I like the nice touch for Boimler's backstory being basically proto-Picard - works on a vineyard, dreams of Starfleet, is very much the diplomat but will absolutely punch you in the face if required.
I like the nice touch for Boimler's backstory being basically proto-Picard - works on a vineyard, dreams of Starfleet, is very much the diplomat but will absolutely punch you in the face if required.
Mariner "we gotta get your heart stabbed... hey, I know some Nausicaans!"
Still a classic from Lower Decks on the Tuvix situation:
"Well, I'm sure Janeway had a solution to this, I'll be back shortly"
Shortly
"Did Janeway figure it out?"
"NO! She just murdered him!"
"There has to be more to it"
"She isolated the genomes and just split him up - he begged her to live!"
"Holy shit! Janeway didn't mess around"
I appreciate they also immediately said they aren't stranded in the delta quadrant so they have basically unlimited resources to figure this out a different way
And then didn't say what that different way was, because no-one (in or out of universe) can think of one that doesn't have the same moral cost. So they just escalated it until the dilemma was over killing a non-sapient conglomeration of flesh.
Still a classic from Lower Decks on the Tuvix situation:
"Well, I'm sure Janeway had a solution to this, I'll be back shortly"
Shortly
"Did Janeway figure it out?"
"NO! She just murdered him!"
"There has to be more to it"
"She isolated the genomes and just split him up - he begged her to live!"
"Holy shit! Janeway didn't mess around"
I appreciate they also immediately said they aren't stranded in the delta quadrant so they have basically unlimited resources to figure this out a different way
And then didn't say what that different way was, because no-one (in or out of universe) can think of one that doesn't have the same moral cost. So they just escalated it until the dilemma was over killing a non-sapient conglomeration of flesh.
It's because Janeway was right but the internet refuses to admit it.
+3
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
No! Not again! A line must be drawn, here and no further!
What I find interesting about Janeway is when Future-Braxton commits Time-crimes his past, young-Braxton is arrested. But when Future-Janeway does a goddamn temporal genocide not just breaking the Temporal Prime Directive but smashing it to bits, she gets a promotion! Um? So, these 'Prime Directives' are just guidelines then yeah? I think only Picard takes them vaguely seriously - and even he breaks it one week and steadfastly supports it the next.
RazielMortem on
0
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Janeway was a murderer. You can argue that the murder was worth it, but it was straight up murder. Or more accurately, human sacrifice in order to commit necromancy.
And now she's an Admiral.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
What I find interesting about Janeway is when Future-Braxton commits Time-crimes his past, young-Braxton is arrested. But when Future-Janeway does a goddamn temporal genocide not just breaking the Temporal Prime Directive but smashing it to bits, she gets a promotion! Um? So, these 'Prime Directives' are just guidelines then yeah? I think only Picard takes them vaguely seriously - and even he breaks it one week and steadfastly supports it the next.
Janeways actions probably inspire the creation of the Time Agency anyway. Preventing her from doing stops them ever being founded.
Picard is also good at speaking klingon and rules lawyering (sheliak), which is no small thing. He's also good at knowing when to trust his subordinates which is like the most powerful of all captain skills. Sometimes you need Sulu with a foil.
Gotta imagine a lot of confrontations with Janeway go:
"Captain, we're being hailed by the Federation vessel"
"Pah, what pathetic human worm dares speak to me. Is it Picard? Oh no, is he going to talk me to death?"
"No sir....it's....Janeway!"
*DOOM Music Plays*
"Fuuuuuuuuuucccccccc-"
I mean everyone over two quadrants knows who the heck is Janeway. Picard might have stopped a Cube, Janeway deleted the whole Collective! With a box of scraps! Whatever you do, DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH JANEWAY.
RazielMortem on
+2
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
No! Not again! A line must be drawn, here and no further!
And if Janeway has anything to say about it, that line is riiiiight down the middle of Tuvix.
