The series takes a look at how
horrifying and traumatizing some of the events that happens in a typical weekly
Star Trek show by presenting them from the perspective of your typical low-level grunt or
Red Shirt. This includes opening a story with a
Zombie Apocalypse on the U.S.S.
Cerritos. Played With as the protagonists are, with the exception of Boimler,
entirely unfazed by this.
Season 1
- "Temporal Edict"
- The episode as a whole deconstructs and then reconstructs Scotty Time, or "buffer time" as the Cerritos lower-deckers call it, in showing why it exists and what the consequences are for trying to curtail it. When Captain Freeman first hears that the crew are in the habit of padding their work estimates, she assumes they're being slackers — and she's right, to a degree. But the other side to that coin is how buffer time is also protective against overwork and burnout, and removing it damages morale and leaves the crew with nothing left when there's an emergency that actually requires them to work their hardest. You can't run the crew at 100% indefinitely any more than you can the ship. To Freeman's credit, she subjects herself and the senior staff to the same punishing schedule, which makes it that much easier for her to reach the conclusion that buffer time, in moderation, actually improves the efficiency of the crew.
- "Crisis Point"
- Boimler made his interview prep program by accessing the personal logs of all the ship's personnel to recreate them with the highest degree of accuracy possible. Characters in other Trek shows have also recreated the crew for various reasons, but the other ensigns treat it as a creepy invasion of privacy rather than a mild irritant. It gets worse when Mariner gets way too into blasting up her crewmates (not unlike Barclay's programs when he routinely beat up on his superior officers) and drives Tendi to leave.
- The Fantastic Racism that comes about by treating different species as a Planet of Hats turns out not to reflect well on Starfleet. And although Mariner does apologize for her behavior at the end, there's also a blink-and-miss it of one of the holo-crew making a disparaging remark about Orions that upsets Tendi. (And if Boimler's simulation is as accurate as it seems in all other areas, that guy really is prejudiced against her.)
- The episode also shows why Percussive Therapy has fallen out of favour in recent years; Beckett Mariner is clearly heading towards an extremely unhealthy place by acting out her aggression on the rest of the crew, something that Tendi points out after the fight with Holo-Shaxs. In fact, her actual breakthrough doesn't come about until she's denied her chance to kill the Holo-Freeman by the Mirror Match with her holo-self and undergoes some literal self-reflection.
- "No Small Parts"
Season 2
- "Strange Energies"
- This episode deconstructs Too Much Alike in that this the main source of conflict between Captain Freeman and Ensign Mariner. These are two headstrong women that have a strong drive to help people but are terrible at doing things on their own. The problem is that these two NEED to be in charge of any group they're in, micromanage everyone in it, and absolutely despise being disagreed with. When they're put together, they constantly butt heads until Capt. Freeman is forced to pull rank. This comes to a head at the end of the episode, where in just three months of secretly working together, both mother and daughter admit to losing their minds and the two being forced to admit that they just can't work together on a regular basis.
- "We'll Always Have Tom Paris"
- The episode deconstructs the Death Is Cheap trope as applied to main characters on Star Trek by showing that resurrection happens so often that most of the crew is just indifferent to it by this point. It also reveals that, even though the officers returned to life look surprisingly well-adjusted given what's happened to them, it's only because they're trying to spare the crew from the terrible, traumatizing secret of what is actually involved in death and resurrection.
Season 3
- "Mining the Mind's Mines" deconstructs the Star Trek cliché plot of "scientist on a remote outpost who gets killed so Starfleet is sent to investigate what happened". Turns out there's a lot of mutual hatred between Starfleet and freelance scientists like the Independent Archeologists Guild.
- "The Stars At Night" deconstructs the series' frequent use of the Insane Admiral trope. Turns out, Limited Advancement Opportunities are responsible for so many flag officers falling into this trap, as it's difficult to stand out from the crowd when you've reached that level of seniority, an especially bitter pill for an amoral egomaniac like Buenamigo to swallow.
Season 4
- "The Inner Fight"
- We find out the root cause of Mariner's many issues, neuroses, and the self-destructive cycle she has been trying to escape from all season, but is starting to slip back into: her unwillingness to let someone under her command die. She lost her best friend to an espionage missions shortly before the outbreak of the Dominion War, and all of that compounded trauma has made her actively avoid being placed into a situation where she might have to sacrifice someone she cares about.
