Review: ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Takes The Low Road In “Mugato, Gumato”

Nope, just a concerned/annoyed party. Fans really need to get a grip on themselves. Zero and Ten aren’t the only options, holy hell folks. Nowadays, fan behavior is in more need of being called out than anything anyone is doing behind the scenes.

True. This is why I don’t involve myself into sci-fi fandom anymore. People are getting unbalanced.

Garth, I like you a lot man, but posts like this is when you do have to step back at times and remember you’re just watching a TV show. Star Trek is ‘real’ in the fictional sense (does that make any sense lol) but once you turn it off, you are back in reality, as much as some may hate it.

Alright Garth, I understand what you mean and I respect it. I’ve always really liked you even when we don’t agree on everything. Still disagree on some of it but I totally get your POV on it now that you explained it more and we’ll leave it at that! :)

Man what is with the hostility? You’re taking all this a little too personal lol. It’s just a conversation. I’m not saying I’m right, I’m only saying I don’t have a problem with them knowing at this point because of the points given. But OK, you do, fair enough. It’s just not a big deal to me at all because I feel the secret about Section 31 would be out by now.

So no, it wouldn’t surprise me at all they would know about Section 31. And my opinion is only based on what we seen. But one of your points were that if someone tell anyone they know about Section 31 then they would face some kind of consequences over that. Where are you getting this odd assumption Section 31 erases traces of who they are??? There has never been any consequences about it. Sloan told Bashir all about the organization and then five minutes later he told Sisko who contacted Starfleet about it directly. And then Sisko told everyone else about Starfleet’s responses which was a basically a shrug.

That’s my point, no one had any trouble just saying they know who Section 31 were and talked about them openly. Bashir didn’t get any death threats over it and then he told his friends on the station about it. Now most people knew about Section 31 on DS9. You have this odd assumption it stopped there. Why? Couldn’t others just hear about the group too ONCE someone outside of it knows about them and simply tell others. Did anyone at ANY point make a pledge never to speak their name again? Or not to tell others? No, right? And if I’m wrong, then please point it out to me.

Seriously point it out!!!!

And since you want to be VERY specific about this, as Sisko would say you REALLY want to do this? Ok, let’s DO it!!! In the second episode of the season, Mariner revealed to Tendi she WORKED on DS9! Right? And we don’t know how long she was on the station but we know she was there when Worf was on the station as well. And yes Worf knew about Section 31 as the rest of them. So maybe Mariner just heard about Section 31 on DS9 since it was an open secret on the station. And Mariner being Mariner just told whoever she wanted like her friends as well since she doesn’t care about rules and regulations all that much. But AS said, at no point did anyone on DS9 say their knowledge of Section 31 even had to stay a secret so that wouldn’t even matter.

OK, so since you wanted something more how they could have known, there it is! Now do I have ANY proof any of this happened, of course not lol. And yes Mariner could’ve left the station before Section 31 ever showed up, but we don’t know that she did or didn’t either. And now, do you have any proof this DIDN’T happen either? That’s the beauty of fiction man! ;D

But logically it can all fit right? Since you’re clearly not going to let this go, this is one very easy way others could’ve heard about them and yes directly through another source if you just don’t believe Section 31 became more known after the war. Not bad logic for a forty something year old ‘kid’.

And FYI, this isn’t the first time Section 31 was even referenced on Lower Decks. Boimler mentioned them last season too in ‘Envoys’. So yeah they established he knew about them for awhile now.

Live Long and Prosper!

What Prof. Crater said that is canon. It’s in “The Man Trap” itself and anything on TV or in a movie or in the books now (since 2019 because ViacomCBS said that they are to be considered canon now too.) is canon. And the Professor said that the Salt Vampire was the last of her kind and that they once could be found all over the planet, like the buffalo. That is a direct quote from the episode itself.

But you’re not gonna tell me that’s not canon. I know the difference between Alpha and Beta canon. That quote comes directly from the episode so that’s Alpha canon. She was the last of her kind.

Now the Salt Vampire in “The Squire Of Gothos” that was probably a completely different Salt Vampire or since that episode was so close to “The Man Trap”, Trelane might’ve plucked the image out of Captain Kirk’s or Dr.McCoy’s mind. Remember he was trying to pass himself off as a big game hunter?So having a creature from a species that was extinct falls in line with that MO. Also, he was trying to frighten them and the Salt Vampire physically attacked Captain Kirk so her image was probably still in his mind and Trelane might’ve plucked it from his mind and conjured up a Salt Vampire.

