Star Trek Discovery: The Trouble With Edward

[MerelyAFan]

For a show that's often accused of not being like Trek enough, at the very least this Discovery short does at least fail for the same reason previous Trek comedies have; the central characters simply not being likable enough and the lack of any sort of conclusive victory to make the story work.

Trouble with Tribbles, Piece of the Action, Magnificent Ferengi, In the Cards, etc certainly have parts where the central characters are the butt of the joke. The difference is though that the audience was to some degree invested in them as characters and that there was a triumph at the end that felt earned. Kirk uncovers the Klingon Plot, the Enterprise crew works out a deal with the Iotians, Quark rescues Ishka, and Jake/Nog get the baseball card. We laugh at their comedic misfortunes while being happy at their success.

This short fails in that regard much like many awful previous Trek comedies. Night in Sickbay has Archer being such a jackass viewers don't laugh or care about his apology. Profit and Lace has everybody acting insufferable and the heroes' plan being an awful farce. Outrageous Okana has the titular character smugly doing nothing as his and Data's story resolutions are hardly impressive. Let He Who is Without Sin thrives on the cast acting either obnoxiously or ignorant and finishes with Worf saving the day via taking back a tricorder.

Admittedly Trouble with Edward manages to top them a bit by having a pitiful success replaced with outright failure, so its breaking new ground there I guess.

[FaxModem1]

I think a main issue(one of many), is that this is as Chuck said, it's too little material stretched too long. But my main issue is the key thing about comedies, unless you're going to make someone an out and out villain, is that they usually end up with a happy ending. As opposed to bumbling scientist gets horribly killed and fresh, green Starfleet captain gets subjected to a court martial, we instead see them grow and become better people.

Instead, imagine if Edward learned to take it down a few notches, and learn to work with people, and Lucero learning to listen to her subordinates and that she can be a leader without worrying about trying to prove herself to her crew all the time. This is the plot of about a thousand cop movies made in the past 30 years, with people smoothing over each other's rough edges. And if they still want tribbles and how they're an invasive species, they could have done a whole bit about them trying to eat the things, and everyone reacts in disgust at how awful they taste, with wacky cooking and serving scenes.

After all, Torres and Janeway had a similar scene all the way back in the third episode of the series, wherein the two technobabble at each other to get along.

[Gekired]

I wonder if one can reconcile the Tribble's variable breeding capability with the following timeline:

Tribbles are on their homeworld, reproducing like crazy and being eaten by the local predators.
Enterprising exotic animal tradesman picks up a few and transports them to the wider galaxy.
Tribbles start causing problems in the various environments they spread to.
Mutant tribbles with reduced reproduction tendencies start appearing, no longer wiped out by their native predators, but otherwise outcompeted by their more prolific brethren.
Tribbles causes ecological disasters on various Klingon-occupied planets.
Klingons hunt down the tribbles, go so far as to burn the tribble homeworld.
Surviving tribbles are either hunted down and killed, hunted down and captured, or otherwise escape notice because they are the mutant tribbles and thus don't do things that get them noticed, like reproducing at unsustainable rates.
Edwards acquires mutant tribble.
Edwards accidentally reactivates dormant genes in tribble that activates its prolific breeding capabilities.

Congratulations Space Paladin. You clearly put more thought into the Tribbles their history, and place in Star Trek Canon then anyone in the Discovery/Short treks writers room

[Darth Wedgius]

Edward and the captain were both failures, but the writers flubbed this almost as badly as the characters. How many science fiction fans are socially awkward? Of course Edward is going to get more sympathy than they expected.
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I can't help but think that the people who bullied Trekkies for being Trekkies in the 80s and 90s are the ones who have ended up with a seat at the Star Trek table rather than the other way around. How else do we explain this character?

I don't know, but I don't think that's paranoia. Given StarTrek.com articles like "On Star Trek: Picard our beloved admiral is forced to reckon with his privilege as a Starfleet officer from a planetary superpower," I think some people in charge of Star Trek now at least think they are "correcting" it in some way. Maybe this was part of it. Maybe not.

[Cheerilee]

Just a thought. But was Barclay treated better till Guinan and Picard came around? He was transferred off his last ship for not 'fitting in' and Riker's initial thought was to toss him to another ship as well. Picard stopped that. When Geordi was at a loss, Guinan humanized the issue. Between this episode and Barclay's appearance it makes you wonder how 'good' most of Star Fleet really was.