+16
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I mean, we all agree that getting Neelix back was a net negative, right? So really, we're comparing the benefit of getting Tuvok back vs. killing Tuvix and having to get Neelix back, too.
I mean, we all agree that getting Neelix back was a net negative, right? So really, we're comparing the benefit of getting Tuvok back vs. killing Tuvix and having to get Neelix back, too.
I don't know, Tuvix ALWAYS freaked me out, still does today at 43. It looks like someone tried to turn Neelix into one of those old 90's werewolves and did a terrible job and it just BOTHERS me.
+1
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Gotta imagine a lot of confrontations with Janeway go:
"Captain, we're being hailed by the Federation vessel" "Pah, what pathetic human worm dares speak to me. Is it Picard? Oh no, is he going to talk me to death?"
"No sir....it's....Janeway!"
*DOOM Music Plays*
"Fuuuuuuuuuucccccccc-"
I mean everyone over two quadrants knows who the heck is Janeway. Picard might have stopped a Cube, Janeway deleted the whole Collective! With a box of scraps! Whatever you do, DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH JANEWAY.
I originally read the bolded line as Spoken By Janeway and it still works. Honestly the thought of how many times Temporal Anomaly Janeway must have been attacked by a different version of herself just warms my heart
Still a classic from Lower Decks on the Tuvix situation:
"Well, I'm sure Janeway had a solution to this, I'll be back shortly"
Shortly
"Did Janeway figure it out?"
"NO! She just murdered him!"
"There has to be more to it"
"She isolated the genomes and just split him up - he begged her to live!"
"Holy shit! Janeway didn't mess around"
I appreciate they also immediately said they aren't stranded in the delta quadrant so they have basically unlimited resources to figure this out a different way
And then didn't say what that different way was, because no-one (in or out of universe) can think of one that doesn't have the same moral cost. So they just escalated it until the dilemma was over killing a non-sapient conglomeration of flesh.
Transporter clone and then split only one of them. All of them live and no one ever needs to worry about who the original was. No half measures when playing the role of a god.
"Summon a whole new person into existence for the explicit purpose of sacrificing them to power the ritual of necromancy," is some Meme-Janeway level shit.
Yeah, there's no solution that doesn't 'kill' at least one person.
If you want to count transporter clones as not people, then you create one not person, then sacrifice them to get two not people.
Neelix was incompetent with a body count. Never mind that he's such an awful cook that after all the jokes about him making the whole ship sick with his food he actually managed to make the ship itself sick with his food. No, that was forgivable. But by claiming to be a survival expert he got members of the crew killed through direct incompetence.
All of that is still there in Tuvix, and it remained to be seem how it will interact with Tuvok's competence, reliability, and honesty.
"Look at all these bones lying in the mouth of this dark and forbidding cave, which could contain all manner of horrors. Those bones might be useful, gather them up, Ensign Deadmeat."
Deadly useless Neelix still better than jealous Neelix. Eurgh. My dude, she's like 3 years old. Gross.
RazielMortem on
0
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Part of what makes the Tuvix thing disturbing is that most Trolley Problem scenarios are:
'Think fast!', the Trolley is a'comin' and you need to do something nowNowNOW. Not a situation where the Trolley rolled through a month ago and you're futzing around to undo it.
The Trolley is going to kill someone, not merge them into a single body so that they're kinda gone, but also not really gone.
Basic Trolley scenarios are raw numbers, funkier ones go into the 'quality' of the people on the receiving end. This is a two-for-one situation, but Janeway is convinced to do the deed because Kes is horny and Tuvok is her friend. It's a pretty explicit 'I like these other guys more than I like you.'
