Why were Data's and Worf's quarters so small?
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Andrew Probert designed the Enterprise-D for a crew of 3,600 to 3,800, but Gene Roddenberry argued the show couldn't afford the number of extras needed to suggest there were that many people on board, so he picked the number 1,100.
The exception is Star Trek Generations, which had a motion-picture budget and could show us a far busier ship than usual.
Addition, after watching the video above: keep in mind a huge part of the saucer section is taken up by the main shuttlebay. Then you also have shuttlebays 2 and 3 and the cargo bays, which should significantly reduce the amount of space available to each member of the crew.
That said, I think it's fair to say Gene's 1,100 figure was too low. But that if we do go with that figure, the fairly small quarters for even high-ranking officers make even less sense.
The exception is Star Trek Generations, which had a motion-picture budget and could show us a far busier ship than usual.
Addition, after watching the video above: keep in mind a huge part of the saucer section is taken up by the main shuttlebay. Then you also have shuttlebays 2 and 3 and the cargo bays, which should significantly reduce the amount of space available to each member of the crew.
That said, I think it's fair to say Gene's 1,100 figure was too low. But that if we do go with that figure, the fairly small quarters for even high-ranking officers make even less sense.
Random speculation for a moment 
The Enterprise-D is highly automated, which presumably requires a certain amount of automation machinery. Perhaps the bulk of the interior of the saucer is filled with huge swaths of this machinery and subsystems, leaving the living areas restrained to the outer edges - hence why there are so many windows, as well so few crew for a ship that size
The Enterprise-D is highly automated, which presumably requires a certain amount of automation machinery. Perhaps the bulk of the interior of the saucer is filled with huge swaths of this machinery and subsystems, leaving the living areas restrained to the outer edges - hence why there are so many windows, as well so few crew for a ship that size
That seems logical .There has to be at least some internal space for sensors ,phasers and the impulse engines even if it's just a shit on of power couplingsRandom speculation for a moment
The Enterprise-D is highly automated, which presumably requires a certain amount of automation machinery. Perhaps the bulk of the interior of the saucer is filled with huge swaths of this machinery and subsystems, leaving the living areas restrained to the outer edges - hence why there are so many windows, as well so few crew for a ship that size
Besides the lack of a window, these quarters are pretty comfy for a single man. Besides missing a kitchen area (not needed with replicator) its not much different than bachelor apartments I lived in as a single person. And who needs a window with ten forward just down the hall?
A lot of assumptions have been made about the Enterprise and how much space is supposedly available but the quarters seemed realistic for a space faring vessel with limited space to devote to housing crew and potentially hundreds of other guests depending on the mission.
As I said earlier, who really needs a window on a space ship? No fresh air, no daylight, and most of the time it's just the same view of stars in front of a black background.
I don't think you'd even see stars most of the time - the brightness of the room you're in would overwhelm them, unless you turned off the lights of course!
We can see for ourselves that they can see the stars through the windows, so I guess transparent aluminium must have bizarre star-amplifying properties.
Yeah, form what I remember we always saw stars outside the Enterprise-D's windows, no matter how brightly the room was lit. But that still leaves the fact that it's not exactly much of a scenery, that you can't open the windows for fresh air, that there's no daylight coming in through them.
And that quarters located deeper in the centre of the saucer, away from the hull, would be a lot safer in battle situations.
And that quarters located deeper in the centre of the saucer, away from the hull, would be a lot safer in battle situations.
There's a line by Janeway in the episode Counterpoint in relation to a stellar phenomenon going on outside the ship at that time where she mentions the "polarisation axis of the windows" - perhaps these are the special properties which viewports on Star Trek seem to possess?
Oh I agree entirely. Give me some nice thick bulkheads by my bedside, any time!
I don't really understand why a larger crew would have meant more extras. Considering how large the ship was, in my eyes a larger crew wouldn't necessarily have meant that there'd be 3 times as many people on the bridge or in corridors.It's not like we ever saw a thousand people on screen at the same time.
And really, Voyager, with its 200-something crewmembers seemed to have about the same amount of extras as the Enterprise-D.
On the bridge, no, but in the corridors presumably yes. Wouldn't the number of people we see randomly walk the corridors be proportionate to the overall number of people on board?
I'm rewatching Season 1 right now and I think they made more of an effort then to give an impression of the large number of people on board, including civilians. In later seasons we see almost only Starfleet personnel anymore.
And, as I already mentioned, in Generations the ship is much busier.
They really packed them in on those old ships.
In Season One anyway. Scenes of corridors packed with extras started to dwindle as Season Two wore on (with several episodes written about explicitly empty ships). Corridors in Season Three rarely featured anyone who wasn't directly relevant to the scene. The big exception to that was the final moments of Mark Of Gideon, but in that case a corridor packed with extras WAS directly relevant to the scene anyway!
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You make a good observation about TNG having fewer background people in the corridors as the show went on.
DS9, on the other hand, had more as each season progressed. Which made sense, as the importance of the station as a trading center and outpost grew with each season. It's another reason DS9 felt so real... the station felt vibrant, lived in, and alive.
However, a lot of DS9 took place in the promenade, which was basically the hub of the station. In contrast on TNG we never really saw the places where the bulk of the civilian population passed their day. It can't have been 10 forward, since it seems small for a crew of 1000 people.
I've always thought the population of 1,012 was way too small for the size of the Enterprise. I know it contradicts what's said in the show, but I've always figured a CREW of 1,012, leading to a population of 2,000 to 3,000.
The quarters shown make sense for the people they depict, which would again support either masses of non-domestic space, or an awful lot of quarters left empty.
Even so, the scenes probably show no more than 50 or so individuals, so don't, or need not, imply an increase in the ship's population.
I thought, but didn't watch in *that* much detail, that the video discounted spaces such as the cargo and shuttle bays.
The times we see a supposedly busy Ten Forward, it actually looks relatively quiet compared to comparable modern-equivalent. If you were to walk into a similar-sized pub, restaurant, or café (OK maybe three years ago rather than today!) when they were "busy" they'd be much busier than 10-Forward was ever shown as being.
I'm not sure what, if any, onscreen evidence there would be, but I've always subscribed to the theory theory that there were lots of facilities similar, though perhaps smaller, than 10-Fwd scattered around the ship. Coupled with the fact that there'd always be a portion of the ship-s body on duty, asleep, in their quarters or in separate facilities (such as holodecks).
dJE
dJE
I think there must have been other facilities. Places where people could listen to different music or places with a different vibe.
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