I don't think Barclay was transferred off his first ship for not fitting in. Picard notes that Barclay has years of service under his belt, and that he consistently got good performance reviews. Picard (Captain of the prized-posting Flagship of the Federation) needed a Systems Engineer, and Captain Gleason personally recommended Barclay to Picard. Said he was excellent. Riker doubts this and suggests that Gleason lied about Barclay's talents in order to dump a problem on Picard, but as we eventually learn, Barclay *is* excellent (in the right environment, and when he gets his head on straight).

On the Enterprise, Barclay is failing his performance reviews (which he wasn't before), and Geordi dislikes Barclay because he's "always late, nervous, and nobody likes him". Guinan correctly points out that if nobody liked her, she'd be late and nervous too. Wesley, the ship's resident child, took to childish mockery of "Broccoli", and Riker and Geordi picked up that habit, and Picard rightly told them to knock that unprofessional shit off.

I would suggest that Barclay's issues either weren't a problem on his previous ship, or they were such that his Captain thought that a fresh start would do Barclay some good. But since the Enterprise is manned by the best of the best, Barclay became intimidated, which made his problems worse (driving him to create holodeck versions of his coworkers whom he could stand up to).

After Picard and the Enterprise, Barclay's next Commander was Pete Harkins, and Commander Harkins called Barclay by a friendly nickname (Reg), allowed Barclay to call him by his first name without rank or title (just "Pete"), knew the name of Barclay's cat, and invited Barclay to come into his home and eat with his family, and even tried to introduce Barclay to his wife's sister, to see if maybe they might have a romantic interest in each other.

Starfleet is (or was supposed to be) "good".

[Beastro]

Starfleet is (or was supposed to be) "good".

That's a spirit increasingly lost in Trek that I wonder might be more Coon's legacy than anyone else's (I don't know much about him beyond his reputation as the "heart" of TOS): That the aim was to be good without assuming people would always be perfect in their actions.

Every time Roddenberry asserted more control Trek became markedly colder. Early TNG is the best example, but TMPs attempt in its message aside, it had a "deader" feeling to the characters than the later movies had. I'd credit Nicholas Mayer and others for going over Trek and rediscovering that lost spirit that made the core TOS movies work, which when Roddenberry reasserted himself with TNG it was lost until revivified after he died (before being killed in the B&B era).

[MerelyAFan]

Starfleet is (or was supposed to be) "good".

That's a spirit increasingly lost in Trek that I wonder might be more Coon's legacy than anyone else's (I don't know much about him beyond his reputation as the "heart" of TOS): That the aim was to be good without assuming people would always be perfect in their actions.

Every time Roddenberry asserted more control Trek became markedly colder. Early TNG is the best example, but TMPs attempt in its message aside, it had a "deader" feeling to the characters than the later movies had. I'd credit Nicholas Mayer and others for going over Trek and rediscovering that lost spirit that made the core TOS movies work, which when Roddenberry reasserted himself with TNG it was lost until revivified after he died (before being killed in the B&B era).

I think both Coon and DC Fontana were both really effective in keeping characters within Trek as admirable while still relatable. Spock especially by Fontana was fleshed out as an intelligent and deeply moral person, but with his own regrets and struggles about his nature.

That sort of balance is why some of my favorite periods of ST are TOS, the latter half of TNG, and most of DS9. Even as dark as the latter could get, a moral foundation to the characters was critical for the stories to be effective. In the Pale Moonlight works because Sisko is an ethical man agonizing over doing unethical things. The themes explored by the show lose a lot of punch if the assumption is most of Starfleet/Federation are assholes.

[Darmani]

Instead of embracing the social Vision that was expected nerdom has booked and actually become very indolent and even mean-spirited. Here's the thing it's not that someone's entitled to be an a****** but it's telling that once someone starts displaying a****** tendencies you start undermining the right for them to enjoy your product. And they don't even try to hide that this is where they immediately go where that's comic book makers on Twitter. Access media journalists. And of course writers with access to beloved genre fiction. I think at this point nerdom just has to accept we're not wanted and enjoy the passwords rather than asking for better adaptations. They want the transformative media creators and influencers now. The mere consumers the Nerds they're useless and unless they are going to be useful they have no reason to pretend to be nice to them anymore

[tyrteg]

Finally saw the Short Trek. I don't watch DIS and don't plan to but I can't judge stuff I haven't seen. So I did. At first I wanted to do a full Picard speech with several paragraphs about leadership and leading by example. But then I noticed Major Grin did it for me in a shorter and much more effective way: https://youtu.be/rnlxugk3Qb0

[chaos42]

if i were to try and fix this episode first i would take out the edwards dna thing its stupid and adds little to the plot.