TL;DR –  A silly and somewhat absurdist episode that was a real delight

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Review –

Have you ever had a colleague that was so sure of themselves, even though they were maybe not quite as smart as they thought they were? Well as much as humanity has advanced in the future, it almost reassuring that this is one trait that we have not quite left behind.

So to set the scene, we open in on a day of celebration because Captain Pike (Anson Mount) gets to see an old crewman off to their new position. As science officer Lynne Lucero (Rosa Salazar) has just been made captain of the USS Cabot. Their first mission is to go to Pragine 63 on the edge of Klingon space to help clandestinely with a food crisis. Her crew all have several ideas, but Edward Larkin (H. Jon Benjamin) has the plan to mess with the DNA of a tribble and it all goes wrong from there.   

This Short Trek is the conclusion (or the start) of a tribble trilogy that began with The Original Series and The Trouble with Tribbles and continued on Deep Space Nine with Trials and Tribble-ations. The tribbles in those shows being this mass reproducing agricultural menaces, but in this Short Trek we find out that this was not always the case. As I have seen mentioned a bit on the internet, the tribbles didn’t need a secret backstory but then it didn’t hurt them either.

This is a style of Star Trek episode that we have not seen in a while, a comedic episode. It is silly but it never strays too far away to be ridiculous, save for maybe the post-credit scene, and I for one am not going to wade into the inevitable debate as to if that is canon or not. These Short Treks are a perfect venue for a sillier absurdist episode like this because at about 15 minutes it does not outstay its welcome.

What makes this episode work is the performances which are the real delight. When you cast H. Jon Benjamin known for his work on Archer and Bob’s Burgers you know you are going to be having a good time. Here he is the sort of brilliant guy that is smart enough that you can’t sack him, but clearly he has been isolated as much as possible to try and do as little damage as possible. He ends up creating what is for all intents and purposes a bio-weapon just because he boss was mean. On the flip side we have Rosa Salazar as the captain on her first mission. She plays the straight man to Jon’s more off hinged scientist and she matches him at every turn. She also gets what might be the best line, or at least top-ten line in all of Trek.

In the end, do we recommend The Trouble with Edward? Yes of course we do. It was silly, absurdist, with some moments of horror. It showed an interesting side of Starfleet, we got to see a cool new ship design, and in one single moment every person who has ever had to tactfully talk about a colleague’s performance would cheer at that final line.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Star Trek Short Treks yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek Short Trek
Directed by – Daniel Gray Longino
Written by – Graham Wagner
Created by – Bryan Fuller & Alex Kurtzman
Starring – Rosa Salazar, H. Jon Benjamin & Anson Mount with Lisa Michelle Cornelius, Matthew Gouveia, Krista Jang, John Jarvis & Loretta Shenosky