Crew of the Enterprise-D

[DavidGutierrez]

Something has been bothering me for quite a while and it seems only logical to reach out to the community and see if anyone else has any conclusions.

Two things were repeatedly stated in TNG: The Galaxy-class was designed to hold families and civilian components of the crew, and the crew complement of the Enterprise was somewhere between 1012 and 1014. My question becomes this:

How many people on board the Enterprise were Starfleet personnel? Or, put another way, how many Starfleet personnel did it actually take to operate a Galaxy-class starship like the Enterprise?

I've scoured canon and non-canon resources like the TNG Tech Manual and Memory Alpha, but not a one of them has a good answer.

Thoughts?

[Ar-Pharazon]

In other words: How many of the 1012 (1014) are crew *or* is it 1012 plus civilians?

Though, 1012 + civvies would seem a bit high.

[C.E. Evans]

I've always gone with a roughly 800+ actual crewmembers plus 200 passengers ratio myself.

[DavidGutierrez]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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I've always gone with a roughly 800+ actual crewmembers plus 200 passengers ratio myself.

Why 800 : 200?

[C.E. Evans]

DavidGutierrez wrote:

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Why 800 : 200?

800 being roughly twice the crew complement of the TOS Enterprise and 200 being the total number of spouses, children, and other civilians aboard the ship.

[Marten]

In Time Squared, the sister ship which I cant remember the name of is said to have been lost with "over a thousand people", and I believe that is supposed to include families. It should be the same for Enterprise.

The ratio of crewmen is more uncertain. In The Offspring, they visit the kindergarten, and a rough guess would put the total amount of children at about 50. If both parents are on board, and one is a crewmember, that is a hundred civilians. Most likely there some who only bring with their spouses/girlsfriends/boyfriends/etc, so say 100 more there. And then an even rougher guess on about 200 civilians on top of that (Ten forward always seem to be full of them), and we have about 600 crewmen left. Which still seems like alot for a ship that doesn't look to need that many people to be run. Of course, there could be a lot of work done that the audience don't see, for example the science departments.

[Shikarnov]

Ar-Pharazon wrote:

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In other words: How many of the 1012 (1014) are crew *or* is it 1012 plus civilians?

Though, 1012 + civvies would seem a bit high.

You think? I always felt like a Galaxy class ship with only 1012 people would have a TON of empty space. With 42 decks, that's an average of 24 people per deck. And given the size of those decks, that's a lot of room to accommodate additional personnel.

[Alrik]

Tech Manual says that it does have a lot of empty space. The space can be used for various duties. When I get time, I'll try to find the specifics.

[C.E. Evans]

Shikarnov wrote:

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You think? I always felt like a Galaxy class ship with only 1012 people would have a TON of empty space. With 42 decks, that's an average of 24 people per deck. And given the size of those decks, that's a lot of room to accommodate additional personnel.

I think the additional space is reserved for mission-related applications (such as new onboard facilities that might come about in the future as well as in the event the ship is required to transport a large number of people--either during a vacation mission or during a large transfer of personnel to a new colony or outpost.

[T'Girl]

Marten wrote:

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If both parents are on board, and one is a crewmember, that is a hundred civilians

There are also unattached civilians aboard the Enterprise, like Keiko. Not married to Starfleet (at first) and with no children. I usually consider Keiko (and people like her) to be aboard as a civilian contractor of some sort.

The teachers in the school perhaps too.

[Bry_Sinclair]

T'Girl wrote:

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There are also unattached civilians aboard the Enterprise, like Keiko. Not married to Starfleet (at first) and with no children. I usually consider Keiko (and people like her) to be aboard as a civilian contractor of some sort.

The teachers in the school perhaps too.

That's always been my thoughts as well. I've always called them civilian contractors as well.

[DavidGutierrez]

It sounds like the conclusion we're coming to is that the Enterprise and Galaxy-class in general only need about 800 Starfleet personnel to operate them.

[danellis]

There's amble on-screen evidence that all the ship "needs" is one person to operate her. It's when things start need repairing that more people are required.

It wouldn't surprise me if the core "crew" of the ship was only two or three hundred: the remainder could be made up of a rotating cycle of mission specialists (both starfleet and non-starfleet) and their respective spouses and children.

Conversley the ship's "crew" could be 950 and the score or so of children and confirmed non-Starfleeters (was it ever categorically stated that Keiko was never Starfleet?) that we saw on screen was all there was on board. Admittedly given that we know at least Jennifer and Jake Sisko were on the Saratoga, a much smaller ship, this is quite unlikely.

dJE

[Alrik]

^
You make a pretty good point. I think there were probably more civilians on board than some might think. Besides all of the children and spouses, as T'Girl mentioned there are also the teachers. We also know that Guinan and Ben weren't Star Fleet, so I would imagine that most of, in not all of the Ten Forward staff were civilian.

[C.E. Evans]

danellis wrote:

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It wouldn't surprise me if the core "crew" of the ship was only two or three hundred: the remainder could be made up of a rotating cycle of mission specialists (both starfleet and non-starfleet) and their respective spouses and children.

Oddly enough, in David Gerrold's novelization of "Encounter At Farpoint," he proprosed that the actual operational crew of the Enterprise-D was no larger than that of the original Enterprise. The old FASA TNG Officer Manual proposed that ships of the era carried more mission specialists and fewer operational personnel. While both books are non-canon, they do support your idea that much of the ship's actual crew consisted of mission specialists.