beckett and Jennifer, who the former claims dreams about her every night with her "stupid little butt". She later admits that she goes out of her way to put distance between herself and the people she likes.
* BloodKnight: {{Deconstruction}}. Mariner loves having her back to the wall with a bat'leth in one hand and a phaser in the other, but she works for an organization that veers into SuicidalPacifism more than once. In her recreational activities, she uses intensely dangerous scenarios for her calisthenics and can go from 1 to 100 on a dime in martial arts.
* BookDumb: She has her experience and street smarts... and figures that's really all she needs.
-->'''Mariner:''' ''(regarding whether she actually read a mission briefing)'' I skimmed almost most of it, and read some of the captions, so...
* BreakingTheFourthWall: While LeaningOnTheFourthWall is par for the course for this show, Mariner so far appears to be the only character who outright breaks it. She mutters Khan's dialogue in her sleep; drops titles of old ''Trek'' episodes, and refers to characters from series that never made it to production. How she is able to do this is never explained.
* BrilliantButLazy: She knows the regulations even better than Boimler does, and she used to have a higher rank, but she just doesn't like the work or Starfleet's bureaucracy, so she's been kicked back down to ensign and has no desire to earn a promotion again.
* BrokenAce: She's incredibly competent at nearly everything she does with a wide breadth of galactic knowledge despite her young age, but she's so contemptuous of Starfleet's VastBureaucracy that almost no one wants to work with her (''including her parents''). "Much Ado About Boimler" reveals that she was actually a straight-laced student in Starfleet Academy who was predicted by her classmates to be the first among them to reach Captain, but something happened that changed her attitude.
* TheBully: Mixed with HeroWorshipper of all things. Mariner is a huge fan of the legendary James T. Kirk, even modelling her entire identify off of him, or at least his reputation that has survived the generations. This translates to little more than Becket trying to bully her way to getting whatever she wants and hiding behind her parents from consequences, something her own mother calls her out on as she points out that, while Kirk was daring, he always tried diplomacy first and had confidence in his comrades. Mariner on the other hand just turns everything into a fight and tries to push people away, something that she's forced to acknowledge in the Season 2 finale.
* BullyAndWimpPairing: Mariner's dynamic with Boimler. At the start of the series Beckett treated Brad as little more than her ensign shaped stress ball rather than a friend and Boimler viewed Mariner as someone to escape rather than impress and earn respect from. All the while calling each other their best friend. The {{Deconstruction}} part comes in where even years into their partnership both still readily believe the worst in the other, Boimler easily seeing Mariner as someone who sells weapons or a murderous black ops agent based on rumors alone while Mariner refuses to see Boimler as anything other than a green newbie right up until he phasered her and saved both their lives from starvation.
* ButtMonkey: Whenever Boimler isn't around to take the heat, this is what Mariner turns into. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Ranging from being part of a group that accidentally caused a war due to bringing the wrong artifact to a peace summit, to setting off a labyrinth of death traps on a collector's ship, to even being a magnet for the bridge officer's hazardous trash.
* CantTakeCriticism: Mariner will tell anyone to their faces that she's always right and outright despises being disagreed with. Something her own mother, the captain, calls her out on. When she's proven wrong, Mariner will do anything possible not to admit it. Even something so small as sharing funny stories with an acquaintance sets her off, but only if she's the butt of the joke. Everyone else is fair game.
* ChaoticStupid: She may have street smarts, but almost no common sense. She gets drunk on Romulan whiskey and wildly swings a ''bat'leth'' around in a corridor, raises and lowers a blast shield on a shuttlecraft rather than get work done, and fires a phaser at someone behind a force field in order to test its field strength ''without'' first making sure that her firearm is actually set to 'stun'. In every case, the recipient tends to be [[ButtMonkey Boimler]].
* CharacterDevelopment: In Season 1, Mariner glories in being a pain in the ass to her superiors and twice sabotages herself to avoid promotion, insiting that she's a "cool, Kirk-style badass" until "Crisis Point" forces her to acknowledge that there are deeper issues motivating her behavior. Over the next two seasons, Mariner starts to repair her relationship with her mother, opens up more to her crewmates, and becomes a more reliable officer (although she's still a MilitaryMaverick, she's a more directed one). When she gets an ultimatum to shape up or ship out, Mariner takes it seriously and ends up with a glowing performance review. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew--apart from her close Beta Shift friends--haven't forgotten her initial attitude. Ultimately, being able to leave Starfleet and do things without people telling her what to do convinces her that Starfleet ''is'' her home and she returns, even requesting Ransom to be her mentor.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Her EstablishingCharacterMoment in "Second Contact" has her injure Boimler while drunkenly swinging around a bat'leth. While Mariner's irresponsibility remains a consistent part of her personality, later episodes depict her as never intentionally trying to harm her fellow crewmates nor as someone who would be that reckless with a weapon.
* CommitmentIssues: Implied in [[Recap/StarTrekLowerDecksS3E03MiningTheMindsMines "Mining the Mind's Mines"]]. When the telepathic spy-orbs start turning the Ensign's dreams into reality, Mariner's takes the form of her new LoveInterest Jennifer acting seductively towards her. When they start conjuring up their nightmares, on the other hand, she is replaced by a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf-ized]] version of Jennifer who starts chasing her while talking about spending their lives together.
* CoolBigSis: Mixed with BigSisterBully. {{Deconstruction}}. Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time and is qualified to be an [=XO=] or even captain of a starship but for her refusal to get promoted. Which means that for the majority of her career most or all of the co-workers on her shift are either green newbies about to leave her behind or demoted screw-ups on their way out. The few people Beckett does see as her peers refuse to see her as such. This causes Mariner to be condescending even on a good day and it takes being phasered to even register that her closest friend has grown to be her equal.
* CoveredWithScars: Mariner's body is riddled with scars, according to "Temporal Edict".
-->'''T'Ana:''' Want me to clean up those disgusting scars?\\
'''Mariner:''' Uh, no way. No, [[EveryScarHasAStory these are my trophies]].\\
'''T'Ana:''' Congratulations, you look like a [bleep]ing scratching post.
* CryingWolf: Gets hit with this as part of a {{Deconstruction}} of her rebellious space-explorer persona. Having a lifelong history of blowing off orders and bucking authority not only means that her superiors will immediately look at her when things go wrong, but also won't believe her when she tries to set the record straight. When the bad track record of the ''Cerritos'' is passed on to a reporter, blame is immediately pinned on her based on her trouble-making personality and nobody's interested in what she has to say to defend herself. When her mother apologizes to her and asks why she didn't trust her, Mariner straight up admits "Maybe it's because I spent years making sure you didn't."
* CustomUniform: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. She wears a standard-issue uniform, but with the sleeves rolled up, which Ransom points out is against regulation, and has the collar open most of the time unless she's on a mission. It shows that she'll subtly thumb her nose at authority in any way she can, while also establishing she's not afraid to do hard work and get her hands dirty.
* DatingWhatDaddyHates: She once dated an [[LizardFolk Anabaj]] just to piss off her mother.
* DeadpanSnarker: Mariner has a dry, sarcastic sense of humor, and is willing to take cracks at most of the people on the ''Cerritos'' and others, especially her mom and the bridge crew.
* DecliningPromotion: An extremely common Star Trek trope, Exaggerated and Deconstructed with her. Many Starfleet characters turn away promotions that would take them away from things they love (Kirk, Picard, Riker), but these still leave them in prestigious positions. Mariner intentionally sabotages her career so she can remain at the ''lowest possible rank.'' The problem is that what keeps her from getting promoted is that she (sometimes on purpose) instigates every situation she gets in and bucks rank. Characters who don't know how capable she is treat her like her rank suggests and blow her off as an overeager ensign, and characters who ''do'' are often too exasperated by her attitude and lack of responsibility to take her seriously. Season 4 reveals that Mariner self-sabotages herself on the belief that everyone who promotes her wants to bust her back down and she decides to give it to them. When Ransom refuses to take the bait when she's promoted to Lieutenant junior grade, she's forced to confront this.
* {{Determinator}}: {{Zigzagged|Trope}}. While Mariner is the most intense, connected, and experienced character on the show, whenever there's not enough action or there's too much effort to a task she will call it a day. That said, if it looks like someone's in genuine trouble, she will not abandon them and try to help them to the best of her abilities. This contrasts with Fletcher, who was willing to let the ship be destroyed if it means avoiding trouble for a problem created by his attempt to slack off.
* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Tells Q right to his face to piss off because she (and Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi for that matter) doesn't have time for any of his "Q bullshit" at the end of a particularly rough day on the ''Cerritos''.
* DidYouThinkICantFeel: Comes up more than once in Season 2 because she has trouble opening up to people. Since she looks like a tough, smart-mouthed rogue, her friends don't realize when she's upset (or don't question why) until it hits a breaking point.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Two in "Second Contact"; the first time we see her, she's drunk on Romulan ale and carelessly wielding a Klingon bat'leth. Later in the same episode, Boimler discovers she's been secretly delivering farming supplies to some impoverished Galardonians who need them, bypassing the bureaucracy so they can comfortably survive. She may be a loose cannon who doesn't care much for regulation, but she sincerely cares about helping people wherever she can.
* EveryScarHasAStory: In "Temporal Edict", she explains the history of her scars to Ransom.
-->'''Mariner:''' See this bad boy? Tentacle guy, bunch of arms. Stabbed me with a barnacle blade. Check it out -- Magus III, Nanibia Prime, Scottsdale. That was a ''mess''. I earned every one in high-concept fights just like this one.
