The Trouble with Edward

I laughed my a** off. The exchange between the Captain and the, er, miscreant had me chortling out loud and rewatching the scene. It's darkish humor but played broadly enough that it is not actually disturbing.

I adore Star Trek. All of it. I love the deep conversations about ethics, about communication with very alien species a la Darmok, with debating the personhood of artificial intelligence, with the plainly written moral dilemmas the Prime Directive entails. I love the action, the swashbuckling, I love Kirk and Riker getting it on with every vaguely female entity that comes within pheromone distance.

I also love Star Trek takeoffs, whether self-generated (as this is) or coming from fandom -- a la Galaxy Quest and the Orville. Bill Shatner's storied appearance on "Saturday Night Live," where he told early Trekkers to "get. a. life!" is funny even as I see myself as one of those Trekkers. All these things can be reconciled if one is not a humorless fundamentalist.

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 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.

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.

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.