Boimler is the One Punch Man of Star Trek (and I love Pataphysics)

The thing about Lower Decks is that over time we learn all the beta shifters are secret badasses. Mariner, the insubordinate slacker, is actually an unbeatable martial artist with amazing command reflexes. Rutherford singlehandedly designed an AI, TWICE, that was capable of outperforming entire ships of humanoid crew and ultimately defeating all sentient life in the galaxy. And Tendi is the Mistress of the Winter Constellations, which I don’t need to explain to you.

But Boimler, while he has grown bold and become a clearly fine officer, is still a goofy little bean.

However, he has three feats which just… don’t make sense.

First, there’s the time everyone on the ship was reduced to a nervous wreck by inability to complete timed tasks, while Boims was 100% fine, thriving and in his element. The timetable Freeman designed was bad. The times allotted for tasks were clearly inhuman. And inbajoran, incaitian, inorion, etc. Even Freeman herself was reaching her limit, and Boimler showed absolutely 0 negative effects. This isn’t just a matter of good organisation, the tasks were literally impossible. No organic mind could have simply paced its way through that challenge. Not even Rutherford’s implant was helping. I question whether even Commander Data could have thrived in such an environment.

Second, Boimler achieved a perfect score, in a test designed to fail him. I can understand how playing it by the book, following every regulation to the letter, would have let him skate by with his initial mediocre passing score. Boimler having one pass out of an entire ship of failures just by being a rules boy is somewhat plausible. But Boimler taught the Borg Queen empathy, in a test designed to make him fail for stepping out of constraints. Mariner got points deducted for walking the wrong direction down a hallway, but Boimler defeated the entire Borg? He performed to the absolute highest standard the drill engineers could imagine a humanoid doing? With the odds stacked against him? That isn’t the highest standard, it’s beyond it. And this isn’t a “ticking all the right boxes” standard either, Boimler specifically performed above and beyond to an implausible extreme.

Finally, there’s the escape from the varuvian mine on Karzill IV. After many watches of that episode, I still can’t tell whether that was Bradward or William, but at that point in continuity, same difference. This is a feat either would have been capable of. And that feat is being trapped under rubble, in a room three seasoned Titan veterans had no reasonable hope of getting out of, with Pakled charging at him, and a delayed start because he had to wait for a transporter beam, and still escaping. Somehow, he freed himself in a split second, evaded a whole gang of heavily armed Pakleds his gloryhound senior officers wouldn’t have dared face, and stole a shuttle inside of about a minute. Worf isn’t that good. Seven of Nine isn’t that good. Kirk isn’t that good. Nobody is. And this is a practical situation. No holo-simulations, no unclear constraints, a real-world impossible situation.

Let’s talk about One Punch Man!

As a plebian anime-only, and one who tries to avoid spoilers, to wit, My exposure to the deep lore of One Punch Man is limited to hearsay from forum discussions and wikis. But, from what I hear, the distinguishing characteristic of the unbeatable Saitama from others in his universe is that he has broken free of a metaphysical limit that naturally exists on all beings’ level of power. This limit is placed upon all living beings as a divine decree, as real to the world as the forces of electromagnetism or the Higgs field.

But it also exists in the mind, and is overcome in the mind. Saitama’s unique mix of willpower and mediocrity put him in the right circumstance to be able to challenge himself to a greater degree than any other being in his universe. A character who started stronger wouldn’t have been able to give themself as much of a challenge. A character with less willpower wouldn’t have been able to rise to that challenge. Saitama existed at the perfect sweet spot to experience a mental and metaphysical victory, permanently, over all limits on his strength. He was able to devise a workout plan that was subjective hell to him, and also to stick with it.

I think Boimler has a lot of the same personality traits. He’s a goof, a physically mediocre specimen, special in absolutely no way, and below average in dozens. BUT, he has a dedication to his craft that few can stack up to. And those that can equal his determination, like Mariner and Freeman, started out in a better position, less able to challenge themselves.

Now, Boimler obviously isn’t going around One-Punching Q into submission. That’s not how Star Trek works. It’s a stretch even for Me to say that the same metaphysical concepts might apply to both fictions.

But Saitama isn’t good at everything. He’s only physically strong. He’s a dimwitted, lazy, gamer-y, impulsive, imperceptive, socially alienated, unwise, inattentive mess of a human being. And he sucks at paperwork. He’s only broken his limit at one particular thing.

