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They may be the lowest rank, but they're often the biggest heroes. This video counts down ten incredible moments from across the Star Trek universe where junior Starfleet Ensigns stepped up to save their ships, crews, and even entire planets.
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00:00As the lowest commissioned rank, Ensigns haven't always gotten the fairest end of the deal in Star Trek.
00:05Having spent years at the Academy, they still have to bunk up, share sonic showers, and eat from the dodgy
00:10replicators, aboard some ships at least.
00:13They can often be found toiling away in the background whilst their superiors bask in all the glory.
00:17That, they could just as well end up as cannon fodder.
00:20We all know that the first appearance of Ensign No Name is an immediate red flag.
00:24Of course, if your name is Harry Kim, you'll be cannon fodder and never make it past Ensign.
00:28But you will get some bigger quarters, so small blessings.
00:32On numerous occasions, however, Starfleet Ensigns have been elemental to mission success.
00:36We have seen them save ships from disaster, protect the lives of individuals or entire populations, and even traverse timelines
00:43to help their fellow officers.
00:45So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with TrekCulture here with 10 Incredible Times Star Trek Ensigns Save the Day.
00:52Number 10. First day on the job, Ensign Lang.
00:55It's a baptism of phaser fire for this Ensign on her first day as acting chief of security aboard Voyager
01:02in the episode Displaced.
01:03She may well accept Chakotay's humorous comment to that effect with a degree of sarcasm of her own,
01:09but the crew are being slowly replaced by a shifty and thermostat-enthusiast alien race called the Nirians.
01:15In the midst of all the action, and at a moment when it's not at all clear what's going on,
01:19it is indeed Ensign Lang who takes Tuvok's station at the bridge.
01:23There are 40 Voyager crew members remaining and falling, and over 100 Nirians and rising.
01:29Lang is then ordered by Chakotay to organize the lockdown of the ship's critical systems.
01:33She takes to the task with panache and is unfazed when Chakotay leaves her alone on the bridge.
01:38When the Nirians start breaking down the doors, Lang confidently issues orders to two crew members who have just arrived
01:44before taking out her phaser and firing.
01:46She is stunned in return and falls to the floor, but her heroic efforts and assured command of the situation
01:52have already ensured that Voyager will win the day.
01:54She also allows Chakotay the time to grab the Doctor whose duties as Tricorder were later key to the crew's
02:00escape.
02:01Number 9. NX2L4 – Ensign Mayweather
02:04When Earth is brutally attacked by the Zindi in the Star Trek Enterprise episode The Expanse,
02:10the Klingon Duras decides to use the moment to get a little revenge on Captain Archer.
02:14Duras has been holding a grudge ever since he was demoted following the pair's encounter earlier in the second season.
02:20In the present episode, Duras first attacks when the NX-01 is arriving home, but he is fended off by
02:26other Earth vessels.
02:27He strikes again when Enterprise is on course for Vulcan, but is readily fought off.
02:31It's not until the ship reaches the Thermobaric Clouds, which surround the Delphic Expanse,
02:36that Ensign Mayweather's extraordinary flying skills truly come into play to save the day.
02:41Those dastardly Klingons attack once more, but this time Enterprise's upgraded weapons,
02:46some fancy new photonic torpedoes, prove ineffective, as Duras has transferred his aft shields forward.
02:53The solution? Get Travis to perform a spectacular L-4 manoeuvre at full impulse,
02:58which basically means flying the ship up and over the Klingons in a loop to arrive facing their unprotected stern.
03:04Lieutenant Reed then fires torpedoes, and the Klingons are expedited to Grethor.
03:09This wasn't the first or the last time Ensign Mayweather saved the day at the helm of the pioneering Warp
03:155 starship,
03:16but it sure was impressive. Nice going, Travis, indeed.
03:20Number 8. Saving Dramaphore from disaster, Ensign's Hildebrandt, Davies, Allens, and acting Ensign Crusher.
03:27The Season 2 episode Pen Pals of Star Trek The Next Generation is a bit of an anomaly.
