Forum:What do they all do?

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I saw the basis for this somewhere else but can't remember where. I apologize if I'm stepping on toes.

The Enterprise-D had a crew of 1000+. What do they all do? You only ever see a couple of dozen bridge officers, maybe two or three dozen engineers and technicians, and maybe another dozen medical and science types. And of course, another dozen or two security officers. (That's food for another thread.) I'm being generous in these estimates. That's like 100. Where's the rest? What are the other 900 people under Picard's command doing with their days? There's replicators so you don't need cooks or tailors or ship's store. If you need your hair cut or your nails done, you just go to the holodeck and run the barbershop or beauty salon program. Even if you didn't, what's that? Five more jobs? There's a lot about ST that I like, but things like this just don't make sense.-– StarFire209 21:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

We've never even scratched the surface of what is on that ship. For example, there are dolphins we never saw, and crew that needs to tend to them. We did not see the stellar cartography department until later in the show. Who knows how much they have for general maintenance, and countless departments and sections we have never seen. Then there is the fact that the crew includes spouses and children, we don't know how many have those. In addition, we know that they DIDN'T just go to the holodeck for haircuts, Mot was not a hologram. As a comparison, remember that a modern US aircraft carrier has 5000+ people, but you don't see them on TV. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 22:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but we know what at least 4500 of ~them~ do - they fly planes.

Actually no, less than half of them fly planes, less than 2500. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 22:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You're actually making my point. ;) But I really wasn't expecting a definitive answer. (I did include Mot as part of the "five extra jobs" remark. Civilian spouses and children aren't crew. If the dolphins (2? 20?) are full crew members, they tend to their own needs. If they're crew the way police dogs are police officers, then one humanoid per dolphin seems like a decent estimate. If you add 50 cartographers and navigators, that's still only about 15% of the crew.) This is one of those things the writers have done quite often, throw a number or phrase out there without thinking it through. Something to wonder about the next time you see the executive officer go on an away mission and take half the senior command structure with him. – StarFire209 20:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the 1000+ include all the families and spouses on board? They aren't crew, but they are included in the 1000+ number you cited. Therefore you're probably only talking about ~700 crewmen. You've also got to think about all of the teachers for the kids and also the Ten Forward staff. There's another 25 or so. Then there's all of those lowly engineers who tend to the nacelles and other systems and we're down to about half of the people on board unaccounted for. I do understand your issues with this because how many times have we seen a starship do everything it can normally under computer control! If it can do this without the crew, then why do you need the crew under normal conditions? -Topher 23:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to keep in mind that the entire crew is not on duty at any given time. Up until Captain Picard was relived of duty by Captain Jellico in the episode "Chain of Command", the ship was operating on a 3-shift rotation. Captain Jellico changed it to a 4-shift rotation. Given those two bits of information, it's reasonable to conclude that at any given time, you would really only see 1/3 or 1/4 of the crew on duty at stations or in hallways, 1/3 or 1/4 off duty (these may be in Ten Forward or other common areas, and possibly 1/3 to 1/4 asleep in quarters. - Davisn456 00:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that on any ship of the line is that between 1/3 to 1/2 of the ship is made up of crewmen [or enlisted personel. the franchise has done very little to show this side of Starfleet; with the few exceptions of a couple Voyager episodes and [if im not mistaken] Chief Miles O'Brien was enlisted for a time. These folks are in the duct work, in the bowels of the ship, doing the dirty work; general maintenance. Take a look at the Enterprise's engineering dept at full capasity, then remember that that is, at best, only 1/3 or 1/4 or the entire Eng division. Now while that deptartment is one of the largest, all others are compareable. oh btw; the dolphins are apart of the Cetacean Ops, and are crewmen. Got that from Mem-Alpha, i did ;) – Farfallen 10:11, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Just my two cents, but but there's an absurd amount of specialist scientists on starships. We've seen that when needed, they are capable of producing, chemists, anthropologists, Sociologists, volcanologists, entomologists and even historians, amongst others. Certainly with such narrow specialization it seems that often they would not see action for months. So my theory is that these are just academics, signing on on starships so they can occasionaly get extraordinary research opportunities (and in return obviously collect data for their colegues at home as much as possible as well as lending a hand whenever their expertise is needed in a crisis situation). On the other hand, while between missions they would work in their personal working spaces and a variety of specialy made-available labs and research facilities on the same long-term projects they would have worked on if they had stayed at home. There's no direct evidence for this theory, but it seems to fit with what we've seen about such specialists very well, and I feel it could account for a large percentage of the crew. -- Capricorn 02:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)