It really is skin-suit Star Trek, with momentary glimpses of what it could have been.
It's remarkable to note that by removing every single last overweight female character they would have greatly improved the episode. Even the new-age hippie captain would be tolerable, if she wasn't surrounded by female dumplings.
It really is astonishing that they insist on including all of these 'Silly Tilly' effigies. As if 'Silly Tilly' from Discovery wasn't bad enough.
It's also funny that you kind of/sort of want to watch Star Trek Discovery after watching this episode. Just to see what caused this 'Burn', but then you remember all the trender stuff and you instantly lose all interest.
And then you remember Stacey Abrams as 'president of earth' and all the other horrid stuff comes rushing back.
Feels like drinking from a poisoned well.
Edit: Also, fun fact. Andor season 1 episode 1 autoplays after this Star Trek episode. Apparently, you can watch the first season (or first couple of episodes) of Andor for free on Youtube.
IIRC when looking it up an alien was sad near some dilithium which for some reason made all dilithium explode.
Any sane spacefaring empire would ensure such a threat would be wiped out, the Klingons (lol this autocorrected to "Clinton's") especially since they literally went to "war" against the Tribbles already.
Any species or entity capable of doing that to dilithium, or any similar situation, would be at best contained forever and otherwise flat out exterminated to ensure it never happened again.
I love it when inexplicable magic is forced into my hard sci-fi. Who doesnt?
Star Trek always had science fantasy stuff like the TOS episode where they meet Apollo, Q, etc, but that's not what they did with the crying alien destroying warp travel.
Those are generally given a fantastical explanation, seems like this is just random nonsense.
That would be mean.