SNW and Disability Discourse

I am sorry, I am so very sorry, but I am going to hold forth about Star Trek, about which I have Opinions. Not because there are not more important things going on in the world, because there absolutely are, but because I am procrastinating on editing a scene that is annoying me and blathering about pop culture is fun, and because I think there will be more interesting discussion here than in the comments on YouTube where I initially expressed some of these ideas.

So! I am really enjoying Strange New Worlds, with the exception of the one episode that was a blatant rip-off of a famous Ursula K. LeGuin story that made no sense for the setting. All of my critique here is said with love—I think it's the best written of the NuTreks and it in general makes me very happy to watch every week. But we must also criticize the things we love because we are nerds and nitpickers and because culture reproduces ideology, etc.

And while I think it does most things well, it does disability kinda badly.

( Spoilers for everything up to and including the penultimate episode below. )