Is Starfleet Actually Negligent Toward Its Officers?

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▶Chapters
0:00 - Intro: Starfleet Is a Promise
01:34 - Yes
03:09 - Starfleet Negligence, Classic Trek Style
05:56 - Negligence: The Next Generation
08:23 - How Much Suffering? Miles
10:57 - Harry Kim, the O'Brien of Voyager
16:15 - Trip's Bad Trip
17:59 - Starfleet Negligence: The Prequel
19:46 - "Court Martial"
26:19 - "The Wounded"
36:19 - Conclusion
40:39 - Shoutouts, Plugs, and Announcements

[DannyBeans]

Tom Riker deserves a mention, too. Dude spent eight years completely alone in a cave, got rescued only to find out that (from his perspective) somebody else has been living his life the whole time, is forced to basically start his life over almost from scratch, and then just . . . has to go back to work. I don't blame him at all for becoming disillusioned with Starfleet.

[FAHCORE]

Maybe they don't need any time off because, off camera, Troi is actually a good councilor.

[gozerthegozarian]

Steve: "Janeway did the right thing!"
Me: Whiskey Tango Foxtrott! Dogs and cats living together ! Mass hysteria!

[Dominic-Noble]

"I've been thinking about the first time I met Geordi La Forge. He was a young officer assigned to pilot me on an inspection tour, and I made some off hand remark about the shuttle's engine efficiency not being what it should and the next morning I found that he'd stayed up all night refitting the fusion initiators. Well, I knew then that I wanted him with me on my next command." - Captain Picard, glorifying toxic work environments.

[rifterx]

The problem with taking time off, is that almost every time Starfleet officers are depicted taking time off something worse happens to them. The overwhelming majority of these are alien abductions leading to torture, brainwashing, implants, and all kinds of other definitely stressful experiences. I don't think Geordi successfully arrived at a single conference in the series, despite burning his vacation time for them.

[oneless]

The Commodore in “Court Martial” also plays perfectly into the argument that Starfleet is negligent towards it’s officers. Here you have a flag officer who believes Kirk made a mistake due to the stress and pressures of being a starship captain. However rather than admitting that Starship Captains are under this intense pressure he wants Kirk to take a desk job so Starfleet won’t have to deal with the fall out… that sounds pretty negligent.

[tedpair]

If Miles O'Brien had a nickel for every time he watched a copy of his own body die, he'd have two nickels.

Which isn't much, but it's weird it happened twice.

[PaulTheadra]

When I was in the army, me and my fellow soldiers came under fire, I was a combat nurse who, like many other combat medical soldiers and civilians, we all medically responding, we treated the injured, moved the dead and continued to get fired upon.

We were all back to work the next day like nothing happened (except the dead and injured). I got in trouble for yelling at a high ranking officer about not doing so well.

I believe Star Trek nails the 'STFU and get back to the mission" theme accurately. Great video Steve <3

[christopherleodaniels]

Uhura has her entire mind erased, learns to speak, gets “re-educated” from “See The Ball” to “Star Fleet Academy” in a week, and is back on duty after she finishes her classes. No time off and no effort to reintroduce herself to her friends and family back on Earth.

[MelodyStark]

I am struggling with this myself. But Picard never did deal with the Borg, as evidenced by First Contact. He has revenge in his eyes, and the rage scene with Lily is... amazing at showing PTSD and how Starfleet never addressed it.

[TheWretchedOwl]

I think an excellent example of this would be the episode with Thomas Riker, Will’s transporter accident duplicate. They find him on the planet where he’s been living alone for like… eight years? He’s been in total isolation for a long time, and when he’s finally rescued he finds that some other version of himself has been living the life that he lost, ruined the relationship he cared the most about, and that nobody even missed him because they didn’t know he was even gone. Then, he’s almost immediately back in uniform, and put under the command of his own self who now outranks him, and later is sent back down to the planet he was stranded on to repair some stuff. Any one of those traumas should require a full psych evaluation at the very least, but the episode ends with him just being reassigned to a new ship and going about his business. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he later sort of snapped and joined a terrorist organization.

[sirBnes]

I think "Hard Time" does a little better than merely "paying lip service" to the notion that recovery from trauma is a process. O'Brien is desperate to avoid dealing with his guilt over what happened and he's hellbent on getting back to work so he can pretend it didn't happen. Sisko and Bashir go along with it at first because he's so insistent, but they ultimately change their mind and force him to take time off.

[Andy-jubb]

The only partial justification in Voyager's case is there's not really anywhere to take a break to. Unless you go to the holodeck for a few days where you just hope that Grendel doesn't turn you into energy, Satan's Robot doesn't capture you, or you don't end up on fourth floor (I still wanna know why the fourth floor was out of bounds).

[jasonknight]

I found it a bit strange you omitted Nog dealing with the loss of his leg... Or Paris being forced to relive the experience of being murdered every 14 hours.

[EMSpdx]

1) The issues with Starfleet is that they recruit and reward beings who neglect their mental health. One of the nice things about the Spock is that he acknowledges how stressful his responsibilities are, and we see him having meditation/prayer time and asks for privacy so he can do so. 2) The horrible thing about Maxwell is that he was right all along!

[wildbill]

American business tend to operate the same way! Cut staffing to the bone, then overwork the employees that are left. Then make you feel guilty for taking a sick day or a vacation.

[marcplourde]

Like you, I am no fan of Voyager, but the episode "Latent Image" which leans heavily on the superb Robert Picardo, is a good example of a whole episode written around a character coming to grips with a trauma. At first Janeway isn't just negligent, she orders his memory wiped because she feels the Doctor couldn't possibly work through his problems and continue to be functional.

[TVFun]

While I'm not a big Enterprise fan, I do actually like how after Trip's sister is killed by the Xindi, they take the time to acknowledge how broken up inside he is about it, even though he's trying to put on a brave face. There was also the TNG episode "The Bonding, " where this little kid's mother dies, he becomes an orphan, and they just sort of leave him alone with his suffering (this seems to be Starfleet's standard policy whenever someone's just had a traumatic loss), hilarity ensues, but at they end they actually acknowledge how messed up that is by bringing in Wesley and having him talk about how he tried to hide all his grief when his dad died and it really didn't do him any favors. This episode actually ran up into a lot of resistance from Gene Roddenberry, who said in the 24th century no one grieves and we just accept death, so maybe that's where a lot of this comes from.

[shona-sof]

The first example of this sort of thing I remember noticing was in the TOS episode where Uhura lost all her memories. _ALL OF THEM_. She was basically reading 'See Spot run.' at one point. Next episode? Fully trained and capable bridge officer.

[katiepersons]

I was always deeply disturbed in TNG when the USS Yamato, a Galaxy class starship with a big crew, is destroyed with all hands lost yet by the end of the episode picard and riker are all grins and giggles like it didn't happen. Truly horrifying.