The Trolley Problem is usually a hypothetical, this does The Good Place thing where not only is it not a hypothetical, it's very hands on, and unlike Chidi, Janeway doesn't even flinch. Remember that TNG episode where Troi burned herself out for weeks trying to figure out how to not kill hologram Geordi? That doesn't happen here, and this isn't just giving an order, this is Janeway doing it herself, which... yeah, that's just straight up first degree murder.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Troi thought there had to be an option she couldn't see. Janeway saw all the options. Taking more time to think about the problem or having the problem expire in a very short period of time would not alter that. Yes, she reduced it to a two for one situation, because the alternative was one for two.
I still respect the episode for making it that, at least. To contrast, there's the reverse situation when B'elanna gets split into Human and Klingon versions. That episode used the status quo cop-out where one dies and the other has to be reverted to her old self or she'll die. If they hadn't wanted to cover the moral choice, they could have just said that Tuvix's DNA was unstable, or something.
I don't like the argument that this was treated as the obvious and unassailable choice. Janeway made it, the Doctor refused to do it (because it was killing one person), and the others were all clearly uncomfortable, but knew they'd be uncomfortable with either outcome. To borrow from the Troi example, officer training includes the fact that an officer might have to order someone to die for the greater good. Janeway knew that, and made the choice because that was her job as Captain. There wasn't a right or wrong answer, there was just the lesser of two evils.
The main villain of the Tuvix situation was, as in all things Voyager, the writers. They chose to set up that nonsense situation from which no one learns anything, no point is made about society or the characters, and no character's actions lead to any consequences even in the way their crewmates view them. Voyager really wanted to be like TNG and DS9 in setting up interesting questions in isolated episodes, but all of the more interesting questions had already been asked so they had to keep straining to contrive new ones. And worst of all, they were asking questions that they had no answer to. Not because they are deep and complex issues, but just because they presented the characters with situations for which the only possible satisfying ending is "don't write the episode in the first place".
A similar offender was the multiverse episode where Kim and some baby die, so they borrow a Kim and baby from an alternate timeline, so that "our" timeline has the correct number of Kims and babies and no harm, no foul. Except of course for the other timeline. The episode does nothing but draw attention to the multiverse problem where nothing has any stakes because every time you win, you also lost in another equally valid universe.
Voyager was not the only series that did this. DS9's episode about O'Brien being mentally tortured for 60 years and then going back into work the next day was equally bad, for being pointlessly bleak and writing themselves into a corner for which there was no satisfying way out.
DS9's episode about O'Brien being mentally tortured for 60 years and then going back into work the next day was equally bad, for being pointlessly bleak and writing themselves into a corner for which there was no satisfying way out.
I'll give you the "bleak" (though I don't really understand what "pointlessly bleak" means here), but how did they write themselves into a corner? (The main problem I'd see is that DS9 told the kind of stories that would have benefited from the series being more serialised. These one-off stories should have left more of a trace on the characters.)
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The main villain of the Tuvix situation was, as in all things Voyager, the writers. They chose to set up that nonsense situation from which no one learns anything, no point is made about society or the characters, and no character's actions lead to any consequences even in the way their crewmates view them. Voyager really wanted to be like TNG and DS9 in setting up interesting questions in isolated episodes, but all of the more interesting questions had already been asked so they had to keep straining to contrive new ones. And worst of all, they were asking questions that they had no answer to. Not because they are deep and complex issues, but just because they presented the characters with situations for which the only possible satisfying ending is "don't write the episode in the first place".
A similar offender was the multiverse episode where Kim and some baby die, so they borrow a Kim and baby from an alternate timeline, so that "our" timeline has the correct number of Kims and babies and no harm, no foul. Except of course for the other timeline. The episode does nothing but draw attention to the multiverse problem where nothing has any stakes because every time you win, you also lost in another equally valid universe.
Voyager was not the only series that did this. DS9's episode about O'Brien being mentally tortured for 60 years and then going back into work the next day was equally bad, for being pointlessly bleak and writing themselves into a corner for which there was no satisfying way out.
I'm don't disagree in general, but they are situations were all the options are bad, and navigating those is interesting. That's the whole point of the trolley problem: navigating a bad situation with no good outcomes.
