It’s a classic, if somewhat exaggerated trope in Star Trek: The ships first officer, second officer, tactical officer, chief engineer, chief medical officer, and a random ensign beam down to an unsecured planet while some dangerous problem is either ongoing or likely to occur. The Doylist reasons for this are as obvious as the Watsonian reasons it seems so silly: these are the main characters who are supposed to get the bulk of the screen time, so they are constantly thrown into situations which real world commanding officers and department heads are generally kept well clear of.
But what if this wasn’t the precedent established in TOS and continued in every subsequent series (including, to a slightly lesser but very real extent, Lower Decks)? What would a Star Trek show look like which still had senior officers who we are meant to care about and who still get significant development and screen time, but who aren’t thrown into unrealistically dangerous situations on a regular basis? Could such a show survive telling stories without visibly putting those regulars lives on the line so frequently? Would it be viable to keep the focus on things that happen either aboard ship or in nominally safe situations? Alternately, could a show successfully develop a cast of lower ranking “away team” characters who get the “dangerous” screen time while keeping significant focus on the major decision makers on the bridge? And how could the shows manage such a visible separation between “expendable” and “not expendable” crew while maintaining that humanist, optimistic, everybody-has-an-equal-right-to-life ethos?
It wouldn’t be an easy thing to pull off, certainly. But how could it have been done?
A/B story format would work. Writers could alternate weeks between the bridge crew and department heads and the “lower decks” crew most likely to pull landing party or other hazardous duty.
Some weeks, the A story is a high stakes drama involving the bridge crew, perhaps involving some diplomatic negotiation such as we saw in the TOS episode “Journey to Babel.” Meanwhile, the lower decks crew will grapple with lower stakes problems such as a crew member overcoming agoraphobia in order to perform an EVA mission, or fixing some critical ship’s system vital to the A story.
Other weeks, the A story would focus on lower deckers, giving them a high stakes problem to resolve like a landing party having to evacuate reluctant colonists, with occasional goofy stories like the shift rivalry stories seen on ST: TLD. In those weeks, the bridge crew would enjoy a breather with lower stakes stories about ship’s culture and interpersonal drama.