Did they ever explain how Geordi...

[R. Star]

The real reason was of course it was silly to have a new guest engineer every week and they needed to shift one of the regulars down there. Apparently that was a big oversight when they originally cast everyone.

For an in universe explanation Picard said he picked Geordi for his ship when he was impressed that Geordi put in some hard work fixing a shuttle when Picard mentioned it wasn't working at peak efficiency. So Picard chose him as his navigator, and had him on his radar to advance once he had served for a little while. Apparently that work ethic impressed Picard a lot. By Geordi's own admission he was an average pilot at best.

[JessDD]

Timo wrote:

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...One might actually argue that with such an automated ship, the only thing they would ever need is engineers. The automation takes care of commanding, piloting, researching, communicating and diplomacy. And the engineers take care of the automation!

Timo Saloniemi

Piloting you don't need for sure. You can fly that ship by voice command.

The need for a science department is pretty limited considering you could just transmit all the sensor and scan data to wherever you wanted.

You still need Command to make decisions. I'm sure you could program some sort of "command algorythm" or such, but I doubt you would make too many crewmembers comfortable with that.

Tactical again can, and probably should, be handled by the computer.

So Command personnel, Engineers, and Medical staff. Oh, and security staff to do... whatever it is they do.

[Timo]

I'm sure you could program some sort of "command algorythm" or such, but I doubt you would make too many crewmembers comfortable with that.

Then again, since you wouldn't need much crew, this wouldn't be a big problem. And if the crew is uncomfortable, you fire them, and hire new ones. Or execute them and order in a new lot, as we'd do in times of war.

Timo Saloniemi