Montgomery Scott, chief engineer of the USS Enterprise, was known to quadruple his estimates for emergency repairs. This excess was eventually termed “buffer time,” and allowed Scott to maintain his reputation as a miracle worker. Later, after becoming stranded on the surface of a Dyson Sphere, he kept himself in suspended animation for seventy-five years via his ship’s pattern buffer.

The moral of this story is that Star Trek contains one too many uses of the word “buffer.”

Despite growing up on The Next Generation and loving “Lower Decks,” the episode about the Enterprise‘s lower-ranking officers who lived in fear of Commander Riker rather than regarding him as a lovable goofball who never learned how to sit in a chair like a normal person, I haven’t watched even one minute of the animated series by the same name. It isn’t anything personal. I just don’t watch much TV these days. After playing Star Trek: Lower Decks: Buffer Time: The Card Game, that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.

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