It takes good writing to do that, and good writing does not belong in the same sentence as. Voyager.
I do disagree about the last point: torturing O'Brien is its own reward.
DS9's episode about O'Brien being mentally tortured for 60 years and then going back into work the next day was equally bad, for being pointlessly bleak and writing themselves into a corner for which there was no satisfying way out.
I'll give you the "bleak" (though I don't really understand what "pointlessly bleak" means here), but how did they write themselves into a corner? (The main problem I'd see is that DS9 told the kind of stories that would have benefited from the series being more serialised. These one-off stories should have left more of a trace on the characters.)
I think most people agree that it's silly to have O'Brien be upset about this for exactly one episode and then move on and be totally normal. But the "realistic" option, where O'Brien retires, a broken man, unable to relate to his wife, child, or best friend ever again...who wants that? It necessitates removing him from the show to treat the situation with the gravity that it deserves. Is that the ending people would want? It eliminates a beloved character while hanging a specter of dread over the rest of the show as O'Brien's absence reminds our heroes constantly that they live in a universe where a random paperwork error when you land on the wrong planet can lead to a horrific, irreversible fate. One that is simultaneously alien to the audience because it relies on made up science, and all too familiar for anyone who has had to watch a dear friend turn into a bitter, broken person through trauma, dementia, or the like. It's pointless because it doesn't have a point. It doesn't demonstrate anything actionable about the characters, the universe, or ourselves. It has no lesson or takeaway. Either you patch it over, as they chose to do, or you treat it with gravity, and its weight drags the rest of the series to a whining halt. Like Tuvix, the concept should have been written off in the writer's room when they realized they knew how to set up the premise but didn't know how to land it.
It works as a self-contained sci-fi short story, though. I wish DS9 had already been part of a generation of TV that could handle such things better (and I disagree with you that there are only the two options you mention, because storytelling can work without having to correspond to reality 100%), but I'd rather have DS9 be able to tell such stories but imperfectly than to only stick to the stories that work best with the semi-serialised format. IMO DS9 is a better series with "Hard Time" in it than without it, even if it was ill equipped to handle such material in the longer term. But it's such episodes straining against the limitation of '90s TV that helped pave the way for TV being able to tell different kinds of stories.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Any main character in any Star Trek show would be crippled by trauma if the consequences of what they're put through on a weekly basis was given "the gravity that it deserves". But the shows are, in the main, episodic entertainment, and the buy-in price of that is the suspension of disbelief (up to a point).
If O'Brien's trauma is that point for you then OK. I guess The Inner Light would also qualify. For me those episodes were about the neat little SF idea at the heart of it (a lifetime's experience, forced upon someone unwillingly, with very different purposes), the character development we see as the person we know lives this alternate life, and the pathos of the ending as the character goes back to their normal life.
I would be against the idea that Star Trek shows shy away from putting their character through anything anything that could not be ignored in the next episode. Riker gets driven half-mad by aliens, Picard is taken over by the Borg and helps kill thousands of colleagues, Data gets taken over (again), Worf contemplates suicide. The only one of them who gets any aftercare is Picard, and that's because he's the lead character.
Honestly, I just assumed O'Brien was going to therapy a lot off-screen after that episode.
Although, checking the wiki rather than relying on my decrepit memory, the O'Brien episode is mainly about the traumatic aftermath of his prison experience. He's plainly damaged by his experience, but reaches a point of healing by the end of the episode. Not of being healed completely, but of choosing to try and get better, at which point the episode ends because the story is over and his recovery is done off in the background of life on DS9.
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
It's like Dear Doctor. A decision that should have large consequences for the person who made it (at the least), but instead it's "But for me, it was Tuesday."
