Star Trek: 10 Starfleet Jobs You Won't Believe Exist

To be very clear, this is not a dig at librarians in general. Frankly, there aren't enough of them out there and they do stellar work. However, one has to wonder what the purpose of a librarian aboard a starship is, particularly one that has earned a Starfleet commission as well.

There is a scene in Star Trek: Insurrection in which Counselor Troi and Commander Riker research the Son'a, They do so in the library, which makes sense, even though in all previous iterations of Star Trek the entire Federation database could be recalled from any desktop padd or computer console. So, in essence, it seems as though the film production simply wanted to add an extra room to the Enterprise-E. That is not the biggest issue here.

The issue is that this room comes with a librarian as well. This librarian is shown to have two things that are unusual in the 24th Century. The first is that she is a Lieutenant, judging by the pips on her collar. That means she went through Starfleet Academy, including all of its various challenges, assignments and merits, so that she could be the librarian aboard the Enterprise. That seems like something of an overqualification.

The second odd thing is that she is wearing glasses, which are few and far between in the future. Clearly, they were added so that the audience would know for sure that she was a librarian - so that she could look over the rims at Riker and Troi as they flirt like horny teenagers in her library.