Oh, look, we’ve gone back to the non-streamers version of the series title card. I wonder how many focus groups were occupied with this detail?
6:1 Time’s Arrow Part II – I kind of appreciate them skipping over how the party that went back in time to find Data got their costumes/disguises, but man, it seems oddly specific — Crusher as a nurse, Riker as a cop, Picard as a Shakespeare-quoting stevedore… (And this is a problem I could harp on with almost every episode, but seriously: the ENTIRE senior staff/bridge crew — with the obvious exception of Worf — chooses to go on an incredibly dangerous time travel mission? Does that leave Worf in command of the Enterprise, or is there some other lieutenant commander from stellar cartography or something who finally gets to sit in the big chair?)
I finally realized it: This two-parter reminds me of something you’d see in Doctor Who, both old and new: “We have these resources, we have this character, this would make a striking opening, now we just need to jerry-rig a plot that can hold it together.”
6:2 Realm of Fear – “Realm of Phobia” would be a more accurate title. Lt. Barkley reappears for a story in which he needs to overcome his fear of the transporter. It’s… well, it’s an episode. Which was made. So there’s that.
6:3 Man of the People – “Hey, we haven’t had an episode where Deanna gets mentally assaulted since last year. Let’s jump on it!” This time, Deanna becomes the living Picture Of Dorian Gray for an acclaimed diplomat, who uses his temporary traveling companions as the receptacle for all his “dark” emotions so he can do his job effectively. Unfortunately, that makes said receptacles unstable and irrational, as well as aging them to senior citizenship in a matter of days. I think right about here is where the Enterprise would do well to hire an Assistant Ship’s Counselor.
As revealed in a later Voyager episode, yeah, that’s pretty much what happens. That particular episode started out showing [perpetual] Ensign Harry Kim sitting in the captain’s chair and commanding the night shift (also revealed to be a standard part of the ship’s operations) while Captain Janeway and most of the other main characters were off getting their eight hours of sleep. As Orson Scott Card once pointed out in his guide to writing fantasy and science fiction, any real captain and his officers who acted like the ones on these shows would have been court-martialed and expelled from the fleet long ago for their incompetence, but, well… that’s standard-grade TV schlock writing for ya.
Interestingly, Dr. McCoy from the original series was also indicated to have that same phobia in the extended-universe book Spock Must Die! in which an experimental new transporter (intended to alleviate McCoy’s fears) accidentally created a mirror-image copy of Spock. Of course, Trekkies will tell you the books aren’t canon, so make of that what you will.
Yep; kind of this series’ early prototype for those “O’Brien must suffer!” episodes of Deep Space Nine.
Which was something that the character of Riker and his introduction as the First Officer who will forbid a Captain from going on an away mission was meant to solve… but then he STILL takes most of the bridge crew. (“Hey, Ensign Nobody, what’s your duty assignment this shift?” “Oh, I’m to stand at the back panels playing Galaga until Commander Riker calls all the senior staff on an away mission. Then I get to sit at ops!”)
And that goes doubly for the pre-Pocket Books novels like Spock Must Die!
And another thing, why do they have “night” shifts on a space ship?
Because too many humans will have psychotic episodes when diurnal cycles are taken away?