The crew is sent to investigate a mugato sighting, but becomes caught up in a Ferengi poaching operation. Boimler and Rutherford hear a rumor about Mariner claiming that she's an undercover black ops agent, leading them to become extremely nervous around her during the mission.
Back on the Cerritos, Tendi is assigned by Dr. T'Ana with tracking down crewmembers who have skipped their yearly medical, requiring her to learn to assert herself to complete their mission.
Tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Mariner is completely baffled by the rules of the economics game that Boimler and Rutherford are playing, which makes it easy for them to hide that she's somehow winning.
- Alien Blood: When a mugato attacks a Ferengi, yellow fluid splashes out. Patingi similarly has purple blood.
- Bait-and-Switch: Boimler and Rutherford storm the cages and point what looks like a bamboo bazooka at the Ferengi... and then reveal that it's a holoprojector for their presentation on why running a mugato preserve would earn them more money than selling their horns.
- Bloody Hilarious: Mariner beating up Boimler and Rutherford is Played for Laughs.
- Brick Joke: One of the Ferengi poachers' first scenes is them tearing a Mugato baby away from its mother. Their final scene shows mama and baby happily reunited.
- The Bus Came Back: This episode not only marks the return of the Mugato from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Private Little War", but also a Kzinti, who hadn't been seen in the franchise since the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon"
- Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Boimler and Rutherford are playing an economics board game called "Diplomath". During the climax, they use the principles of the board game to negotiate with the Ferengi.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: The last and most difficult patient who refuses to be scanned by Tendi is Dr T'Ana herself.
- Continuity Nod:
- The Denobulans puff up their heads in response to the mugato spooking them, just like Phlox.
- Boimler and Rutherford's holoprojector visually resembles the bamboo cannon that Kirk made to fight the Gorn.
- Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford practice anbo-jyutsu.
- When discussing the possibility of Mariner being a trained secret agent, Boimler and Rutherford mention Tuvok infiltrating the Maquis and how Starfleet Intelligence would sometimes use undercover agents as well.
- Section 31 is obviously not that much of a secret anymore, since Rutherford accuses Mariner being their agent as well when she catches up to him and Boimler at the end.
- Boimler and Rutherford mention that a compromise is an agreement that neither side is happy with. This references what Archer said to Shran and Soval during their negotiations.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Tendi breaks her arm while chasing T'Ana through the Jefferies tubes, then scans her when she comes back to help. She couldn't simply fake it because T'Ana wouldn't be fooled.
- Everyone Has Standards: While extremely adverse to having her medical scan done and initially skeptical, T'Ana immediately moves to help the moment it's apparent that Tendi is actually seriously hurt.
- Evil Poacher: The Ferengi are hunting the mugato for their horns, even though Mariner points out that they could just replicate them. Boimler and Rutherford convince the Ferengi that making the planet into a preserve and then marketing the hell out of it would be a more profitable venture.
- Fantasy Gun Control: For this away mission, phasers are forbidden, because mugatos are a protected species and phaser fire can render them sterile (even on a stun setting). Shax doesn't mind because he looks ready to punch mugatos (or Ferengi) that get in his way.
- Fictional Board Game: Boimler and Rutherford are playing a board game called "Diplomath", which simulates negotiating a business contract with math and graphing involved, where the objective is to close on a deal acceptable to all parties, even if all the players are losing. Their knowledge of the game helps them negotiate with the Ferengi poachers to free their crewmates and convince them to give up poaching and open a preserve for the mugato.
- Fingertip Drug Analysis: Shaxs does this with mugato dung. Repeatedly.
- Furry Reminder: T'Ana is both a doctor doing the typical act of avoiding a check up because she believes that she would know if she had a problem, and also a cat avoiding a trip to the vet. She even hisses, meows, and runs on all fours while avoiding Tendi.
- Glowing Flora: The forests of Frylon IV are filled with glowing purple pods growing on stalks from the ground and glowing blue flowers hanging from the trees.
- Grew a Spine:
- The task to scan reluctant crew members forces Tendi to get creative when they won't willingly submit. It also makes her more assertive because she's determined to finish the job.
- While Boimler grew his on the Titan, this is the first time that Mariner sees evidence of it.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of the episode, Mariner spins a tall tale about Boimler and Rutherford defeating the Ferengi and the mugato to the gossipy bartender.
- Hypocrite: T'Ana sends Tendi out to collect medical scans of reluctant crew, but has gone to great lengths to avoid having herself scanned, proving that doctors do indeed make the worst patients. And that animals hate the vet.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: At the beginning, Boimler and Rutherford are confident of faring better than usual in their Anbo-jytsu match with Mariner, as they've been training hard since the last match, and snarkily tell her to "take off the kid gloves". Turns out that she's been going easy on them, and proceeds to wipe the floor with both of them.
- Impaled Palm: Mariner does this to Rutherford with half of her broken Anbo staff after cutting loose. Shaxs just casually ignores it, since they still have the court for ten minutes.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When the ship detects a planet-side storm, Captain Freeman tells Shaxs he's got "less than 22 minutes" — 22 minutes being the length of the episode minus commercials.
- Lightning Lash: The Ferengi energy whip returns, which is another checkmark for these guys being Last Outpost style throwbacks.
- MacGyvering: Boimler and Rutherford rig a bunch of equipment into a holoprojector so they can do a presentation for the Ferengi on the cost-benefit ratio of mugato poaching versus a theme park-style nature preserve.
