Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1 proved to be a haven for Easter egg fans, harboring a hidden visual reference or dialogue callback around every turn. Season 2 continues that tradition with some of the show's greatest nods yet - for Spock fans especially.
And what better way to facilitate Easter egg hunting than by opening the vaults of an in-story Star Trek collector">blue Starfleet uniform. What in Gary Mitchell's name happened here?
The skeleton is none other than Spock, and hails from Star Trek: The Animated Series, which aired from 1973 to 1974, and boasted most of the famed TOS cast - Leonard Nimoy's Spock included. In season 1's appropriately titled "The Infinite Vulcan," the cartoon crew travel to Phylos and encounter Dr. Stavos Keniclius 5, a scientist clone who seeks to bring peace to the universe. The best way to achieve this, according to Keniclius, is by cloning Spock and sending him out into space as a bringer of harmony. The resulting Spock 2 is rendered giant by the cloning process, but Kirk successfully convinces it that forcing peace upon worlds is not the Vulcan way. Thus, Spock 2 remains on Phylos to help restore the planet's native species of intelligent plant life.
This isn't the first time Star Trek: Lower Decks has paid its own unique brand of homage to "The Infinite Vulcan" and Spock 2. In season 1's "Veritas," Boimler referenced "giant Spock" during the Cerritos crew's court hearing/party celebration. Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 goes one step further, revealing exactly what became of Spock's over-sized clone. "The Infinite Vulcan" takes place in 2269, and "Kayshon, His Eyes Open" in 2381, but the state of Spock's remains suggest he's been dead quite some time. Maybe life on Phylos wasn't quite as fruitful as Spock 2 hoped, or perhaps Keniclius got cold feet and superseded his original creation with Spock 3. In either case, being hung in a collector's private museum is a sad end for a character designed solely to foster peace in the Star Trek galaxy.
At the behest of Paramount and Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Animated Series was deemed non-canon in the 1980s, but writers have continued to reference the quirky, oft-forgotten venture in years since. Star Trek: The Animated Series now occupies more of a semi-canon middle ground, and with the likes of Star Trek: Lower Decks continuing to draw from this 1970s curio, the animated adventures of James T. Kirk won't be forgotten any time soon. At the very least, Giant Spock has earned his special place in Star Trek history.