I was thinking about the crew of the Enterprise and wondering about how many people are there to crew the ship and how many are there for specialist roles that are not day-to-day crew? We know there are 430 people aboard during the 5 year mission. However, we also know that Pike's crew numbered 204. On a three shift duty cycle, that means Pike's ship ran with fewer than 70 persons on duty during normal conditions. There might be some specialist personnel in there too, but I think we can assume that Pike isn't on a 5 year mission and the quarters aren't filled. If Kirk's ship has the same basic staffing requirements, then that means there are over 220 specialists and scientists filling in the rooms. What would they all do? My intention is to actually come up with a roster of how many people are in what departments and divided into what shifts. But I thought I'd see if there's a consensus on this sort of thing already. (I assume there isn't, but I'm sure some of you have some good ideas to help steer my own process.) Thanks, guys! --Alex
Not all shifts would need to be fully staffed. It's inefficient. Most likely you would have a "morning" shift, ""evening" shift and "night" shift. with the night shift being a lite staff.
That makes sense. Explains why Riley was the only one in engineering in "The Conscience of the King." --Alex
There's a slight problem with the "busy" shifts coming at irregular intervals: there's no way to predict that hectic action will commence at "sunrise", as opposed to "sundown" or "afternoon tea". And by hectic action I don't mean unanticipated battles, but fairly regular events such as arrival at a strange new world. I guess the setup here has to be quite flexible. Not only are the shifts relatively fluid, but personnel can get cross-assigned at a moment's notice, too: the Ship's Historian may have to scrub plasma manifolds today, manage supplies tomorrow, and cook for the officers the day after tomorrow. Agreed that Kirk's ship probably ran on 200 people, with 200+ "passengers". Might be that Pike's ship already had "passengers", though (such as the two kids in civvies who failed to salute or even recognize Pike early on in "The Cage"), and a Constitution actually sails just fine with 50 people per shift. She just doesn't accomplish much without her specialists. Timo Saloniemi
The whole "night shift" thing from TNG always seemed bizarre to me. It's not like the Romulans are going to wait for 9am to attack, so what's the purpose in having the B-team on duty half the time? Unless we assume the conceit that the B-team are just as capable, just we rarely see them because we see the Enterprise when interesting things are happening, and the senior officers are therefore on duty.
The "night shift" thing does make sense. There are departments aboard a ship that do not need to be staffed 24/7, or at least not fully. If there is an emergency or somesuch, the folks that are off duty can be easily be called back to duty in fairly short order. I mean, it's not like they're gonna wander off somewhere or something. You need to have certain areas staffed constantly: bridge, engineering, sickbay (at least a skeleton staff). Everything else can go without sometimes.
...And it's good for the biological clock to get the necessary work done at a certain time of the day, rather than when needed. Hence, one "active" shift where stuff gets done, and several "passive" ones where stuff merely gets supervised. Depending on the technicalities, the ship might just as well run with an "active" shift every Friday, and "passive" shifts for the rest of the week. But that would mean losing the daily rhythm, and retaining that rhythm is the whole point of the exercise. Timo Saloniemi
We need to find someone here who seved on a submarine and ask how they did things. This is probably the closest present day equivilent to crewing a starship.
Your all forgetting that just because it's a night shift doesn't mean the "day shift" is unavailable. The crew are still onboard and would undoubtably be called to duty as required. Example: When I worked on cruise ships we had 3 shifts like this. If the ship was arriving to a port late at night or early in the AM, the Captain and First Officer were always on duty, regardless of normal schedule. Same for anyone that would be involved in the mooring process.
Hi Alex, You may remember my take on this from the past, but I'll toss it out there again. The Enterprise is one of a large number of cruiser-type starships, not merely twelve. These cruisers were set up in the "The Cage"/"Where No Man Has Gone Before" state, and carried a crew of just over two hundred, with space for as many as thirty "specialists" (in cramped quarters) for special missions, ike extra-galactic probes). But with the advent of early "replicator" technology, much of the stowage space became available. You didn't need to carry as many spare parts, or spare uniforms, or food supplies, or so forth. You could make new water from chunks of space rock if you needed to (at a significant power expense of course). A LOT of interior volume used for cargo/payload was freed. This new technology was fit into twelve heavy cruiser hulls. The space which was freed up was converted into additional science labs and crew quarters. Basically, they were able to fit the full complement and resources of a science vessel (less command crew, which would be redundant) into the freed up space. These ships were the first "Federation Explorers," which eventually, by the time of TNG, is actually a ship classification (the 1701-D was an "explorer," remember) Now, we know that the Enterprise, and most ships, operate on a three-shift system. And we know that command crew, engineering crew, medical crew, and the like during Pike's time made up something like 200 personnel, and likely this remained the case post-explorer-refit. Finally, we know that on yellow-alert, two full shifts are on-duty, and at red-alert, all three shifts are on-duty. Some people man secondary duty stations, and some get assigned to damage-control parties, and likely some get assigned to supplement security operations. (You can't stay at Red Alert for days at a time, but you can stay at yellow alert for days at a time... this is consistent with what we see on-screen, as well). Oh, yes, and the Captain