Dead Parents

[Christopher]

Another factor to consider: convenience. It's easier to deal with the extended family by having them dead (unless family members can contribute to shows) than having the characters reference them as often as 'normal' people do, or by making the main characters seem strange by almost never referring to their extended family over the course of seven years.

Interesting thought. TNG kept the crew mostly far from home, while DS9 was more rooted and maybe had more opportunities for family-related stories.

On the other hand, though, TNG consciously incorporated the idea of family into its premise, with the ship designed to accommodate crew families; and yet it didn't take advantage of this with any of the main characters besides the Crushers. Also, VGR kept its crew much further from home, yet explored its characters' families more than TNG did.

 

[Timo]

The idea that the E-D would have families aboard effectively dictated that our heroes couldn't have families!

If Riker had a mom and dad aboard, we would have to see them in basically every episode, which would mean casting two people of minimal dramatic utility. But if Riker had a mom and dad in Alaska, we could spend entire seasons not hearing about them - or we could hear of them in every episode and it would still cost Paramount zip.

Giving Riker "daddy issues" was a standard technique for introducing a character that would still conveniently stay at an arm's length and thus cost relatively little. Yet doing so after the E-D was established to be a family ship put undue emphasis on the fact that everybody was having arm's length relations rather than nice, hugging families.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Neutral Zone]

Though there were families with children on TNG's Enterprise, it feels to me that the writers barely scratched the surface with what they could've done. There could've been more faily fallouts, children born and fatalities, but perhaps this would have gone too far. It then be more like a soap opera rather than an action scfi?

 

[Christopher]

Though there were families with children on TNG's Enterprise, it feels to me that the writers barely scratched the surface with what they could've done.

I think that's because the original developers of the show mostly left during or after the first season, and their successors weren't as interested in the concepts they developed. The Enterprise was originally supposed to be charting the unknown reaches of the galaxy, but it ended up spending most of its time dealing with Federation members and neighbors. It was supposed to be a university village in space with hundreds of civilian scientists and their families, but it was mostly portrayed in later seasons as a pure Starfleet crew with the only civilians being the spouses or children of officers.

In the original writers' bible, Geordi La Forge was supposed to be a liaison with the ship's children (perhaps reflecting LeVar Burton's Reading Rainbow role) as well as the helmsman, but that concept never actually made it to the air. Maybe if they'd kept the idea, it would've provided a mechanism for doing more with the families. Although that might've further marginalized Deanna as a character.