Can Anyone Explain TNG era Main Crew Positions

[Lance]

The only one I've never been able to get a handle on is Worf in season one.

He's wearing red, so he's not part of Tasha's team.

He seems to be stationed at one of the screens at the back of the bridge, but it's incredibly inconsistent exactly what that duty is.

When Tasha drops off the perch, nobody seems to be assigned to his old job.

I can't help wondering if he arrived for his tour-of-duty on Enterprise and the guy was just like, "Uh yeah, Starfleet's only Klingon... geeze, uh, well, how about you watch this screen here and tell us if that little blinky there turns off or on? Important job, no-one else can do it."

And Worf's like, "Wtf, I should be makin' shit happen on this ship, but here I am looking after the ship's Blue Screen Of Death?"

 

[Christopher]

The only one I've never been able to get a handle on is Worf in season one.

He's wearing red, so he's not part of Tasha's team.

He seems to be stationed at one of the screens at the back of the bridge, but it's incredibly inconsistent exactly what that duty is.

When Tasha drops off the perch, nobody seems to be assigned to his old job.

As I said, he was basically the bridge watch officer or officer of the deck. It's not a post that's been used elsewhere in Trek, but that's basically what his responsibility was -- basically the captain's assistant and protege, standing watch over the bridge as a whole and filling in at any station as needed, including commanding the bridge in the captain's absence.

The thing is, Worf was an afterthought. He wasn't even in the original series bible. So when he was added late in the game, all the major posts had already been filled. So they made Worf the guy who did everything else on the bridge.

 

[MacLeod]

So if we combined logic and Star Trek trends of senior staff, then aboard a starship we would have:
1. commanding officer
2. executive officer
3. chief operations officer
4. chief science officer
5. chief counselor
6. chief flight controller
7. chief security officer
8. chief tactical officer
9. chief medical officer
10. chief engineer

I'm guessing 10 main actors is too much for network executives to afford on a new show?

Don't see why not. Shows like Once Upon a Time have a large cast of regular, supporting and reoccurring characters

Didn' B5 had a fairly large main cast, true some of them didn't appear in every episode but from memory

Sinclar/Sheridan
Ivonova/Lochley
Garibaldi
Talia/Lyta
Delenn
Franklin
G'Kar
Londo
Vir
Lennier

And for some of the seasons we had

Marcus (3-4)
Keffer (2)
Na'Toth (1-2)
Zack (3-5)

So that's 10-12 mains per season

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think arc based storytelling lends it's self to larger casts.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

So if we combined logic and Star Trek trends of senior staff, then aboard a starship we would have:
1. commanding officer
2. executive officer
3. chief operations officer
4. chief science officer
5. chief counselor
6. chief flight controller
7. chief security officer
8. chief tactical officer
9. chief medical officer
10. chief engineer

I'm guessing 10 main actors is too much for network executives to afford on a new show?

Not all of them have to be main characters, some could be commonly recurring characters (eg ship's counsellor and conn officer).

 

[The Wormhole]

So if we combined logic and Star Trek trends of senior staff, then aboard a starship we would have:
1. commanding officer
2. executive officer
3. chief operations officer
4. chief science officer
5. chief counselor
6. chief flight controller
7. chief security officer
8. chief tactical officer
9. chief medical officer
10. chief engineer

I'm guessing 10 main actors is too much for network executives to afford on a new show?

Not all of them have to be main characters, some could be commonly recurring characters (eg ship's counsellor and conn officer).

Indeed. In fact, the problem some Trek series got into (particularly Enterprise) is that is just made the main cast comprise only of key positions of the starship's staff which led to severely underused characters like Mayweather, Hoshi, and even Reed.

 

[Sans]

Wasn't the counselor position only on Galaxy-class ships due to them being one of the few Starfleet ships that housed the crew's civilian families?

 

[Enterprise1981]

Wasn't the counselor position only on Galaxy-class ships due to them being one of the few Starfleet ships that housed the crew's civilian families?

That would appear to be the case considering Troi had the most interactions with the children on the Enterprise-D (Jeremy Aster, Jake and Willie Potts, Alexander Rozhenko, Clara Sutter, Eric Burton).

Perhaps the counselors on other ships and space stations have a less prominent role than Troi. The Titan novels established that in addition to being senior counselor, she was the Titan's diplomatic officer, a title she never had on either Enterprise because of Picard's diplomatic experience. The counselor in the TNG-relaunch novels does not appear to be a prominent bridge officer. Deep Space Nine did not have a counselor among its senior staff until Ezri Dax--Sisko's reasoning being the Dominion War. For all we know, Counselor Telnori, referenced in "Hard Times", was a civilian.

