Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 finale, "First First Contact."
The Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 finale finally delivered on a tease from Star Trek: The Next Generation by showing Cetacean Ops. The USS Cerritos was desperately trying to save the USS Archimedes from crashing into a planet and the only way to navigate a dangerous debris field that could drain the starship of its power was to strip the Cerritos of all of its hull plating. This required Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) to dive into Cetacean Ops to eject the last hull plate, which meant meeting the starship's dolphin navigators.
Star Trek has long had a uniquely positive relationship with dolphins and whales. This stemmed from Leonard Nimoy being inspired by a book about the extinction of humpback whales, which spurred him to center the plot of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home to literally be about saving the whales. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual described a section of the starship called Cetacean Ops, where 12 bottlenosed dolphins serve as the USS Enterprise-D's navigational specialists and help steer the starship. Cetacean Ops was referenced in TNG season 3 and Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) even once offered to take a passenger to "see the dolphins," but Cetacean Ops was never actually seen on the show.
One of Star Trek: Lower Decks' unique advantages is that, as an animated series, it doesn't have the practical limitations a live-action show has. TNG would have had to build an actual tank and used trained dolphins if they wanted to go actually show Cetacean Ops, especially since the show was produced in the late 1980s/early 1990s before the advent of modern CGI. Star Trek: Lower Decks finally delivered on TNG's promise to show the dolphins, and this established that other Starfleet ships in the 24th century, not just the Enterprise, has Cetacean Ops onboard.
Star Trek Finally Shows Starfleet's Dolphins In Cetacean Ops
On Star Trek: Lower Decks, the residents of Cetacean Ops are two Beluga whales named Kimolu and Matt. They're not only intelligent and able to communicate with the Starfleet Officers but Kimolu and Matt both wear blue Starfleet uniforms and comm badges. Amusingly, the whales really seem to enjoy swimming with humans and they kept inviting Ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) to join them in the water in provocative ways. Kimolu and Matt also keep up on the ship's gossip and were aware that Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) is Captain Carol Freeman's (Dawnn Lewis) daughter, so the visitors to Cetacean Ops must tell the whales all sorts of things.
Kimolu and Matt seem to be the only two aquatic mammals in the Cerritos' Cetacean Ops so a California-class starship must not have the full complement of a dozen dolphins a Galaxy-class ship like the Enterprise-D had. However, the Beluga whales are as heroic as any Starfleet Officer and they saved Boimler from nearly drowning after he freed the Cerritos' last hull plate but couldn't make it back to the surface after a rupture in his wetsuit filled his helmet with water. When Cetacean Ops was first mentioned in Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, Boimler described it as "one of the greatest places" on the ship and Kimolu and Matt proved the purple-haired Ensign right.
Star Trek: Lower Decks' visit to Cetacean Ops effectively showed the dolphins Star Trek: The Next Generation mentioned but the animated comedy did it in an expected and hilarious way. It's not clear if every Federation starship in the 24th century has Cetacean Ops; after all, it's hard to imagine Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's tiny warship, the USS Defiant, had dolphins aboard. But it's possible that Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) taking his crew back to 1986 to save the whales launched how Starfleet Officers now work side-by-side with intelligent aquatic mammals. No doubt, the season 2 finale isn't the last time Trekkers will see Cetacean Ops on Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is available to stream on Paramount+.