If You Could Invent a New Starfleet Role

Yup. Higher ranking officers with more responsibilities and duties to attend to can carry on with them whilst the Away Team specialists can do the job they're trained for.

 

Star Trek: Away Team Chronicles!

 

That would be "Science Officer"...or just "Starfleet"

 

What gets me is that, regardless of who is on the away team.. they never pack anything!
I mean, for example:
They find a class M planet, decide to go down.
Who goes on the team?
Lets say, first officer, team leader, a couple of sciencey people, botanaist, geologist, etc. a medic of some kind, if its a larger party, might have an "Emt" type, or on a smaller team, someone who is cross trained to be an emergency medic. then atleast 1 security ( more if it is an extreme situation, and you need more to die for plot!)
But in all of this, they would have SUPPLIES!! They'd carry back packs, and beam down a container with them containing, tents, water, food, jackets, spare battires, phaser riffle etc. just incase things go tits up.

 

This is the thing that bugs me the most about the way Starfleet apparently does away teams. I mean the "Main Characters Do Everything" scenario of senior officers making up the teams is dumb, but somewhat necessarily given television budget restrictions, but there's no excuse for not equipping your teams properly with at least environmental gear, rations and maybe even a subspace emergency beacon or radio.

 

The obvious answer to this is that they don't typically expect to need to be laden down with all that stuff given there's a fully equipped starship in orbit with transporters. Not foolproof but given most away missions will go without a hitch all things being equal the balance of probability likely favours travelling light.

 

Really?

Not on the version of Star Trek that I've been watching (especially TOS).

Given a choice I'd have only one senior officer as team leader, either XO/contact specialist or science officer normally, but security chief, chief engineer or even chief medical officer are possiblities depending on the mission. The typical "away team" would be made up of an operations CPO or PO, a communications officer (PO or Crewman) and three security officers (marksman, EOD, medic).

 

Which by definition shows the exciting minority of cases where things go wrong in interesting and dangerous ways.

That's kind of the point, the excitement comes from seeing exceptionally capable characters deal with situations which challenge them in some manner, not ones where everything is routine, mundane and humdrum. However the backdrop is that the adventures of Kirk and co. represent the minority of cases and typically occur in ways that would be almost impossible to prep an away team for anyway.

They could develop some form of mass transportation device filled with thousands of tonnes of kit to equip and cover the team for every possible eventuality but...oh yeah, that's what a starship is

 

Fair point, but there's a difference between overkill and not bothering at all.

The former would somewhat break the narrative, the latter IMO just makes it look like Starfleet has no interest in learning from it's mistakes or protecting its personnel.

 

Medical examiner/coroner

There are a lot of freaky-deaky deaths in the Trek universe, so how about a travelling M.E. who conducts autopsies for the Federation legal system?

 

Like the TMP transporter accident victims and what was left of them.......

 

Exactly.

Coincidentally, I just read The Lost Years the other day and thought "Hey, this Ciana character is kind of interesting. I wonder if she made any other appearances?" A quick check of Memory Beta and I found out.

 

Ciana didn't have a clone when she died. As opposed to Weyoun 5. I guess there was nothing left of Weyoun 5, Damar took care of it.....

 

Oh yes.

Or more a representative of the ship's civilian population.

Definally, reoccurring character.

Have someone who takes on the role we saw Neelix doing. Ship wide news, keeps ship's gossip under control, organizes parties and celebrations. And funerals.

We hear of freight and cargo, we see holds with items.

Unless the ship is quite small, likely they do have the equivalent of a "I.T. guy," as a part of the crew. Most likely an enlist specialist.

Who is a step below half-master and one day will achieve full-master.

Just place a neck tie on the holodeck doorknob. One of the problems I have with the Trek depiction of the future is the obvious absence of personal privacy.

It would be great if on occasion a captain or senior officer would ask for a piece of information (say on a private individual), and have the computer inform them that they basically weren't going to get it.

Yes this. Not replacing Starfleet security, but to have a separate specialty. There could be a time and a need for out and out combat troop, beyond what security is trained for.

Dedicated away team, what a good idea. Secondary characters, reoccurring characters. They go in first and the principal characters show up later. We see them in the background, rarely they're featured.

No, a specialist.

Which on multiple occasions is cut off from the ground team.

 

Nah, it's a science officer, dealing with unknowns is their role.

Yes, to give the characters a challenge, it's a story telling conceit and one which is explicitly stated time and again to be outside the in universe norm. We just see it happen a lot for dramatic purposes.

Equip those characters with some sort of mobile tool/survival kit, or a ground vehicle or.....whatever and all you've done is shift the writers' focus from one story telling device to another, more cumbersome, secondary one which would needlessly complicate matters.

If the writer needs the characters isolated from help then isolated they will be. Adding additional avenues for that help to arrive from just makes the busywork of explaining that isolation more contrived and awkward, taking time and focus off the actual meat of the episode.

 

I like the chaplain and fitness instructor ideas.

I would add compliance officer, one who is versed in regulations regarding safety onboard ship, assuring workplace hazards are prevented and people work safely when not facing extraordinary circumstances.

 

Chief Technobabble Translating Officer...

 

I'd like to see the return of the Captain's yeoman, my "head canon" says Picard did have a unseen yeoman.

Also, a legal specialist, maybe a JAG representative. Larger US Navy ships today have them.

Nah, the science officer would have a specialty and beyond that be a generalist, and also be the science division manager. Under them would be various specialists with narrow fields of expert knowledge.

 

I like the idea of a safety inspector of some sort too. I can just imagine Kirk complaining of health and safety gone mad

 

Agony Booth Janitor

Warp Core Ejector Engineer - Sole job is to make sure the damn thing works.

Chief of Recreation - everything connected to off duty time. Holodecks. Gym. Entertainment.