- Manchurian Agent: Boimler and Rutherford suspect Mariner of being one after hearing a rumor from the bartender. It turns out that Mariner planted the rumor herself.
- Mythology Gag: The mugato first appeared in TOS: "A Private Little War". The gumato first appeared in… that same episode; that's technically the creature's real name, according to the closing credits, but DeForest Kelley had trouble with the word and Roddenberry left it in.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: With his Australian accent and a cheerful attitude towards dangerous animals, Patingi the Tellarite seems to be one to the late Steve Irwin.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Mariner gives one to Rutherford and Boimler at the beginning, which is what starts their suspicions about her being an undercover secret agent.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently Starfleet lost the USS Atlantis (one of Mariner's old ships) due to lice, of all things. Starfleet covered it up because it was that embarrassing.Mariner: Do you know how embarrassing it is to lose a starship to lice?!
- Not What It Looks Like: Mariner stabs Shaxs in the chest and then bites the wound, making Boimler and Rutherford assume that her programming has turned her into a killer. She was actually draining the poison from a mugato wound.
- Pragmatic Villainy:
- In classic Ferengi fashion, the poachers are ultimately convinced to give up their brutal, Mugato-killing enterprise through negotiation. When Rutherford and Boimler explain how they could make far greater profits in the long-run by running a preserve that cares for the Mugato and allows visitors, they eagerly drop their reservations and adopt this new plan, with only a brief mention that it will involve more work.
- Additionally, while the lead Ferengi poacher is reluctant to just let their Starfleet captives go, he soon relents when it's pointed out that it would normally be upon Starfleet to pursue him for attacking Starfleet officers. It's easier for everyone if he just lets them go and everyone puts this behind them.
- Running Gag: building on the Mythology Gag above, characters are constantly mispronouncing "gumato".Boimler, lampshading: So I was reading up on the mugatos. Did you know they have alternative pronunciations? Mogatu, mugutu, and gumato. Isn't that neat and inconsistent?
- Self-Deprecation: Freeman decides to gift Hyde a new shuttle to replace the one that he lost. When Ransom asks what they'll tell Starfleet, she says they'll write it off as being lost to a black hole, which Ransom notes is a fairly common occurrence. Destroying shuttles was a common action sequence in TNG, DS9, and Voyager, which was especially notable in the latter because they somehow managed to keep replacing them while in the Delta Quadrant.
- Squick (In-Universe):
- Everyone is disgusted by Shaxs' habit of tasting Mugato dung.
- Rutherford and Boimler are disgusted by two mugatos going at it right in front of the hollow tree where they're hiding. And the third one who shows up to watch.
- Later, Tendi is visibly squicked by T'Ana telling Shaxs that she can heal him all night long.
- Staged Pedestrian Accident: The Cerritos accidentally disintegrates Hyde's ship when trying to tow it in, and have to give him one of their shuttles as well as Freeman's mementos to make up for it. Then Admiral Freeman calls in to warn her about a scam where people set their ships to self-destruct in a tractor beam to guilt-trip the crew that caused it into reimbursing them, and Captain Freeman promptly tows him in and sentences the man to work in the new Mugato preserve.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Mariner accuses the poacher Ferengi of playing into Ferengi stereotypes in their villainy, even calling them "Last Outpost"-style throwbacks.
- Suck Out the Poison: Mariner does this to Shaxs when a Mugato scratches him, which Boimler and Rutherford mistake for her trying to eat him.
- Tempting Fate: Boimler and Rutherford think that they will defeat Mariner easily after getting a decent hit in. They are Instantly Proven Wrong.
- Too Dumb to Live: "Renowned biologist" Patingi, who has five books on mugatos… that is, he's read five books on them, and thinks that this is enough to enable him to move among them. He gets his head bitten off in his second scene.
- Took a Level in Badass: Downplayed, since Boimler and Rutherford employ the Talking the Monster to Death strategy rather than solving it through physical force, but it's still a notable departure from The Ace Mariner solving every problem. This is only the second time Boimler that provides the solution— and the first one that didn't result in a transporter clone. This is a big enough Meta Twist that a number of reviewers actually commented on it.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Shaxs, perhaps unsurprisingly given that it's Shaxs, sees Mariner mauling Boimler and Rutherford in an Anbo-jytsu match and just decides to calmly wait his turn.
- Widely-Spaced Jail Bars: The bars on the cage that the Ferengi keep Mariner and Shaxs in are spaced wide enough that Mariner should be able to just walk through, and even barrel-chested Shaxs might be reasonably able to sidle out. As is usual with this trope, you're clearly not supposed to acknowledge it.
- The Worf Effect: One of the straightest examples since Worf himself. Shaxs is fully ready to take on the Ferengi but an accident releases all the mugatos and he gets stung in the stampede. Mariner is also taken out of action by a simple foot snare. So it's down to the nerdy boys.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Played with: Patingi only thinks that he's an expert, and so it makes more sense than usual that he fills this role in the plot.
- Worthy Opponent: T'Ana is proud of Tendi for being willing to seriously injure herself if it means helping a patient.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Captain Freeman nearly becomes a victim of one, if not for a timely call from her husband warning about the scam. She quickly recaptures Hyde and presses him into the service of the Ferengi, shoveling mugato dung.
