Star Trek: 10 Incredible Times Star Trek Ensigns Saved The Day
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00:00 As the lowest commissioned rank, Ensigns haven't always gotten the fairest end of the deal
00:04 in Star Trek.
00:05 Having spent years at the Academy, they still have to bunk up, share sonic showers, and
00:09 eat from the dodgy Replicators - aboard some ships, at least.
00:13 They can often be found toiling away in the background whilst their superiors bask in
00:16 all the glory.
00:17 That, they could just as well end up as cannon fodder.
00:20 We all know that the first appearance of Ensign No Name is an immediate red flag.
00:24 Of course, if your name is Harry Kim, you'll be cannon fodder and never make it past Ensign.
00:28 But you will get some bigger quarters, so small blessings.
00:32 On numerous occasions, however, Starfleet Ensigns have been elemental to mission success.
00:37 We have seen them save ships from disaster, protect the lives of individuals or entire
00:41 populations, and even traverse timelines to help their fellow officers.
00:45 So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Trek Culture here with 10 incredible times Star
00:50 Trek Ensigns saved the day.
00:52 Number 10.
00:53 First day on the job, Ensign Lang.
00:56 It's a baptism of phaser fire for this Ensign on her first day as acting Chief of Security
01:01 aboard Voyager in the episode "Displaced".
01:04 She may well accept Shikote's humorous comments to that effect with a degree of sarcasm of
01:08 her own, but the crew are being slowly replaced by a shifty and thermostat-enthusiast alien
01:13 race called the Nereans.
01:14 In the midst of all the action, and at a moment when it's not at all clear what's going on,
01:19 it is indeed Ensign Lang who takes Tuvok Station at the bridge.
01:23 There are 40 Voyager crew members remaining, and falling, and over 100 Nereans and rising.
01:29 Lang is then ordered by Shikote to organize the lockdown of the ship's critical systems.
01:33 She takes to the task with Pernash, and is unfazed when Shikote leaves her alone on the
01:38 bridge.
01:39 When the Nereans start breaking down the doors, Lang confidently issues orders to two crew
01:42 members who have just arrived before taking out her phaser and firing.
01:46 She is stunned in return and falls to the floor, but her heroic efforts and assured
01:50 command of the situation have already ensured that Voyager will win the day.
01:55 She also allows Shikote the time to grab the Doctor, whose duties as tricorder were later
01:59 key to the crew's escape.
02:01 9.
02:02 NX-2L4 - Ensign Mayweather
02:05 When Earth is brutally attacked by the Xindi in the Star Trek Enterprise episode "The Expanse",
02:10 the Klingon Juras decides to use the moment to get a little revenge on Captain Archer.
02:14 Juras has been holding a grudge ever since he was demoted following the pair's encounter
02:18 earlier in the second season.
02:20 In the present episode, Juras first attacks when the NX-01 is arriving home, but he is
02:25 fended off by other Earth vessels.
02:27 He strikes again when Enterprise is on course for Vulcan, but is readily fought off.
02:32 It's not until the ship reaches the thermobaric clouds which surround the Delphic expanse
02:36 that Ensign Mayweather's extraordinary flying skills truly come into play to save the day.
02:41 Those dastardly Klingons attack once more, but this time Enterprise's upgraded weapons
02:46 - some fancy new photonic torpedoes - prove ineffective, as Juras has transferred his
02:51 aft shields forward.
02:53 The solution?
02:54 Get Travis to perform a spectacular L4 manoeuvre at full impulse, which basically means flying
02:59 the ship up and over the Klingons in a loop to arrive facing their unprotected stern.
03:04 Lieutenant Reed then fires torpedoes, and the Klingons are expedited to Grethor.
03:09 This wasn't the first or the last time Ensign Mayweather saved the day at the helm of the
03:14 pioneering Warp 5 starship, but it sure was impressive.
03:18 Nice going, Travis, indeed.
03:20 8.
03:21 Saving Dramer 4 from disaster - Ensign's Hildebrandt, Davies, Allens, and acting Ensign Crusher
03:27 The Season 2 episode "Pen Pals" of Star Trek The Next Generation is a bit of an anomaly.
