I enjoyed this one more than last week's - I think I'm calibrated to prefer the more heartfelt episodes over the sillier ones. And this one added "the purple D" to the lexicon, so that's...a real legacy, is what it is.
The Mariner subplot was pretty thin, and probably could have been cut entirely.
Heartfelt usually but not always equals The Tendi Effect on LD to me hah. I agree about the subplot being weak - both for Mariner and also Boimler/Rutherford which was pretty much a slapstick sketch.
I would've liked to see something like Boims struggling to think of a first book to take to T'Ana's book club, with Ruthie enthusiastically but haplessly trying to suggest things (usually engineering related)