Did the Enterprise have a mortuary ?

[Timo]

Several cultures may demand a burial on the person's home planet.

OTOH, the practical realities of Starfleet life may well nullify such demands. If you enlisted, you waived your right to get buried.

Kirk's giant ship could obviously afford to have not just an onboard cemetery (with miniature rolling hills and sycamores and whatnot) but the sacred temples of the fifty most popular religions as well (if only in swappable form, with inflatable holy men). Yet a lesser ship might well have no chance but phaser-cremate the corpses; even the carrying of dedicated burial shrouds for spacing them might be too much of a logistical strain.

(Now, Picard's ship could of course hold the better part of Arlington physically on Decks 6 through 8. But holodecks in that era would make it possible to give a decent burial even aboard a tiny cutter, including a ten-thousand-person parade across three states. It's just that the corpse would end up being phaser-cremated anyway, even if the holodeck made it look otherwise...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

Several cultures may demand a burial on the person's home planet.

OTOH, the practical realities of Starfleet life may well nullify such demands. If you enlisted, you waived your right to get buried.

Kirk's giant ship could obviously afford to have not just an onboard cemetery (with miniature rolling hills and sycamores and whatnot) but the sacred temples of the fifty most popular religions as well (if only in swappable form, with inflatable holy men). Yet a lesser ship might well have no chance but phaser-cremate the corpses; even the carrying of dedicated burial shrouds for spacing them might be too much of a logistical strain.

(Now, Picard's ship could of course hold the better part of Arlington physically on Decks 6 through 8. But holodecks in that era would make it possible to give a decent burial even aboard a tiny cutter, including a ten-thousand-person parade across three states. It's just that the corpse would end up being phaser-cremated anyway, even if the holodeck made it look otherwise...)

Timo Saloniemi

I'm not considering a cemetery. Just a morgue. Something small. Kirk's Enterprise 20 maybe 30 stasis chambers. Enough to hold bodies of important dignataries, a few crewmen who died of an unknown illness, or even for professional review if it is believed the medical staff made a mistake.

Picard's Enterprise I would say, no more than 50.

Stasis chambers could be self contained, and all ships could have identical chambers that run off of ship power but able to switch to internal battery during power outages and so they can be swapped out with another ship headed back. Since they are identical, the ship headed in could give its empty chambers to replace the used ones.

 

[Timo]

Apparently, the Defiant didn't have a morgue of any size; at least the corpse of the Muniz guy was kept in torpedo casings in a cargo hold. If a starship about half the size of Kirk's can't afford the facilities, then odds of finding them could well be much lower than we'd expect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

Or just promply forget about the rotting corpse (Friday's Child).

I always made the assumption that he was beamed back to the Enterprise, like that red shirt from The Apple, just it was done off screen.

The problem is, their communicators and phasers were confiscated immediately. Kirk wasn't allowed to call the ship, thanks to the Klingon's taunts. By the time Kirk got the communicators back, the Enterprise was out of orbit on a wild goose chase. There was no time from Grant's death until Scotty arrived with his pack of redshirts at the end of the episode for Kirk to have the body beamed up.

Hence, he forgot about the rotting corpse.

I suppose he could have asked the Cappellans to bury him or do whatever they did with dead warriors, but we never saw it.

 

[Timo]

As the Capellan habits in general were of the classic "barbaric native" sort, we could well speculate that "whatever they did with dead warriors" had already been done, with appropriate gore...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Or just promply forget about the rotting corpse (Friday's Child).

I always made the assumption that he was beamed back to the Enterprise ...

The problem is, their communicators and phasers were confiscated immediately.

I didn't mean immediately, just that the bodies would be recovered before team Kirk finally departed the planet.

Unless the natives completely destroyed the corpse in some fashion, then the guy in 'Child would be return to the ship. Or be "properly" interned on the planet.

 

[Timo]

Or, for all we know, the Klingons took him for their own nefarious purposes.

The region of Capella featured here appears to be studio-warm, uh, temperate to subtropical. Local body disposal culture would probably put an emphasis on haste, then...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

Well, possibly McCoy - who'd been there before - asked them to either ice up the body or give him a decent burial since he "died as a warrior." The Klingon (Bob) would have protested, but I could see the Capellans being cool about it. "The humans show spirit and courage. we will respect their wishes."

Then it all went to hell when Kirk touched Catwoman.