A lot of strange things happen in Star Trek, from encounters with crystalline entities to ships being sucked into black holes and thrown to the other side of the Delta Quadrant, but one event that every series shares is an amnesia episode (usually more than one). Outside of Starfleet crews encountering a temporal anomaly, memory loss is one of the most effective plot devices to drive dramatic tension. More than that, by the nature of it involving forgotten memories, it allows characters to explore different aspects of their personalities.

Memories make up every sentient beings’ life experiences, and these experiences are what shape them into who they are. Being robbed of those experiences, in part or in totality, creates the sort of serious repercussions that are part of the rich tableau of morality plays unfolding in these classic episodes of Star Trek.

10 The Paradise Syndrome (Star Trek: The Original Series)

When Kirk, Spock, and McCoy reach the planet Amerind, an obelisk is activated that plunges Kirk through a secret door, erasing his memory of life aboard the Enterprise in the process. When Spock and McCoy eventually find Kirk, he’s remiss to leave the life he’s built behind.

With Captain Kirk suffering total amnesia, the episode focuses on what sort of bucolic life Kirk would lead, free from the obligations of command. It culminates with the palpable sense of loss he experiences at having to abandon it to resume his captaincy aboard the Enterprise. A captain exploring –then losing– another possible life for himself would be explored by Captain Picard in “The Inner Light” to a similarly poignant effect.

9 Future Imperfect (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Riker awakens in sickbay after an away mission to Alpha Onias III and is told by Dr. Crusher that he’s recovering from a virus he contracted — 16 years earlier. She explains the virus destroyed his memory, but Riker is suspicious, and his investigation leads to a convoluted Romulan plot and a cryptic young prisoner who isn’t what he appears to be.

Rather than just a means for Riker to be awesome, this episode provides a lot of important opportunities for his character by making him the focus, including exploring what sort of captain he’d make, especially since he’d turned down his own command before. It also gives him an alternate life with a wife and son (named Jean-Luc), as well as a thrilling mystery to solve.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

8 Conundrum (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

When the Enterprise gets scanned by an alien ship, the entire crew –including Data– lose their memories. They aren’t aware of who they are or their rank, but they’re still able to perform the tasks necessary to fly the ship. As they try to regain their memories, they soon realize they’re at war with a race they don’t remember engaging.

See also  25 Wild Details Behind The Making Of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Without knowing their rank and influence, the episode gives the crew an opportunity to potentially discover a new pecking order (Riker isn’t automatically Number One, for instance), altering the inherent dynamics on the bridge as different aspects of their personalities emerge.

7 The Swarm (Star Trek: Voyager)

When he can’t remember certain operas or medical procedures, the doctor slowly realizes that his programming is degrading. B’Elanna Torres confirms it when she realizes she may need to reinitiate his entire program, which would effectively wipe away all of his memories of the previous two years.

The memory fragmentation the EMH suffers is analogous to Alzheimer’s, and the fear he experiences at watching small pieces of his life slip away is authentic. Because he’s added to his personality subroutines by exploring his relationships and hobbies, he’s augmented his humanity, and the episode shows how much he’s come to mean to the crew.

6 Thine Own Self (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

When Data gets sent on an away mission to Barkon IV to investigate a radioactive deep space probe, he winds up losing all memory of who he is or why he’s there. The inhabitants accept him into their village, but his android nature is soon revealed (including to him), causing panic despite the fact that he tries to help them find a cure for a cellular disease.

With Data in rags wandering into a medieval village and being referred to as a “monster”, the episode shares several parallels to the tale of Frankenstein’s monster, about a compassionate creature who only wants to help but faces resistance. Data is able to turn one of his worst moments into one of his best by realizing the meaning of Shakespeare’s words, “to thine own self be true.”

See also  Curse of The Dead Gods: The Best Weapons Available (& How to Find Them)

5 Unforgettable (Star Trek: Voyager)

What might seem like a typical romance-of-the-week plot for Chakotay and guest star Virginia Madsen becomes a unique look at the effect memory loss has on love. A mysterious passenger aboard the ship insists that she has memories of a love shared with the Commander he cannot remember, and just as he begins to fall in love with her, a neurolytic emitter causes her memories of him to slip away, forcing him to try to jog her memory as she had done his.

This episode does a moving job of exploring what it would be like to love someone who’s unable to remember that shared love. If one half of the couple doesn’t remember the love, does it only exist for one person? The fact that this exercise is applied to each partner, in turn, allows for the powerful examination of both a male and female perspective.

4 Before And After (Star Trek: Voyager)

When Kes suddenly wakes up elderly and on her deathbed, she has to piece together the missing years of her life through a series of flashbacks that cause her a great deal of disorientation. The crew of Voyager is much changed, with Chakotay as captain, and several prominent crewmembers dead. Worst of all, she has no recollection of marrying Tom Paris or starting a family.

The appeal of this episode lies in the fact that time has a different meaning to an Ocampan, and so there’s a sense of desperation inherent to Kes’s predicament as she runs out of it. Typical Trek tropes are used to exaggerate her issue, but ultimately her circumstances are grounded by tackling the familiar issue of memory loss from her unique perspective.

3 Twilight (Star Trek: Enterprise)

Captain Archer loses twelve years of his life after suffering from a mysterious illness, resulting in T’Pol becoming his caregiver while an alien race expands its conquest. As time runs out for humanity and for Archer, T’Pol works to find a cure for his infection and restore his memories.

Unlike other episodes of Enterprise exploring the worst one-off romances, this episode explores Archer and T’Pol’s relationship in a different way by examining both sides of the caregiving coin, a role of selfless compassion and empathetic exhaustion. T’Pol’s relationship with him becomes very one-sided because as it evolves over the years, he remembers none of their time together, while she is fortunate –or doomed– to remember all of it.

2 Clues (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

When the Enterprise passes through a wormhole, the crew suffers a mysterious blackout. Data leads them to believe that they all were unconscious for thirty minutes when it was more like an entire day. Because something doesn’t make sense about Data, Captain Picard heads up an investigation into the circumstances surrounding their memory loss, only to find that Data has been operating under his explicit instruction from an earlier time period.

See also  The Witcher: Will Jaskier Return For Season 2?

With an intriguing mystery at its center, this episode offers a lot of fun twists as the crew seeks to remember what happened. It functions as a fascinating analogy for the type of exercises used on patients suffering short-term memory loss, including triggering memories with sensory details like sight, smell, and touch.

1 Latent Image (Star Trek: Voyager)

When the doctor discovers that his memory files have been altered, and he cannot remember a specific incident simultaneously operating on a crewmember and Ensign Harry Kim, his investigations reveal –to his horror– that he chose to save Kim’s life over the other crewmember because he was his friend.

Having a hologram suffer from the guilt of its choice, which develops into a feedback loop between his ethical subroutines and his cognitive programming, allows for the exploration of whether or not he has a “soul”. He shouldn’t have any feelings of remorse and yet he does, and the crew’s choice to remove that struggle for him by removing his memory robs him of part of what makes him who he is.

Next10 Jaw Dropping Betrayals That Happened In The Vampire Diaries

About The Author


Kayleena Pierce-Bohen
(1344 Articles Published)

Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she’s particularly proud of. When she isn’t writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she’s working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

More From Kayleena Pierce-Bohen