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
It works as a self-contained sci-fi short story, though. I wish DS9 had already been part of a generation of TV that could handle such things better (and I disagree with you that there are only the two options you mention, because storytelling can work without having to correspond to reality 100%), but I'd rather have DS9 be able to tell such stories but imperfectly than to only stick to the stories that work best with the semi-serialised format. IMO DS9 is a better series with "Hard Time" in it than without it, even if it was ill equipped to handle such material in the longer term. But it's such episodes straining against the limitation of '90s TV that helped pave the way for TV being able to tell different kinds of stories.
I might be particularly susceptible to things that muck with a person's identity (which is why Tuvix's presentation of everything as "This is a third person who has nothing to do with the other two" makes it flat to me). So a version of Hard Time that was in an anthology series and involved a new character, I could see working pretty well.
The ending of Hard Time I picture is where everyone (thinking mainly of Keiko and Bashir) starts to distance themselves from O'Brien, pitying him but realizing they ultimately can't understand what he's been through, that they can't pretend he's the same person and have to be prepared for him to lash out, but all they can do is either stay by his side and be available in a one-way relationship, or move on and realize they have to think of their own needs.
That ending reminds me a bit of the ending to That Mitchell and Webb Look, where (as a joke?) the comedy series ends with an incredibly depressing and well-executed sketch about Sherlock Holmes having Alzheimer's. It hits hard, but of course it only works as a one-off. You couldn't put it in the middle of a Holmes series even if you planned on making the show about Watson and Mycroft afterwards.
Of course, just because O'Brien is one of my favorite characters does not mean he's the main character or that the show couldn't continue without him. Anyway, I agree with the point that the episode works if it is self-contained, so it's not really comparable to the bad Voyager "weird concept" episodes which usually just have too much going on to be efficient standalone stories.
EDIT: Having seen @Bogart 's comments, it does make me wonder why that episode sticks out over The Inner Light or Riker's insanity episode (which also stood out to me as hitting a bit too hard). I think it's because they did take the time to make it about the trauma. With an episode that is mostly about something bad happening to the crew, then it gets resolved and the crew moves on, I watch the episode and think, "huh it's kinda weird that this didn't really phase anyone", but that didn't color my impression during the episode. But Hard Time chose to make most of its runtime about that trauma, specifically making the point that this will impact him forever. Leaving me thinking, "how do they go forward after this?" and then leaving that question basically unanswered.
I doubt I'd remember Hard Time as an example of this if it wasn't, overall, a really good episode.
It does remind me that for all his jovial, upbeat attitude each week, Riker also got a lot of shit thrown at him - dude gets absorbed into weird black goo for hours, tortured constantly and then spat out. Also gets tortured by aliens, again. Then nearly goes mad. Gets shot multiple times. Also he has to suffer the ultimate pain - a clip show.
One of the episodes I remember going 'daaaayum' was Voyager's 'Real Life'. For most of the episode it's 'haha what if the Doctor had a sitcom family shenanigans rather than the blissful perfect family'...and then the goddamn daughter suffers a fatal accident and slowly dies. WHAT THE FUCK. Ok sure, moral 'appreciate today because tomorrow may not come' but come on, jeebus.
0
amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
I feel like in the vegan space socialist future, people that like hang out on Earth or aren't starfleet prolly do deal with normal trauma.
I think someone who signs up to possibly get cloned in a transporter and then sent to the future and the past, and then given false memories of a lifetime of imprisonment, and also was assimilated by the borg, prolly just has some 300 years from now Neuroatypicality that lets them shake it off.
Also the Holodeck is more of a therapy tool than the therapists of Starfleet.
they could have just said that Tuvix's DNA was unstable, or something.
If Tuvix's creation had any hint of science instead of pure magic it would have had the same results as TMP's transporter accident. "What we got back...didn't live long... fortunately."
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Posts
Mariner "we gotta get your heart stabbed... hey, I know some Nausicaans!"
And then didn't say what that different way was, because no-one (in or out of universe) can think of one that doesn't have the same moral cost. So they just escalated it until the dilemma was over killing a non-sapient conglomeration of flesh.
