This week’s ‘Lower Decks’ engages in old-school Trek tropes

This post contains minor spoilers for season two, episode four of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

If you were a Star Trek newbie, today’s episode of Lower Decks, “Mugato, Gumato,” is not a good place to start. It’s packed full of references across the franchise, including Beckett Mariner, Sam Rutherford and Brad Boimler engaging in a not-so-friendly match of anbo-jyutsu, the appearance of not-so-enlightened Ferengi and even the episode name, which references how no one can seem to agree on how to pronounce the creature whose name is spelled “mugato.”

However, after a season and a half, the show has already settled into a groove, and as a streaming program there’s no reason why “Mugato, Gumato” would be anyone’s first episode. Paramount+ would only pull up this one if last week’s “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” had recently been watched. With less need to be accessible, that leaves a show like Lower Decks free to dabble in continuity and in-jokes for the long-time fans.

Fan service is often derided for being gratuitous at best, and an act of gatekeeping at worst. After nearly 55 years and over 800 episodes aired, Star …read more