• The episode title is a reference to a British comedy drama, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, starring Dame Judy Dench, who voices the character Krog.
• Captain Freeman records the stardate as 59393.7.
• Judging by the amount of facial hair growth Boimler’s exhibited over the course of the three episodes this season, we can assume that so far the entire season has taken place over about 17 hours.
• The cruise ship, the Cosmic Duchess has a number of habitat domes attached to it, very similar to the habitat domes we see attached to Starbase One in various episodes of SNW.
• Freeman claims the Cosmic Duchess is the size of a moon. Though moons can vary fairly wildly in size, even if we’re talking about Pluto’s smallest moon, Styx, that still indicates the cruise ship is one of the largest structures we’ve seen in Trek, and perhaps the largest structure built by the Federation.
• Rogue nanites were also the problem in the TNG episode “Evolution”.
• ”One of the space casinos has a bunch of Dixon Hill slot machines.” Dixon Hill is the fictional hard boiled detective, whose adventures Captain Picard enjoys playing out on the holodeck, as first seen in “The Big Goodbye”.
• In space, they just call them casinos.
• It’s Jennifer! From Star Trek! Jennifer is played by Lauren Lapkus.
• Jennifer has not had a speaking role in the show since season three’s “Trusted Sources”, where she and Mariner seemingly broke up over the erroneous belief that Mariner betrayed the trust of the USS Cerritos crew by bad mouthing them to a FNN reporter; yet in the first scene this episode with her, Jennifer is acting as though they’re still an item.
• Ransom recruits Boimler to locate the AWOL Admiral Milius. Milius is named for the screenwriter John Milius, who wrote such films as “Conan the Barbarian”, “Red Dawn”, and perhaps most relevant to this episode, “Apocalypse Now”.
• It’s Jet! From Star Trek! Jet is voiced by Marcus Henderson, and has not had a speaking role since season two’s “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.
• Jet’s hands were devoured by piranha bats, but Doctor T’Ana is going to grow him a new pair. Characters were artificial body parts include: Captain Picard [heart], Worf [spine], Geordi [eyes], Nog [leg], Ishka [heart], and Jack Crusher [personality]
• ”She gave me back a candle!” Mariner did not accept the return of the candle, telling Jennifer to give it to Castro.
• Jennifer is being prompted and transferred to the USS Manitoba. Usually the Manitoba is only ever mentioned alongside the USS Saskatchewan, and both are overshadowed by the other Prairie-class starship, the “USS Alberta”.
• ”There’s a bunch of Andorians on the ‘Toba*.”* As a species native to a moon covered in ice, Andorians are well suited to cold temperatures aboard the Manitoba.
• This is the first episode in which we see a Gallamite depicted on screen. Jadzia Dax dated a Gallamite named captain Boday, who was notable for his transparent skull and “toothy smile.”
• The Kreetassan vacationers are offended when Boilmer drinks a cocktail and eats in front of them, causing one to attack him before Ransom intervenes. It was established in “Vox Sola” that Kreetassans view eating the same way they do sex, an intimate and private act.
• ”Apparently one of Milius’ acolytes spends a lot of time at the top of the huge, dangerous mountain.” The mountain is very familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
• We learn that T’Lyn’s favourite musician is an individual named Krog, who plays an instrument called the vibe tubes. Though this is the first we’ve heard their name, the vibe tubes appeared in the TNG episode, “We’ll Always Have Paris”.
• ”You’re grabbing my genitals!” As Captain Kirk discovered in “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country”, ”Not everybody keeps their genitals in the same place.”
• Boimler refers to various space whales, mentioning the gormagander, introduced in “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”, and ”those galaxy’s child things,” from “Galaxy’s Child”. Previously Mariner was the only character to break the fourth wall in that fashion.
• When the nanite icosahedron strikes a palm tree and briefly stops, you can see a millinery in the background that has on displays hats similar to several that Guinan wore over the season of TNG, and some Bajoran vedic mitres.
• ”I can’t believe we’re going to get killed by a goddamn icosahedron.” Yet Mariner has been seen playing Bat’leths and BiHnuchs in “The Least Dangerous Game”.
• Rutherford locates a miniature Intrepid-class USS Endeavour. There have four other USS Endeavours, NCC-1895, NCC-25530, NCC-39222, and NCC-71805. Only the NCC-71805 was mentioned in dialogue, with the other three only appearing on charts and displays.
• We’ve previously seen a tiny ship when Jadzia Dax, Bashir, and O’Brien get shrank down along with their runabout in “One Little Ship”.
• ”We’ve been through a month of hell!” That is the longest length of time any Starfleet ship has gone through hell.
• Boimler appears to be drinking bloodwine out of the traditional mug, the sort of which were first seen in “Apocalypse Rising”.
Now now, let's not be normative about the speed of facial hair growth. Some people take longer filling in their mustache and beards than others, and this could easily be something like 17 days if Boimler has particularly slow and/or sparse facial hair.
Harsh, but true.
Besides, we all know that beards cannot grow in space.
Upvoted for "The State"
I would agree with you, if not for the fact that we've already seen Boimler's facial hair potential in Beardler. Unless that alternate universe iteration of Boimler was using some sort artificial hair growth enhancement, it was naturally quite full, which would indicate to me that prime universe Boimler has that same potential.
That's fair. But we do not know the specifics of that parallel universe Boimler's face fur: