Don't get me wrong: it was right for STC to pursue this story. This just wasn't the way to present it. Almost everything in it fails to provide adequate rationale, with each detail serving just to bring up plot points. I notice John & Mary Black are no longer overseeing the scripts, and can only lament the sudden fall in quality from the six episodes they supervised.
What do I mean? Well (to pick one) would you congratulate someone on a promotion, and then tell them there are complications, and then reveal that actually it isn't at all settled? Why congratulate someone when you know it isn't actually settled yet?
Sure, people get excited and jump the gun sometimes, but that wasn't the point of this episode. And the script didn't seem too sure what it wanted its point should be, only the issue it wanted to bring up .... to no actual conclusion. So there is no actual story here.
Of course, some will still want to defend this, and say "hey, at least they tried, and their hearts were in the right place." And YES: original Trek was sometimes preachy, sometimes clumsy, sometimes hamhanded. But bad writing in the past doesn't change the fact that bad writing in the present is, well, *bad* -- especially when it's specifically attempting to redress the error made in a previous (TOS) episode, but then makes it worse by sloppy handling and poorly-thought arguments.*
*I'm being generous here; this episode has no real arguments, just people making declarations, asserting conclusions and challenging straw-man assumptions -- none of which are adequately demonstrated, and all entirely failing to point toward any understanding. Very sub-par Trek.
Extra bonus quiz:
Q. Why is Spock on the shuttlecraft in the first place?
Q. Why is Kirk interviewing a candidate for captain on another ship?
Q. Why would command placement have to take place faster because a candidate got upset?
Q. Why would an officer get to decide what constitutes enough answer regarding an action where people died?
Q. Why is there someone present just to turn on/off a computer, but one of the judges at the command interview has to act as comm officer for a subspace message?
(These are just off the top of my head; there are more)
