Today In STAR TREK History: August 20th

Stop! Buffer time!

Welcome to our round-up of the Star Trek episodes which received their premiere broadcast on this day throughout the show's long history, along with anything else of note that may have taken place. All viewing figures quoted are for U.S. premiere broadcast (unless noted).

August 20th
August 20th 2020 saw the third episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks released on to the new retitled Paramount+ streaming service. Temporal Edict saw a new work protocol, which eliminated “buffer time”, having the Cerritos crew run ragged as they try to keep up with their tightened schedules.

The concept of "buffer time", and the inspiration for this episode, came from original Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott's admission that he would often pad his estimates of how much time was needed for repairs "by a factor of four" in order to maintain his reputation as a "miracle worker", as explained during Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and his guest-appearance on The Next Generation episode Relics.

Join us again next time for another round-up of the episodes broadcast, the movie's released, the special events, the birthday's celebrated and anything else of note that went down on this day in Star Trek history.