Star Trek: 10 Starfleet Crews That Totally LOST IT
8. Strange New Worlds: Among The Lotus Eaters
If you were stripped of all your memories, what would remain?
Among The Lotus Eaters starts with an unassuming mission to clean up cultural contamination caused to a Bronze Age level civilisation by a previous away team. It lures you into the false sense of security that you're settling in for a nice story about the Prime Directive. But it takes a sharp turn into a misadventure that sees both the away team and the Enterprise crew forget themselves.
Chapel suggests the memory loss might be caused by some kind of exotic radiation, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Before long, the corridors of the Enterprise are full of crew members wandering around in a daze or huddled in a corner. A perfectly legitimate response when you don't know where you are, who you are or who anyone else is.
This episode explores what happens when a capable crew are reduced to instinct and their base personalities, without their experiences to guide them. Even without their memories, the away team's instinct drives them to solve the mystery of who they are, fight back against their oppressors and trust their feelings.
Dr. M'Benga still heals. La'An still fights. Pike still leads. Ortegas...well, she still flies the ship. And yet, without their memories, they lose all perspective, resulting in Pike almost killing a man before his memory returns.
Perhaps the whole fiasco is karma for dashing Ortegas' hopes by putting her on the away team, only to pull her from it at the last moment. Her disappointed little face...we won't forget that transgression anytime soon.