03:31 It is strange not least for the creepy long-distance communications between Data and a young girl,
03:37 Sargenka, from a pre-warp planet, Dramer 4, which is facing catastrophe.
03:41 The ramifications for the Prime Directive most certainly shouldn't have been the only
03:45 consideration when judging Data's behaviour.
03:47 Still, Data's actions have consequences, and it's up to a group of Ensigns to sort things
03:52 out for Sargenka.
03:53 Whilst the senior staff are comforting themselves with the luxury of philosophical debate, only
03:57 ever self-serving in this instance, Ensigns Hildebrandt, Davies, and Allens, led by acting
04:03 Ensign Wesley Crusher, are doing the hard work to discover the cause of the planetary
04:07 breakups in the Sulkundi-Dramer sector.
04:10 Struggling at first in his position of authority, Wesley manages to rally his team of Ensigns
04:14 behind him.
04:15 When he finally summons the courage to order an icospectogram test, it is this that leads
04:20 to the discovery of the cause of the planetary instabilities - funky interactions with dilithium
04:25 in the planet's crust, essentially.
04:27 The Ensigns are then able to use this information to develop a solution to the problem, via
04:31 some modified probe torpedoes at it, which returns geological stability to Sargenka's
04:36 previously doomed homeworld and saves the lives of every inhabitant.
04:40 7.
04:41 Linguistic Licence - Ensign Sato
04:43 Hoshi Sato's journey to self-confidence is certainly one of the greatest of any Ensign.
04:48 She was always a prodigious linguist, mastering several languages and picking up new ones
04:53 with apparent ease.
04:54 Later, in Enterprise's mission, she would make major improvements to the Universal Translator
04:59 and developed the Lingua Code translation matrix that was still in use centuries later.
05:03 In the beginning, Sato's nerves and lack of self-esteem were often a hurdle for her
05:07 to overcome.
05:08 This struggle is most visible in the Enterprise Season 1 episode "Fight or Flight".
05:13 Despite her reservations, Archer convinces Sato to join the away team that was to board
05:17 an unresponsive and seemingly damaged alien vessel.
05:20 When the team find a string of alien bodies hanging upside down, Sato has a rather visceral
05:25 reaction.
05:26 I mean, wouldn't you though?
05:27 A sense of embarrassment and doubt follow her from the incident.
05:30 When Enterprise is attacked, the Universal Translator struggles to process the language
05:35 of the alien race in a position to come to the crew's aid.
05:38 Looking for synonyms that don't arrive, Hoshi is understandably more and more frustrated.
05:42 Archer suggests that she forget the Universal Translator and communicate with the aliens
05:46 directly.
05:47 Whilst trepidatious - I mean, she hasn't even had time to learn the language's basic
05:51 conjugations - Hoshi accepts.
05:52 Doing what she does best, we see her confidence grow with each line she speaks.
05:56 The alien is convinced and saves Enterprise from the hostile species, all thanks to the
06:01 exceptional skills of a gifted ensign.
06:03 6.
06:04 The entire ship and timeline, Ensign Anna Jameson
06:08 Lieutenant Carey wasn't any the wiser, but you might recognise this ensign as Seven of
06:13 Nine.
06:14 This is left field or maybe even flirting with a bit of a cheat, but long before Picard's
06:18 field commission, Seven was recruited by the USS Relativity.
06:21 It is reasonable and a little bit of fun to assume that she officially carried the rank
06:26 during that period.
06:27 When a mysterious saboteur from the 29th century - it turns out to be a rancorous future future
06:33 - Captain Braxton places a Force III temporal disruptor somewhere, sometime on Voyager.
06:39 Seven is enlisted to save the day.
06:41 She is beamed back and forth along Voyager's history to prevent the ship's destruction,
06:45 risking temporal psychosis in the process.
06:48 She even dies at one point.
06:49 Now, that's an incredible sacrifice for our technically speaking first time ensign.
06:54 Her future, present, past self - also will be, has been, was, is - starting to agree
07:00 with Braxton about those tenses, afflicted by some dizzying sensory aphasia as a result.
07:05 With a little help from a reluctantly drafted Captain Janeway, Braxton is stopped and Voyager
07:10 saved.