But you know who’s great at paperwork? Boimler. I don’t think Boimler became a One Punch Man at fighting, I think he became a One Punch Man at being a weaselly little beaurocrat. At checking boxes and passing drills, for one thing. I think his metamorphosis is also very incomplete. He’s had three occasions where he did something impossible, and in 2/3 cases they were situations he believed were trivially easy to begin with. Things in his wheelhouse, stuff he’s passionate about. For all the physical difficulty of these tasks, it seems he simply bluffed his way through them, giving the universe no narrative space to put challenges in his way. Even with the varuvian mine, it seems nobody even acknowledged that what he did was remotely difficult, too distracted by the transporter cloning. Maybe that’s why it was able to work.

Boimler fails at stuff all the time when it’s scary, or looks difficult, or is outside his realm of expertise. And despite his inhuman effectiveness on the battlefield, he hated serving on the Titan. Boimler hasn’t come into his own with whatever strange powers of Being A Good Starfleet Officer he has. Bold Boimler is a small part of that progression.

I’m entirely convinced that with more confidence, he could be a captain of absolutely unreasonable and implausible skill and effectiveness.

I love pataphysics

The reason I’m inclined to apply this seemingly niche concept from a single anime to a vastly different fiction is what you might call trope awareness. A more common reading of all these situations might simply be that Boimler has Toonforce. The capacity of cartoon characters to defy the laws of reality in whatever way is funny. For example, Wile E Coyote hanging in the air in defiance of gravity until he finally realises he’s run off a cliff. Boimler can do all of these amazing things because he’s a cartoon, and they’re funny.

But I actually don’t like toonforce. Because toonforce doesn’t say anything meaningful. Sure, toonforce is important to understanding looney tunes, and it’s funny that such a thing exists, but that’s where the depth ends.

Whereas, I find the idea that peoples’ abilities are governed by a limit at the intersection of the mental and the metaphysical to be profound. It has something to say about our own lives, rather than just about the rules of comedy. And like toonforce, it is a trope. An idea embedded in human collective consciousness that surfaces in myth, legend, and storytelling.

I find pataphysics fascinating. A fictional field of science popularised by collaborative writers of the SCP project. The idea that in a fictional world, reality is governed by the rules of stories. The idea that trope awareness can be confirmed by the scientific method. If only you paid attention, and performed the right tests, you’d have noticed that the threat to the Enterprise always gets wrapped up in the last 5 minutes of runtime.

Star Trek is quite clearly a work of fiction, and is governed by the rules of stories. Humanity will always improve. There is always a way to solve problems using respect for life. There’s always a bit of technobabble that can solve the problem. These are some of the basic rules of Star Trek. Jim Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru not because of a material reason, but simply because he’s the hero, and never accepting defeat is part of his character. The material reason manifested from the narrative reason, right inside the writer’s head. The material world is, quite literally, an illusion. It’s all a story.

A lot of people say that about fiction as a thought terminating cliche. “It’s not real, so don’t bother caring about it. Don’t try to understand how the warp drive works, don’t analyse, just mindlessly consume.” I don’t think that way. I say this as a thought expanding cliche, or the attempt to build one. Star Trek is governed by a conscious reality that supersedes material reality, just as many religions believe in the real world, and indeed as many ascended beings like Q have hinted at within the show’s canon.

Mind really is over matter in Star Trek, so long as mind aligns with narrative. So when I say Boimler is a limit breaker like Saitama, I’m not just drawing an analogy and guessing that the two verses work similar. I’m pointing at a real, demonstrably true fact of the way Star Trek works. Boimler is an inhumanly efficient bureaucrat because that’s the story. As long as nobody points out that his actions are impossible, and as long as the story demands it, Boimler really will be capable of bending the laws of reality in his favour. That’s not a guess, it’s a cold hard fact. It’s pataphysically provable.

As a soulist, I believe our consensus reality is a fictional narrative we tell each other, and that it’s governed by pataphysical rules. Not the same ones as Star Trek, because Star Trek is designed for fun, and consensus reality is designed for a lot of political and economic reasons that largely come down to controlling people. So limit breaking isn’t as easy for us as it is for Boimler, and it doesn’t work the same way. We don’t get to use toonforce.

Unless you’re Donald Trump. Seriously, I actually believe the reason that man hasn’t been locked in a prison, shot, or ever effectively attacked in reputation, is because his existence is a big joke on all of us. He’s the Bugs Bunny to our social reality’s Elmer, if all of the themes of the story were completely inverted.

But talking about how pataphysics can genuinely affect characters like Bradward Boimler, and apply concepts that intersect with pop culture, philosophy, and religion in a way that explores our own socially constructed reality is really fun and really cool.