So there’s no telling if that was a real Salt Vampire or not because Trelane was conjuring up everything that day and remember it’s been rumored for years that Trelane was the proto-Q and that’s where his powers came from was the Q Continuum, supposedly. So everything in the castle was conjured up and plucked either out of the minds of the landing party or from the Enterprise’s data banks. Lower Decks using her to have sex with Ransom was a canon break. If they’d’ve given a reason as to how she could’ve been there a 120+ years later after the species went extinct then I might’ve bought it and it wouldn’t have broken canon.

But they didn’t so it broke canon. They brought her back just to use her in a joke and that’s not right. That’s disrespectful. Now the Salt Vampire in the Collector’s case, that one is logical and makes sense.

That could be a completely different Salt Vampire from a different era of her people because we don’t know how long the Collector was collecting for or just how old he was supposed to be. But he had Khan’s necklace from TWOK and I believe I saw a torpedo tube casing and that might’ve been Spock’s from TWOK. So the Collector was alive during TOS. I think they should do a short story anthology exploring how the Collector got certain items in his collection.

I think that would be pretty cool to read. Your story or theory about the Salt Vampires sounds plausible and possible. Too bad that Strange New Worlds anthology series wasn’t still around then you could’ve submitted your idea and maybe won a contract to write for the Star Trek novels 🙂. But as far as canon is concerned, I know what’s canon and what’s not.

I’ve been a full-blown Trekkie since I was 12 back in 1991, 30 years now. My first episode of Star Trek though was in 1985 and it was “The Trouble With Tribbles” and I watched that with my Mom. She was the one who got me into Star Trek. I watched “Encounter At Farpoint” when it first came on in 1987 with both my parents. I had a Geordie La Forge figure from the 1st season of TNG.

He was in his Ensigns uniform. I believe Galoob made those figures, I’m not sure 🙂. I watched The Best Of Both Worlds” when it first came out and then I had to wait from May until September to find out if Locutus blew away the Enterprise-D. I love all of Star Trek 💖 with all of my heart!

So I know what’s canon and what’s not. I had to learn about canon because, when I was a teenager, I thought William Shatner’s novels were canon and they’re not. So, what the Professor said in “The Man Trap” is canon. Oh, and your idea about how they might’ve used the psychic net is pretty neat!

But I think they used something similar on DS9 with the Founders because they only communicated telepathically when they were in the Great Link and that sounds just a little bit similar to your theory. But continue to dream and come up with theories, though. That’s the joy and the heart of Star Trek is to dream and imagine what’s out there in space. Live long and prosper 🖖.

Prof. Crater’s statement about the last Salt Vampire however did beg the question of how he obtained this information, hence my two different hypotheses of the Salt Vampires’ telepathic network and the Craters’ scanners. After rewatching the episode and looking at the transcripts of other episodes and movies, I must rule out or revise certain elements of my hypotheses. If Vulcans could sense across light years of space the collective scream of 400 Vulcans dying or the call of V’Ger (TOS: “The Immunity Syndrome”, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), then the hypothetical network of the even more telepathically powerful Salt Vampires could similarly have extended light years from their planet, rather than be planet-bound.

And in the hypothesis of the Craters’ scanners, one element that must be ruled out is the possibility of the couple using a spacecraft, a manned one, not a satellite, to scan the planet. During the search for Nancy Crater, the Enterprise used its own surface search equipment and found only Dr. Crater within a 100 mile (radius) circle. They did not even consider her to have traveled away in a vehicle. Since the crew did not make this consideration and did not search the whole planet and off-planet, then the Craters did not have a spacecraft or any other kind of vehicle, not even a car to travel to the other diggings that Prof. Crater mentioned, at least not one that could cover a 100 mile radius during the shortest time window for the search, 12 minutes 13 seconds, or during the longest, 9.1 hours.

I estimated the shortest window of 12 minutes 13 seconds from the time between video timestamps 15:44 and 27:57, and the longest window of 9.1 hours from the time between Stardates 1513.4 and 1513.8, minus the half hour in which McCoy performed the autopsy of Sturgeon, an autopsy time I based on his autopsy of two crewman between two of Scott’s consecutive roughly hour by hour callouts of when the U.S.S. Yorktown was expecting to rendezvous with the Enterprise (TOS: “Obsession”).

