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LOW LOW Season 2

We’ll Always Have Tom Paris & Mugato, Gumato

In “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”, Mariner and Tendi team up for a mission to retrieve an heirloom for Dr. T’Ana. Meanwhile, the Cerritos is visited by Lieutenant Tom Paris, much to the excitement of Boimler, who is hoping to meet him. While all this happens, Rutherford is haunted by the mystery surrounding the reappearance of a familiar presence on the Cerritos.

In “Mugato, Gumato”, the USS Cerritos is dispatched to a planet to investigate an unexplained sighting of a dangerous Mugato.

In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” and “Mugato, Gumato”. Plus! The duo chats about the trope of bringing back the dead, the lack of a central lead character, and Star Trek: Lower Decks bringing pathos into its narratives.

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The second season of Star Trek: Lower Decks continues to reset everything that happened in the first season with the latest pair of episodes. “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” and “Mugato, Gumato” mix up the character pairings, bring back characters from the dead, and potentially cross the line of good taste!

The Wikipedia plot summary for “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”:

T’Ana sends D’Vana on a mission to retrieve an important family heirloom, and Mariner joins her. Picking it up is easy enough, but the two decide to take a sneak peak and while playing with it, it is broken. Mariner disguises herself as an Orion to fix it, but when the guise wears off, they are attack and escape without the heirloom. They return to T’Ana, resigned, but T’Ana says that she only wanted the box to play in. Rutherford sees Shaxs walking around, and, startled that the man who was previously believed dead, is alive. He is assured that bridge crew is always revived and returns to normal, but is still shaken. When Rutherford sees Shaxs cry at the mention of his death, he is cautious to ask about the method of his return. When he finally builds up the courage to do so, Shaxs tells him terrifying secrets that scar Rutherford forever. Meanwhile, Tom Paris boards the ship and Boimler wants to meet him and have him sign his commemorative plate. The computer does not recognize his voice as he returned so recently, so he crawls through the Jefferies tube to get to the bridge.

The Wikipedia plot summary for “Mugato, Gumato”:

The Cerritos is assigned after a Mugato, a rare breed of species is found on a planet that is not its own. (The Mugato species first appeared in the Star Trek episode “A Private Little War”.) Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford as assigned to go down with Shaxs and the rest of the away team, but not before Boimler and Rutherford learn from the bartender that Mariner may be a Section 31 spy. On the trip, they find that the Mugatos are being harvested by Ferengis, and in a climactic prison break on the Mugato’s part, Boimler and Rutherford see Mariner killing Shaxs and biting his wound. They run away, and meet an expert on Mugatos who is revealed to be a sham and subsequently killed. They find Mariner and she convinces them she is not a spy, and together they propose a friendly way to profit off the Mugatos to the Ferengis that lets the animals roam free. Meanwhile, one of the Ferengis’ buyers arrives on the Cerritos and tries and fails to swindle Captain Freeman while Tendi is enlisted by T’Ana to gather medical scans, only for Tendi to realize T’Ana was never scanned either.

In this episode of the podcast, Wes and Clay discuss “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” and “Mugato, Gumato”. Plus! The duo chats about the trope of bringing back the dead, the lack of a central lead character, and Star Trek: Lower Decks bringing pathos into its narratives.