Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x5 "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" Review

 rating: **

the story: The Cerritos hosts an inconveniently nervous ambassador.

the review: It seems obvious that "Dooplers" was meant to be the Lower Decks equivalent of tribbles, and whether you think this is a good or bad thing, it's the highlight of the episode, other than the continuing attempts to explore lingering character arcs.

At this point, it's clear that the season was quite determined to linger on those arcs throughout its course.  Rutherford still can't settle into the fact that his implant essentially rebooted his whole character, Mariner can't decide how she feels about Boimler's time aboard the Titan, and so these things are rehashed while other subplots have Mariner and Boimler attempting to crash an exclusive Starfleet party (which eventually concludes with failure, but their discovery that Kirk & Spock failed to find their way in, too, in a previous generation) (which seems kind of ridiculous, if you think about it too much).  

Surprisingly, it's Captain Freeman, in her efforts to resolve the duplicating Doopler crisis (I wish they'd come up with a more creative name for the species), doing so by being gruff, the first time she gets to be successful just by being herself (it comes up again in the season finale), who shines in the episode.  Since there's so much happening around this, and the brunt of the effect of the whole thing hinging on the ambassador's hilarious embarrassment, "Dooplers" ends up losing a valuable opportunity to take a victory lap (which, again, is probably something the producers themselves figured out, given the season finale).

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The echo of "The Trouble with Tribbles" is worth savoring, plus the restraint in not actually featuring tribbles.
• series - There's the sense that, given the overall emphasis on the Pakleds in other episodes, that another set of gimmick aliens just here to be ridiculous might be Lower Decks overextending its hand.
• character - Even if everyone else kind of feels like they're treading water, Freeman gets a small nudge in a positive direction.  She's no longer just Mariner's mom!
• essential - If the episode had leaned more on the Dooplers, or Freeman, it might have been.