 

[Timo]

Were we ever given a reason to think that the E-D or the Galaxy class would be unique in carrying families? To the contrary, everything from teeny weeny Mirandas up seemed to be accommodating families (see Saratoga) and a counselor (see Brattain)...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cyke101]

I believe there are three positions:

1 Sitting

2 Standing

3 Tossed across the room by an exploding console.

My personal favorite was "Address crew member while sitting/standing on important equipment." Riker was the master at this -- sitting on top of the rear bridge consoles, putting one foot next to Data's console while giving him orders, etc.

 

[MacLeod]

So if we combined logic and Star Trek trends of senior staff, then aboard a starship we would have:
1. commanding officer
2. executive officer
3. chief operations officer
4. chief science officer
5. chief counselor
6. chief flight controller
7. chief security officer
8. chief tactical officer
9. chief medical officer
10. chief engineer

I'm guessing 10 main actors is too much for network executives to afford on a new show?

Not all of them have to be main characters, some could be commonly recurring characters (eg ship's counsellor and conn officer).

Indeed. In fact, the problem some Trek series got into (particularly Enterprise) is that is just made the main cast comprise only of key positions of the starship's staff which led to severely underused characters like Mayweather, Hoshi, and even Reed.

I think you need 5 main characters that would cover most stories

CO
XO
Chief Medical
Chief Engineer
Security/Tactical Chief

As for the rest, I think they could be covered by recurring/guest actors. As for ENT, I think in some respects they tried to recapture the triumvirate of TOS. To which I din't think they succeed as well as they had hoped. As you say they underused characters like Mayweather and Hoshi, and when they paired Trip up with T'Pol that pushed aside the Trip/Reed dynamic.

I think arc based storytelling lends it's self to larger casts.

That might be true, but conversely smaller casts should allow better development of characters. But sometimes recurring characters in a show can be better developed than main in another show.

 

[Timo]

It probably isn't necessary to include officers in the main cast at all. Generally, the starship ends up in a location of adventure, and the adventure then takes place: it's not really relevant to give hero status to those characters who decide where the ship goes, because the ship in any case goes to the adventure and doesn't leave until the adventure is done. The deciders in charge of the ship don't have the dramatic license to actually decide! The drama is with the doing, and that could be by a bunch of lowly crewmen in a landing party.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

It probably isn't necessary to include officers in the main cast at all. Generally, the starship ends up in a location of adventure, and the adventure then takes place: it's not really relevant to give hero status to those characters who decide where the ship goes, because the ship in any case goes to the adventure and doesn't leave until the adventure is done. The deciders in charge of the ship don't have the dramatic license to actually decide! The drama is with the doing, and that could be by a bunch of lowly crewmen in a landing party.

Agreed in principle but it would be harder to tell stories of broad interest. The lowly crew member will only know his/her immediate assignment, while the captain and higher-ups will have the "big picture" and can address more aspects of the overall story. Someone on security duty with a landing party might have a very exciting time fighting off an attack, but probably won't know the background details of why the attack happened, how it affects other departments, what the implications are for the ship's mission and so on.

That said, I think a show could benefit immensely from an approach that consistently touched on different levels of the organization. While the cook in Forbidden Planet was comic relief, it was nice to see the story reflected from a different point of view than that of the top officers. And the scenes of Parker and Brett's labor-side bellyaching gave a wonderful liveliness and believability to Alien.

The Hill Street Blues ensemble was spread across several strata: commanding officer > command staff > detectives > uniform patrol. That has the advantage, though, of the "lowest" level working independently with the public and liable to come into contact with interesting situations all the time. A starship crewman standing watch and doing routine work day in, day out doesn't have the same dramatic potential.

 

[Christopher]

Nobody suggested focusing on some guy on routine duty in environmental engineering. Gerrold's proposal was to focus on the people who went where the action was, the expendable frontline officers who were the first to go into dangerous or unknown situations and make the new discoveries. The only difference from what we actually got is that they wouldn't have also been the indispensable command crew of the ship, which is silly and unrealistic. Certainly they would've been aware of the big picture, since they'd be the captain's primary tools for getting things done off the ship.

There's a show that was recently released on DVD, Search, a '70s spy-ish series produced by Trek's Bob Justman. It was about three different agents (one featured per week) who went around the world looking for valuable lost items, monitored constantly by a sort of "Mission Control" back at headquarters that watched and listened to them through high-tech micro-cameras and mikes that they wore in their rings or watches or the like, and passed instructions to them through speakers implanted in their skulls. So the guy in charge back at HQ (played by Burgess Meredith) was, in his way, just as integral to the story and the decision-making as the action lead out in the field, with him every step of the way (except when communication was cut off). There was a time when I imagined that as the way a Trek-style exploration starship might operate in my own original SF universe, with the survey team constantly monitored by the ship captain and a team of scientist-advisors -- and I came up with that decades ago even though I'd never seen an episode of Search until just a couple of months ago.

 

[J.T.B.]

