Lower Decks S5E3: The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel
This week, the Cerritos docks with the Cosmic Dutchess, a Starbase-sized interstellar cruise ship, which needs the crew to deal with a nanobot infestation. The lower deckers are excited, both to play exterminator, and play around on the Dutchess afterwards. The only catch for Mariner is that Jennifer (Lauren Lapkis), her Andorian ex-girlfriend, abruptly tags along. They broke up in season 3, and Jen’s acting like that never happened.
As it turns out, it never actually did. Mariner just ghosted her, and assumed she got the message. Despite the two not speaking for a year, she somehow didn’t. But she tells Mariner she’s transferring to another ship, so rather than have to actually have the breakup conversation and deal with her emotions for a change, Mariner can just wait it out.
So she plays along and pretends they’re a happy couple headed for a tearful goodbye. But in her desire to get the day over with, she rushes through the mission, and ends up making everything worse. The mounting tension exposes the cracks in their not-really-still-a-relationship, until Mariner has no choice but to talk about it.
Boimler splits off from the group this week, as First Officer Ransom taps him for an undercover mission, in which the two of them and Chief Engineer Billups pose as vacationers, to track down a rogue Admiral who’s enjoying his vacation too much and won’t return to duty. Just as he’s getting ready to leave, Boimler meets the junior officer Ransom brought along on the previous mission — or what’s left of him. On his way to sickbay after losing both of his hands (don’t worry, it’s the future, they’ll grow back), he warns Boimler that Ransom “uses guys like us.”
That leads to Boimler second-guessing Ransom’s every order, but they do eventually find the Admiral, in what turns into an absurdist Apocalypse Now parody, with a Kurtz figure who’s more about relaxed vibes than horror. It’s a fun episode, but one that’s not easy to write about, since it’s all pretty straightforward. Both situations get resolved (and then tied together with a clever twist). It’s nothing earth-shattering, just another funny, smartly-put-together episode we could have used five more seasons of.
Stray Tachyons:
• Boimler’s still trying to grow a beard. He’s made very little progress, and somehow looks even worse than last week.
• Jennifer coming back after a season and a half is a bit out of left field, but the writers said they hadn’t realized she was a fan favorite and wanted to give her a send-off in the final season.
• T’Lyn’s favorite alien musician is on board the cruise ship, so there’s a fun runner of her fangirling out in an extremely restrained Vulcan way.
