In TMP, when viewing Epsilon 9, there look to be a few hundred crew members, even though I don't expect that's everyone on board. How many are on board during the "little training cruise" in TWOK? Crew shots when Admiral Kirk et al enter the ship, and shots of Engineering and Spock's funeral add up to, what, several dozen? How many experienced crew and trainees would be aboard such a mission? Same question, I suppose, for who's left in TSFS as the Enterprise heads back to Spacedock. Admiral Kirk mentions that the vessel seems empty after the trainees have been re-assigned, and we see one scene in the torpedo bay with what looks to be less than twenty crew members. Again, I'm sure that's not everyone, but if most of the trainees have departed and the ship seems empty, how many are left before the Enterprise returns home?
I guess it would be based on which departments were on board for training, at a minimum engineering and ordnance, but those were probably understaffed compared to a real mission, probably no sciences and minimal medical and security. Could easily be only like 100 total crew for the cruise. The trip back to Earth was probably hardly anyone once the trainees were gone, only the instructors and maybe some additional skeleton crew from wherever the trainees were transferred, which is why Scotty had the ship rigged for almost complete automation
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that a fully manned NCC 1701 would still be around until decomissioning if she had a full compliment of crew. The scripting cleverly placed the ship at a precarious position right off the bat to elevate the stakes as you would in a motion picture as opposed to a routine episode from TOS.
It's always been my impression that was the entire training crew assembled in those scenes, especially the ones in which the ship was docked. You also briefly glimpse an upper deck of assembled crewmen as Spock's tube is being lowered. Star Trek was in the hands of people who barely knew ST (which is not the negative thing a lot of fans would knee-jerkingly make it out to be). I've no doubt Meyer or Bennett would have told you that was the whole crew if asked. You wouldn't exclude nine tenths of your crew from any of those official proceedings.
THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. As a narrative, as a story, as a movie made no sense - everything about it is odd, and I flat out hate that movie. TWOK gave the impression the full crew compliment were trainees, and the senior staff were also inexperienced with the exception of Spock and Scotty. If the trainees were reassigned then the ship is run by a skeleton crew, but what would be the compliment for that? From my understanding of what I've seen from TOS and TMP these Starfleet vessels require a full staff aboard, but in this stupid movie the Enterprise don't require much of a crew, and later doesn't require anyone but 4 guys to perform complete operations of that vessel??? These hiccups are just not important to the whole scheme of things to come, like David being the reason why Genesis failed, Kirk an experienced and well trusted and respected officer can't even be trusted to get the Enterprise for a mission. The So called "Great Explorer" the Excelsior doesn't work after all the hype said about it in the beginning of the movie, even if Scotty sabotaged it, it's not very satisfying if I don't see this thing do something which was prefaced. As for the crew compliment in the beginning of the movie, I felt Kirk mentioning the trainees being reassigned was not necessary because there's never been a production that ever shown the full compliment of a Star Trek crew. TMP did presented a taste of how many people are on the Enterprise, but portions are what we'll always see because the main characters will always be the focal point of the narrative. By leaving out the reassignment, whoever is on the Enterprise would be worked out from our own imagination.
In Ultimate Computer Kirk says he can’t run the Enterprise with a crew of 20, this is obviously no longer true a few decades later, where 5 people are enough to do basic stuff (but clearly not normal operations, see what happens when they get into battle) thanks to something called “automation center”. Regarding the original question, I never got the feeling that the enterprise was understaffed on TWOK, only staffed mostly by Un experiences trainee. In any case it would have depended on how many classes were on board and with how much senior crew support (clearly not much). The ship was obviously understaffed on search for Spock and Final Frontier, anyway I expect the standard compliment to be similar to a pre-refit Connie, that is between say 200 and 450.
"How many people does it take to run the ship?" is a question with multiple correct answers. Making her fly might not require more than a keypress; quite possibly, she could even be remotely controlled. But keeping her flying is different, and 20 might be just fine for that, but it won't suffice for conducting a "mission", which is what M-5 allows. For sustaining flight for more than a single mission, Janeway still needs a hundred folks. And for getting things done, Kirk needs 430 explorers while Pike only needed 200+ whatevers, this dictated by the nature of his mission rather than by the specs of his ship. (In one of the TOS movies, there's a reference to 500 crew on either the -nil or the -A. What was that reference? I think it was in TMP.) Timo Saloniemi
I had the impression that the Enterprise had little more than a skeleton crew during TWOK and even less than that at the start of TSFS. If the ship was truly a cadet training vessel by that point, she was probably never intended to be assigned to regular missions and had the smallest crew needed for training missions, with quite a few of them being cadets/trainees. Even though the Enterprise was still fully operational and equipped with live weaponry, her days as a frontline starship may have been considered over if she was now a cadet vessel. In that light, I would hazard a guess of 200 or so in TWOK and maybe around 100 at the start of TSFS.
as I got the subtext on Ultimate Computer, Kirk meant that if he had to shit down the M5 for whatever reason he wouldn’t have enough crew to go back to the starbase. Of course he does try to shutdown the computer after all, but I guess they could have sent a distress signal and waited for the fleet. Another point, in doomsday machine Kirk is able to operate (in battle!) the heavily damaged Constellation at warp with way less than 20 people. Of course he can only do very rudimentary maneuvers and it wasn’t intended for the long run, but still...
This makes me wonder if the battle damage incurred by the Reliant's initial attack in TWOK could have been repaired more quickly if an "experienced" TOS crew would have been aboard. Then again, the ship was pummeled...and this has probably been covered elsewhere.
Strangely enough, I had the same thought (pretty sure for the first time) when I was writing my original comment upthread. I'd imagine if there were a more experienced engineering crew on board they'd probably been able to fix the main energizer without Spock having to go in there and apparently mix matter/antimatter plasma with his bare hands.
maybe. By the way, how many people were on the Reliant at the time? Khan’s followers didn’t seem more than 20 to me and many of them end up on the bridge and must be very inexperienced, being this the second starship they see at all... Unless they kept part of the starfleet crew aboard, equipping then with ceti eels, which really doesn’t seem the case, how can they operate the starship?!
I agree. When Spock asks McCoy about Scotty's condition I always assumed that since Scotty had the suit on (assuming he added the helmet we saw in TMP I don't remember if we saw those helmets in twok as well.) he'd have been safe to do the work. IIRC Spock's hands are ok looking at the end even though his face isn't, implying the gloves were sufficient protection and that the suit would be too but Spock didn't have time to put on a full suit.
I suppose however many people we see, multiply by 3 for the three duty shifts. I would guess that each shift has a Chief and a couple of specialist POs to supervise the trainees. TOS rarely acknowledged non-coms It's possible that the experienced crew was diverted elsewhere earlier in the conflict to maintain functionality of the temporary repairs.
It seems to be Scotty's expert opinion that the radiation prevents repairs. McCoy concurs. So I doubt the suit would have helped any; Spock's ability to complete the task seemed to depend on his physiology. Or then not. This was merely his counterargument to McCoy's ban on going in; most probably, it was another of the Vulcan's blatant lies, and McCoy saw through it at once. In reality, Spock's only advantage here was that he was intent on not surviving. Why does Scotty faint? Out of exhaustion, probably. Radiation damage would be unlikely to affect the heroes one way or another during the completion of the task; it would merely ensure their deaths later on. OTOH, Scotty doesn't have the trademark skin damage that in this context marks the radiation damage. Timo Saloniemi