* EveryoneHasStandards: Mariner has been all over the galaxy, seen every quirk to every culture, and goes out of her way to be as audacious as possible when she can get a way with it. But even this rogue was outright disgusted when she realized she was holding an unwashed Caitian libido post with her bare hands.
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Any photos or flashbacks of Mariner all have different hairstyles. Apparently she changed them whenever she was shuffled to a new assignment, and she's been reassigned a lot.
* ExtremeOmnisexual: She likes her romantic/sexual partners [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys to have the word "bad" in front of their gender]] (whatever it may be), but other than that everyone is fair game for her.
* FanOfThePast: Her particular fascination is with Khan, she often quotes ''Wrath of Khan'' and says he was the biggest villain the ''Enterprise'' (all five) ever faced. Hell she even escapes one holo-sim piloting a ''Miranda''-class like ''Reliant'' and clearly models Vindicta after him.
* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: It's revealed at the end of the pilot that Captain Freeman is her mother.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Well, her ''current'' friends like her, but Mariner has a long history of pissing people off, so any time we see her talking to old contacts, they do stuff like charge her double for a repair job or try to trick her into being arrested for carrying contraband. Even as-is, the main reason she's still on good terms with her current group of friends is because of her CharacterDevelopment, which has led to Mariner being more able to admit her mistakes with them, show her vulnerable side, and listen when they put their foot down with her.
* GiveGeeksAChance: Non-romantic version, probably. When Mariner and the rest of Shax's search team were captured by Ferengi poachers, the moment that Boimler and Rutherford showed up to negotiate their freedom Mariner happily announced 'those beautiful nerdy men' were saving them all with the power of math.
* GenderBlenderName: Beckett is a unisex name, so, on its own, it's difficult to tell the character's gender.
* GoingCommando: This appears to be Mariner's default. As while we've seen her wearing underwear in the first episode, she considers the simple fact of putting on underwear enough of a reason to power through station security and threaten criminals. Indicting that, aside from field missions, Mariner usually just wears the Starfleet uniform and nothing else.
* HasAType: As she says in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", it's [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys bad boys, bad girls, and bad gender non-binary people]]. In a physical appearance sense, she's had [[EatingTheEyeCandy an immediate reaction]] to characters with big muscles on multiple occasions on screen.
* HaveIMentionedIAmSexuallyActiveToday: While Mariner has claimed to have been with everything from outright villains, to gender nonbinary babes, to borderline {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, she's never actually been seen dating anyone. The only confirmed person Mariner has dated was Captain Amina Ramsey, and that was back in their academy days, along with one awful date with a ConspiracyTheorist on the ''Cerritos'' a year before the series started. Averted in Season 3, where she's in a relationship with her former SitcomArchNemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
* HeIsNotMyBoyfriend: With Boimler. They both claim that they're nothing more than friends, though Mariner can come off as possessive due to her own past trauma (like the time [[ItMakesSenseInContext she saw a colleague get devoured by her boyfriend.]]) All the same, while this trope often serves as cover for BelligerentSexualTension, Mariner really ''is'' upset seeing Brad in any sort of sexual situation and even professes at one point to view him more as a pet than anything else. And the thought of ''other'' people finding Brad attractive makes her dump an entire bottle of alcohol in her glass.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** Is greatly annoyed that the senior officers do not treat her as a peer when she butts heads with them, despite the fact that the ''only'' reason that she is still an ensign is because ''she'' actively resists promotion.
** Also says repeatedly that the reason she hid that she was the captain's daughter was to avoid special treatment, and how much she dislikes her superiors trying to kiss up to Freeman by using her a proxy. At the same time, the only reason she wasn't kicked out of Starfleet years ago was because of her connections, and a major reason she hates the idea of her Mom being transferred to another ship is because she knows another captain won't give her anywhere close to as much leeway.
* IJustWantToHaveFriends: Mariner has been in Starfleet a long time. Because of that and how crew members are moved around every couple of years to new posts and positions, Beckett has never had a friend longer than a term of service on a starship, or even less when they're promoted and get transferred even faster. It's gotten to the point that Mariner even thinks its better not to make friends in the first place than to lose them, making her one of the loneliest crew members on the ''Cerritos'' if not all of Starfleet. The fact that her own mother, the captain, can barely stand to be around her does not help.
* ImproperlyParanoid: “I Have No Bones And Yet I Must Run” suggests that Mariner’s seemingly eternal promotion-demotion dance is this: whenever Mariner gets a promotion, she becomes convinced that, in secret, they’re looking to turn around and bust her down, so she decides to give it to them. Ransom realizes this and refuses to play Mariner’s game, forcing her into a HeelRealization.
* InternalReformist: The first season finale has her becoming one, with her deciding to work together with her mother to help pull Starfleet out of its LawfulStupid ObstructiveBureaucrat policies that allow for stuff like the Pakleds becoming a NotSoHarmlessVillain. While the alliance ends rather quickly next season when Mariner and Freeman realize how much they hate working together, Mariner will continue to try and find loopholes for said policies to help people.
* JabbaTableManners: She's a messy eater. In "Envoys", she spills broth all over the shuttlecraft's consoles while enjoying a noodle soup.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: She might be an [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist obnoxious prick with an almost pathological inability to follow the rules]], but sincerely cares about both Starfleet and her crewmates, and is [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight furiously dedicated to doing the right thing]].
* JerkassHasAPoint: Mariner is abrasive and obnoxious, but it's hard to deny that she's dead on about a lot of Starfleet's failings. Alongside Freeman, she's one of the only people to note that Starfleet's habit of leaving planets behind after dealing with the problem of the week will inevitably cause massive problems in the future - which becomes a frightening reality when the Pakleds graduate into being {{Not So Harmless Villain}}s.
* KickedUpstairs: In "Moist Vessel", Ransom and Freeman try to make her transfer by assigning her terrible duties, but Mariner finds a way to make them all fun. What ''does'' make her miserable? Being promoted back to Lieutenant with all the bureaucratic busywork and agonizing social events that entails.
* TheLastDJ: She's been in Starfleet for a surprisingly long time, and it's implied (later confirmed) she's been both promoted ''and'' demoted several times. She's got a strong sense of her own convictions and is extremely competent when she applies herself, but her laziness when she doesn't care and a general disdain for authority have severely limited her career advancement (which is a state she seems perfectly content with). None of the people who are her peers by age and experience have much respect for the insubordinate ensign with the sloppy uniform.
* LastNameBasis: Almost everyone just calls her Mariner. The only people who ever call her Beckett are her parents, and even Carol only uses it as a FirstNameUltimatum.
* MasculineGirlFeminineBoy: The masculine girl to Boimler's feminine boy.
* MeaningfulName: "Mariner" is another word for sailor, and Starfleet's basic command structure was inspired by the U.S. Navy. It also helps that any Federation starship is essentially [[RecycledInSpace a submarine in space]]. [[invoked]] This adds some extra FridgeBrilliance to her first scene where she's wasted on Romulan ale; [[JustForPun she's a drunken sailor]].
* MotorMouth: She tends to talk a light-year a minute.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Mariner is a born warrior with no patience for paperwork and a strong distaste for anything sentimental. Naturally she's in a Quasi-military that focuses on peace, bureaucracy, and cultural artifacts. Don't even get her started on Earth, which Mariner thinks is the most boring and dumb place in the galaxy.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: Most likely crew member to get naked for a gag instead of fanservice.
* {{Nepotism}}: While she definitely earned her way into Starfleet, her insubordinate attitude would have gotten her kicked out if it had not been for her family connections. Since her captain mother and admiral father don't want to have a washout for a daughter, her punishments are limited to demotion and brig time (which don't bother her anyway). While she resents being coddled and even considered transfer herself at one point, she does accept the protection of being on Freeman's ship. Subverted in her mother tells her that she and her father will not longer cover for her, and that from now on her being a member of Starfleet will be Ransom's call.
* NonuniformUniform: Among all the crew, she's the only one who wears her uniform with the sleeves rolled up. She also frequently has her uniform flap open, when she can get away with it.
* NoodleIncident: As the oldest and most experienced of the lower deckers, her backstory is full of unexplained incidents, including the matter of how she got demoted and transferred off the ''Quito''. She also appears to have an equal amount of apparently random intergalactic connections who either owe her a favor, or who bear an undying grudge against her.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Mariner loves everything about being in Starfleet, but has cultivated a MilitaryMaverick attitude and "cool" image that makes her reluctant to admit she gets excited about the same stuff that her fellow ensigns do--like the sight and sound of the warp core, or foraging off the bridge crew's conference snacks during cleanup.
** She also can't stand anything swamp related.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Mariner will go to some lengths to keep herself from adding another pip. She's actually qualified to be the XO of a starship, and her old Academy friend tries to get Mariner to be hers, so Mariner pretends to be a flake until an actual crisis forces her to stop. She also has no problem calling herself a Federation dog to get information from a Klingon and gets herself demoted from lieutenant by embarrassing Freeman in front of an admiral.
* OlderThanTheyLook: Or at least, older than she acts. If, as her flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" implies, she was already in Starfleet by the time of the events of ''TNG'''s "Descent"[[note]]or the very least the Dominion War considering the uniform she wore at the time came out in 2373- this gets more muddled as we see the ''Titan'' are still using those uniforms[[/note]], then she'd have to be at least in her mid-thirties. "Much Ado About Boimler" appears to confirm this, as one of her Academy contemporaries is already a ''starship captain''.
