Logline
It’s a pre-warp society undercover Girls Trip!
Written by: Andrew Mueth
Directed by: Megan Lloyd
Damn, I guess the ship doesn’t clean itself after all.
What’s weird is in the IDW comics, Data has become a severed head again as well.
I’m a little sad. When I saw a time dilation plot, I was honestly expecting an unexpected romance to begin between Mariner and one of the other two (probably T’Lyn) - not like it fully develops, but like something weird to show up in the possible future we better get in the finale.
I was thinking something kind of similar - if they had left Mariner out of it entirely, we could have had a Tendi/T’lyn “Janeway and Chakotay build a bathtub” plot.
I’m loving the friendly beard-off between Boimler and Rutherford, who just casually between episodes has grown a stubble that is more impressive than Boims’ shaggy growth.
It’s especially nice that their differences didn’t evolve into an episode-long, passive aggressive competition between comrades over who’s is the better — oh, hello Tendi. Didn’t see you there.
“We’ll have to lick it off” had me reeling.
I found the lurkey quite funny this episode, even if it was a bit of an embellished and exaggerated character.
And my goodness, I love the guest star that they found on the time dilation planet in this episode: The Vasquez Rocks.
Much more affordable at animation rates!
I enjoyed this one more than last week’s - I think I’m calibrated to prefer the more heartfelt episodes over the sillier ones. And this one added “the purple D” to the lexicon, so that’s…a real legacy, is what it is.
The Mariner subplot was pretty thin, and probably could have been cut entirely.
I second many of your points. And, also…
“the purple D”
Had me immediately thinking, “Well, STO vanity shields are canon now, I guess.”
Heartfelt usually but not always equals The Tendi Effect on LD to me hah. I agree about the subplot being weak - both for Mariner and also Boimler/Rutherford which was pretty much a slapstick sketch.
I would’ve liked to see something like Boims struggling to think of a first book to take to T’Ana’s book club, with Ruthie enthusiastically but haplessly trying to suggest things (usually engineering related)
Annotations for 5x07 up at: https://startrek.website/post/16832667