is not assigned to a "shift." He's on-duty 24/7, though he normally would operate during first shift, I think, and normally would sleep during third shift. So... for a crew of 430, that's 429 crew to be divided into three shifts, or 143 personnel per shift. On Pikes' ship, he says he's "responsible for 200 lives." Let's say that he's omitting himself, If the total complement is 202, this means that the captain plus three shifts of 67 personnel each. Sixty-seven personnel per shift should be more than enough to run all the primary duty stations for a ship of this size and capabilities... after all, on normal status, the bridge will have what, six people? Main engineering will have four? So... engineering and operations for the TOS 1701 should make up 67 per shift. Now, the "Pike's Enterprise" may have had a very small sciences team and a very small medical team. We see no indication of any dedicated security team, either. Maybe eight of those personnel per-shift would be dedicated medical, security, and science types? Likely, there would be a pair of on-duty security personnel (think "sheriff and deputy"... and the Enterprise is a VERY small town!), a pair of medical personnel (a doctor and a nurse... or shall we say, a "medical assistant?") per shift, and four science personnel (one on the bridge). That still leaves us with forty-nine personnel running around the ship doing other duties... Which is quite reasonable. Now, for the TOS ship, with the much larger crew, we still have the same number in Engineering, the same number on the bridge, etc, etc, during normal circumstances. To be honest, I have a hard time imagining what 143 personnel would do on a day-to-day basis aboard a ship like the Enterprise. Obviously, some of them are so underutilized that the first time they're needed, they end up falling in love with a cryogenically-preserved genetic superman. Marla McGivers is the quintessential example of how "overboard" they went when they staffed up this ship. I suspect that she split her time between "work in her cabin" (which is why she had a private cabin, unlike most of the crew) and work in the library computer complex. And as far as I can tell, she never did anything else the whole time she was aboard. There would also be geologists, meteorologists, cultural anthropologists, and so forth... which would likely never have been found on Pike's Enterprise. During Pike's command, the science officers would have been expected to fill all such needs in a more "generic" sense. There would be a full biological research team, maybe six total (as opposed to a doctor, nurse, and lab tech on Pike's Enterprise). There would be a linguistic team... likely three or four people... supplementing the three commmunication officers from Pike's era. Now, I'm summarizing this right now, but I went through this thought process in (excruciating) detail when I was figuring out the complement of the Enterprise a while back (I had to figure out how to quarter my crew when I did my ship layout, after all!). VERY few of the crew get private cabins. Only senior officers and those who mainly "work from their quarters" (using it as an office), like the quartermaster, the captain's yeoman, the historian, and so forth. Maybe a junior ensign in security would briefly have a private cabin, but only until his new cabinmate arrived on-ship (likely this had been one of the redshirt ensigns who'd been killed at various points!) Finally, it's worth mentioning that despite what Roddenberry later claimed, and which FJ was forced to conform to, the lowest-ranking personnel on the Enterprise were NOT "ensign rank." The term "crewman" is used repeatedly, and is used in a way which is consistent with contemporary naval terminology (where the word is "seaman") or air force terminology (where the term is "airman"). This refers to enlisted personnel, not officers. And "Ensign" is the most junior officer rank (well, technically you can argue that "cadet" is an officer rank, but that's a dubious argument). If you use the modern-military model, you'll get a ship with at least one officer on duty in each department at any given time, with the rest being enlisted. So, if you assume four personnel in main engineering, typically one would be an officer and three enlisted crewmen. The doctor would be an officer but the nurse would be a crewman. And so on. The real issue, as far as I'm concerned, is how the "science specialists" managed to keep busy and be productive, any time the ship wasn't in orbit around an interesting planet...
I imagine they are writing up their findings and working on the backlog of data they have collected. That's going to be a huge task, which should not be underestimated. Remember they are collecting new data on an almost constant basis.
It's not overboard to have 400 people on this ship... Just the one deck here has over 200 people on it, with 40 rooms empty. It's hard to see, but each little speck is a person. No one would have to hot bunk in a ship this size with just two saucer decks taking the bulk of the people. The cross section shows another 200 people- and that's enough room for those 200 even if the ship was only 2 meters wide.
I'll agree with your premise on Engineering (although, there would likely be more than the 4 you postulate... possibly many more). However, a nurse in sickbay would be an officer, at least an ensign if not a lieutenant. Even in our modern military, nurses are officers, which reflects their advanced training. A medic could be enlisted, however.
Yeah, nurses are officers and can be of any rank, although they won't outrank the CMO. (The head nurse might be the same rank, though.) Corpsmen and medical technicians would be enlisted.
Well, in "The Ultimate Computer", we learn that twenty people isn't enough, so I'm guessing somewhere around fifty, just to get the ship from Point A to Point B without something serious being overlooked.
It probably isn't a precise even split. The 'day shift' may involve science officers carrying out the majority of their experiments unless labs are double-booked. It's unlikely that the labs will be in use 24/7 normally so they may just involve a single crewman monitoring things during the 'night shift'. Similarly, the ship's dentist or pharmacist would generally just operate during the day shift.