* OutOfFocus: Downplayed, as she remains the lead character, but she is much more clearly the main protagonist in Season 1 than in Season 2, which focuses more on the ensemble and makes Boimler and his arc more prominent, both at her expense. Although she gets a new arc in season 3, she still has to share focus with Boimler (again), Rutherford, Tendi, and even her own mother Captain Freeman, all of whom get their own arcs as well.
* PercussiveTherapy: Mariner has issues. But because of the emotional walls and reputation she's built for herself over the years, not to mention the incompetent therapist assigned to her ship, Beckett has no one to talk to about them right up until the breaking point. The only time Mariner has any kind of breakthrough is when there's some kind of physical catharsis. She only makes progress on her issues during an action-filled holodeck simulation or a mission that's gone south--during which time everyone around her is preoccupied with terror, disgust, and/or survival. By the beginning of the second season, we see that she's made this her ''hobby''. Regular workouts are too boring so she stages Cardassian prison breaks in the Holodeck while spilling her guts to an interrogator about her personal problems. It seems to work better than talking to Migleemo...
* PermissionToSpeakFreely: When she asks this in "Temporal Edict", Ransom points out that nobody can ''stop'' her from speaking freely.
* PlatonicLifePartners: What Mariner insists she and Boimler are. Though to everyone else it looks like they're dating. Even Tendi, a close friend of hers on the same shift, thinks the two practically share the same bunk.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: While playing the villain in the holodeck movie in "Crisis Point", she casts Tendi as a character that amounts to a stereotype of her species which seriously upsets her causing her to leave. While she apologizes at the end of the episode, she still doesn't see a whole lot wrong with casually referencing the stereotypes of other species in the galaxy, or sometimes even exploiting them for her own ends.
* ProperlyParanoid: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", she goes off the deep end a bit when she finds out Boimler is dating a woman who seems way out of his league and spends the entire episode trying to unmask Barb. It turns out she ''is'' right to suspect the relationship, [[RightForTheWrongReasons but her focus was on the wrong half of the couple]].
* PsychologicalProjection: Mariner has issues. A lot of them and whenever she runs into something she doesn't like she immediately attaches it to those issues. Even people and things Mariner does like, she attaches stuff she doesn't like about herself to them. Something Beckett awkwardly admits when she asks out her SitcomArchNemesis Jennifer the Andorian.
* RankUp:
** Promoted to Lieutenant (''full'' Lieutenant - that's two pips on her collar) in "Moist Vessel", incensing Boimler, as part of a plot by Freeman to convince her wayward daughter to resign or request a transfer. She is busted back down to Ensign at the end of that episode after mocking an Admiral's pronunciation of the word "sensors".
** She is promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in the first episode of season 4, despite her objections. We subsequently learn in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee" that she has been promoted, and then demoted again, ''a dozen times'' in the course of her Starfleet career, with Ransom saying he's going to make sure that this promotion will be the one that sticks.
* RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Boimler's Blue, being carefree and insubordinate compared to his desire to stick to the rules and not rock the boat.
* ReformedButRejected: In Season 3, Mariner takes her last chance in Starfleet seriously and it seemed that she was doing much better. However, when a reporter seemingly changes her tune around Captain Freeman and Commander Ransom reveals that Mariner was interviewed, she stands accused of ruining the ship’s reputation and, heartbroken, resigns after she is transferred to Starbase 80.
* RejectionProjection: Mariner has this tendency.
** After treating Boimler like crap for much of the first season (albeit, what she regarded as a VitriolicBestBuds friendship), she gets ''pissed'' when he accepts a transfer to the ''Titan'', calling him a "backstabbing little weasel" and threatening him with bodily harm. She's still mad at him come Season 2, but after he gets transferred back to the ''Cerritos'' they talk things out and make up.
** This also applies to Mariner's SitcomArchNemesis, Jennifer the Andorian. Mariner has a crush on her, which manifests in one-sided BelligerentSexualTension, which causes Jen to dislike her, which leads to Mariner disliking her back.
* SacrificedBasicSkillForAwesomeTraining: Mixed with WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer. Mariner is a fighter. Possibly the best on the ''Cerritos'', though she can be overpowered. The problem is that she has no other skills. When Beckett runs into a problem she can't punch away, she makes more problems that she can, leaving her teammates and commanders to fix the original problem and clean up her mess along with it. This is best shown in "Grounded", as Mariner almost destroyed the careers of the entire main cast while Starfleet brass had already resolved the conflict of the episode in spite of Becketts's actions instead of because of them.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Her character in a nutshell, and at least part of the reason why she has been demoted so many times. By the time of "Crisis Point", this is {{Deconstructed|Trope}} as she's seen as nothing more than a loose cannon by her own mother and is sent to therapy for it. This gets so bad that, by the time of “Grounded”, she’s willing to pull crimes in the name of “being right”.
* ShipTease: Mariner can generate this in prolific amounts:
** With Ransom in "Temporal Edict", leading to a now-infamous case of BelligerentSexualTension.
** With Captain Amina Ramsey in "Much Ado About Boimler". WordOfGod even confirms that it was left deliberately ambiguous as to whether they are platonic friends or AmicableExes, with Mike [=McMahan=] apparently favouring the latter explanation.
** With Jennifer after they resolve their SitcomArchNemesis feud in the Season 2 finale.
* SlaveToPR: Deconstruction and something she inherited from her mother, the captain. Though in the opposite way. Beckett has been in Starfleet most of her life and is fully qualified to take command if her mother is incapacitated. Mariner also has a strong desire to stay where she is and refuses promotion. The problem is to do that she must be viewed as a loose cannon to anyone that can promote her. Which means staged accidents, mistakes, embarrassing stories, borderline catastrophies, and of course open insubordination to superiors. All of which reflect bad on friends and family alike, which pushes them away and isolates Beckett more and more over time.
* SpoiledBrat: Her main problem and glaring flaw. Beckett Mariner is Starfleet royalty in all but name. By her parents own admission they have covered for, excused, and protected her from any form of consequence. Because of that Mariner has nothing but open contempt for the rules and regulations, breaking them even when following procedure is in her best interest. This led to her developing a major case of arrogance and entitlement and prevents her from learning her lesson and overcoming her many issues, let alone a being better member of Starfleet. Deconstructed in that it has done nothing but cause trouble at best and put people in danger at worst, ultimately landing her in a 'shape up or ship out' with the person who hates her the most.
* StreetSmart: Combined with TaughtByExperience. She doesn't care much for studying, but she can handle herself competently in almost every situation, largely because of these two tropes.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Beckett chooses good. And like most things with Mariner, deconstructed. Beckett has a strong drive to help people. From random locals on the planets her ship visits, her fellow crewmates, to even people that have crossed her- though the latter only to an extent. The problem is that she chooses to do all this under the radar because Mariner can't stand going through the rings of bureaucracy to do it legally. Which means no one- aside from a select few, know why Mariner breaks so many rules. So most of Starfleet views Mariner as little more than a spoiled brat that keeps getting in trouble for the sheer fun of it. Even Boimler at first is fully willing to believe that Mariner is selling weapons than helping farmers before they're let in.
* TooMuchAlike: With her mother, the captain. They're both committed to helping people, but they have a strong need to be in charge of whatever group they're working in. When they have to work together ''personally'', they immediately start butting heads until Freeman pulls rank. This comes to a head in "Strange Energies" where the two are forced to admit that they just can't work together on a regular basis.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: She's the {{tomboy}} (sassy, forceful ActionGirl) to Tendi's GirlyGirl (naïve, sweet-natured [[TheCutie cutie]]).
* TookALevelInKindness: Over the course of the series, Mariner slowly works on improving her behavior and treating the people around her better. While still somewhat acerbic, by the end of Season 3 she's much more amicable and accepting of her loyalty to Starfleet, contrasting greatly with her Cavaliere and reckless attitude at the beginning of the series.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: She encourages her lower decks friends -- typically Boimler -- to do things the ''non''-Starfleet-approved way, which she insists is better and more fun in spite of all the chaos.
* TraumaButton: Overly-perfect romantic partners. She witnessed her good friend Angie being ''eaten'' by one. (It's still PlayedForLaughs.)
* {{Tuckerization}}: Mariner is named for creator Mike [=McMahan=]'s sister, Beckett Mariner [=McMahan=].
* UnaffectedBySpice: In "Grounded", she dumps at least half a bottle of [[BlazingInfernoHellfireSauce 17,000,000 Scoville hot sauce]] (1,000,000 higher than ''pure capsaicin'') into her food, and after tasting it casually remarks that it has a "nice little kick". A little dash of the stuff was enough to make Boimler pass out after about 30 seconds.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: She's deliberately disrespectful to her superior officers (including her own mother who even tries to force Mariner into requesting a transfer in "Moist Vessel"), and she frequently jibes and emasculates Boimler. This is taken up to eleven in "Crisis Point", where she uses the holodeck to roleplay as a villain and kills the entire crew, dead-set on killing her mother. As she starts working on her issues over the course of the first season, she tones this down and begins to treat Boimler as a real friend.
* UptightLovesWild: {{Inverted|Trope}}. Though her stated preference is [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys bad]] ''[[ExtremeOmnisexual anything]]'', she used to be in a relationship with Captain Ramsey and has BelligerentSexualTension with Ransom, both of whom are ''far'' more by-the-book than her.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Reconstruction, and surprisingly not with Boimler but with her mother and captain- Carol Freeman. These two have so much in common it's downright scary sometimes, for both of them. They have been forced to admit that they can't work together personally on a regular basis because they constantly end up fighting inevitably each time. While they avoid each other when they can, the few times they share their off time together isn't much different. The reconstruction part comes in that is these two actually do enjoy spending time with someone who shares their interests, history, and on equal footing when off the clock. Something exceptionally rare for the both of them.
