“A Farewell to Farms” is probably the better episode of this Lower Decks season, and the main characters are barely in it. Farewell to arms? No, this is a farewell to farms.
My co-host and I had a good time with this one. The whole episode is callbacks all day long. We’ve got Klingon characters from the past, and we’ve got Dr. Migleemo all involved with his people, the Klowahkans, and their whole history of loving food. Apparently that’s the only reason they went out into space and invented warp drive, which I find fascinating. Our main characters kind of take a back seat, and it’s still the first episode this season that I found interesting, because it’s exploring some new things.
A Dishonored Klingon on a Targ Farm
The short version is that the Klingon here is the same exact Klingon from previous seasons, the one who helped Mariner. It’s all in my previous review, so I won’t run the whole history back. Where we pick him up, he’s been dishonored and he’s at home on his targ farm, where they also make bloodwine. I think it’s the gagh worms they squash to make it. This entire process was way more involved than I ever knew.
They were getting into it, honestly. It wasn’t even the regular opening credits. It’s just this entire sequence showing how they make the worm wine, or whatever you want to call it, and I sat there going, what? It was very interesting.
The basic gist is that he’s got to get his honor back. The brother of the guy he killed in the previous episode is really upset with him and won’t let him appeal the decision that kicked him out. And because Boimler knows everything about obscure information, he finds a really obscure ritual that lets our guy set off a series of events. That’s just an excuse for us to get to see old Klingon stuff, and I’m okay with seeing it in this context. It was fun.
They did the pain stick thing. I don’t remember it being quite so colorful when Worf did it, but whatever, this is animation.
Why the Klingon Stuff Works on Me
A lot of the Klingon things in this episode are very good if you’ve been any kind of Star Trek fan for any amount of time, because you’ve got all the callbacks. I thought the ritual stuff was really cool. It’s very Star Trek to have Klingon customs used in creative ways.
When I was younger I was in a Star Trek fan club, Starfleet International, and my persona was a Klingon. So I enjoyed watching this episode from that perspective for sure.
They’re drinking out of these cups the whole time, which I thought was great, and I said on camera that I should’ve brought my bloodwine cup. It’s a metal cup with a handle and a little flared-out top. My co-host went and got it, so if you watch the video, please forget the random cut where I suddenly have it in my hand. We got it at the Star Trek convention in Nashville when Mrs. Know-It-All and I went. It’s one of the most Star Trek things I own. It was very cool to have the Klingon culture of it all put out there on display.
Boimler’s Klingon Phase
We didn’t see much of Mariner or Boimler. Boimler was fangirling the entire time with the Klingons. He’s going through a big Klingon phase lately, and he has a mustache now, so I guess whatever he used to try to do is working. Go him.
They also keep up the fact that Mariner apparently knows every Klingon of importance. She just knows people. As TikTok would say, she is so slay.
And we got to see the captain from back when we were with Tendi and Rutherford. She was slaying, honestly. She was awesome. I like her.
A Planet of Food Critics
Back on the ship, Dr. Migleemo is approached by two other Klowahkans who are like the holy ones of his planet’s food culture. They’re basically a planet of food critics. Hoity-toity food critics, seriously. If you ever watched Kitchen Nightmares, you know exactly what we’re talking about.
My co-host had this half of the episode down. They’re really dramatic about everything. What is this lighting, why are the rugs not that cute, all of it, and they haven’t even tried the food yet. Then when they do try it, they take a teeny little bite. You know how kids who don’t want to try something will just take a tiny little bite? That’s basically what they were doing. Then they’re spitting it out, this is awful, this is horrible.
So Migleemo admits he used a replicator. “How dare you call yourself a chef?” “Well, I don’t. I’m a psychologist. More of a chef of the mind.” It was a whole thing.
Obviously he should’ve actually hand cooked it, so the gang helps him cook a hogfish galantine. Everybody’s saying this is the best dish in the galaxy. The critics do the same thing a kid would do, the teeny little bite, they spit it out, and then they haul him off to food jail. Food jail. That’s exactly what it was.
That’s when the gang gets suspicious. You get hors d’oeuvres when you go to the planet regardless, an amuse-bouche, and they were going to serve the critics oysters. So they switched the oysters for some manure they made with the replicator. “Oh, delicious as always. Divine.” “I knew it. These aren’t real oysters.”
The other Klowahkans, the little ones, smelled it right away. Come to find out the two critics lost their taste buds, and a Klowahkan without taste buds is no Klowahkan at all. So Dr. Migleemo says it’s psychology, he can help them through it, and they’re thrilled. That’s the end of that story. Somewhere in there Migleemo turned into Gizmo for us, like the little ’80s character.
Forced Conscription and a Lot of Fire
When we jump back to the Klingons, they’ve been cornered. The last thing our guy has to do is sacrifice one of the members of his crew. So they use another ancient Klingon ritual, because Boimler knows all of them, and this one involves forced conscription. They conscript the guy who’s been giving their friend a hard time. They force him to join the crew, and then he gets chosen as the one to die. So either this guy lets him out of the whole thing, or he’s the sacrifice. It ends with stabbing. Dude stabs him, dude stabs him back. It’s a whole thing.
And there was fire. A whole bunch of unnecessary fire. My co-host didn’t understand that part. Unless a random fire started somewhere, there was no reason to have flames all around.
Welcome to Star Trek. The minute it happened I said, this is the most Star Trek thing, and she said, what do you mean it’s normal, there’s no reason to do all that. She’s absolutely right. There isn’t, and that’s the beauty of it. That’s what makes it so Star Trek, because growing up that’s how it was. You’d see these things and you’d wonder why the scene was so dramatic all of a sudden, with fire everywhere. One of my favorites was the Stargazer episode with Picard. There are flames all of a sudden and you’re going, what is going on here?
He ends up defeating the dude, literally killing him, so he’s killed both brothers apparently. He’s given his rank back, he’s a captain again, and he and his brother are captaining the one ship they have. It’s a small little ship. It’s nice. The lesson was all the friends we made along the way, or be nice to your brother or something. They were fighting at the beginning and now they’re not.
The Hole in Klingon Space
There’s also a random hole that breaks out in Klingon space, continuing the storyline of the potential alternate universes. I thought that was very interesting, even though they only said it briefly.
We’ll see what that’s all about. I don’t think there’s anything suspicious going on there. I just think it’s a thing. I don’t necessarily subscribe to all the alternate universe stuff, but I think it’s fun to think about.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Lower Decks lands at an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index for “A Farewell to Farms.”
My co-host thought it was cute, and I thought it was cute too. This is probably, honestly, the better episode of the season. I was going to give it a point higher, but we didn’t see a lot of the main characters.
One more thing from the video: my co-host had to point out her Lower Decks shirt before we signed off. It came back from that same Nashville trip.
Hopefully we’ll talk more about this one again soon. Tell me where the Klingon rituals landed for you, and whether the fire bothered you as much as it bothered my co-host. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