I am so glad I'm not the only person who obsesses with crew rosters, shift rotations and department staffing. I always go for the standard three shift rotation, with Beta and Gamma shifts having the same number of crew but with Alpha shift having slightly more. Just because it's the wee small hours on Earth doesn't mean a damn thing in space, and each shift would need an experienced Bridge staff to handle and situation. Yes the Captain, First Officer, et al would be called to duty in an emergency, but there won't always be the luxuary of time to wait for them to get there. I also prefer to have all the senior staff / main characters on Alpha, therefore need a Watch Officers for the other two shifts. As for the actual departments, in the TOS era not everything is as heavily automated as in TNG. So crewmembers are likely to be needed to carry out other less glamerous work. For a TOS-era fanfic I wrote onboard an older Yorktown-Class ship, I came up with the following department roster: Admin / Command - 8 officers, 7 non-com Hanger / Helm / Nav - 7 officers, 15 non-com, 9 crew Ordnance - 4 officers, 12 crew Medical - 14 officers (4 doctors, 10 nurses), 6 non-com, 6 crew Science - 10 officers, 18 non-com, 9 crew Communications - 3 officers, 3 non-com, 3 crew Engineering - 13 officers, 18 non-com, 18 crew Operations (cargo / services / transporters) - 14 non-com, 30 crew Security - 10 officers, 12 non-com, 18 crew This is something I always try to do on any fanfic project I undertake, as I like to make the ship feel like its 'real', with men, women and other living a normal hard-working life, that just happens to be in space. But that's just me.
I do remember that! I knew I read something like that someplace, but I forgot who was responsible for it. Do you have a link to your findings so I can read it in greater detail? This whole process came up from a similar project I'm working on. I am designing a layout for a gently reimagined Enterprise. I'm not strictly adhering to the show, given the end results of where I'm going with this project. (I'll start a thread on that when I'm a bit farther along, for now I'll play it close to the vest so to speak.) But I too am trying to figure out how to billet all these people and what they are up to on off-hours. I agree that the specialists are probably making sense of their findings from that last planet while the ship is on it's way to the next mission. I'm still a bit on the fence about the invention of replicators. I'm sort of in the mindset that the ship is more or less the same but just was less heavily crewed during Pike's time, perhaps on a mission of more military focus. But I don't know, it's possible. Like I said, I'm on the fence. Also, I agree that the shifts are not likely symmetrical. The "day" shift is probably (shot in the dark: ) 30% to 50% larger that the other two. And most of the specialists probably do their business during that particular shift as well. I did know a guy who served on a USN sub in the 80's. They patrolled the northern Russian coast monitoring Soviet radio transmissions. As I recall from his descriptions, they worked as two 12-hour shifts and hot-bunked. Missions were assigned (again, as far as I recall from his description) in lengths of several weeks out to sea and then come back. Given that the Enterprise is substantially larger, with a much bigger crew, and on a much extended mission length, I think it's fair to assume that submarines are not a useful parallel to starship duty. --Alex
I work in a large manufacturing plant (650+ employees across three shifts) and the vast majority of employees are first shift employees. There are 50 management employees (these would be your "officers"). Most work first shift (i.e., 40ish) and the rest work off shifts (i.e., only 10-11). The employees are for the most part evenly split amongst all three shifts, but first shift would have a slight majority. There are 5 main production departments with a manager on every shift, so that accounts for 15 managers. These would be analogous to your "Ensigns". Each department also has a production manager who coordinates with his peers on the three shifts, but is not their boss and generally works first shift. This would be a "Lt. JG" or "Lieutenant", depending on level of responsibility and experience. Each department has a Unit Manager. This would be a "Lt. Commander". There is an engineering maintenance department, with a manager for each department who covers all three shifts, which adds an additional 5 managers (who generally work on first shift). These would also be "Lt. JGs" and "Lieutenants". Since there are no shift managers, we don't have any "Ensigns". Instead, point people on each shift would be your "NCOs". The Engineering department also has three Unit Managers (each with a different specialty). These would be "Lt. Commanders". There are several other units that would be analogous to the Science Division, who only work on first shift. These would be led by Unit Managers who are also "Lt. Commanders", and may have Ensigns or Lieutenants working for them. All the senior leadership works day shift, but are on call if something happens during the night. Our plant has five (one for Manufacturing, one for Engineering, one for S&D, one for Accounting, and one for HR). They would all be "Commanders". The Manufacturing Manager is the most important of them, and would be the XO of the plant. Our plant doesn't have a director, because the regional Vice President has an office here. If we had a Director, he'd be the "Captain". As it is, the Regional Vice President is actually like a "Vice Admiral". We are one of the largest plants in our company, so we'd be a bit like a "Galaxy Class" plant. If our plant were smaller, you'd see less "Commanders" and "Lt. Commanders", and more "Lieutenants". They'd also have a Plant Manager or Director, who would be the "Captain".
There's also the question of what all those redshirted Security specialists do when they're not on duty. Presumably they spend a lot of time updating their wills and making sure their next of kin can be contacted easily. And if the crew are the size of ants! (Okay, it's probably just a typo. But what did you mean?)