* WeHelpTheHelpless: In "Second Contact", it initially appears from her suspicious behavior that she's selling Federation weapons, but in fact she was giving agricultural tools to two Galardonian farmers who desperately need them.
* WorkoutFanservice: She's shown in her workout clothes at least once a season, potentially invoking this.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Brad Boimler]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) Bradward "Brad" Boimler
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bradward_boimler.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"We all joined Starfleet to dive headfirst into the unknown. We're explorers. Of course we don't always know what's going on!"'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/JackQuaid
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the command division, fresh out of the Academy.
----
* TheAce: As of Season 2, he is slowly becoming this over the course of the series thanks to his time serving as a lieutenant on the U.S.S. ''Titan''. He has become so skilled in fact that in "I, Excretus", not only was he the only member of the crew to pass any of the training simulations, but he was eventually able to increase his score to a perfect 100% and only ended up failing because Captain Freeman ordered him to not finish the program in order to stall for time. This becomes even more impressive when it's revealed that [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation the training simulations were rigged to make sure everyone failed]] and Boimler was able to not only pass but get a perfect score despite that, something not even ''James T. Kirk'' was able to do without resorting to cheating by reprogramming the simulation.
* AffectionateNickname: Mariner sometimes calls him "Boims".
* AlliterativeName: '''B'''radward '''B'''oimler
* AmbiguouslyHuman: A running joke through several episodes now, most notably "I, Excretus", is that Boimler is in fact not actually human, merely some sort of very human-presenting species. Whether this is just a joke at his expense, or hinting at another truth entirely has yet to be seen.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: He gets the promotion to the ''Titan'' he wanted. But the reason the ''Titan'' is so prestigious is because it's essentially a battleship, and being a helmsman on a ship that is in constant combat with a captain who eagerly dives into space anomalies is ''really stressful''. [[SubvertedTrope That said]], Boimler is still disappointed when circumstances force him to transfer back to the ''Cerritos''.
* BerserkButton: Do not touch his rank pips or insult Starfleet's uniforms to his face.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: For the most part, Boimler is very passive and unwilling to engage. However, even Boimler has his limits and he ''will'' flip out when he's pushed past them.
* ButtMonkey: He's on the receiving end of constant humiliation and abuse, mostly because of Mariner.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: Fitting for a ButtMonkey, on the occasions Boimler ''does'' try to break the rules, it often blows up in his face.
** Trying to lie to the Farm attendants about being a freak is immediately exposed, and he's tossed on the next shuttle off-planet.
** Attempting to use Mariner's status as the captain's daughter for blackmail only results in it being broadcast to the entire crew, rendering the information useless and landing him in hot water with the captain.
** Lying about being from Hawaii causes him anguish, and he comes clean, causing all the other officers who've been lying about this to do the same... only for them to immediately bond over being from moons and shun Boimler for trying to get in on that.
--->'''Ransom:''' Modesto is ''not'' a moon.\\
'''Benzite:''' If you ''were'' from a moon, you'd know how deeply offensive that is.
** Even trying to be bold in a tabletop game ends in misery for him; a simple act of confronting a Klingon bartender has his character brutally killed, dishonorably at that, since the bartender beat his character to death with his character's own severed arm, thus technically dying by his own hand.
* CantLiveWithThemCantLiveWithoutThem: Despite Boimler and Mariner's frequently tense friendship, Rutherford notes at one point that Bradward seems noticeably more unhinged without her around.
* CharacterDevelopment:
** Boimler gets a great deal of this in Season 2. While he's still something of a nebbish and needs backup often, he's found a spine and is a much more capable character overall. Best demonstrated in "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie", a Mariner/Boimler two-hander away team mission (which made up the plot of several Season 1 episodes) where Boimler successfully comes up with a plan to defeat the episode's villain and executes it on his own without any help from Mariner despite her having him re-assigned so that she could look out for him.
** In Season 3, he's convinced to take up a new way of thinking when he's being hunted and decides to become "Bold Boimler", becoming more vocal and taking more risks. Despite Mariner thinking "Bold Boimler" is gonna get him killed one day, it gives Boimler more confidence -- he blows up at a bunch of hecklers while defending Starfleet's actions, becomes an amazing Dabo player and ultimately gets the entire bridge crew of the ''Cerritos'' to listen to Shaxs' idea of ejecting the warp core.
* TheChewToy: To a literal extent in the series premiere, "Second Contact", where he's bodily employed as a pacifier to calm down a giant alien spider (which is itself livestock).
* CluelessChickMagnet: In Season 3, he's completely oblivious to the flirtations of all the vineyard girls, taking their questions seriously, though it's implied later in the season that he is aware of it and ignores it because that would mean being stuck on the raisin farm. It's played straight in regards to fellow ''Cerritos'' crewmembers, as Mariner pours herself another round when two of the other girls at Jennifer's sleepover ask whether he is single, something Boimler likely would reciprocate since they're fellow officers.
* CowardlyLion: His first instinct in mildly-dangerous situations is to run away [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl screaming]], but when his back's really up against the wall, or if someone ''else'' is in danger, he'll step up to save the day, even at the risk of his own life. You know, like a Starfleet officer!
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Despite being TheChewToy who frequently finds himself out of his league when dealing with aliens, he's a crack shot with a phaser. He's also the only person on the ''Cerritos'' who can function perfectly without [[ScottyTime buffer time]] (even the captain herself struggles to uphold her own directive). Appears to be drifting slowly towards HiddenBadass as he's pulled the wool over both Mariner's and Agimus' respective eyes more recently.
* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: Slowly revealed to be suffering from this over the course of Season 3, which nicely informs his MarriedToTheJob status. It's revealed that he was raised on a vineyard for raisins, which he found unbearable, and tried to find a greater purpose by joining Starfleet. As an ensign he's clearly discouraged by his career seemingly hitting nothing but roadblocks, and tries to compensate by doing his menial job to the best of his ability. This comes to a head when his transporter clone is seemingly killed in a random accident, which sends him into existential despair at the apparent meaninglessness of his life.
* {{Deuteragonist}}: As in most ''Star Trek'' series, ''Lower Decks'' is a clear two-man show, with Boimler as the deuteragonist to Mariner. When he isn't sharing the A-plot with Mariner, he is usually the focus of the episode's B-plot. He even gets an episode named for him ("Much Ado About Boimler"), a rare honor among ''Star Trek'' regulars. He turns the trick again in Season 2 (although we only learn this at the very end, when he mentions that "Excretus" is his assimilated Borg identity in the simulation). Season 2 also sees his story arc becoming more prominent at the expense of Mariner, the protagonist, whose arc formed the throughline of Season 1.
* {{Determinator}}: When Boimler puts his mind to something, nothing will stop him from doing it. Usually through non-violence, though the little guy is more than happy to whip out his phaser when the situation calls for it. Getting beaten up, humiliated, his life threatened is little more than standard operating procedure for this guy.
* DontCallMeSir: Played for laughs in the season one finale when Mariner, attempting to act more professional, keeps calling him sir on the grounds he technically outranks her. He finds it gross and disturbing, and keeps asking her to stop.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Downplayed. From the neck up, Boimler's design had no change at all from the initial piece of concept art.
* EasilyForgiven: Mariner gladly takes him back into the gang when he returns to the ''Cerritos'', despite having been pissed at him for "abandoning" her by accepting a transfer to the ''Titan''. A few episodes later, she admits that she actually is still upset about it, but once he apologizes for how he handled the situation she accepts it without any further drama.
* EffeminateVoice: Downplayed since it's not his normal voice, but when he's overly anxious, he speaks in a high-pitched tone.
* EndearinglyDorky: {{Reconstruction}}! Once people get past the straight laced professional butt kisser persona, this is essentially him. Each and every time Brad has managed to get noticed- not just potential suitors but friends and superiors- they note that his non-violent and friendly nerdy personality does so much for them. Ranging from saving the ship itself to simply brightening up their morning after receiving a bad work assignment. All this in a vast organization where everyone is forced to be an action survivor at the very least just to survive, this allows him to stand out.
* {{Fanboy}}: Boimler is a rabid fan of nearly every famous figure from Starfleet history and can't resist gushing about them whenever the subject arises.
* FantasticRacism: He's clearly prejudiced against the Ferengi, believing them to be ObviouslyEvil and AlwaysChaoticEvil.[[note]]This is probably from being warned about the Ferengi in the academy, a CallBack to the first episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.[[/note]]
-->'''Boimler:''' He could not be any more Ferengi -- the big ears, the beady eyes, the greedy thing they do with their hands. Ferengi are the most untrustworthy race in the galaxy. He probably just wants to lure us over there so he can mug us.
* FearlessFool: In the third season he declares himself "Bold Boimler" after realizing his cautious nature may be slowing his career advancement, but is quite bad at judging the difference between "bold" and "suicidally reckless."
* FishOutOfWater: He's great at following the rules, but out of his depth when the situation calls for flying by the seat of one's pants.
* HappyEndingOverride: The first season ends with Boimler getting a promotion and being transferred to the ''Titan'', his dream job. He is shown to be much more in his element on the ''Titan'' and seems like things are looking up for him. At the start of the second season though, three months have passed and he is constantly freaking out due to the intense battles he finds himself in. A position on the ''Titan'' is more prestigious than most other ships, but much more stressful because it is essentially a battleship instead of an explorer ship. This is zig-zagged at the end of "Kayshon, His Eyes Open", when Boimler is forced to return to the ''Cerritos'' and demoted back to Ensign: though a bit annoyed by this turn of events, he now has a better appreciation for his old position, with Riker even encouraging him to enjoy it while it lasts, and he immediately reconnects with his old friends.
