Captain Lynne Lucero has taken her first command, of the science vessel Cabot. Right away, she has two tricky problems to solve: a planet facing a dangerous food shortage, and a difficult officer on her ship named Edward Larkin. Single-minded and antisocial, Larkin wants to genetically engineer a solution to the food crisis. But in doing so, he unleashes a far worse problem.
Going back to see reactions to this episode when it first arrived, it seems "The Trouble With Edward" was really polarizing. Some people really went with the broad, humorous tone, while many simply were not having it. Personally, I'm totally here for it. It's true that Star Trek isn't usually a comedy, but it has always made room for silly, from classics like "A Piece of the Action" to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, from The Next Generation's "Rascals" to Deep Space Nine's "The Magnificent Ferengi" (which I haven't yet reached in my rewatch), and more. Every once in a while, Star Trek just gets goofy, and I find it a great spice in the soup. Episodes involving tribbles are perhaps the silliest of all.
Maybe it's that in the modern age of Star Trek -- the Kelvin timeline movies and Star Trek: Discovery -- it's never been this comedic. You might even argue that Star Trek has never taken such a pure shot at comedy. This episode is not the product of a Star Trek writers' room cutting loose for an episode. It's written by a actual comedy writer, Graham Wagner, who worked on shows like The Office, Portlandia, and Silicon Valley. It's directed by a comedy director, Daniel Gray Longino -- another Portlandia veteran (who also made Who Is America? with Sacha Baron Cohen). These are comedy people making a Star Trek episode, not Star Trek people trying to make comedy. The resulting tone is different, more dry than just tongue-in-cheek.
It's also great, I think. It has a fun story arc for newly-minted Captain Lucero, who goes from "can't wait to work with people smarter than me" to "he was an idiot." It has playful music, from the jaunty score by Sahil Jindal to the rare use of existing, real-world music in Bing Crosby's "Johnny Appleseed." The darker, Gremlins-like take on the reproducing tribbles lends a black comedy of its own. And of course, it's the perfect vehicle for the deadpan humor of H. Jon Benjamin as the troublesome Edward Larkin.
Alright... maybe the post-credits commercial for Tribbles cereal (played, apparently, from VHS tape) is pushing a little too far. But even that joke is well in keeping with the nature of this episode to try something really different. I feel like you can't get too bent out of shape about that unless you're struggling to figure out where it goes in "Star Trek continuity." (And if you are: first you'll need to reconcile why the tribbles' out-of-control reproduction seemed to be created here when Enterprise already talked about that characteristic in one of its episodes.)
I give "The Trouble With Edward" an A-. I found it an inspired use of the Short Treks format.
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