If I was making a Star Trek genre sci-fi series, this is what I would want for episode four-or-so, for a nice bit of character development, a fun episode, and an unusual take on a very very usual plot.
I'm sure you know that every show of the genre has at some point had an episode where someone gets split into their good and evil sides; the episodes inevitably conclude with the aspects not being able to live apart, and some contrivance being used to bring them back together into a single entity.
That's wishy-washy moralistic claptrap, I say. I want a major character to be split into their good and evil aspects, and the evil aspect to sneak away and split themself into "slightly less evil" and "slightly more evil". These two evil sides can then conspire; one of them (probably "slightly more evil", though I wouldn't bother actually making the two distinguishable) agrees to pretend to be the good one. They then surreptitiously dispose of the good aspect entirely, replacing him with fake-good-evil-aspect. The remaining evil aspect then allows himself to get captured, and the two evil aspects are merged back together. Hooray! The crew has won again! And they all have a big happy party. The split crewmember can now remain evil for the rest of the series.
I'm not talking stupid-evil here, not Star Trek evil; more of a Blake's 7 Avon-evil. The sort that's entirely sustainable in a primary crewmember character. And likeable.
This also leaves an amusing opening for a surprise return of Good Engineer (or whatever role) late in season 3 of the show, when Evil Engineer has proven himself competent and useful, and the crew have grown to like him as he is; cue pleasing drama situation. And that would be an infinitely better Deus Ex Machina possibility than the this mouseover hides a Buffy spoiler.
Take heed sci-fi series producers - and give me moneys.
[13:35]
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