* HatedHometown: He ''hates'' his family's vineyard in Modesto, and he hates making raisins.
* HeroicBSOD: In "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus", he slips into one when he learns his transporter clone was killed in a freak gas accident and tries to use his holodeck movie to search for TheMeaningOfLife. When he doesn't find them, he slips even further before passing out and having a dream meeting Captain Hikaru Sulu... or being clinically dead from lack of water, one or the other.
* HiddenDepths: He can play the violin incredibly well, although his songwriting skills need some improvement because he bored the audience during his performance.
* {{Hypochondriac}}: A weird InvertedTrope case: Boimler is host to a wide variety of anomalous medical conditions as one of his running gags (lots of allergies, "sensitive corneas," and so on) but he's such a workaholic he pushes through and keeps working in spite of all these weird little problems.
* InformedDeformity: At least according to inorganic beings, Boimler has been described as 'pimply faced' by an evil computer and 'almost human' by a simulation of the Borg queen. Though to everyone else he's rather ordinary, even seen as 'mousy sweet and soft'. Though the latter was under influence from a mating parasite. Of course thanks to the minimalist art style to the show, the viewers can't verify any of this. In live action he is of course played by his voice actor Jack Quaid, who inherited his parents' movie star good looks.[[note]]Though to be fair Quaid often plays nerdy/geeky characters in live action as well.[[/note]]
* TheKlutz: While normally Boimler is the epitome of straight laced, he's naturally clumsy and prone to bad luck on a good day. So much so that even the nicest of people and closest of his friends can't help but laugh at his expense. He uses this to save Tendi from her transformation into an angry scorpion by pratfalling repeatedly, making her laugh, which also earns him a compliment from Ransom.
* ALessonLearnedTooWell: In Season 3, he decides to stop being so risk-averse and become "Bold Boimler". This ends up getting him into different scrapes he might've otherwise avoided, much to everyone else's exasperation, with Mariner figuring it's going to end up killing him.
* MarriedToTheJob: Ditches his friends and cuts contact with Mariner following his promotion to U.S.S. ''Titan''.
* MommasBoy: For the ship's Talent Night, he performs two violin pieces ("Essence" and "Requiem for a Hug") he wrote about his mother.
* MyHoverCraftIsFullOfEels: He gets his metaphors a bit mixed up talking to Kayshon and accidentally calls him fat (at least that's apparently what happened based on context).
* NakedPeopleAreFunny:
** In "Second Contact", he and Mariner are forced to strip so that she can use their uniforms as a decoy for the spider, but he's irritated that it only goes after ''his'' uniform. Then he loses his underwear when the spider uses him as a pacifier. He returns to the ship in a pair of too-short farmer overalls.
** In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Mariner finds him in an orbital platform completely naked, because he was expecting his girlfriend.
** In "I, Excretus", seeing a simulation of Brad going spread eagle during the "Naked Time" simulation is what starts to break Mariner into a complete failure of her simulation training, where she was previously skeeved out at seeing everyone in a sex frenzy but not willing to quit.
* NewMeat: In contrast to Mariner, he actually is fresh out of the Academy, although he wants to be promoted as soon as he can.
* NoRespectGuy: He's repeatedly belittled by Mariner and treated as a worthless non-entity by his superior officers. {{Subverted|Trope}} toward the end of the first season, when his accomplishments finally pay off and he's promoted and transferred to the ''Titan''. Even after returning to the ''Cerritos'' in Season 2, he's treated with more respect than before and Ransom, at least, openly recognizes him for his accomplishments.
* NonActionGuy: Like many things with Boimler, {{Reconstruction}}. While Brad isn't afraid to whip out his phaser when its called for, Boimler is proud to admit that he's an explorer over an adventurer because it allows him to actually enjoy his service in Starfleet, an organization whose job it is to do exactly that. He even inspired the SpaceMarine types on the ''Titan'' to rediscover their love of "boring" Starfleet things and figured out a non-violent way for them to escape certain death. Conversely, his time on the Titan has made him a more capable fighter and officer, which becomes more obvious when he returns to the ''Cerritos''.
* ObfuscatingDisability: He pretends to still be a patient at "the Farm" in order to flirt with the attendants, which works until one of the actual patients calls him out.
* ObliviousToLove: Season 3 shows that he may be more attractive to the opposite sex than he realizes. Jennifer's friends ask Mariner if he's single (to her bafflement), and he's completely oblivious to the fact that all the female employees on his family's vineyard want to have sex with him (no matter how overt they get).
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: In "Envoys", Mariner knows something is very wrong with Boimler when he loses the will to carry out their mission.
-->'''Boimler:''' I don't even care anymore.\\
'''Mariner:''' What? Oh man, how much blood did you lose?
** There's also his RageBreakingPoint in Season 3's "Reflections", which occurs after a couple of outpost scientists make fun of Starfleet's uniforms, then ''take his rank pip and stomp on it''. He goes ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHVQ2BckZn4 completely apeshit]]'' and wrecks most of the other booths at the job fair while [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech ranting at the other booth runners]] and [[ClusterFBomb swearing up a storm]]. Ransom's taken aback to see Boimler on the rampage and Mariner calmly signing people up for Starfleet.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: He's transporter-cloned in the second season and feels betrayed and hurt when his other self does ''not'' self-sacrificially volunteer to leave the ''Titan'' with him -- and also starts sucking up to Riker. That said, Brad DOES experience some intense grief when he thinks William's been killed, though it's up to the viewer if it's actual mourning for his other self or if it he's just been painfully reminded of his own mortality.
* ThePerfectionist: He desperately needs his efforts to be rewarded, and strives for perfection in whatever task he's assigned. On the one hand, this makes him efficient and he's the only one who can function without "buffer time", on the other, this means he won't stop ''until'' he makes a perfect score. This actually ends up saving the ship in the second season; not only does he ''pass'' a rigged simulation, his repeated attempts to bump up his score and avoid TheBGrade mean that the bureaucrat trying to disband the ship can't submit the crew's score until he's done. This may also explain why he failed the infamous Kobayashi Maru test ''17 times'', if a line from his rant in "Reflections" is any indication (presumably [[ComicallyMissingThePoint he didn't realize it was supposed to be a no-win scenario]] and kept trying it over and over).
* PurpleIsTheNewBlack: Averted. "Grounded" confirms that his hair is in fact purple, not just a HollywoodDarkness style of black, and that he dyes it that way to cover up his true hair color. What that color is, however, is conveniently not revealed.
* ProfessionalButtKisser: He does his best to curry favor with senior officers and dignitaries, though usually without much luck. He cheerfully admits that he's looking forward to kissing Ramsey's ass when she's assigned temporary captain, although he would have phrased it differently. Ironically Boimler is always noticed by his superiors when he's ''not'' doing this, particularly Commander Ransom (who ''hates'' bootlickers in general and is never impressed by Boimler whenever he sucks up to him).
* ProneToTears: He tends to break down into tears whenever he feels unappreciated or helpless.
* RageBreakingPoint: In "Reflections", after spending the entire time trying his damnedest to prevent Mariner from going rogue, a pair of scientists mock the Starfleet uniform, then one of them pulls off and tosses away his rank pip, leading it to getting it stepped on. That was the ''last straw'' for Boimler and he goes ''apeshit''.
* RankUp:
** Gets promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (j.g.) at the end of the Season 1 finale. [[StatusQuoIsGod It doesn't last]], he ends up getting demoted back to the rank of Ensign at the end of the second episode of Season 2.
** Gets promoted to Lieutenant j.g. ''again'' in the season 4 premiere, "Twovix", and this time it sticks.
* RapidFireNo: Occasionally prone to this when things are ''very'' bad (e.g.: three Pakled ships warping in in the Season 1 finale, or facing death by drowning in the Season 2 finale).
* RedOniBlueOni: The Blue to Mariner's Red, constantly being browbeaten by her into actions he'd rather not do.
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: He has a very high-pitched scream when he's in trouble (which is often).
* SocialClimber: Of the main characters, Boimler is the most concerned with getting promoted.
* TheStoolPigeon: When the fed-up patients of a medical ship he's on decide to mutiny, Boimler pretends to side with them and immediately tells the captain, although it's mostly out of his belief that they're making a mistake. (Which is--eventually--proven true.)
* StupidSexyFriend: Boimler has admitted that he finds Mariner 'hot'... at the worst possible time, during a performance review with the ships captain- Mariner's own mother.
* ThrowTheDogABone: {{Zig Zagging|Trope}}.
** After being the resident ButtMonkey of the ''Cerritos'' and having all his attempts at currying favor and advancing himself blow up in his face throughout the first season, the finale has him earn a promotion to and a transfer to the U.S.S. ''Titan'', where he seems to have made new friends and is liked by Captain Riker... Then he gets transporter cloned and his clone steals his promotion and gets him sent back to the ''Cerritos''.
** Ransom acknowledges his talents at the end of "wej Duj" by recommending him to give pointers to a new cadet who was having trouble maintaining his work schedule.