03:31It is strange, not least, for the creepy long-distance communications between Data and a young girl, Sarzenka,
03:38from a pre-war planet, Dramer 4, which is facing catastrophe.
03:41The ramifications for the Prime Directive most certainly shouldn't have been the only consideration when judging Data's behaviour.
03:47Still, Data's actions have consequences, and it's up to a group of Ensigns to sort things out for Sarzenka.
03:53Whilst the senior staff are comforting themselves with the luxury of philosophical debate, only ever self-serving in this instance,
04:00Ensigns, Hildebrandt, Davies, and Allens, led by acting Ensign Wesley Crusher,
04:04are doing the hard work to discover the cause of the planetary break-ups in the Salkundi-Dramer sector.
04:10Struggling at first in his position of authority, Wesley manages to rally his team of Ensigns behind him.
04:15When he finally summons the courage to order an Ico-spectrogram test, it is this that leads to the discovery
04:21of the cause of the planetary instabilities.
04:23Funky interactions with dilithium in the planet's crust, essentially.
04:27The Ensigns are then able to use this information to develop a solution to the problem,
04:31via some modified probe torpedoes at it,
04:33which returns geological stability to Sarzenka's previously doomed homeworld and saves the lives of every inhabitant.
04:40Number 7. Linguistic Licence Ensign Sato
04:44Hoshisato's journey to self-confidence is certainly one of the greatest of any Ensign.
04:48She was always a prodigious linguist, mastering several languages and picking up new ones with apparent ease.
04:54Later in Enterprise's mission, she would make major improvements to the Universal Translator,
04:59and developed the LinguaCode Translation Matrix that was still in use centuries later.
05:03In the beginning, Sato's nerves and lack of self-esteem were often a hurdle for her to overcome.
05:08This struggle is most visible in the Enterprise Season 1 episode, Fight or Flight.
05:12Despite her reservations, Archer convinces Sato to join the away team that was to board an unresponsive and seemingly damaged
05:19alien vessel.
05:20When the team find a string of alien bodies hanging upside down, Sato has a rather visceral reaction.
05:26I mean, wouldn't you though?
05:27A sense of embarrassment and doubt follow her from the incident.
05:30When Enterprise is attacked, the Universal Translator struggles to process the language of the alien race in a position to
05:36come to the crew's aid.
05:38Searching for synonyms that don't arrive, Hoshi is understandably more and more frustrated.
05:42Archer suggests that she forget the Universal Translator and communicate with the aliens directly.
05:47Whilst trepidatious, I mean, she hasn't even had time to learn the language's basic conjugations, Hoshi accepts.
05:52Doing what she does best, we see her confidence grow with each line she speaks.
05:56The alien is convinced and saves Enterprise from the hostile species, all thanks to the exceptional skills of a gifted
06:03Ensign.
06:03Number 6. The entire ship and timeline, Ensign Anna Jameson.
06:08Lieutenant Carey wasn't any the wiser, but you might recognise this Ensign as Seven of Nine.
06:13This is left field or maybe even flirting with a bit of a cheat, but long before Picard's field commission,
06:19Seven was recruited by the USS Relativity.
06:21It is reasonable and a little bit of fun to assume that she officially carried the rank during that period.
06:27When a mysterious saboteur from the 29th century, it turns out to be a rancorous future, future Captain Braxton, places
06:34a Force III temporal disruptor somewhere, sometime on Voyager.
06:39Seven is enlisted to save the day.
06:41She has been back and forth along Voyager's history to prevent the ship's destruction, risking temporal psychosis in the process.
06:47She even dies at one point.
06:49Now, that's an incredible sacrifice for our technically speaking first-time Ensign.
06:54Her future, present, past self, also will be, has been, was, is, starting to agree with Braxton about those tensers,
07:02afflicted by some dizzying sensory aphasia as a result.
07:05With a little help from a reluctantly drafted Captain Janeway, Braxton is stopped and Voyager saved.
07:11Let us all look backwards at the time when Ensign Anna Seven Jameson gets the praise she clearly deserves.
