Crew question ?

[Nero's Shadow]

I was thinking about this today the enterprise is a BIG ship and yes we know it's manned with at least 430 crew many different in rank, but my question is would any of the lower ranks crew members ever get to see the bridge .? As we know they are three deversion departments command science and engineering so would this happen lower ranking engineering officer may only see and work in engineering.?

So your thoughts would this be possible ?

 

[FormerLurker]

Potentially. Some of it would depend on scheduling, but having worked in jobs where I never saw the bosses' offices (which we called carpetland), I'd have to say it could happen that some personnel would never see the bridge as anything more than lines on a schematic.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm pretty sure some of the nameless guys manning various stations were probably enlisted or junior officers, as were various security guards, yeomen and "repairmen" who trapsed on and off the bridge on occasion.

 

[Timo]

Both TOS and VOY also feature fairly high-ranking specialist officers who seem to have few or no daily tasks, and isolate themselves in their labs or cabins. That sort of a phenomenon would be less typical of modern navies, but sort of plausible on the long exploration voyages that Starfleet tasks the ships with. I doubt Lt. McGivers got to see much of the bridge before linking fates with Khan, for example.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CoveTom]

I don't get the impression, however, that the bridge of a starship would be a location that would necessarily be "off limits" to other crewmembers. Certainly nothing we've seen on screen would indicate such. Granted, they restrict access to the bridge for civilians, but I don't see why any crew member couldn't just pay a visit to the bridge to have a look. Starfleet ships are definitely more relaxed in such protocols than modern Navy vessels. And that's even if modern Navy ships restrict personnel from visiting the bridge. I don't know if they do.

 

[ZeroArmour]

I'm fairly certain that places like the bridge and engineering are "duty personnel only" places, meaning you only go there when you're on duty. And when you're on duty you don't just stroll around the ship.

 

[T'Girl]

Granted, they restrict access to the bridge for civilians

Exceptions made for the monster of the week, of course.




.

 

[Chaos Descending]

And that's even if modern Navy ships restrict personnel from visiting the bridge. I don't know if they do.

They do indeed. The bridge is restricted to people who have a specific need to be there.

There are a couple reasons for this. First, people who work on the bridge have a very serious job to do. Distractions are to be kept to an absolute minimum. Any old person wandering up to the bridge at will would definitely be a distraction. Second, there simply isn't room. Contemporary ships don't have the spacious accommodations that UFP starships do. The bridge of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier for example is slightly smaller than the living room in my old two bedroom apartment.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, I seriously doubt that -anyone- is allowed to visit the bridge, regardless of their status, just to stand around and gawk, unless it's pre-approved.

 

[Botany Bay]

Another vote for "strictly limited access" here. The last thing you'd want is people getting in the way up there.

If you've ever seen a radio station - every bored employee loves to check out the on air studios and come in for chat, but it's very distracting and annoying to the team on air, whose asses are on the line if they have a bad shift, so, apart from a tour on your first day, the studios are strictly off limits to most people. The bridge would be the same.

 

[DonIago]

Hell, I work in the back office of a bank, which may be "high-security" but certainly is no military installation, and even when I'm not particularly busy it annoys me when "civilians" are in the area (family members of employees, etc.). If I get a phone-call or actually do need to focus on getting something done, the last thing I want in the background is small children running around the department or adults yakking within earshot.

In a case of false irony, I do tend to listen to my iPod when I have anything particularly demanding in front of me, but I think I'm actually more focused with background music, and it tunes out other distractions. Though when I need to focus even moreso than usual I've sometimes needed to turn the music off as well because even that became a distraction.

In any event, I can only imagine Uhura at court-martial claiming that she didn't hear the Kobayashi Maru's distress call because she was distracted by how cute Ensign Busybody's new baby was.

 

[Pauln6]

If you look carefully at TMP, there are many crewmembers on the bridge at various stages. There are also some crewmen with no rank insignia actually assigned to stations, including a few technicians in their white overalls, so it isn't just officers who get to sit in on the action.

I would think that all key locations such as the bridge, engineering departments, transporter rooms, and auxillary control rooms would be off limits to anybody who didn't have an 'official' reason to be there. Most of the saucer section (D-deck to H-deck, excluding impulse engineering and environmental engineering) would be free to all, there's the pool and arboretum in the secondary hull, and there are plenty of observation rooms even on partially restricted decks.

 

[Nero's Shadow]

Yeah I like how the TMP used it's cast and extras for the crew.? Made it feel that the enterprise was really real. I love the scene in TMP where we get to see the whole crew watching vger in the observation deck. But I'm still thinking that a science officer or a lower ranked crew member would only work in a certain area of the ship, I know that they would have whole ship coverage but I was thinking of there working surroundings.?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

I've always wondered if the RED doors were to indicate limited access to personnel. YELLOW doors had greater access, etc. Bridge and Engineering both have red doors, don't they?

 

[Pauln6]

Yeah I like how the TMP used it's cast and extras for the crew.? Made it feel that the enterprise was really real. I love the scene in TMP where we get to see the whole crew watching vger in the observation deck. But I'm still thinking that a science officer or a lower ranked crew member would only work in a certain area of the ship, I know that they would have whole ship coverage but I was thinking of there working surroundings.?

Most areas in the saucer section were not off limits. For example, Rand just wanders into the botany lab to give Sulu his lunch when they are both off duty, although no doubt some labs are off limits during particular experiments.

I think most technicians would spend their time floating between key posts so a technician might spend one or two hours monitoring the ship's environmental sensors and running a diagnostic. After that time, a different technician would take over and repeat the process and the original crewman would go off and relieve somebody else. During normal operations, I doubt that more than one transporter chief and one technician are on duty and they just move from one room to the next running through the standard diagnostic checks on each transporter in turn until they're actually needed.

During General Quarters or Red Alert, off duty personnel would go to their assigned posts and/or man damage control teams. So all transporter rooms would then be manned and ready for use.

In Enterprise, TNG, and Voyager we sometimes see off-duty personnel bothering people in engineering. Officers or not, I don't think they're supposed to be there!

 

[Timo]

During normal operations, I doubt that more than one transporter chief and one technician are on duty and they just move from one room to the next running through the standard diagnostic checks on each transporter in turn until they're actually needed.

To reconcile between the TOS concepts of there being several differently configured sets for a transporter room, and there being dialogue referring to "the transporter room" without further identifier, it might be prudent to argue that something about keeping a transporter room "hot" is very costly in terms of resources. Thus, only one room at a time is active outside special emergencies, and every one of the heroes then knows where to head on that particular day when Kirk asks them to meet him at "the" transporter room.

On the issue of off-duty personnel popping up at busy locations, I'd think that they'd be discouraged from doing that only on tightly run ships during short missions. When the ship stays "out there" for several years at an end, informality takes over... On certain ships, as long as one's hammocks or stacks of magazines or spare beagles don't block access to Emergency Jettison Valve 47, anything goes. On others, if you want to flirt with the not so busy Engineer's Mate at Impulse Console B, you have to pretend to hide from the duty officer's watchful eye, which the duty officer of course duly turns the other way when he sees you approaching. Ships where loitering is only allowed in the Recreation Room are probably a minority (and even then, Recreation is a major and expansive department, with massive facilities such as the one seen in TMP or the one implied in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" as being three decks high).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Chaos Descending]

To be honest, even on a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier it's still not all that uncommon for off-duty engineering folks to be in the engineering spaces for various reasons. Even if you're just going down to the plant to shoot the shit with your buddy who's on watch, it's still not all that discouraged as long as there aren't any kind of special evolutions going on like training drills, or unusual plant operations and maintenance.