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The latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is called ‘Mugato, Gumato’, which is a reference to the creatures that appear in this episode but also the amusing nonsense of the original TOS episode. There, the creatures were written one way, but one of the actors couldn’t pronounce it, so they switched the spelling, but then some of the actors pronounced it entirely differently again.
Thus Boimler’s little note about how the creatures are inconsistently named and the truly hilarious moment when Shaxs refers to them as ‘mugatus’ and then as ‘gumatos’ in the very next sentence. Right before they all head down to their alien ‘animal control op’, the classic bartender Honus tells Rutherford and Boimler that Mariner is a secret black ops agent. Although it doesn’t actually make sense, at a surface level, you could almost see how possible it might be.
Thus the conflict becomes Rutherford and Boimler worrying about Mariner and her uncanny ability to kick ass, but ultimately serves to give us more depth — the two are really worried (just like Tendi was in the first episode with Rutherford) that Mariner is simply too cool to want to be friends with two super nerds like them.
It’s a nice little thematic throughline, and I also really liked how they used the Diplomath, the amazing game invented for the show (which could totally sell in the real world) as the way to convince the Ferengi by showing a cost-benefit analysis. It’s naturally the perfect way to convince the Ferengi to change their ways, and suddenly they’re running a preserve for the endangered mugatos/gumatos/etc instead of killing them.
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On the ship there are a few more little bits of business, like the Captain getting bamboozled by a random alien with a junk ship that self-destructed triggered by a mere tractor beam. And then there’s the little storyline with Tendi and her quest to scan a bunch of coworkers, but I felt that the plot felt a little under-served and rushed. There were certainly some funny moments, like Dr. T’Ana giving Tendi a slow clap (as slow clap jokes are always funny), but there was so much time dedicated to the other plotline it felt a bit unbalanced.
Overall, it was a pretty entertaining episode, with some nice character moments and growth — it’s nice to see Mariner and her physical badassness not always win the day. And it was also nice to see Boimler and Rutherford act as friends, in a way that Tendi and Mariner never had before last week’s episode — honestly, Boimler and Rutherford do have a lot in common so the pairing really does make sense.
Standout moments were the delight of Rutherford and Boimler losing at Diplomath, the fact that the creatures have genitals sensitive to phaser fire, the term ‘tractor factor’, and the Patingi alien immediately getting his head ripped off quite gruesomely (if amusingly). The ‘likes to watch’ joke was alright, but I suppose it’s a bit tired — it was still a pretty fun episode despite that.
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