07:17Number 5. An enderprisian Ensign, Ensign Garavik
07:21As Star Trek Prodigy writer Aaron Waltke tweeted regarding the Star Trek End's son,
07:27I wanted to give him a slightly bigger fanfare send-off and tribute to all the other Red Shirts.
07:32And that he most certainly did for this bearer of crimson.
07:35In the Prodigy episode All the Worlds Are Sage, the motley but endearing crew of the Protostar answer a distress
07:41call to find a pre-war planet,
07:43whose inhabitants are, nonetheless, cosplaying their hearts out to Kirk-era Starfleet.
07:49Or Starflight.
07:50From one of their plays, filled with uncanny impressions and fabulously familiar overacting,
07:55we learn about End's son Garavik's time on the planet.
07:59Over a hundred years before, Garavik had flown a lone shuttle mission to the planet
08:04to attempt to resolve an unknown problem without the inhabitants' knowledge.
08:08His shuttle, the Galileo, crashed instead.
08:10Doing his duty, he went to warn the population of the danger that the damaged Galileo, now leaking warp plasma,
08:17posed.
08:17Before his death, the heroic Ensign did everything in his power to prevent the inhabitants from falling victim
08:23to what they interpreted as the Curse of the Gallows.
08:26His actions no doubt saved countless lives before the arrival of the Protostar,
08:30whose crew were able to find a definitive solution to the curse.
08:34Going out saving the day is a much better end for the character,
08:37who appeared quite significantly in one episode of the original series and then was never seen again.
08:43Number 4. When did he not?
08:45Harry Kim
08:46Poor old Harry Kim, the archetype of the unsung hero Ensign.
08:50He saw his jailbird friend demoted and promoted back without the whiff of a little box on his console.
08:55Seven years is a long time at the bottom, even if he was senior staff.
08:59But it was a small ship and if Harry got a pip then everyone would want one.
09:03The times Ensign Kim saved the day, or was a major part of it, are Legion.
09:07They may outnumber the times he died.
09:09For example, when Voyager is duplicated by a subspace divergence field,
09:14Kim Mark II runs through a ship full of Vidians to get the then-newborn Naomi Wildman
09:18and cross over to the original Voyager.
09:21When he gets to sickbay, he phases one Vidian almost immediately
09:24and performs an epic forward roll move that allows him to shoot the other.
09:28He rescues the baby and by extension saves himself.
09:31All the while, his counterpart, technically speaking the real Harry,
09:35is presumably still floating through space.
09:38He deserves a mention simply for retaining his sanity.
09:41Weird really is part of the job.
09:43Later, when Kim gets a taste of command,
09:45he saves Captain Janeway and Chakotay in the nick of time from Cronerworks,
09:49torts down a smart bomb, although he did argue to bring it on board,
09:53gets a reality check on the Nightingale,
09:55and helps rescue an amnesiac crew with some explosive escape pods.
09:59Number 3. Lower Decks, Lower Decks, Lower Decks.
10:03Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford.
10:06It was about time they got their own series.
10:09After all, Lower Decks of the Next Generation was first broadcast in 1994.
10:13There was an episode of Voyager with similar intent, but they were all crewmen.
10:17Now aboard the Cali class, we see just how often the Ensigns save the day,
10:21or to phrase it more in the style of the show itself,
10:23the number of times they kick Impossible's arse.
10:26For the most part, not yet tired or jaded by the rigours of rank and command,
10:31or precisely to avoid it in one case,
10:33Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi
10:36have repeatedly innovated their way out of danger.
10:39Either collectively or individually,
10:41they have helped cure a zombie rage virus,
10:43defeated Romulan guards and uncovered spy plots.
10:46They have fended off the Paklet,
10:48the Drukmani and Billups' mum,
10:50outsmarted a megalomaniacal computer,
10:53compromised with the Ferengi with clever economics,
10:55and generally saved each other's lives countless times.
10:58In the season 2 finale, First First Contact,
11:01Mariner inspires Rutherford with the plan to remove the outer hull of the Cerritos,
11:06and the entire crew then work around the clock to save the Archimedes
11:09from crashing into an inhabited planet.
11:11Tendi also saves Boimler with Cetacean Ops CPR.
