But then something *happens* like it always does to Kirk–the “hole in space/giant glowing hand” kind of thing–and all of that goes out the window–in the course of, say, 38 hours Jim gets called “jim” 50 times, Spock never goes off shift, the ship is hit and all of sulus plants fall out of the closet they were stuffed in, uhura is swearing up a storm and Scotty’s jurry-rigging everything, checkov gets caught staring at the pretty alien, and Chapel does her damn job thank you, and Bones appears in the bridge to yell at everybody like he does.
BUT, at the end of the day, Kirk has secured a new treaty because the culture values closeness over formality, Spock’s marathon at the science station has collected enough data to keep the academy busy for *months*, one of the aliens is fascinated by the plants ensuring a new collaboration between their scientists and starfleet, Scottys improvements to the systems prevent their new friends from getting eliminated by their enemies and uhura’s swearing intimidated the enemy into backing off, and the princess is totally ensnared with Chekov–oh, and Bones discovers the cure for the new mystery illness is the bathroom moonshine, and chapel saves the fucking day.
The inspector just throws up their hands because he’d read the Kirk file, *but he never believed it was true*