The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel)

Going from some of the best episodes of not just 'DS9,' but Trek itself (the seven-episode station occupation serial), to... this... I know modern Trek wanted to be all things to all people, all flavours, etc, it does stick out how vastly dissimilar Trek made in this century, or at least this past decade, has been. And I know which I prefer. So while we can have absolute classic stories of great character and writing from all those years back, we also have this current stuff, or fluff, a bit like going from playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild' to some squarely average game, as I also did earlier in the year - whatever comes after is not going to hold up. But even if you take 'DS9' out of the equation this is not one of the starring instalments of the series. I have zero interest in the soapy Mariner subplot about her trials with Jennifer (it even irks me that an Andorian would be called Jennifer), although at least this story writes that character out of the series for good. And it's true that if you remove that C-plot from the episode there's some passable interplay in the other two subplots, but they're also pretty slight.

I think one thing that irritates, and has done throughout this era of Trek from the first season of 'DSC' where they had to mention The Beatles, to countless other examples, is their insistence in ingratiating themselves with whomever they assume is the audience these days by referencing pop culture rather than just Trek culture. The title itself is a play on the film(s), 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,' and I suppose you could draw some kind of parallel with the AWOL Admiral being an old man, and it does take place on an interstellar cruise ship which is basically a holiday resort, but otherwise it seems designed to make people point at the title with some kind of joyful recognition, and little else, whereas for me it takes me out of it. The bigger reference is obviously 'Apocalypse Now' (and perhaps if we're generous, 'Heart of Darkness,' the story it was based on - with a side order of 'The Blob'). It's not a film (or story), I love, so it doesn't win any points for that. I didn't think it quite made sense, either, since why would an Admiral have a ship in order to go and milk 'space whales' in the first place, that's not what Admirals do. Checking back on the line it could be inferred he was talking about earlier in his career when he was a Captain, but then why wait until he'd become Admiral to rebel? I also always find it such a typically modern attitude to Starfleet duty and life in general when a character complains of boredom. It's a state of mind, while Trek's supposed to be inspirational, full of the kind of exploration and joy of discovery that made it seem so optimistic and adventurous and why the best of the best applied in the first place!

Okay, so the Admiral's point was he didn't get to do exciting missions, but it all reminded me of that stupid scene in 'Beyond' where 'Kirk' (or the modern facsimile of a character called Kirk), suggests every day blends together in space and is basically saying the same thing: it's a boring day job most of the time. Indulgent rubbish for the younger generation who expect to be stimulated at all times rather than putting their own minds to it. They could have pulled it back a bit by connecting with the trope of Admirals being behind a desk and emphasising that side, which can be valid (again, just having seen Sisko restricted to desk work with Admiral Ross and his yearning to go back into the field with his crew as opposed to the greater number of lives his decisions are having on the war effort is just one example of how much more complexity there was in that series), and we've seen so many of the rank behave badly that it's ripe ground for exploration, even on the surface-level jokey style of this series. I did quite enjoy the three 'bros,' Ransom, Billups and Boimler on a mission together, it's the kind of thing Trek would do as a series progressed, pairing up some characters you don't necessarily see together all that much. The gag about Billups wanting to be called 'Gilbert,' while Ransom says he should have a more 'normal' alias like Zandy, was fun, as was Boimler's reference to being a canary (from Manhaver's concern Ransom treats his subordinates cavalierly and experimentally, like sending the canary into the coal mine in case of poisonous gas or lack of oxygen), which was also used well, Billups assuming it's because it's hard to think of an animal that skis! (Later hilarious when Boimler pleads he's not the canary and they agree with him even though they haven't a clue what he's talking about).

