7 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Lower Decks 5.1 — Dos Cerritos

9. UP — Science Fiction — Doubles Feature

No bat'leth competition this time, but there was Kal-toh. That one Vulcan puzzle game between Mariner and T'Lyn was in itself a neat bit of visual foreshadowing to the disruption in the once more orderly branches of the multiverse. It has already been confirmed that "spacetime potholes" are the theme this season. T'Lyn's 'solve-in-one' was then equally its own Easter egg (see Cetacean Observations for more on that).

Lower Decks thrives on taking specific — not to say niche — Trek precedent and going to warp 10 with it in the service of its characters. And there couldn't be better character development than doing it twice in the same episode, all in the aim of really just doing it once in the manner only sci-fi can.

Amongst all the lessons and fair forewarnings of roads taken/not taken was the on-point comedy we've come to expect. Double trouble had us doubled over by the hyper-confident, bearded, alternate Boimler, and the varying hair lengths of both versions of Shaxs who each got their prowess from "strangling Cardassians".

Other Billups was King, the two Kayshons had a terrific argument in Tamarian, and Ransom was still as attracted to himself. Where was Captain Freeman (the parallel version of our version — Carol, not Becky)? Starbase 80. The worst place in any universe!