It's because Janeway was right but the internet refuses to admit it.
And now she's an Admiral.
Janeways actions probably inspire the creation of the Time Agency anyway. Preventing her from doing stops them ever being founded.
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
"Captain, we're being hailed by the Federation vessel"
"Pah, what pathetic human worm dares speak to me. Is it Picard? Oh no, is he going to talk me to death?"
"No sir....it's....Janeway!"
*DOOM Music Plays*
"Fuuuuuuuuuucccccccc-"
I mean everyone over two quadrants knows who the heck is Janeway. Picard might have stopped a Cube, Janeway deleted the whole Collective! With a box of scraps! Whatever you do, DO NOT FUCK AROUND WITH JANEWAY.
And if Janeway has anything to say about it, that line is riiiiight down the middle of Tuvix.
I don't know, Tuvix ALWAYS freaked me out, still does today at 43. It looks like someone tried to turn Neelix into one of those old 90's werewolves and did a terrible job and it just BOTHERS me.
I originally read the bolded line as Spoken By Janeway and it still works. Honestly the thought of how many times Temporal Anomaly Janeway must have been attacked by a different version of herself just warms my heart
Transporter clone and then split only one of them. All of them live and no one ever needs to worry about who the original was. No half measures when playing the role of a god.
If you want to count transporter clones as not people, then you create one not person, then sacrifice them to get two not people.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
All of that is still there in Tuvix, and it remained to be seem how it will interact with Tuvok's competence, reliability, and honesty.
I still respect the episode for making it that, at least. To contrast, there's the reverse situation when B'elanna gets split into Human and Klingon versions. That episode used the status quo cop-out where one dies and the other has to be reverted to her old self or she'll die. If they hadn't wanted to cover the moral choice, they could have just said that Tuvix's DNA was unstable, or something.
I don't like the argument that this was treated as the obvious and unassailable choice. Janeway made it, the Doctor refused to do it (because it was killing one person), and the others were all clearly uncomfortable, but knew they'd be uncomfortable with either outcome. To borrow from the Troi example, officer training includes the fact that an officer might have to order someone to die for the greater good. Janeway knew that, and made the choice because that was her job as Captain. There wasn't a right or wrong answer, there was just the lesser of two evils.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
A similar offender was the multiverse episode where Kim and some baby die, so they borrow a Kim and baby from an alternate timeline, so that "our" timeline has the correct number of Kims and babies and no harm, no foul. Except of course for the other timeline. The episode does nothing but draw attention to the multiverse problem where nothing has any stakes because every time you win, you also lost in another equally valid universe.
Voyager was not the only series that did this. DS9's episode about O'Brien being mentally tortured for 60 years and then going back into work the next day was equally bad, for being pointlessly bleak and writing themselves into a corner for which there was no satisfying way out.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I'm don't disagree in general, but they are situations were all the options are bad, and navigating those is interesting. That's the whole point of the trolley problem: navigating a bad situation with no good outcomes.
It takes good writing to do that, and good writing does not belong in the same sentence as. Voyager.
I do disagree about the last point: torturing O'Brien is its own reward.
I think most people agree that it's silly to have O'Brien be upset about this for exactly one episode and then move on and be totally normal. But the "realistic" option, where O'Brien retires, a broken man, unable to relate to his wife, child, or best friend ever again...who wants that? It necessitates removing him from the show to treat the situation with the gravity that it deserves. Is that the ending people would want? It eliminates a beloved character while hanging a specter of dread over the rest of the show as O'Brien's absence reminds our heroes constantly that they live in a universe where a random paperwork error when you land on the wrong planet can lead to a horrific, irreversible fate. One that is simultaneously alien to the audience because it relies on made up science, and all too familiar for anyone who has had to watch a dear friend turn into a bitter, broken person through trauma, dementia, or the like. It's pointless because it doesn't have a point. It doesn't demonstrate anything actionable about the characters, the universe, or ourselves. It has no lesson or takeaway. Either you patch it over, as they chose to do, or you treat it with gravity, and its weight drags the rest of the series to a whining halt. Like Tuvix, the concept should have been written off in the writer's room when they realized they knew how to set up the premise but didn't know how to land it.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
If O'Brien's trauma is that point for you then OK. I guess The Inner Light would also qualify. For me those episodes were about the neat little SF idea at the heart of it (a lifetime's experience, forced upon someone unwillingly, with very different purposes), the character development we see as the person we know lives this alternate life, and the pathos of the ending as the character goes back to their normal life.
