“Mike won our hearts with his first sentence: ‘I want to do a show about the people who put the yellow cartridge in the food replicator so a banana can come out the other end.’ His cat’s name is Riker. His son’s name is Sagan. The man is committed,” Kurtzman said. “He’s brilliantly funny and knows every inch of every Trek episode, and that’s his secret sauce: he writes with the pure, joyful heart of a true fan. As we broaden the world of ‘Trek’ to fans of all ages, we’re so excited to include Mike’s extraordinary voice.”
In 2011 McMahan started a Twitter account where he posted episode plots to a fake season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were such a hit that Simon & Schuster hired him to write a readers’ guide to a fictitious eighth season of TNG titled Star Trek: The Next Generation: Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season. At All Access/CBS TV Studios, he also is a writer on the Start Trek: Short Treks series of shorts.
This was probably “inspired” by a 1998 episode of Babylon 5 (another space show) which tells the story from the point of view of two members of the maintenance crew as they witness the station being attacked.
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“A View from the Gallery is a standalone episode in the sense that it doesn’t advance the prevailing storyline of the season, but instead provides an outsider’s look into how the station operates and how two civilians deal with issues commonly faced by the station’s military and diplomatic personnel. Events from the episode are also self-contained, in that the alien attackers are of a previously unknown alien race that is not mentioned again.”
More likely it was inspired by the 1994 TNG episode Lower Decks, which was about a bunch of ensigns in the run for a promotion, told largely from their perspective.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Lower_Decks_(episode)
In a world of free energy and matter replicators, the “support crew” is one or two engineers on hand in case something malfuctions. And one janitor standing ready to unplug the Holodeck the next time it tries to take over the ship.
Fiction always overlooks simple, obvious solutions, like the Man with the Yellow Hat buying a monkey cage with a sturdy padlock.