They can always come up with the kind of lines you'd never find elsewhere in Trek (like one of the Admiral's acolytes who voices the fact they can't get hold of Boimler who'd rubbed suncream all over himself: "It's like trying to grab a string bean"), but it's also nice to see Boimler's perceived deficiencies (being skinny and hyper-prepared), as useful in certain situations, though the joke about them wanting him along for the undercover operation because he's good at crawling through ducts seems more like a 'Mission: Impossible' joke, even if Trek characters were forever crawling through such spaces. Ransom claiming Boimler's a capable, prepared officer to an unhealthy degree is too true, but the fact Boimler's so delighted he noticed says everything about the character! Just a shame he's looking so scruffy with his 'arc' of growing the alternate dimension Boimler's beard at an early stage. The true arc of the season is of course the inter-dimensional fissures, so I did enjoy the connection to the Nanites' story here, which made that more palatable - otherwise it didn't make sense that these computer creatures would dash around in a glob, sucking up everything, but you just put it down to the typical zaniness of the series and try not to take it too seriously.

At least there was some kind of rationale for it with this alternate dimension Intrepid-class starship from a microscopic reality, trapped within the glob and trying to get enough energy to create a portal back home. Obviously they're doing a lot of 'Voyager' callbacks with the ship trying to get home and saying it's been a 'month of Hell' (rather than the temporal year of Hell Voyager was trapped in), and it neatly tied up the other story with the Admiral's new mission to focus on getting this ship home (even if he should be court-martialled in reality!). 'Evolution,' the 'TNG' episode that introduced Nanites, wasn't one of the best (especially as a season opener - people often forget that the season the series found its footing and became good, began with such a dreary episode!), and Nanites certainly weren't required again, but it's exactly the kind of one-episode wonder concept 'LD' likes to toy with, so no surprises there.

In case anyone watching was concerned 'LD' only Trekferences the old series' (other than poking fun at the ridiculousness of such things as 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films), they do throw in Boimler's mention of the Gormagander as an example of a 'space whale' (though he follows it up with a Trekference to 'those Galaxy's child things' - a bit too on the nose, as we've seen before when Mariner's mentioned actual episode titles, though at least you can rationalise it as either the official, or casual, designation given to the creatures in 'Galaxy's Child'), and he's clearly thinking of it joyfully, so 'LD' doesn't actually hate 'DSC' (how could they, it provided so much for the series to laugh at!). The big Trekference of the piece was finally showing us what Gallamites look like after all that talk from Jadzia in 'DS9' about Captain Boday and his transparent skull - I wasn't too impressed with the design. I know it's only a gag, but if you're going to show something that had existed only in the imagination of fans for decades you need to put some serious thought into it. I feel they should have considered how Michael Westmore might have achieved the look in makeup and prosthetics - I know it's only my imaginings, but I always felt they'd have quite long, skeletal, humanoid faces, but with pretty much entirely transparent heads, while here they were just grey, Clayface shark monsters with a little brain dome on top. But that's the thing, it's never going to satisfy everyone which makes you wonder if it was a good idea to even try, especially as it was merely a throwaway visual gag.

Fun to see the Kreetassens from 'Enterprise' again, though you'd have to wonder how they would even end up on a facility that contained other races when by this time they'd know every other race has no problem eating in public. The joke worked in 'Enterprise' because neither the Kreetassens nor humans had ever heard of the other, or met before, so such extreme cultural offence would be natural. Not so two hundred years later, you would think... While I'm nitpicking, I didn't understand Krog's admission he was a big fan when addressing T'Lyn's work. Did he mean Vulcans in general since he's taken on some of their philosophy? Otherwise it's a little hard to believe (even in an episode about a giant Nanite cluster barrelling around a resort, I like things to make sense!). I do find myself hearing the other actors when they do voices for guest characters, such as Marcus Henderson who returned as his usual Jet Manhaver, but also played Krog, or Dawnn Lewis as the Kreetassen woman - granted there's not a lot of Captain Freeman in the episode, so maybe that's why they give people a little something extra to do? I think on the whole the episode was rather disappointing, like they're not really using the little time they have left very well, and I come away feeling they're on a downward curve this final season.

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