11:14Again, in the season 3 finale,
11:16all three are crucial to saving the day.
11:18They prove that Starfleet needs people,
11:21especially as Ensigns are not a bunch of machines to ensure its mission.
11:25Let's just hope that history doesn't really remember Boimler
11:27as the laziest, most corner-cutting officer in Starfleet.
11:31Number 2.
11:31A Dutiful Sacrifice, Ensign Cito
11:34Cito Jaxa got off to a bad start in her Starfleet career.
11:38At the Academy, she was part of the cadet flight team Nova Squadron,
11:42which included Wesley Crusher.
11:44The group had attempted an illegal and highly dangerous
11:46Colvord Starburst manoeuvre that ended in disaster
11:49and the death of fellow cadet Joshua Albert.
11:52Cito and the others then lied to a board of inquiry
11:54in an attempt to cover up the cause of the accident
11:57and shift the blame to Albert until the truth was finally revealed.
12:01All but the squadron leader, Nicholas Locarno,
12:03Tom Paris in another life,
12:05were allowed to continue at the Academy,
12:07but obliged to repeat the year.
12:08There's nothing like a redemption story, however,
12:10and this one stands out both in its heroism and tragic consequences.
12:15The next time we encounter Cito is as an Ensign
12:17and original Lower Decker aboard the Enterprise-D.
12:20After a dress-down fake-out from Picard,
12:23it is in fact he who ensured her transfer
12:25and an equally fictitious to-the-death Klingon ritual.
12:28Cito learns that she has, in truth, been assigned to the mission
12:31to ensure the safe return of the Cardassian defector Jorette Dahl
12:35to Cardassia Prime.
12:37Even given the enormous risks,
12:38and of course the history between Bajorans and Cardassians,
12:41Cito accepts.
12:42The mission succeeds as Jorette makes it back,
12:45but Cito's escape pod is destroyed in the process
12:47and she is presumed dead.
12:49As Picard says in a solemn ship-wide announcement,
12:52Ensign Cito was the finest example of a Starfleet officer.
12:55All aboard, and especially her friends,
12:57are devastated by her loss.
12:59Number 1.
13:00Dicey Dyson Sphere Driving Ensign Rhaegar
13:03The Next Generation episode, Relics,
13:05is most remembered for the reappearance
13:07of Captain Montgomery's Scotty Scott
13:09via a little transporter wizardry.
13:11It equally features an on-screen realisation
13:13of an actual theoretical concept,
13:16a Dyson Sphere,
13:17a gigantic structure that encompasses an entire star
13:19to utilise its power,
13:21and not the latest model of a certain type of vacuum cleaner.
13:24When the Enterprise-D is accidentally pulled into the Dyson Sphere
13:27by an automated mechanism,
13:28the ship's power systems are knocked out
13:30and it begins to fall directly towards the star inside.
13:33Riker manages to divert some powers to thrusters,
13:36but it is Ensign Rhaegar at the helm
13:38who manoeuvres the ship into a stable orbit,
13:40thus avoiding total destruction.
13:42Later, LaForge and Scotty hatch the plan
13:44to free the Enterprise using the latter's ship,
13:46the USS Janolin,
13:48as a doorstop.
13:49However,
13:49it is the exceptional flying skills of Ensign Rhaegar
13:52that once again save the day.
13:54When the Janolin is destroyed,
13:55the doors of the Dyson Sphere begin to close.
13:58Rhaegar performs a magnificent 90-degree roll
14:00at breakneck speed,
14:02and she does so with such calm composure
14:04that it makes this seriously advanced bit of flying look effortless.
14:07The Enterprise squeezes through the ever-narrowing opening
14:10and escapes the Sphere.
14:11Ensign Rhaegar,
14:12you are a legend.
14:13We don't really see if anyone congratulated you,
14:16as it's back to the Engineers for some ego-stroking,
14:18but we sure hope someone did.
14:20And that concludes our list.
14:21If you think we missed any,
14:23then do let us know in the comments below,
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14:38I've been Ellie with Trek Culture.
14:39I hope you have a wonderful day,
14:41and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.