10 Most Important Mental Health Awareness Episodes In Star Trek

Harlan Ellison's first draft of The City on the Edge of Forever had an altogether different opening scene. In it, one officer — Richard Beckwith — is dealing an illegal drug called "Jewels of Sound" to an addicted Lieutenant (junior grade) LeBeque. Gene Roddenberry refused the idea of drug use amongst a Starfleet crew.

Roddenberry wasn't insensitive to the matter of drug addiction, however. He told Allan Asherman in The Star Trek Interview Book (1988):

What emotional things are we doing to those people who need a substance to get by? We should be examining that, not the criminal aspect of drugs.

As TrekkieFeminist.com pointed out, this was Roddenberry "talking about addiction as a mental health issue in the 1980s". Quite ahead of his time! Star Trek: The Next Generation still remained resolutely moralising in its depiction. You only have to watch The Neutral Zone or Symbiosis to realise that.

Later, Star Trek: Enterprise would address the topic through T'Pol's addiction to Trellium-D. Then, from Star Trek: Picard's Maps and Legends onwards, we would see an open and honest portrayal of drug and alcohol addiction in the character of Raffaela 'Raffi' Musiker.

Picard never glosses over the impact of addiction, nor does it simplify or undermine the road to recovery. Later in season one, Raffi suffers a relapse. In season three, she is re-exposed to a world of drugs on M'talas Prime.

At the 'Women Of Sci-Fi' panel at MegaCon this year, via Collider, Michelle Hurd explained her approach to the character:

Addiction is a real thing. It's a real disease. […] And I really wanted to show the struggle of somebody who's doing the best that she can.