07:11 Let us all look backwards at the time when Ensign Anna Seven Jameson gets the praise
07:15 she clearly deserves.
07:17 5.
07:18 An Enderprisean Ensign - Ensign Garrovick
07:22 As Star Trek prodigy writer Aaron Waltke tweeted regarding the Star Trek Ensign, "I wanted
07:27 to give him a slightly bigger fanfare send-off and tribute to all the other redshirts."
07:32 And that he most certainly did for this bearer of crimson.
07:35 In the Prodigy episode "All the Worlds Astage", the motley but endearing crew of the protostar
07:41 answer a distress call to find a pre-war planet whose inhabitants are, nonetheless, cosplaying
07:46 their hearts out to Kirk-era Starfleet.
07:50 From one of their plays, filled with uncanny impressions and fabulously familiar overacting,
07:56 we learn about Ensign Garrovick's time on the planet.
07:59 Over a hundred years before, Garrovick had flown a lone shuttle mission to the planet
08:04 to attempt to resolve an unknown problem without the inhabitants' knowledge.
08:08 His shuttle, the Galileo, crashed instead.
08:10 Doing his duty, he went to warn the population of the danger that the damaged Galileo, now
08:16 leaking warp plasma, posed.
08:18 Before his death, the heroic Ensign did everything in his power to prevent the inhabitants from
08:22 falling victim to what they interpreted as "the curse of the gallows".
08:26 His actions no doubt saved countless lives before the arrival of the protostar, whose
08:30 crew were able to find a definitive solution to the curse.
08:34 Going out saving the day is a much better end for the character, who appeared quite
08:38 significantly in one episode of the original series and then was never seen again.
08:43 4.
08:44 When did he not?
08:45 Harry Kim
08:46 Poor old Harry Kim, the archetype of the unsung hero Ensign.
08:50 He saw his jailbird friend demoted and promoted back without the whiff of a little box on
08:54 his console.
08:55 Seven years is a long time at the bottom, even if he was senior staff.
08:59 But it was a small ship and if Harry got a pip, then everyone would want one.
09:03 The times Ensign Kim saved the day, or was a major part of it, are legion.
09:07 They may outnumber the times he died.
09:09 For example, when Voyager is duplicated by a subspace divergence field, Kim Mark II runs
09:15 through a ship full of Vidians to get the then-newborn Naomi Wildman and cross over
09:19 to the original Voyager.
09:21 When he gets to sickbay, he phases one Vidian almost immediately and performs an epic forward
09:26 roll move that allows him to shoot the other.
09:28 He rescues the baby and, by extension, saves himself.
09:32 All the while, his counterpart, technically speaking the real Harry, is presumably still
09:36 floating through space.
09:38 He deserves a mention simply for retaining his sanity.
09:41 Weird really is part of the job.
09:43 Later, when Kim gets a taste of command, he saves Captain Janeway and Chakotay in the
09:47 nick of time from Chronoworks, torts down a smart bomb, although he did argue to bring
09:52 it on board, gets a reality check on the Nightingale, and helps rescue an amnesiac crew with some
09:57 explosive escape pods.
09:59 3.
10:00 Lower Decks, Lower Decks, Lower Decks
10:03 Ensign's Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford.
10:06 It was about time they got their own series.
10:09 After all, Lower Decks of the Next Generation was first broadcast in 1994.
10:13 There was an episode of Voyager with similar intent, but they were all crewmen.
10:17 Now aboard the Kali-class, we see just how often the Ensigns save the day, or, to phrase
10:22 it more in the style of the show itself, the number of times they kick Impossible's arse.
10:26 For the most part, not yet tired or jaded by the rigours of rank and command, or precisely
10:31 to avoid it in one case, Ensign's Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi have repeatedly
10:37 innovated their way out of danger.
10:39 Either collectively or individually, they have helped cure a zombie rage virus, defeated
10:43 Romulan guards, and uncovered spy plots.
10:46 They have fended off the Paklet, the Drukmani, and Bilops' mum, outsmarted a megalomaniacal
10:52 computer, compromised with the Ferengi with clever economics, and generally saved each
10:56 other's lives countless times.
