Away Teams

[Captrek]

According to Phillipa Louvois, you’re right about the android. There’s still no official word on you Klingon bastards.

[Melakon]

David Gerrold's away team concept could have worked if casting decisions and writing had been different. I'll use Yar as the example. Picard orders away team. Riker gives Yar the assignment. Yar chooses 2 or 3 security or specialist types, one of whom could be a guest part with sizable dialogue.

[C.E. Evans]

I guess an away team could really just consist of a junior officer and a squad of enlisted personnel.

But then every Star Trek series and film has been officer-heavy as far as who does much of the action with enlisted personnel relegated mainly to technical and support roles in the background, IMO.

[Mojochi]

Yeah, in reality none of them should be going on away missions unless they are diplomatic in nature. Hell in the CMO's case, sending your chief medical officer on an away mission to render aid is like sending a hospital's chief of surgery out in an ambulance

When you call someone a chief of something like security, engineering, medicine, then they are administrators & top specialists, only to be called away in the rarest of circumstances, not to make some goofy Pakleds "Go"

Frankly, chief of operations shouldn't refer to the inner workings of the ship. That should be like chief of facilities or something comparable. Chief of Operations should be the person in charge of all away mission ops, whether science, militaristic or technical related

& if the captain is the designated diplomat, then he actually has more need to go away then the XO. These are all jobs that need to either be more specifically designated or for the sake of tv, need to actually be more like TOS had it... ambiguous

[Timo]

How often could a mission to an unknown, inhabited planet be considered "not diplomatic"?

Even if it was known in advance to involve fighting back angry hordes, Kirk beaming down with two redshirts armed with phasers would be equivalent to MacArthur wading up the shores of a Pacific island with the entire 3rd Marine Division going hut-hut-hut around him. Hand phasers aren't honor guard sidearms, they are strategic weapons! Generally speaking, landing party duty should be rather risk-free. The problem isn't with the demonstrated practices of beam-down, it's with the implausible calamities the parties are subject to.

As for sending down the CMO, she doesn't run a hospital full of doctors. She is one of perhaps four MDs aboard (see "Remember Me"), and that's pretty much it. One of the four has to go down whenever mere paramedics don't suffice - and the CMO isn't a poorer choice than the other three.

Sending the CEO out in "Samaritan Snare" was just plain silly. But perhaps it was diplomatic?

Timo Saloniemi

[Dale Sams]

Yeah...everytime we see the calvary come over the hill..it shouldn't be Scotty leading, it should be that grey-haired guy we saw in "Devil in the Dark".

That's one thing TNG fixed was a Security Chief in the thick of it.

[Timo]

the calvary come over the hill

Isn't that a weird sort of redundant?

Timo Saloniemi

[davejames]

The thing that was always more baffling to me, was why the away teams (in this super advanced 24th century of theirs) never took along a freakin camera and transmitted what they were seeing to the Enterprise. Instead of having to give Picard some vague and not very helpful verbal description all the time.

The closest they ever got was Geordi's crazy kaleidescope vision in the first season, and that was more for kicks than anything else.

[USS Firefly]

Or why security teams don't wear armor?

[Loskene]

USS Firefly wrote:

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Or why security teams don't wear armor?

I remember Sisko melting a meter thick rock wall on a wide beam setting and Data destroying an irregation system up to the to of a mountain with hand phasers...

Armor probably would just be a good excuse for enemies to ignore the pansy a$$ stun setting, unless said armor is a 3 meter tall shielded battle mech. That might make a difference.

I don't think Enterprise carries those though.

[Captrek]

How come, in the 24th century, people are still carrying the kind of firearms that require the shooter to expose himself to return fire in order to see or fire upon an armed target? How come nobody ever carries grenades? And did they ever take delivery of the Echo Papa Six Oh Seven?

[Captain McBain]

The in-universe explanation is that Riker (or whoever decides on the away team members) probably has more confidence in the abilities of the senior staff than some no-name ensigns. (Unless the ensigns are specialists or are there for extra muscle, and so occasionally you do see no-names on away missions.)

[Mark_Nguyen]

No surprise then that by Voyager's time, the policy had been quietly buried by Starfleet. Even after Chakotay got Cavit's job, never did he assert any authority to stop Janeway from beaming anywhere (and don't say it's because of Voyager's peculiar circumstances - it was plenty inconsistent, but for the most part the ship was run by Starfleet regulations). Likewise, Sisko (who had attained Captain's rank by then), Picard in the movies, and any given guest Captain were all seen routinely beaming into dangerous situations whenever they felt like it. I think only in "Nemesis" did Riker suggest that Picard going for a joy ride would be worth bringing up as a dumb thing to do, and Picard blew him off anyway.

Yup, somewhere along the line the "XO only on away missions" thing wasn't worth enforcing anymore. Stoopid cowboys.

Mark

[Captain Picard.]

SimpleLogic wrote:

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So I get why a captain shouldn't always beam into an unknown place, but isn't it equally as foolish to have the entire command staff go instead? Seems like every time they beam down they have everyone but the captain go.

I know, the entire senior staff go while the captain is left on board and when the captain wants to go they have a go at him

[Agonizer]

davejames wrote:

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The thing that was always more baffling to me, was why the away teams (in this super advanced 24th century of theirs) never took along a freakin camera and transmitted what they were seeing to the Enterprise. Instead of having to give Picard some vague and not very helpful verbal description all the time.

The closest they ever got was Geordi's crazy kaleidescope vision in the first season, and that was more for kicks than anything else.

Or why not just beam down some sort of probe/camera before sending any people down. They could get some idea of what they were heading into.