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.
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.
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)