Nobody suggested focusing on some guy on routine duty in environmental engineering. Gerrold's proposal was to focus on the people who went where the action was, the expendable frontline officers who were the first to go into dangerous or unknown situations and make the new discoveries. The only difference from what we actually got is that they wouldn't have also been the indispensable command crew of the ship, which is silly and unrealistic. Certainly they would've been aware of the big picture, since they'd be the captain's primary tools for getting things done off the ship.

I was responding to Timo's comment's about no officers and lowly crewmembers, not this Gerrold thing. It's an interesting idea, though it might have some problems, too. If the "away team leader" was a lead of the show, what would he be doing in an episode that took place entirely aboard ship? They might have to find ways of inserting him into situations that the captain should be able to handle himself.

 

[The Wormhole]

If the "away team leader" was a lead of the show, what would he be doing in an episode that took place entirely aboard ship? They might have to find ways of inserting him into situations that the captain should be able to handle himself.

Perhaps the same thing someone like Jack O'Neill does in Stargate episodes set exclusively at the SGC?

You seem to be assuming every episode would involve an adventure that needed to be dealt with in an action like manner. But wouldn't an episode set entirely aboard ship basically be a "bottle show" and therefore likely a character driven story?

Actually, the Away Team concept seems like real fertile storytelling ground. If we assume something like a Galaxy class ship had say ten such teams assigned to it and they simultaneously explored the planets, each team checking out a different region with specialists from the ship's crew helping out as needed, it could actually help chart newly discovered planets a lot more thoroughly than the usual Trek situation of a group of the ship's senior staff with one or two expendables check out a city or town or forest, get into some trouble and beam back to the ship with the planet now considered "catalogued." Hell, I'm kind of surprised a series, Trek or otherwise hasn't done more with this concept.

 

[Christopher]

I was responding to Timo's comment's about no officers and lowly crewmembers, not this Gerrold thing. It's an interesting idea, though it might have some problems, too. If the "away team leader" was a lead of the show, what would he be doing in an episode that took place entirely aboard ship?

Presumably the same thing he or she would do when the ship was between planets. They wouldn't let a member of the crew just take up space, so everyone would have shipboard duties. Star Trek has always seen its crewmembers as analogous to astronauts, cross-trained in multiple specialties so they can adapt as needed. The point is simply that it's silly to have the captain be the first person taking life-threatening risks.

Besides, it makes more sense than, say, Kira and Odo coming along on a Defiant mission, as they often did for no clear reason.

They might have to find ways of inserting him into situations that the captain should be able to handle himself.

But handling things the captain needs done is the crew's whole job. That's how a military works. The captain is busy making decisions about what everyone needs to do. He or she doesn't have time to personally execute every decision -- that's what the crew is there for. What's unrealistic about Star Trek is that it shows the captain -- and the whole command crew -- carrying out tasks that would actually be the responsibility of subordinates. You see the same thing in lots of shows, like on House MD, where the doctors were constantly performing slow, meticulous tests that would really be delegated to interns or technicians because the doctors themselves would have too many other responsibilities. Or Batman comics, where Commissioner Gordon is constantly going to crime scenes personally instead of letting detectives handle it because he's too busy managing the whole department.

Actually, the Away Team concept seems like real fertile storytelling ground. If we assume something like a Galaxy class ship had say ten such teams assigned to it and they simultaneously explored the planets, each team checking out a different region with specialists from the ship's crew helping out as needed, it could actually help chart newly discovered planets a lot more thoroughly than the usual Trek situation of a group of the ship's senior staff with one or two expendables check out a city or town or forest, get into some trouble and beam back to the ship with the planet now considered "catalogued." Hell, I'm kind of surprised a series, Trek or otherwise hasn't done more with this concept.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I imagined it working for my original-SF idea.

 

[The Wormhole]

But handling things the captain needs done is the crew's whole job. That's how a military works. The captain is busy making decisions about what everyone needs to do. He or she doesn't have time to personally execute every decision -- that's what the crew is there for. What's unrealistic about Star Trek is that it shows the captain -- and the whole command crew -- carrying out tasks that would actually be the responsibility of subordinates. You see the same thing in lots of shows, like on House MD, where the doctors were constantly performing slow, meticulous tests that would really be delegated to interns or technicians because the doctors themselves would have too many other responsibilities. Or Batman comics, where Commissioner Gordon is constantly going to crime scenes personally instead of letting detectives handle it because he's too busy managing the whole department.

I liked it when Simpsons made a joke on that matter with Chief Wiggum saying "you know in most cities, the chief of police doesn't head out on routine calls like I do."

 

[Christopher]

You know, all these years I've been wondering what a police commissioner actually is, so I just looked it up. Turns out it's basically the same thing as a sheriff.

 

[USS Triumphant]

You know, all these years I've been wondering what a police commissioner actually is, so I just looked it up. Turns out it's basically the same thing as a sheriff.

In some places, even moreso than others.