Don't think they're including shuttlecraft. It's a bit hard to read but I can't see the Cerritos' Death Valley scanning through that area of the alphabet. I do note that Discovery is there in both original and -A format, which might be contentious since the ship is its own refit.

If it makes you feel better, Captain Chakotay had normal pips by the time the Protostar was commissioned. Guess Janeway just didn't want to grant ranks away from Starfleet proper.

Star Trek does this thing where formal rank isn't actually as important as being in the captain's in-group. Can you name anything important that provisional Lt. JG Ayala did on the USS Voyager? I sure as hell can't, but it was less important than Harry "eternal ensign" Kim.

As much as the Lower Decks gang would like to think of themselves as unimportant, they're very much confidants of the Cerritos' senior staff so it's illogical, but consistent for Boimler to be at the top of the list for acting captain when stuff's going down.

Out of universe it's obviously a narrative/screen time thing, I'd say you've just got to accept it and move on.

u/Stamets likes his Star Trek hot folks to be fully clothed, damnit! Like Captain Pike! or Doctor Culber! or Captain Pike!

Rutherford hanging out with Freeman is presumably setup for the finale, giving us three perspectives without compromising the focus on the main gang. He did feel a little tacked on though.

Dunno why they didn't bother promoting this episode, it was great. I was initially skeptical that it was just going to be a "Mariner is angsty" episode without much of a payoff, but they finally revealed everything. And they gave Ma'ah screen time doing it!

The confirmation of how the Dominion War scarred Mariner wasn't much of a surprise, but the tie back to the Lower Decks of old was. What an absolutely crushing reason to lose the optimism in what Starfleet can be. Props to Tawny Newsome for some good voice acting for an emotionally vulnerable moment.

Minor complaint/discontinuity: in this episode Mariner seemed surprised that T'Lyn was present at the fight against the Pakleds and the Klingon BoP in Wej Duj, although I seem to recall T'Lyn explicitly referencing that incident to her in Empathological Fallacies.

Speculation about next week: I'd hazard a guess that Locarno is a thematic version of what Mariner could become if she isn't careful. He's a Starfleet ace gone bad, and also Sito's former friend, so he's presumably got a lot to sell her on the troublemaker's life.

God, I typed a lot and didn't even get to Freeman's misdirection this episode. It was good, watch it!

I mean if you look at Burnham and Sarek's relationship in Discovery he did a pretty dang good job beating the human emotion out of her.

Sure, this kinda fucked her up emotionally in a way the series tragically didn't look into nearly enough after season 1, but you can't say that his methods never worked.

A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn't solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.

Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn't list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she's been in Daystrom for less than two years.

IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn't an anomaly, Rutherford's got it bad for Tendi. It's kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.

I can honestly see them pulling the trigger on it at the end of this season. This season's pretty emphatically pushing the gang past their former status quo-- Mariner has supportive superiors, now what? Boimler is in charge sometimes, now what? Figuring this romance situation out would just be running with the theme of growth and change.

I'm happy either way they end up, although I think Rutherford's comment about green eyes is telegraphing there's something there, even if he and Tendi are oblivious to it.

Loved this one, prob my favorite of the season so far. We've had Tendi's attitude towards her own Orion heritage hanging over her character this entire show (plus a touch of SNW), so it's fun to finally dive deeper. I like how T'lyn was used here-- basically as a manifestation of Tendi's friends prying into her personal life. I wasn't expecting Mariner's main role this episode to be running gag, but hey, it worked.

The plot resolution (at least on the character arc side) wasn't super surprising, but I think it works and goes beyond where we last left the thread of Tendi's pirate identity in season 3. On DS9 it felt like she just saw herself as a trained pirate trying to be a scientist, here we have the gang affirming that the scientist is Tendi's real self. For those of you reading queer allegories onto Tendi, this episode just makes them all the deeper.

The Brutherford B-plot was incredibly silly, even as LD plots go. It's not deep, but I think it was just audaciously funny enough to work. I was initially skeptical of how they just yadda-yadda'd past the guys' conflict resolution on the holodeck. I think it works because it heightens captain Freeman's (and the audience's) disbelief that they'd expect their petty Seinfeld shenanigans would translate to any useful diplomatic measures.

Other notes:

• The big guy from the B-plot friggin' threw Shaxs. might be the first time we've seen Shaxs succumb to the so-called Worf effect
• T'lyn seemed to accept a group hug at the end with nary a raised eyebrow. So un-Vulcan!
• Tendi's great-grandmother Astrea had the same title Mistress of the Winter Constellations, and if the bouncer's reaction is any indication it's related to D'vana being her family's prime--does that imply Astrea also had a similar path in life before ending up on the science ship D'Var?

yeah it's missing a bit where the ensign falls in front of Captain Gomez. As portrayed in the subsequent panels though she's extremely chill about it.

Stamets: Put mushrooms in it. It made it work better, but Reno made fun of him anyway.

Billups: Took 30 years just to spend extra time away from his mother's royal consorts.

Jankom Pog: What, you think Trip acted alone?