“Tacky Cardassian fascist eyesore!”

Look, the man also directed First Contact (the movie, not the episode) and Those Old Scientists, which are generally well received. I think we can begrudge him one ghost-fuckin’ episode.

T’Lyn’s story in Season 5 involves her and another character in an interesting way, and you see T’lyn embrace science and Starfleet more than I think people anticipate.

Until proven otherwise I’ll remain on the Sokel-is-T’Lyn’s-father boat and will assume this to be about him.

Star Trek does this thing where formal rank isn’t actually as important as being in the captain’s in-group. Can you name anything important that provisional Lt. JG Ayala did on the USS Voyager? I sure as hell can’t, but it was less important than Harry “eternal ensign” Kim.

As much as the Lower Decks gang would like to think of themselves as unimportant, they’re very much confidants of the Cerritos’ senior staff so it’s illogical, but consistent for Boimler to be at the top of the list for acting captain when stuff’s going down.

Out of universe it’s obviously a narrative/screen time thing, I’d say you’ve just got to accept it and move on.

Man, the years were far kinder to Tom Paris than Locarno. Guess being a Starfleet burnout is a pretty stressful existence.

Rutherford hanging out with Freeman is presumably setup for the finale, giving us three perspectives without compromising the focus on the main gang. He did feel a little tacked on though.

Dunno why they didn’t bother promoting this episode, it was great. I was initially skeptical that it was just going to be a “Mariner is angsty” episode without much of a payoff, but they finally revealed everything. And they gave Ma’ah screen time doing it!

The confirmation of how the Dominion War scarred Mariner wasn’t much of a surprise, but the tie back to the Lower Decks of old was. What an absolutely crushing reason to lose the optimism in what Starfleet can be. Props to Tawny Newsome for some good voice acting for an emotionally vulnerable moment.

Minor complaint/discontinuity: in this episode Mariner seemed surprised that T’Lyn was present at the fight against the Pakleds and the Klingon BoP in Wej Duj, although I seem to recall T’Lyn explicitly referencing that incident to her in Empathological Fallacies.

Speculation about next week: I’d hazard a guess that Locarno is a thematic version of what Mariner could become if she isn’t careful. He’s a Starfleet ace gone bad, and also Sito’s former friend, so he’s presumably got a lot to sell her on the troublemaker’s life.

God, I typed a lot and didn’t even get to Freeman’s misdirection this episode. It was good, watch it!

Tendi’s bit was wholesome, but this was a weaker episode overall IMO. I get what they were going for, the jokes just didn’t really land for me.

A bit worried it’ll have a heavy tonal overlap with Lower Decks and thematic overlap with LD/Prodigy.

That said, I really want Star Trek to move to literally anything other than the TOS/TNG eras, so let’s see where this goes.

A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn’t solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.

Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn’t list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she’s been in Daystrom for less than two years.

IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn’t an anomaly, Rutherford’s got it bad for Tendi. It’s kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.

No T’Lyn in these shots, here’s hoping we still see her through the rest of the season.

Absolutely looking forward to the triumphant return of AGIMUS!

I can honestly see them pulling the trigger on it at the end of this season. This season’s pretty emphatically pushing the gang past their former status quo-- Mariner has supportive superiors, now what? Boimler is in charge sometimes, now what? Figuring this romance situation out would just be running with the theme of growth and change.

I’m happy either way they end up, although I think Rutherford’s comment about green eyes is telegraphing there’s something there, even if he and Tendi are oblivious to it.

Totally was the Sense-Ores admiral from Moist Vessel. Memory Alpha lists him as Admiral Vassery.

maybe they’re doing the star trek thing of having bad/meh early episodes, just on a more compressed time scale. (yeah it’s subjective, but I certainly liked these ones a lot more than the first ones).

I liked this one, just some wholesome series-to-series love wrapped up in a goofy package. A very Lower Decks feel. The Prodigy erasure continues to be a thing but I don’t think that’s ending anytime soon.

And if heavens forbid this is the last Star Trek thing George Takei does at least it’s on the same fun retrospective note as he had in his Crisis Point II appearance.

Hard to do, sure, but “cannot be done easily” is a far different proposition from “cannot be done.” Unless you want to argue that the multiple transporter clones we have seen are philosophical zombies.

The Cerritos is continuing the proud Starfleet tradition of having good mental health advisors and a kinda useless ship’s counselor.

Man, I was hoping they’d confirm the commonly held theory that Sokel is T’lyn’s father (since she’s the Sh’val’s version of Mariner). No dice unfortunately.

Really like how Mariner was emotionally mature enough to solve the problem by just talking. Sure, she’s done that some other times (Crisis Point II comes to mind), but she doesn’t really know T’lyn nearly as well as those other examples. Really shows how far she’s come from the therapy-hating Mariner in Season 1. She’s not wrong to point out how Vulcans tend to have a very narrow view of what their species should be like while idolizing paragons who don’t fit that mold. Tear them space elves down, girl!

Other notes:

• One of Shaxs’ officers at the gathering reaaally looked like a Kiley (Kileyan?) from SNW episode 1. Guess Pike’s message stuck.
• I noted previously that they drew the betazoids with larger eye dots to reference their dark irises. Looking back, I think they even did that when drawing Counselor Troi in season 1.
• we don’t often see Tendi being the butt of the joke. guess there’s no place to ham up her excessive emotionality than a T’lyn episode.

Ah, that explains why they actually acknowledged that Prodigy exists for once.

I was about to say that since LD doesn’t color in characters’ irises there’s very little to differentiate the animated Betazoids from humans. But it turns out they gave them bigger black eye dots!

Looks like Tendi’s happy crying in one of the last pictures, so here’s hoping that T’lyn gets some embarrassing wholesome emotions exposed.

I’m a little surprised her ride home wasn’t stolen/stripped for parts.

Fifth most powerful family in the Orion crime syndicate. The people who are above Tendi in the social hierarchy don’t need it, those below probably like living.