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Star Trek Dis - Season 2 - Episode 15.2

Star Trek Dis - 2x15.2 - The Trouble with Edward

Originally Aired: 2019-10-9

Synopsis:
Newly minted Captain Lynne Lucero is excited to take command of the U.S.S. Cabot, until she meets Edward Larkin, an ornery scientist who believes he has found a revolutionary new use for tribbles...

My Rating - 0

Fan Rating Average - 1.07

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Problems
- In Ent: The Breach, it is established that tribbles breed too quickly to be controlled. That contradicts the notion that they were slow breeders before Edward modified them.

Factoids
- This is the first (and hopefully the last) episode of Star Trek to feature a post-credits scene.

Remarkable Scenes
- The ship being destroyed by the tribble overrun.
- Lucero regarding Edward: "He was an idiot."

My Review
While it was nice to see a brand new crew on a brand new ship, this is easily the worst Star Trek "episode" in many years, so much so that it deserves to be struck from canon and ignored forever. Aside from the fact that the details regarding tribble biology and history are hard to reconcile with the rest of canon, the "post-credits" scene (a newer fad in TV/film that we should hope dies a swift death) is obviously pure parody and clearly not intended to even be part of canon to begin with. The rest of the episode isn't much better though. It's basically an episode of Bob's Burgers set in the Star Trek universe, except Edward isn't even remotely as likable as Bob. Edward is awkward, antisocial, reckless, immoral, and vindictive. The narrative expects us to hate him and celebrate his needless death in the end, as though watching obnoxious people win Darwin Awards is somehow in the spirit of Star Trek. It isn't.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Azalea Jane on 2021-09-19 at 5:10pm:
    Agreed, this episode was mean-spirited and missed the mark. I kind of wish I hadn't seen it.

    Also, I know that Trek tends to play fast and loose with the conservation of energy, but where did all that *mass* for the tribbles come from? What did they EAT? That added to the disbelievability of this episode. This feels like it should have been a scrapped Lower Decks episode if it were the right time period. Or maybe, an in-universe school play from Lower Decks.

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