** In the aftermath of deciding to be bold in Season 3, it seems to be paying off: his [[RageBreakingPoint rage-induced rampage]], while landing him in the brig for a night, impressed Ransom to the point the latter offered to have a drink with Boimler after he's released. Then, during the crew's visit to [=DS9=], he gets ''absurdly'' lucky at Quark's dabo table, to the increasing horror of the pit boss; when the boss offers Boimler a gift voucher for Quark's gift shop instead, Boimler gladly takes it (since as he points out, Starfleet doesn't use money) and gets to walk away with no debt ''and'' a bunch of Quark's merchandise.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Boimler (almost) always goes lawful. He knows the rules and regulations of Starfleet forward, backward, and upside down, following each of them to the letter. The problem that it's left him with little real world experience and initiative to think on his own when he runs into something the regulations didn't cover or handle wrong. More than that, because he sticks to the rules so much, he's seen as a wet blanket by his fellow lower deckers and boring by the higher ups to such an extent he's seen as part of the background at best and outright worthless at worst. To be fair, in 'Second Contact', he did choose not to rat Mariner out for giving farmers aid without waiting for Starfleet's approval.
* TookALevelInBadass: After returning from the ''Titan'', one would be excused for assuming that Boimler would backslide to becoming the same nebbish load that he was for most of the first season. And he CAN be... a bit... but also has become a much more capable and well-rounded person during his time on the bigger ship, and is more capable of taking charge, commanding others (including, at times, Mariner herself), deception, trickery and even physical combat. He's also a much more quick-thinking and capable officer.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Beckett at first makes fun of the fact his name is "Bradward", but he treats it as if it's no big deal.
* {{Workaholic}}: If it were up to him, there would be no breaks in Starfleet. "Temporal Edict" demonstrates that he excels in a hectic work environment which has strict, jam-packed scheduling, and he effortlessly completes the menial tasks assigned to him in the allotted time (with some tasks even being completed ''ahead of'' schedule). He tells Freeman that it has been the greatest week of his life after she eliminated [[ScottyTime buffer time]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) D'Vana Tendi]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) D'Vana Tendi
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dvana_tendi.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"WE are your family! We will always be there for you! And right now we're headed for pile of crazy dangerous space debris. Just trust us!"'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/NoelWells
A ensign and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the science department.
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* TheAce: A unorthodox example, but Tendi's natural curiosity and [[{{Determinator}} relentless zeal]] for whatever she's doing means she can accumulate new skills and knowledge very quickly, plus [[HiddenBadass she's far more capable in a fight]] than she looks.
* AchievementsInIgnorance: She started practicing DNA sequencing in her off-time, and she ended up creating a dog that could shapeshift, fly, and speak English. Turns out she had no idea what regular dogs were like since they don't have them on Orion, so she didn't think it was weird to add new features.
* AlienBlood: The show establishes in canon that Orions aren't just [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe green-skinned space babes]], but green-muscled and green-blooded as well.
* AudienceSurrogate: She seems to be written as this, as her reaction to serving aboard the starship is, at least initially, pure {{Squee}}. She's also the NaiveNewcomer, so ship protocols can be explained to the audience through her.
* BoyishShortHair: Her hairstyle is very short (it's shaved around the sides and the back, so her locks are limited to the top of her head), unlike the [[LongHairIsFeminine long hair]] that's typically associated with Orion women.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Tendi is one of the sweetest and most helpful members of the ''Cerritos'', but she is fully capable of kicking seven shades of green shit out of fully armed and trained soldiers with her bare hands. There's some pretty heavy implications that she was once a fearsome pirate, which are confirmed in "Hear All, Trust Nothing."
* BreakTheCutie: Tendi loves Starfleet. She loves the ship, the crew, the adventures and especially her friends. The green medic tries to pack as much fun as she can into her job. But when Tendi unwittingly volunteered her and her friends for the most demeaning and dangerous job on the ''Cerritos'' she was smacked down bit by bit until she had an emotional breakdown and wished she never left Orion. Luckily Boimler was there to give her the slapstick CooldownHug she needed.
* TheCaptain: Reveals in "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" that this is her ultimate goal.
* CompellingVoice: She may not have the mood-altering pheremones certain other types of Orions have, but she has a "bossing everyone around voice" that she uses on other Orions in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris." It only works on people willing to listen to her in the first place, however, and it initially disturbs her to use it. As she grows more confident, however, [[CharacterDevelopment she learns how to draw upon her more decisive side]] to make herself a more effective officer.
* CreatingLifeIsAwesome: As a personal project she engineered a dog from scratch with no prior experience with one. The result is physically identical to a normal dog, with a ''lot'' of random extra abilities.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: You wouldn't know it from her quirky, ditzy personality, but she's more than capable of ''demolishing'' close to a dozen armed Romulan guards, ''with her bare hands''. "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" implies these combat skills come from a DarkAndTroubledPast that she's loathe to talk about.
* CulturalRebel: Every other Orion we've seen in the prime timeline has been either a murderous pirate (male) or a voracious sexual predator (female). Conversely, she's a socially awkward medic.
* CurtainsMatchTheWindow: Her hair and her eyes are green.
* TheCutie: Big eyes, freckles on her cheeks, a light and sweet voice, and an inherently kind-hearted demeanor; she fits this trope to a tee.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: She comes from a clan of [[TheDreaded feared and infamous]] Syndicate SpacePirates, and it's implied that she was involved in the family business to some degree before joining Starfleet. She inherited the title of "Mistress of the Winter Constellations" from her grandmother, and presumably her mother, and is fully capable of living up to its fearsome reputation when she needs to.
* {{Determinator}}: {{Deconstruction}}. Much like Boimler, when Tendi gets an idea in her head she will not stop until she does it. The problem is when this happens it always results in more danger, bodily harm, and unnecessary complications than are necessary. Ranging from hunting friends down to remove body parts, to visiting violent pirate dens, to even willingly cracking open her own limbs.
* TheDitz: For as lovable as Tendi is, she admittedly is this when it comes to Earth-related matters, such as believing that all dogs can shapeshift, fly, and talk.
* DesperatelyCravesAffection: Kinda. Tendi NEEDS to be liked by anyone she meets. When someone dislikes her, this cute medic describes it as 'ants on her brain'. Tendi will go to any lengths to making someone like her. It really says something that her attempts at this starts at stalking and ends at removing someone's brain and trying to rewire it neuron by neuron.
* EnthusiasticNewbieTeacher: Though not an educator by trade, Tendi seems to be the go-to liaison for new recruits aboard the ''Cerritos'', and she's nothing if not enthusiastic about it both times.
* GenkiGirl: As energetic as she is upbeat.
* GirlyBruiser: She may be bubbly and sweet, but she's ''devastating'' in hand-to-hand combat.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: [[PlayingWithATrope Played With.]] She's a member of the TropeNamer species and is certainly attractive, but she doesn't wear revealing clothing (outside of the movie in "Crisis Point") and endears people to her with her kind, cute, and optimistic personality rather than by being an overt seductress the way Orion women are portrayed as. Tendi is admittedly rather upset by the stereotyping of her species as this trope.
* HiddenBuxom: Tendi heavily downplays the cliché fanservice elements seen in Orions up until now, because she doesn't want to play into the GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe stereotype, and is usually just seen in her Starfleet uniform. However, she's noticeably curvier than Mariner.
** This is obvious when both women are in uniform, but even more noticable when Tendi is out of a uniform, as in "Crisis Point" when she wears the usual Orion space pirate outfit, or other situations that put her in either civilian clothes or undergarments.
* IJustWantToBeLoved: In "Moist Vessel", we learn that Tendi has an obsessive need to be liked by everyone. In "Strange Energies", she is willing to extract Rutherford's brain rather than risk losing him as a friend.
* InstantExpert: Well, "instant" may be a stretch, but she dedicates herself to any task she gets with 100% enthusiasm, and takes up numerous side projects in her off-time. She has the same dedication for cleaning the conference room as she does running a secret Black Ops mission with her executive officer. It makes Dr. T'Ana take notice and recommend she take the bridge exam to become Science Officer.
* LetsGetDangerous: Thanks to the training she received from her pirate family, when Tendi decides to kick ass, she goes ''hard.''
* LivingAphrodisiac: Averted hard. Tendi does not produce pheromones and is annoyed at the stereotype that all Orion women have this ability.
* MadScientist: She shares this role equally with Rutherford. As a member of the medical staff her first day started with her pumping a fully awake patient's heart with her bare hands, creates a borderline eldritch abomination dog in her spare time, and when she's worried about a friend's behavior she tries to hunt him down to remove his brain.
* TheMedic: Among the main cast, she started off as a medical officer who assisted Dr. T'Ana in sickbay.
* MinionWithAnFInEvil: On the occasions she has to pretend to be a bad person, she's not very good at it, using G-rated swears and half-heartedly talking about robbing people. If the implication she used to be a pirate is true, this is probably why she isn't one anymore.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Up until now, Orions have been portrayed as vicious space pirates and seductresses. Tendi isn't either of those things and [[DamnedByFaintPraise insists that Orions haven't engaged in piracy for, like,]] ''five years'' now (mostly).
* NewMeat: She's fresh out of Starfleet Academy and new to the U.S.S. ''Cerritos''.
* NiceGirl: She's the most consistently kind-hearted and good-natured of the four main characters, aside from perhaps Rutherford.
* NotSoAboveItAll: Tendi is the nicest person on the ''Cerritos'', if not all of Starfleet, and tries to get along with everyone. But even the heart of Beta Shift can't help but laugh when she sees the resident ButtMonkey make a mess of himself. Because of this and her love of slapstick, she's able to bounce back from her worst day on the job, which sees her tortured by space trash and turned into a man-eating bug.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Tendi is usually cheerful and upbeat, but even she has her limits.