10:58 In the Season 2 finale First First Contact, Mariner inspires Rutherford with the plan
11:03 to remove the outer hull of the Cerritos, and the entire crew then work around the clock
11:08 to save the Archimedes from crashing into an inhabited planet.
11:11 Tendi also saves Boimler with Cetacean Ops CPR.
11:14 Again, in the Season 3 finale, all three are crucial to saving the day.
11:18 They prove that Starfleet needs people, especially as Ensigns are not a bunch of machines to
11:23 ensure its mission.
11:24 Let's just hope that history doesn't really remember Boimler as the laziest, most corner-cutting
11:29 officer in Starfleet.
11:31 2.
11:32 A Dutiful Sacrifice, Ensign Ceto
11:34 Ceto Jackson got off to a bad start in her Starfleet career.
11:38 At the Academy, she was part of the cadet flight team Nova Squadron, which included
11:43 Wesley Crusher.
11:44 The group had attempted an illegal and highly dangerous Colvord Starburst manoeuvre that
11:48 ended in disaster and the death of fellow cadet Joshua Albert.
11:52 Ceto and the others then lied to a board of inquiry in an attempt to cover up the cause
11:56 of the accident, and shift the blame to Albert until the truth was finally revealed.
12:01 All but the squadron leader Nicholas Locarno, Tom Paris in another life, were allowed to
12:05 continue at the Academy, but obliged to repeat the year.
12:08 There's nothing like a redemption story, however, and this one stands out both in its
12:12 heroism and tragic consequences.
12:15 The next time we encounter Ceto is as an ensign and original lower-decker aboard the Enterprise
12:20 D. After a dress-down fake-out from Picard - it is, in fact, he who ensured her transfer
12:25 - and an equally fictitious "to the death" Klingon ritual, Ceto learns that she has,
12:30 in truth, been assigned to the mission to ensure the safe return of the Cardassian defector
12:34 Jorette Dahl to Cardassia Prime.
12:37 Even given the enormous risks and, of course, the history between Bajorans and Cardassians,
12:41 Ceto accepts.
12:42 The mission succeeds as Jorette makes it back, but Ceto's escape pod is destroyed in the
12:47 process and she is presumed dead.
12:49 As Picard says in a solemn ship-wide announcement, Ensign Ceto was the finest example of a Starfleet
12:55 officer.
12:56 All aboard, and especially her friends, are devastated by her loss.
13:00 1.
13:01 Dicey Dyson Sphere-Driving Ensign Rager
13:03 The Next Generation episode "Relics" is most remembered for the reappearance of Captain
13:07 Montgomery "Scotty" Scott via a little transporter wizardry.
13:11 It equally features an on-screen realisation of an actual theoretical concept, a Dyson
13:16 Sphere, a gigantic structure that encompasses an entire star to utilise its power, and not
13:21 the latest model of a certain type of vacuum cleaner.
13:24 When the Enterprise-D is accidentally pulled into the Dyson Sphere by an automated mechanism,
13:28 the ship's power systems are knocked out and it begins to fall directly towards the star
13:33 inside.
13:34 Riker manages to divert some powers to Thrusters, but it is Ensign Rager at the helm who manoeuvres
13:38 the ship into a stable orbit, thus avoiding total destruction.
13:42 Later, LaForge and Scotty hatch the plan to free the Enterprise using the latter's ship,
13:46 the USS Janolan, as a doorstop.
13:49 However, it is the exceptional flying skills of Ensign Rager that once again save the day.
13:54 When the Janolan is destroyed, the doors of the Dyson Sphere begin to close.
13:58 Rager performs a magnificent 90-degree roll at breakneck speed, and she does so with such
14:03 calm composure that it makes this seriously advanced bit of flying look effortless.
14:07 The Enterprise squeezes through the ever-narrowing opening and escapes the sphere.
14:12 Ensign Rager, you are a legend.
14:13 We don't really see if anyone congratulated you, as it's back to the engineers for some
14:17 ego stroking, but we sure hope someone did.
14:20 And that concludes our list.
14:21 If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments below and while you're
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14:38 I've been Ellie with Trek Culture, I hope you have a wonderful day, and remember to
14:41 boldly go where no one has gone before.