Below Deck with Lower Decks: Moooorn

Who doesn’t love an exciting trip to cool, famous, or even historical places? It’s especially neat when your job sends you and there won’t be much for you to do while your captain works. You’re free to enjoy some well-deserved downtime, so of course you find yourself in a whole new batch of trouble.

Welcome to Star Trek: Lower Decks.

This latest episode sees Captain Freeman running point on important trade negotiations with representatives of the Karemma, a race from the Gamma Quadrant. Despite being part of the Dominion, they were willing to negotiate agreements with the Federation and other non-Dominion powers.

In the years after the Dominion War, that willingness to engage other spacefaring civilizations has only increased, and Starfleet has sensed an opportunity to solidify its own diplomatic ties with the Karemma. Since the main route to the Gamma Quadrant is through the stable wormhole located near the planet Bajor, you know what that means? It’s time for the Cerritos to visit Deep Space 9! It’s also an opportunity for the Lower Deckers to generate some new bout of shenanigans in which to mire themselves.

And so it goes.

This episode marks the first time the famous space station has appeared on-screen since the series finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1999. For Ensign Mariner, it represents something of a reunion and trip down Memory Lane, as she was posted to the station earlier in her Starfleet career. It’s also the first chance we get to catch up with characters like Colonel Kira Nerys, Quark—he of Quark’s Bar fame—and, perhaps the station’s most famous resident, Morn.

That’s right, I said it.

One of DS9’s most popular characters is that adorable barfly, Morn. A member of the Lurian species, Morn was a mainstay at Quark’s, present in 93 episodes across the show’s seven seasons. Of those appearances, the vast majority depicted him sitting on a stool at one end of the establishment’s bar. When the Cerritos arrives at the station and the Lower Deckers begin sampling the wares on its Promenade, they make their way to Quark’s and who do they find?

Say it with me — “MOOOOOOOOORN!”

As far as we’re able to tell, Morn has been sitting there this whole time, drinking and watching Dabo games unfold without uttering anything resembling an audible word.

According to Mark Allen Shepherd, the actor who portrayed Morn throughout the series, several scripts featured dialogue for his character, but his lines were among the first ones cut even before cameras rolled on scenes in which he appears. Despite pretty much never saying anything, Morn became and remains one of DS9’s fan-favorite characters.

For those who might not know, the name “Morn” is an anagram of “Norm.” In this case, it refers to Norm Peterson, one of the local regulars of that little bar in Boston where everybody knows your name, Cheers. In 275 episodes over the course of 11 seasons, Norm sat perched atop a stool at one corner of the Cheers bar. Unlike Morn, Norm is something of a talker, and his entrance to the bar is always heralded with shouts of “Norm!” from the rest of the crowd before he goes on to make some wisecrack in response to a question posed by one of the bartenders.

For our Morn, listening to whatever scheme Quark is up to is more than enough social interaction until the next visit. Of course, maybe Mariner got him to talk at some point while she was assigned to the station.