** After a whole day of suffering injuries handling "Anomaly Consignment Day", and Mariner and Rutherford's complaining, an increasingly frazzled Tendi, influenced by a mood-altering cube, reaches her breaking point and starts ranting about how much everything sucks, alarming her friends. Things get so bad she even yells she wishes she was back on Orion.
** After Peanut Hamper betrays everyone ''again'' in "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" she goes into a state of TranquilFury and is distinctly unamused with Peanut Hamper's attempt to call the Borg to their location.
* PluckyGirl: No matter how dire the situation is, nothing seems to dampen her enthusiasm.
* ThePollyanna: At the end of the pilot episode, Mariner jokingly asks if she's still excited to be there. Tendi's response is an enthusiastic "Yes!" because she got to hold a heart (as in, one still attached to a patient that she had to manually pump) on her ''first day!'' And in the Season 1 finale, she does not despair over Rutherford's amnesia making him completely forget her... she sees it as an opportunity to become his bestie all over again.
* PunctuationShaker: Her given name contains an apostrophe.
* RankUp: Promoted to Lieutenant j.g. in the season 4 premiere, "Twovix".
* RedBaron: In her former life (and to members of her family) she was known as '''"Mistress of the Winter Constellations."''' May also qualify for NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast status, as the person who uses this name for the first time seems ''rather'' frightened of her.
* RuthlessModernPirates: Eventually confirms that she grew up in a pirate family allied with the infamous [[TheSyndicate Orion Syndicate.]] It's ambiguous if Tendi was ever one of these herself (making her a ReformedCriminal) or if she was merely trained by her father. Either way, it's made abundantly clear that [[LetsGetDangerous just because she decided against going into the family business doesn't mean she wasn't GOOD at it.]]
* ShipTease: She gets some mild teasing with Rutherford throughout the first season, but it's especially heavy in "Terminal Provocations." They connect really well due to them being the two nicest and most pure-hearted crewmembers of the ''Cerritos'', their friendship is clearly healthier and more mutually respectful than Mariner and Boimler's, and Tendi often excitedly hugs Rutherford when she's happy with him. [[WillTheyOrWontThey Only time will tell, however, if they'll ever decide to become more than friends.]] For what it's worth, when Mariner asks her if the two are dating in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris," Tendi's response is an uncertain ''"Not really?"''
** There also fans who saw her interaction with T'Lyn as such. Since Vulcan have TouchTelepathy, Tendi grabbing T'Lyn hand is the equivalent of a french kiss.
* StepfordSmiler: Her insistence on always finding the bright side to any situation means she sometimes tries to force herself to be cheerful even when it's doing more harm than good, and she sometimes pretends to be more okay than she really is after a crisis.
* TokenHeroicOrc: She's the first Orion series regular in the franchise and the first Orion Starfleet officer seen in the prime timeline. Her species is mostly portrayed as villainous criminals.
-->'''Tendi:''' And the truth is, a lot of Orions ''are'' hyper-capitalist libertarian gangster pirates, just not ''this'' one. That's why I'm ''here''.
** She is also very uncomfortable with how abusive Orion females can get when talking to males.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: She's the GirlyGirl (naïve, sweet-natured [[TheCutie cutie]]) to Mariner's {{tomboy}} (sassy, forceful ActionGirl).
* TranquilFury: Implied. While she remains calm after Peanut Hamper reveals that her redemption was a sham and betrays and abandons everyone for a second time, she is visibly pissed and refuses to tolerate the Exocomp's efforts to call the Borg. She even forcibly jams her antenna back inside her body to stop her.
* VisualPun: Her skin color. In Season 1 she's "green" (short for greenhorn), as in a person who is inexperienced. In Season 2 she's jealous of Rutherford's relationship with Barnes and could be described as "green" with envy.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Kind of. In "Second Contact", when Dr. T'Ana starts giving her instructions, Tendi protests that she's not qualified and she's supposed to be reporting to a nurse rather than the CMO. T'Ana points out that the growling, slavering, rage-vomiting patient strapped to the biobed ''is'' the nurse. And it seems to stick -- from "Envoys" onward, she seems to report directly to Dr. T'Ana.
* YouthfulFreckles: She's the youngest member of the main cast, and her freckles reflect this.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g.) Sam Rutherford]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) Samanthan "Sam" Rutherford
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/samrutherford.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"I belong in the tubes."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/EugeneCordero
A ensign, and later lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. ''Cerritos'' in the engineering department.
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* AmbiguouslyBi: It's confirmed that he finds Tendi cute and has gone on romantic dates with women, but "Crisis Point" shows hints that he might be attracted to Commander Billups ([[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything unless they really are just talking about engineering]]). Similarly, in "Mining the Mind's Mines", his illusion is Leah Brahms repeatedly trying to tempt him with engineering equations.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: He's dark-skinned and is voiced by Filipino-American actor Eugene Cordero, but his name does not suggest any particular race. "Reflections" hints that Rutherford is also Filipino, with his past self naming a racing ship ''Sampaguita'' after the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasminum_sambac national flower of the Philippines]].
* AmnesiacDissonance: Rutherford, before getting his implant, was actually a womanizing JerkAss who only wanted to race and flouted Starfleet rules and regulations. The LaserGuidedAmnesia that the implant also enforced on him turned him into the sweet and lovable guy he is now.
* CasualDangerDialogue: In "Second Contact", he and his date continue asking get-to-know-you questions and flirting after they get caught up in the firefight and emergency evacuation caused by the virus.
* {{Catchphrase}}: "Okeydokey!"
* {{Cyborg}}: He has a Vulcan cybernetic implant that aids his sight, making him somewhat of an {{Expy}} of [[Characters/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Geordi La Forge]] and his VISOR (notably, crewmembers actually wearing a VISOR appear in the background a few times). It occasionally malfunctions and tries to suppress his emotions, but only in the first episode.
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Thanks to his implant, Rutherford can fight off a simulation of a Borg strike team (the purpose of said simulation being to [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation humble new recruits]]). Even without the implant, this is a guy who creates homicidal A.I.s in his off time that can destroy enemy flagships in minutes.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: In "First First Contact", he deletes redundant memories of Tendi in order to free up his memory. However, he then sees a memory of his implant being installed which suggests it wasn't voluntary. "Reflections" then reveals that he was injured working on a top-secret project, and his supervising officer had his memories of the project erased. "The Stars at Night" finally reveals that he was working on then-Lieutenant Commander Buenamigo's new ''Texas''-class prototype.
* DeathOfPersonality: The ultimate fate of his original personality. When he loses the race with the current Rutherford, he is fatally injured and fades out of existence. Rutherford offers to do a SplitPersonalityMerge with him, but he declines on the grounds that doing so would essentially kill them both.
* DecliningPromotion: Despite having been in Starfleet Academy during the TNG era (a flashback of his shows Admiral Buenamigo with the TNG-style combadge), he's still just an ensign post-''Nemesis''. Eventually, series 4 reveals that he has actually been offered a promotion, ''several times'' thanks to the various things he's done through the series, but he's turned them down simply to stick with his fellow Beta Shifters. If he wanted a promotion, he actually could ask for one and get it... a fact he was completely unaware of.
* TheEngineer: He serves in the engineering department, so he's this among the main cast. It's taken to an adorkable level when he forgoes romance as he wonders why a red alert would deactivate an emergency hatch.
* EyeScream:
** The implant isn't just covering an eye, it's replacing it. Then it turns out the medics who gave him the implant removed his eye. With a ''drill''.
** The reason he got the implant in the first place? An experimental engine ''[[FacialHorror blew up in his face]].''
* FanOfThePast: When Barnes tells him that she's a fan of a "classical band called Music/TheMonkees" (a group that is over ''400 years old'' from their perspective), he responds, "Let's just say I'm a believer." "I'm a Believer" is one of the Monkees' biggest hits.
* FashionableAsymmetry: His left eye, and much of the left side of his head, is cybernetic. The metal ear is pointed, reflecting its Vulcan origin, while his organic ear is rounded. Also, his right eyebrow has a gap.
* FlawedPrototype: Rutherford is enthusiastic and does have the skill, but his attempts to create or upgrade things independently tend to go wrong, mainly because he tried to run them before they were ready.
* GenderBlenderName: '''Samantha'''n Rutherford.[[note]]Which is especially funny if you know that the name "Samantha" is already a ''literal'' Gender Blender Name, originating in the 20th century from blending the names "Samuel" and "Anthea" and devised specifically so there'd be a feminine form of "Samuel".[[/note]]
* GreaseMonkey: In "Envoys", he's covered in black stains after working on the EPS conduits. He enjoys completing arduous tasks that other people would find extremely unpleasant.
-->'''Rutherford:''' Well, if you see an unaligned EPS conduit, don't call me. Mine are aligned as hell.\\
'''Tendi:''' Wait, aren't there like a hundred of those? How long have you been in there?\\
'''Rutherford:''' A solid week. Crawling through cramped ducts, prying open panels and adjusting red-hot power cables. Look, look, look, I've got blisters on my blisters.\\
'''Tendi:''' Oh wow, you must be so relieved to be done.\\
'''Rutherford:''' Oh, I'm not done. Now I get to recalibrate everything. That's another three, four days in the tubes!
* IHatePastMe: Having discovered what a JerkAss he was before, Rutherford really didn't like who he was.
* IKnowMortalKombat: His cybernetic implant allows him to [[CurbStompBattle vanquish]] an entire team of holographic Borg drones in unarmed combat.
* {{Jerkass}}: Prior to his accident, Rutherford was an arrogant, womanizing jerk who was rude to everyone around him. Buenamigo having his memories erased to cover up his illegal project resulted in Rutherford [[AmnesiacDissonance gaining his current personality]].
