WHY WE LIKE IT: Secretly part of the season's arc.
WHY WE DON'T: A lot of plot contrivances.
REVIEW: It makes sense for the last season of something called "Lower Deck" where the characters are now Lieutenants junior grade, moving towards "Mid-Decks", to give them more to do and deal with a career in Starfleet. Boimler's "side-quest" with Ransom and Billups is the purest manifestation of this. Ransom's reputation for putting junior officers in extreme danger, like canaries in a coal mine, is both warranted and debunked (in terms of motivation anyway) because he actually believes the officer 1) wants this duty and 2) can definitely handle it. Looking at the episode a second time, Boims is not actually in danger until he is, and he is usually either because he was nervous and preoccupied (breaking those aliens' taboo), or as something unexpected (the ski sequence). In the end, Ransom opens up and Boimler pretty much single-handedly rescues his comrades AND gives the missing admiral a new lease on life.
With Mariner, it's more about how Starfleet officers maintain romantic relations (or don't) with Jennifer seemingly unaware that Mariner broke up with her the previous year. Or really, ghosted her and hoped for the best, to avoid a confrontation (with an Andorian? seems wise). Mariner is usually too cool for school, so it's fun to see her so discombobulated, trying to rush through a mission, so that she can get out of this awkward moment. Jennifer is breaking it off anyway, moving on to another ship, so keep your head down, call her "babe", and don't say the wrong thing. The question of how this misunderstanding can be possible over such a long time is well answered - Mariner's own parents are separated by their roles in Starfleet. SF relationships are intermittent, but don't need to be weaker for it. To Jennifer's credit, she's trolling Mariner. She knows she's been ghosted and doesn't appreciate her inability to get closure. It all ends pretty amicably once they talk it out, and the two women work well together on the mission goals.
But while the characters are well served, the plotting is a little lazy. The resort/cruiseship might as well be a planet, with what being on a ship actually brings to the story. The references to T'Lyn being a fan of vibe tube player Krog are an obvious unfired phaser that telegraphs how vibe tubing will be the solution to the Globus nanites. Krog even gets captured by the nanite polyhedral, but is stuck in a net, forcing T'Lyn to tube the vibes herself. It's all quite silly. Lower Decks is silly, I'll give you that, but it doesn't usually feel so, well, cartoonish. Throw in an admiral singularly tasked with milking space whales and you're well over the line. I might also mention the first visual appearance of transparent-skulled Gallamites making them look a lot more monstrous than Dax's crush would allow. The saving grace: The nanites are acting up because there's a microscopic Intrepid-class (the "Month of Hell" reference didn't fall on deaf ears) directing them, revealing in the closing moments that this episode is part of the multiverse arc. That's cleverly done. The rest, not so much.
LESSON: Assumptions are anathema to communication. They also make an ASS out of U and ME.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Good character work earns forgiveness for the naff story.
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