WHY WE LIKE IT: All the Klingon stuff.
WHY WE DON'T: The shame I feel at not immediately recognizing all the recurring Klingons.
REVIEW: A hefty episode if they're going to forego the opening credit sequence and drop the title on a landscape. And yeah, we're going to make a deep dive into Klingon lore AND do a lot of world-building re: Dr. Migleemo's culture. It's both Strange New Worlds and Strange Old ones, a story type that's one of Star Trek's breads and butters. And so we'll have two brands of absurdist humor as well. On the one hand, anchored in what we already know of the Klingons and might poke fun at in casual conversation. On the other, the creation of a completely ridiculous world we knew nothing about, except through its one (also ridiculous) exemplar. Both stories provide laughs AND a Starlfeet puzzle to solve.
In the beefier Klingon strand, we get back to Ma'ah, the warrior who was there for Mariner in The Inner Fight. He's fallen on hard times, nominally for having "allowed a mutiny", but in reality, for having killed his fleet commander's mutinous brother (so it's political), and now he's on the blood wine farm (it's gross, but really interesting) with his hapless brother Malor. They are, in many ways, the Klingon Quark and Rom. Enter Mariner (whose actual mission is a nice reveal) to help him, along with Klingon fanboy Boimler (that he's a nerd about Klingon bureaucratic minutiae is damn near perfect). K'Orin, from Lower Decks' second-ever episode Envoys (but having a long prior history with Mariner) is also here, as part of the Klingon Oversight Council, on which also serves Ma'ah's nemesis. Really a big excuse to make fun of the many rituals we've seen on TNG, and their rather bureaucratic names, creating a few more and putting the characters through various tests, often overcome with the Starfleet characters' clever schemes. It all ends, quite appropriately, with the dishonorable being punished, and the honorable getting a new lease on life. Maybe this is one of the best Klingon episodes ever made, I don't know.
Meanwhile, Migleemo welcomes two of his planet's most important food critics aboard the Cerritos, as we explore Klowahkan culture and how food-based it is. Prisons that look like bird cages, tons of new taste epithets (makes sense!), and Migleemo almost being taken off the great seating chart. Is it a little dumb? Yes, but I'm often reminded of the Ferengi and THEIR particular obsessions. Originally meant as satire, it's never going to make complete sense. Well, same here. But neither is Klingon culture. Or perhaps any of our own, gentle reader. The only real let-down is that it's PRETTY CLEAR the critics have lost their sense of taste very early on. Blandness is their only criticism. But it's kind of worth it for Migleemo's filtering of his job (counselor/therapist) through his culture: "I cook the mind".
LESSON: Taste is on the tongue of the betaster.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Klingon as hell! (Also something Klowahkan as hell.) A nice little ethnological two-fer.
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