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: In "No Small Parts", due to his cybernetics getting ripped out, he suffers amnesia and forgets the events of the entire season. By Season 2, he's mostly back to normal, save for a few temporary personality changes (he likes pears when before he hated them). "Reflections" reveals that he was actually hit with this ''much'' earlier, his entire personality having been changed.
* LovedINotHonorMore: He chooses to investigate a broken emergency hatch over his hot date who had just passionately kissed him.
-->'''Rutherford:''' Who has time for romance when there's a level 2 diagnostic just sitting there waiting to be run?
* NewMeat: He's been in Starfleet a while (flashbacks show he was a cadet during the TNG days), but post-amnesia he's still figuring out his way in shipboard engineering.
* NiceGuy: Despite his awkwardness, he's always friendly and kind to everyone on the ''Cerritos''. In "Crisis Point", during the movie sequence, when playing the part of one of Mariner's minions, he ominously says that he wants to tell the simulation of Commander Billups "what he really thinks of him" and get away with it, as if setting up a nasty TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, only to instead tell the simulation of Billups how much he admires his engineering skills. It's a shame Rutherford thinks he can't tell the real Billups how much he respects him.
* NonActionGuy: Before he participates in Shaxs' combat training simulation in "Envoys", he panics because he's never fought anyone before ("I don't know how to fight!"). However, his cybernetic implant helps him to overcome his lack of experience.
* ObliviousToLove: In "Second Contact", he doesn't realize that his date for the evening is annoyed by his interest in a broken emergency hatch over her.
* RankUp: Promoted to Lieutenant j.g. in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee". He acknowledges that he has been offered promotion several times for his past heroics, always turning them down so he could continue serving alongside Tendi.
* RoboCam: We occasionally see from his perspective how his cybernetic implant functions.
** In "Envoys", it has a setting that can [[EnemyScan analyze potential targets and determine the optimal combat strategy to defeat them]].
** In "Moist Vessel", it warns him of the "Unauthorized {{terraform}}ation" that's taking place on the ship, so he has a slightly better chance than the average person to move out of harm's way quickly enough to avoid getting impaled by jagged rocks.
** In "No Small Parts", he breaks off a knob from his implant and finds a button that changes his attitude. We see the various moods as he switches through them.
* ShipTease: He gets some mild teasing with Tendi throughout the first season, but it's especially heavy in "Terminal Provocations" when he admits to Badgey that he thinks Tendi's cute and wanted to impress her. He doesn't explicitly state that he has a crush on her, but it certainly sounds like it when he says he wants to impress her with something he made in a simulation because she's cute, not that Rutherford would even need to do that, as Tendi already likes him for his good-hearted nature.
* TookALevelInJerkass: After having his implant damaged in "No Small Parts," he's notably more irritable and snappy in Season 2, even after Tendi stops trying to bring his old personality back. "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" suggests this is out of frustration for feeling like he's lagging behind where his old self used to thrive.
** Season 3's "Reflections" clarifies things: The levels in JerkAss he took were his original personality trying to reassert itself, and he TookALevelInKindness due to side effects of the procedures involved in giving him the implant... and erasing his memories of just what he was involved in that led to him needing one in the first place.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Viewers stopped dead in their tracks when it's revealed his full name is ''Samanthan''.
* {{Workaholic}}: Rutherford absolutely loves the endless monotonous tasks that keep the ship running. He's positively gleeful at the thought of spending days in the Jeffries tubes.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Lieutenant (j.g ) (Provisional) T'Lyn]]
!!Lieutenant (j.g.) (Provisional) T'Lyn
[[quoteright:200:[[labelnote:As a member of the ''Cerritos'' crew.]][[/labelnote]]]]
[[caption-width-right:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tlyn_s4e1.jpg]]
[[quoteright:200:[[labelnote:As a member of the ''Sh'vhal'' crew.]][[/labelnote]]]]
[[caption-width-right:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/t_lyn_profile.png]]
[[caption-width-right:200:''"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."'']]
->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/GabrielleRuiz
A female Vulcan crewmember, formerly serving aboard the Vulcan cruiser ''Sh'vhal'', now re-assigned to the ''U.S.S. Cerritos'' as punishment for not acting logically enough.
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* AuthorAvatar: Was originally a cosplay character created by the writer of her debut episode, Kathryn Lyn.
* BigDamnHeroes: Her efforts end up saving both the ''Cerritos'' '''and''' the ''Sh'vhal'' from destruction. Also saved the ''Cerritos'' crew from becoming an army of Tuvixes.
* BreakoutCharacter: Originally a one-shot character, her unexpected popularity in Season 2 led to a regular role for her in Season 4 (Season 3 was mostly written by the time her episode was released).
* CulturalRebel: T'Lyn is more in touch with her emotions and instincts than most Vulcans, and believes her approach to be the superior one. Which is not to say T'Lyn doesn't still appreciate quiet time like any Vulcan. But being less bound by logic and unemotional detachment than her crewmates, is enough to get her kicked off the ''Sh'vhal''.
* CustomUniform: While aboard the ''Sh'vhal'', she wears her belt as a headband. After being transferred to the ''Cerritos'', T'Lyn wears color-coordinated headbands to match her clothing, since Starfleet hasn't included belts as part of their uniforms since the early 2300s.
* DeadpanSnarker: Practically given for a Vulcan, T'Lyn has quite an acerbic wit.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Despite being instrumental in saving the crew of the ''Sh'vhal'', she receives no recognition for her efforts, and is in fact booted off the ship because of them.
* {{Foil}}: Within seconds of arriving on the ''Cerritos'', her quiet demeanor is immediately contrasted with Tendi's bubbly personality as the latter literally drags her to meet the rest of Beta Shift.
* GadgeteerGenius: She is quite proficient with technology, as seen when she boosts the range of the ''Sh'vhal's'' scanners and later improves its shields. After being transfered to the ''Cerritos'', she easily hijacks the ship's transporter system to save the crew.
* HotBlooded: By Vulcan standards, at least. While she is outwardly [[TheStoic just as cool-headed and serene]] as any Vulcan, and she can be logical enough to sway her captain on several occasions, she also has a habit of allowing her emotions to dictate her actions; she pursues personal projects when she should be meditating and relies on her instincts rather than logical analysis, which her captain describes as "outbursts" and accuses her of acting like a child. The rest of the crew also berates her "passionate" actions.
* ImNotHereToMakeFriends: This is initially her attitude upon being transferred to the ''Cerritos'', making it clear her intention is to prove to the Vulcan High Council that she deserves reinstatement in their fleet, and has no interest in establishing personal connections (plus, you know, ''[[TheStoic Vulcan]]''). However, although it takes a while, she does start warming to Tendi's efforts to befriend her.
* MirrorCharacter: She is essentially a Vulcan version of Mariner. She's a rebellious young woman whose outside-the-box thinking saves the day, and she even wears her uniform informally compared to everyone else. Unlike Mariner, her violations are minor with a more direct benefit to the ship, but committing them at all eventually gets her transferred, just like Mariner.
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: T'Lyn is berated by her peers for exceeding her duties and experimenting with ways to improve the systems on the ''Sh'vhal'', because they're otherwise operational. Even though in both cases her innovations were functional and improved systems, she's still transferred to the ''Cerritos'' by her captain, because she's considered too headstrong for doing so in the first place.
* RankUp: Promoted to (provisional) Lieutenant j.g. shortly after transferring to the ''Cerritos'', presumably having taken her service aboard a Vulcan vessel into account.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: Despite her saving the day in "wej Duj", the captain of the ''Sh'vhal'' has her transferred off the ship, recommending she serve on a human Starfleet vessel instead as punishment for her disruptions. She is eventually assigned to the ''Cerritos'', and intends to work her way back onto a Vulcan vessel as soon as possible.
* SarcasticWellWishing: Departs the ''Sh'Val'' on a "Live long, and prosper" so barbed it would make Kelvin timeline Spock proud.
* SmugSmiler: {{Downplayed}}. T'Lyn gives off a smirk when the captain of the ''Sh'vhal'' is unable to refute her logic, but is otherwise fairly stoic.
* TheStoic: As a Vulcan, T'Lyn is the very definition of the trope. She rarely lets her emotions show, and even when she does, it's not much more than a slight raising of her voice and adding a slight emphasis to her words. However, she's much more in tune with her emotions and instincts than her fellow Vulcans, who regard her as HotBlooded.
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: T'Lyn has no compunctions about disregarding protocols and orders if she believes they are interfering with her mission.
* {{Workaholic}}: When ordered to meditate by her captain, she briefly attempts to comply before giving up and returning to her work. This is one of the many marks against her character on the ''Sh'Val'', as everyone questions the logic of working to improve already serviceable and functional systems.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: T'Lyn's transfer to Starfleet at the end of her debut appearance suggests she'll play a major part in Season 3, but she only makes a small cameo appearance at the end of the season finale, having been re-assigned to the ''Cerritos''.
** Creator Mike [=McMahan=] explained that T'Lyn's absence from Season 3 is because "wej duJ" was written as a one-off episode, with no intention of continuing her storyline. By the time "wej duJ" premiered and went on to become the most acclaimed episode of ''Lower Decks'' to date, Season 3 had already been written, with zero expectation that both "wej duJ" and T'Lyn would become so popular.
** T'Lyn appears in the final minutes of Season 3 to introduce her presence in Season 4, then begins working alongside the the four main characters (especially Tendi) in the show's fourth season.
[[/folder]]
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