I would be against the idea that Star Trek shows shy away from putting their character through anything anything that could not be ignored in the next episode. Riker gets driven half-mad by aliens, Picard is taken over by the Borg and helps kill thousands of colleagues, Data gets taken over (again), Worf contemplates suicide. The only one of them who gets any aftercare is Picard, and that's because he's the lead character.
Honestly, I just assumed O'Brien was going to therapy a lot off-screen after that episode.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I might be particularly susceptible to things that muck with a person's identity (which is why Tuvix's presentation of everything as "This is a third person who has nothing to do with the other two" makes it flat to me). So a version of Hard Time that was in an anthology series and involved a new character, I could see working pretty well.
The ending of Hard Time I picture is where everyone (thinking mainly of Keiko and Bashir) starts to distance themselves from O'Brien, pitying him but realizing they ultimately can't understand what he's been through, that they can't pretend he's the same person and have to be prepared for him to lash out, but all they can do is either stay by his side and be available in a one-way relationship, or move on and realize they have to think of their own needs.
That ending reminds me a bit of the ending to That Mitchell and Webb Look, where (as a joke?) the comedy series ends with an incredibly depressing and well-executed sketch about Sherlock Holmes having Alzheimer's. It hits hard, but of course it only works as a one-off. You couldn't put it in the middle of a Holmes series even if you planned on making the show about Watson and Mycroft afterwards.
Of course, just because O'Brien is one of my favorite characters does not mean he's the main character or that the show couldn't continue without him. Anyway, I agree with the point that the episode works if it is self-contained, so it's not really comparable to the bad Voyager "weird concept" episodes which usually just have too much going on to be efficient standalone stories.
EDIT: Having seen @Bogart 's comments, it does make me wonder why that episode sticks out over The Inner Light or Riker's insanity episode (which also stood out to me as hitting a bit too hard). I think it's because they did take the time to make it about the trauma. With an episode that is mostly about something bad happening to the crew, then it gets resolved and the crew moves on, I watch the episode and think, "huh it's kinda weird that this didn't really phase anyone", but that didn't color my impression during the episode. But Hard Time chose to make most of its runtime about that trauma, specifically making the point that this will impact him forever. Leaving me thinking, "how do they go forward after this?" and then leaving that question basically unanswered.
I doubt I'd remember Hard Time as an example of this if it wasn't, overall, a really good episode.
One of the episodes I remember going 'daaaayum' was Voyager's 'Real Life'. For most of the episode it's 'haha what if the Doctor had a sitcom family shenanigans rather than the blissful perfect family'...and then the goddamn daughter suffers a fatal accident and slowly dies. WHAT THE FUCK. Ok sure, moral 'appreciate today because tomorrow may not come' but come on, jeebus.
I think someone who signs up to possibly get cloned in a transporter and then sent to the future and the past, and then given false memories of a lifetime of imprisonment, and also was assimilated by the borg, prolly just has some 300 years from now Neuroatypicality that lets them shake it off.
Also the Holodeck is more of a therapy tool than the therapists of Starfleet.
If Tuvix's creation had any hint of science instead of pure magic it would have had the same results as TMP's transporter accident. "What we got back...didn't live long... fortunately."