9 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Lower Decks 5.3 — The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel

Third time's a vibe for a Vulcan this week, as T'Lyn (and Gabrielle Ruiz) gives another outstanding performance. The one-liners were, as ever, pitch-perfect. "Assumptions are anathema to communication" deserves to be noted with the greats. T'Lyn's fascination with Krog, "master of the vibe tubes," was remarkable. Krog, a practitioner of Vulcan logic, was then equally intrigued by T'Lyn.

In all this, Lower Decks continues to prove its mastery of the Star Trek minutiae. With thanks to Jörg Hillebrand for pointing this out, the "vibe tubes" (we now know they're called) — a kind of 24th century theremin — were first seen briefly in the background at the Café des Artistes in Star Trek: The Next Generation's We'll Always Have Paris. To take that otherwise forgettable detail and transpose it up into character construct, arc, and plot resolution is its own fine melody.

It's not like the Vulcans don't have their well-established and keen sense of music — the Vulcan lute goes all the way back to the earliest days of Star Trek. We've never seen fandom from a Vulcan quite like this, however, but then T'Lyn has been an iconoclast from day one. All we ask is that she be allowed to play on!