The Trouble with Edward

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 ;)

The Trouble with Edward (2019) is just plain fun. Some serious people may try to over analyze it for ST canon, but just sit back and enjoy this tragic smorgasbord of workplace dysfunction in "utopia". Though a comedy, it's crammed with so many delightful levels of subtle "what the..." and that an introverted savant's actions could snowball to affect everyone's ethics, work, careers, ships, planets, and the whole Federation. This episode took some thinking to orchestrate this clockwork train wreck and is deeper and more humbling than I expected as an engineer. Thoroughly enjoyable just how many other Star Trek episodes this connects together. Things to notice: Edward is morally and ethically obtuse, yet a genius. Add to this a drive to prove he's smart and trouble insues. He did (unintentionally) create a cheap biological way to destroy ships, evacuate planets, disrupt empires, and it's a tasty food. It touched on how to manage people and groups and how easily a promising young Turk's career was sunk. The only minor thing that I see that needed explained is where the Tribbles found enough food/water to breed that much.

Now on a sinister note: If the ending was tweaked to be less silly, this episode could have gone very dark. Imagine Edward did not die at the end but was really working for Star Fleet Intelligence (SFI) or even Section 31 (S31). This would make sense because Edward is the perfect savant for working on black projects that would make others in Star Fleet (SF) wince. Notice how Edward obtusely comes up with famine solutions (eating Tribbles, manipulating human DNA, lobotomizing lifeforms) that ethically causes his co-workers to smile uncomfortably or tense up. This is similar to "ST: Into Darkness" where Kahn was recruited to cross ethical boundaries Star Fleet wouldn't come near. In "ST: DS9" Dr. Bashir or the augmented savants were used either by SFI or S31. This would answer Captain Lucero's incredulous question why Edward was able to stay in SF so long being "an idiot" (Edward might be an asset for SFI or S31). If this was so, after every "screw up", Edward would just be moved to some other isolated insignificant science posting to continue his "protein work" (i.e. Weaponizing tribbles against Klingons). This idea could be milked to explain several ST:TOS and other episodes where SF comes across strange lifeforms, diseases, and devices that are the deliberate or unintentional byproducts of someone like Edward working for SFI or S31 (The Naked Time, The Deadly Years, This Side of Paradise, Operation - Annihilate!). "Operation - Annihilate!" could be just another TOS examples of Edwards creating another new "food" source. Edward is use to being dismissed and thus is covert in his actions. Captain Lucero was reported by Edward for interfering with his work and later became the patsy for Edward's (SFI, S31) project. Sadly, SF, SFI, or S31 will likely conclude she being in charge is what caused all the problems and not Edward. As I said, this episode could really be milked into several episodes to show all the Federation dirt swept under the carpet by SF, SFI, and S31. But hey, it's just a comedy. I hope they have future adventures of Edward Larkin.

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.

The conference scene alone makes this worthwhile - it made me laugh out loud several times. It serves as a neat origin story for the tribbles (at least in their troublesome form) and features a couple of great performances.

Just as funny are the reviews - never ceases to amaze me how people who bash modern Trek for getting things "wrong" are wrong themselves.

Spock is the only Vulcan in Starfleet? Er...how about the entire crew of the Intrepid for starters.

Trek humour should be restrained "by precedent"? Never seen I, Mudd or Bride of Chaotica, I take it.

Sigh.

The actors and the director of this episode are great,and this beats the fact the Star Trek creators have no clue about the biology lessons from the school.For example,Odo can turn himself in to a glass ,and can be as easy as a glass ,but in the same time he can transform himself into an iron shape shifting Terminator or in to a very heavy hard solid rock,so ,how much mass has h is body in reality ?!?..or how can he remain alive without eating anything,although he sometimes makes very much effort.. ?!?..or how can you combine a being with a copper based blood with the one with an iron based blood ..?!? ..or how to combine a being with two hearts with the one with one heart ( a Discovery producer would say something about their external ,sexual organs ,because they clearly don't understand such sub textual and still so obvious references) ...?!?...how can a being who eats cereal seeds to grow so fast without food and even they are just omnivore beings how can they eat so fast ,when they don't seem to have the sense of smell,they don't have eyes or mouth or ears ?!?.. Anyway the Critters-Gremlins are still cute enough and the actors the same to save this little episode for bad reviews.I would love to see a Galaxy Quest series with those actors and that ship,but we, the Trekkers, don't have that kind of luck.