I should add that Prof. Crater’s statements about the last Salt Vampire also begs another question, that of how accurate and precise was his information about the creature being the last of its kind. Since he was a scientist – in one of the softer sciences that 23rd century technology would probably transform into a much harder one than it is today – he probably had to perform error analysis on this information. In the episode, he did seem to be 100% confident in his statement. However, scientific confidence about a piece of information depends on the accuracy and precision, design and calibration, and usage of the method for obtaining that information. The methods that I hypothesized – the Salt Vampire telepathic network and the Craters’ scanners – could not have been perfect. Even if the telepathic network could have reached cosmic distances and penetrate black hole event horizon barriers, the reliability of any reports from such a network would have depended on the veracity of what the Salt Vampire told Prof. Crater. Since it desperately needed love and salt, and killed people for salt by pretense, the honesty and mental health of the Salt Vampire are questionable. It could have told the Craters anything it wanted to tell them. Even though the Craters understood it, it still killed them.

As his wife was killed by the Salt Vampire, Prof. Crater’s own honesty and mental health are also questionable, as he lied for a killer, aiding and abetting it. So what he told the Enterprise was questionable as well.

Regardless of the professor’s honesty and mental health, if the Craters had scanners, the instruments would of course have provided an objective and repeatable method for determining the population of the Salt Vampires over time, from a population of millions down to a population of one, and for recording those determinations. However, their scanners would not have had the range and penetrability of Starfleet scanners.

So regardless of how Prof. Crater got his information about the last Salt Vampire, the Enterprise, after killing that creature, probably would have had to verify the professor’s information, using its own more powerful scanners, in order to determine if conservation laws, the Prime Directive, and a security status applied, as well as to conduct scientific research.

In LD: “Veritas,” Ransom said the Salt Vampires had died out over a century before. His statement was probably based on the verifications by the Enterprise, rather than on Prof. Crater’s information.

However, in TOS: “The Naked Time,” Spock said, “Instruments register only those things they’re designed to register. Space still contains infinite unknowns.” This leaves room for the possibility of other Salt Vampires elsewhere in the Galaxy.

As for Lower Decks using a Salt Vampire to have sex with Ransom in LD “Veritas,” I think this show was actually using this particular creature to provide an instance of the senior officers messing up “all” the time, this particular mess-up being one of the first officer’s alien dates for which he did not do research, about which he – thinking that the Salt Vampires had died out – dismissed Mariner’s warning, and by which he was apparently attacked off screen.

The show was also giving another, more intense glimpse of Beckett – who she said she had “seen stuff” – detecting dangerous beings and warning people about them ever since she saw, back when she was serving on the Quito, a secret Harvongian Shape-Changer apparently eat her friend Angie (LD, “Cupid’s Errant Arrow”).

I understand that if the show had given a reason how a Salt Vampire could have been in “Veritas” after the species had become extinct, you might have bought it. Since the show has been escalating the glimpses of Mariner sleuthing out dangerous beings, perhaps a future episode will give a reason, along with an explosive climax.

Just for fun, I will try to come up with my own reason anyway. In a park near where I live are a number of buffalo whose ancestors were transplanted far from the prairies over a century ago. If the Salt Vampires’ civilization never became advanced enough to develop star travel, then perhaps a number of them could have been transplanted far from M-113 by a civilization or organization that did have starships. Since the Zibalian Collector Kerner Hauze had a Salt Vampire in his collection, then the Zibalians or the Collector’s Guild probably did the transplantation, or collection, or abduction (TNG: “The Most Toys”) of that particular creature. If Hauze was long-lived, then he might have been the Zibalian or collector who did the collection. Or he might have inherited it from an ancestor who collected it. Or he could have bought it or traded for it or stole it from a chain of collectors going back to the one who actually collected the poor creature in the first place. A similar chain of inheritance, purchases, trades, or thefts could have happened to the items that you identified as Khan’s necklace and Spock’s torpedo casing, and many of the other items in Hauze’s collection.

I imagine that before the extinction of its kind on its planet, this particular Salt Vampire was collected alive, as Data had been collected alive by Kivas Fajo. It then lived a long, sad, and dreary life in a collection. And upon its death, this extremely intelligent being was taxidermied like a dumb beast.

The Salt Vampire that intruded on the Cerritos could have been the descendant of collectees like Hauze’s, a descendant that had somehow escaped its collector and ended up on the Cerritos.

Like Dracula, the Salt Vampires keep coming back.

Sorry for posting so many long comments.