I enjoyed this episode, even if it was a little bit lower decks by numbers. It had little of the zaniness of early LDS, and it was more genuinely funny than the first two episodes of the season. It also had pretty complete (if out of nowhere) character arcs for both Mariner and Boimler.
In the A plot, Mariner and company try and defeat a swarm of nanites while she deals with unresolved closure from her relationship with Jennifer. I'll admit I never cared about their relationship - I don't think the show ever wanted us to care, and Jennifer was honestly never characterized beyond kind of being a bitch (not being misogynistic here, that's all that's there). So the episode wisely instead focuses on Mariner's stunted emotional maturity/lack of communication skills. She has to put her big girl pants on in order to work together with Jennifer to save the others. Everything is put on speedrun, because this is Lower Decks, but this arc works well enough.
I was, however, a bit disappointed with the nanites themselves. Like probably everyone, I was presuming these were the "smart nanites" that Wesley accidentally made in TNG, so having them be a big dumb object which operated out of plot convenience was pretty nowhere. The realization they're being "controlled" somehow by a microscopic Federation ship from another dimension was also just weird. I know this was to somehow link it to the season-long arc (which apparently involves the anomalies), but I was left with so many questions, given I don't think the ship was actively trying to destroy things/roll over people.
Turning to Boimler's B-plot with Ransom and Billups, it was...fine? I feel like we've seen this dozens of times now. Boimler has often made a wrong realization, only to wise up in the third act. He's also frequently used as a show punching bag. I liked the idea of an admiral with "Boimler-like" elements tempting him to leave, but the dude is such an uptight stick-in-the-mud that there was zero tension - even manufactured tension. That said, elements of this were genuinely amusing, such as using slippery sunblock as part of a "fighting style."
In the end, both plots should have been standalone episodes, as neither has time to say much profound about their characters given like 10 minutes of runtime. But the jokes here were better than in the first two episodes, so I still think this is an above-average episode of the series.
