“Mugato, Gumato,” by Ben Rodgers, is Star Trek: Lower Decks’ first foray into edgier adult comedy whose laughs relies on grossing you out. While it is still an enjoyable episode of the show in many respects, a lot of the gross-out humor at play here does not feel like it quite fits comfortably in Star Trek.

I applaud the show for trying out different styles of humor to find the full palate of jokes that work in a Star Trek context, but I am not sure The Hangover-style humor necessarily lands in all cases here.

For every joke that did get a laugh out of me — like Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) continuously tasting Mugato dung, or Patingi the Tellarite getting his head ripped off by a Mugato — the funniest jokes were still the ones deeply tied to Star Trek lore.

For example, I adored that one of the jokes at the heart of this episode relies on the production history of the episode that first introduced the Mugato. The shooting script (and closing credits) for “A Private Little War” called the animal creature “The Gumato, but after DeForest Kelley continues to mispronounce the alien as “Mugato,” the rest of the show’s dialogue was changed to match.

Every “mugato,” “mugooto,” and “gumato” joke in this episode worked for me, given no character would pronounce it the same way twice in succession — notice when Shaxs beams down he uses one version in the transporter room, and then the two others in quick succession once reading the surface of Frylon IV.

That kind of joke was much funnier to me than Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) getting stuck in a dead tree trunk while two of the creatures mated against it… as another one watched.

I also liked the dynamics between Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Boimler, and Rutherford in this episode. The idea that Boimler and Rutherford get taken in by a rumor — started by Mariner herself, we learn — that she is a rogue Starfleet black ops agent adds an interesting dimension to the episode, and deepens the relationship between the characters by showing how the “cool” Mariner and the supremely “uncool” Boimler and Rutherford work together as a team.

And ultimately, it’s not Mariner’s anbo-jyutsu skills that get the Cerritos’s crew out of a Ferengi prison, but it’s Boimler and Rutherford’s nerd skill at Diplomath, the Federation equivalent of the Ferengi game Tongo.

Tendi (Noel Wells) also gets another nice storyline in this episode with Dr. T’Ana (Gillian Vigman), who like most doctors turns out to be her own worst patient — and how like in other stories throughout Trek history, many officers give the ship’s medical staff a hard time when it comes to their annual check-ups.

While there wasn’t a great deal of substance to her diagnostic mystery, I’m okay with a lot more cat jokes from this duo.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• The Denobulan researchers seen briefly after the opening credits possess the same defensive mechanism as Doctor Phlox displayed in “Home,” puffing out their faces in response to being threatened by a mugato.
   
• In their small talk before being startled, the Denobulans are talking about the Klingon coffee raktajino.
   
• Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford play anbo-jyutsu — the ultimate form of martial arts — against each other in the Cerritos gym. This is the first time we’ve seen the blind-folded combat game since Will and Kyle Riker squared off in “The Icarus Factor.”
   
• Mariner references the ship’s phaser range. We saw the Enterprise-D’s phaser range in “A Matter of Honor” and “Redemption, Part I.”

• The USS Cerritos has a Kzinti officer, as seen in the bar shortly after the opening credits; the Kzinti were mentioned on Star Trek: Picard in “Nepenthe,” but have not seen since “The Slaver Weapon.”
   
• When discussing the possibility that Mariner might be an implanted Starfleet black ops agent, Boimler helpfully remembers that Tuvok went undercover aboard Chakotay’s Maquis ship in the same manner.

• Rutherford and Boimler break into the Ferengi prison holding what looks like the projectile cannon Kirk used to injure the Gorn captain in “Arena” — but it hilariously turns out to be a holographic projector to highlight the profit potential of a mugato sanctuary.
   
• The “creepy, throwback, ‘Last Outpost’-style Ferengi” are armed with energy whips, distinctive weapons used by the big-eared species in that episode; they were only seen once more in “Acquisition,” Enterprise’s lone Ferengi episode.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• When the mugato is chasing Boimler and Rutherford, there is a direct homage to the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — the iconic scene where the hobbits are hiding from the Black Rider in the roots of a tree.
   
• The game Boimler and Rutherford are playing is called Diplomath. The goal of the game is for each side to lose, being “equally unsatisfied with the negotiation.”
   
• We learn that Mariner’s immediate posting before the Cerritos was the USS Atlantis — where half the crew had to be reassigned due to an outbreak of Kerplickian lice — making this her fourth known assignment (along with the USS Quito and Deep Space 9).

Overall, “Mugato, Gumato” has a very funny premise, but its humor did not quite land for me in a Star Trek context.

I’ve enjoyed plenty of gross-out humor movies over my life, and still do, but I think there’s a time and a place for them, and I’m not sure that place is in Star Trek… and that’s the whole gumato.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on September 9 with “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on September 10.