The Trouble with Edward

Designed as a Star Trek story with a lighter tone, it instead comes across as an unpleasant take on a Starfleet that's more reflective of current day society as opposed to the idealistic future Gene Roddenberry had presented in the 1960's and again in the 1980's.

In many ways, the stumbling, awkward character presented in this story is the Reginald Barclay of his day. Unlike Barclay, however, he isn't nurtured or befriended by the crew of the Enterprise or his commanding officers at Starfleet headquarters who see that, at his core, he is a brilliant man. No, Edward's commanding officer views him as an idiot who wants him as far removed as possible without digging a little deeper into what he believes he can accomplish and his fellow crew members are as dismissive and unpleasant as she is. In the end, his ultimate fate is met with a collective shrug.

It seems unlikely that the tone of this particular short, if presented in the 1960's or 1980's, would have inspired two generations of fans to look toward a more hopeful future and to look beyond themselves.

Short Treks have been a lot of fun but this one was a big miss.

I caught this by accident after having totally losing confidence in the Star Trek franchise with the absolutely awful Discovery, and pretty much anything the managers of the franchise touch.

I thought this episode was a parody shot on the sound stages in spare down time, and really enjoyed it for its poking fun at the franchise, except I think it was actually a legit episode, which actually does make it worse. But lets keep it at a parody.

A scientist who manipulated cute creatures to be tasty and meaty? Hilarious. A b!tch fight that goes on and on with the captain, much more entertaining than anything they've served up in real start trek lately.

The character of Edward was just so out of sorts with the Star trek world that it had to be a parody, lets pretend it was. Like a SNL wind up. Let's pretend.

And that's the point! Geeze people, get over this "this isn't star trek" garbage already. It's so boring. This is obviously a comedy episode and it is very funny. John Benjamin's character is hilarious of course, and the captain handles him perfectly. I guess some people still can't stand to see an intelligent woman in a position of power, even on TV. Just because the bumbling science officer is a man doesn't mean this episode is about "gender politics" or whatever nonsense codewords y'all have to cover your backwards and misogynistic worldview. It's sad how easy it is to read between the lines with some of these other reviews.

H. Jon Benjamin, the actor playing Edward Larkin, does the latest Arby's commercials. So it is sort of fitting that he's a self-proclaimed "protein expert" and pushing tribbles as a new meat source to end galactic hunger.

These short treks are a really interesting laboratory for show concepts and direction. This probably made me laugh more than anything I've seen in star trek which has to count for something.

Then I read the comments here.

The fact that old nerds complain about it not lining up with a campy TV show where hero's chuck styrofoam rocks, dweeby kids save the ship, whales are aliens and space Lincoln exists is a preposterous golden age fallacy. This just continues the legacy of levity for tribble episodes in both TOS and DS9 guys. The wink of an insider joke baton passes to a new generation.

I love star trek, but it's vision for the future of humanity will die with its aging fanbase if we can't modernize it with each generation. Sure, less rediculous melodrama in the new show would be a welcome change, however, the melodramatic pedants in half these comments are even worse.

Be happy. We finally have a short episode that you can onboard someone to star trek with. Maybe you're a Sisco fan, someone else is about Kirk, and this new person might end up being a Saru or Pike. I'm just happy to have them onboard our idealistic vision for humanity. This of course is the tolerance of a Picard deciple speaking ;)