Review: Star Trek Lower Decks “Mugato, Gumato”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Boimler and Rutherford are told a weird rumor about Mariner right before a mission to save some space gorillas, while Tendi tries getting everyone who missed their medical check up.

OUR TAKE

Well, good news is that this episode didn’t really make me feel like I was missing a lot of key references! In fact apparently the Mugato are from the original series, which I’ve actually seen! But unfortunately, this episode definitely felt the weakest of the season thus far. Maybe that’s because they’ve gotten comfortably back into the status quo after so many shake-ups and revelations in the past few episodes, maybe it’s because this isn’t an especially compelling premise, maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither. Incidentally, there’s a recurring gag about Boimler and Rutherford play a game where they goal is to reach a compromise that nobody likes, which I feel like is how the writing of this episode went. I guess not every episode needs to be a home run, but to follow this metaphor, I wouldn’t call this even a bunt. That’s a thing, right? I don’t watch sports.

It’s still fun in its own ways and gives Boimler and Rutherford an episode together finally, just like last week finally gave Mariner and Tendi an episode together. Glad they’re mixing up the pairings and not just sticking to Mariner-Boimler and Rutherford-Tendi. Also, I guess this season has a recurring theme of putting Tendi in hot outfits, since last week had her in the Orion outfit with the belly window and here she’s in a lab coat, which doesn’t seem like it would be all that hot but sometimes less is more, you know? Also also, Shax is still around so we’re sticking with him just being back I guess? But the new guy from the second episode is also around, so are we going to do more with him? There’s not NO continuity, but we seem to have gone back to a more comfortable place for the writing team for the moment, for better or worse.

Yeah, I would say this one is kind of a dud. It doesn’t really make me less excited for the remaining six episodes or anything, it’s just…not great. I guess if you had to pick a time to have a mediocre episode, this is PROBABLY a good time to get that out of the way. We haven’t reached the halfway point, we’ve got plenty of room to improve on it, it’s not so bad that it taints anything coming up, it’s just…there. Maybe that’s worse than being plain bad because then I’d have something to talk about. Ah well.