Did having children and families onboard make sense?

[JoeZhang]

Wasn't it willful endangerment?

"Class has finished early today children, as Borg drones are busy asimilating the crew. Yes I know some of you are still having nightmares from that time the romulans attacked the ship but there are many many drugs that the doctor will give to stop you having nightmares".

 

[Nebusj]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

JoeZhang said:
Wasn't it willful endangerment?

More dangerous than having them aboard a starbase or colony?

 

[22 Stars]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

At least the children would be learning proper grammar.

 

[Mysterion]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

22 Stars said:
At least the children would be learning proper grammar.

I think so too, won't you?

On topic: I think the idea stank on ice, and still does.

 

[USS Excelsior]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

In fact I believe that the producers of the show in retrospect believed it was a mistake because even in the show you just can't justify it.

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

Nebusj said:

JoeZhang said:
Wasn't it willful endangerment?

More dangerous than having them aboard a starbase or colony?

Is it a good idea to have them on a starbase?

A colony would depend on where the colony is - a new planet in federation space - yes, a disputed planet in a area where there is heavy conflict with an alien race - no.

On a ship that is often sent into battle? not a lick of sense.

 

[Kirby]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

In reality the average starship probably doesn't get into battles and other dangerous situations on a regular basis. There are probably hundreds (thousands?) of ships that just haul people and cargo from place to place, or science vessels that would work in relative security well within Federation borders.
From a story perspective, I didn't like having families on board (which would have cut Wesley off right from the start) but initially the Enterprise was supposed to separate and run away when they knew they were going into battle, but it seems like they didn't have the budget to show that on a regular basis without repeating the same fx shot over and over.

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

but initially the Enterprise was supposed to separate and run away when they knew they were going into battle

That never made much sense either, due to the lack of warp engines on the saucer. If the hull was taken out of action/blown up - that would leave a slow moving ship of potential hostages!

 

[Smiley]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

The concept is sound. You're more likely to sign up for a 20-year voyage if you can bring your family along, and disaster can strike no matter where you live. There were certain errors in execution on the show, but I think it worked more often than not.

 

[Galactic Alignment]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

JoeZhang said:Is it a good idea to have them on a starbase?

Depends where the Starbase is. And whether, like DS9 from 'Way of the Warrior' onwards, it's heavily armed and defended.

I imagine most Starbases that are well inside UFP borders would be pretty safe. The Starbases on planetary surfaces might be safer than normal colonies, i.e. more well defended with orbital defence systems and nearby starships.

 

[Red Ranger]

Re: Did have children and families onboard make sense?

People,

I think they never quite properly handled the idea of having families and civilians on board. With the exception of Guinan, Keiko and a few eps showing some of the families, they never did a good job showing the non-Starfleet people interacting with the Starfleet people.

I think it would have been natural to have a civilian liaison to bring the concerns of the non-Starfleet population to the captain, for example, which might have made for some conflict there. Guinann could have served in that capacity, for example. Or perhaps if Counselor Troi hadn't been a Starfleet officer but a civiilian psychiatrist who also served as the liaision to the families, that might have made sense.

Red Ranger

 

[A beaker full of death]

It was fucking stupid, and they couldn't tapdance their way out of it fast enough.

 

[Gertch]

As a vessel of exploration that could be gone for years this made some sense. But since the show would be extremely boring if it was all mundane exploration, they had to add conflict and dire situations. Because of that the idea doesn't pan out.

 

[Christopher]

I'm with Smiley and Gertch. The original concept was that a Galaxy-class starship would be a roving research institution-cum-university town in deep space, carrying a large contingent of civilian scientists alongside Starfleet personnel and spending 15 to 20 years away from any home port or starbase. There's no way in hell you'd get most civilians to agree to spending two decades away from their families. I doubt you could get most Starfleet personnel to agree to that either. The intended mission profile of the Galaxy class couldn't have worked without families aboard.

In my novel The Buried Age, when Picard was contemplating whether to take command of the Enterprise-D, I had a character mention that to him, but that character also mentioned something else:

"Out there, in the frontier, we're the face of the Federation to everyone we meet. Maybe the only face they get to see. Do we want them to see a military force? Or a community of explorers and their families? How would we rather have them think of us?"

The problem wasn't that there were families onboard a military ship. The problem was that it wasn't really supposed to be on military missions, but the writers ended up increasingly using it that way and pretty much abandoned the idea of a long-term deep-space exploration mission. So it wasn't that the idea didn't make sense to begin with, it was that it ended up not being used the way it was supposed to be.

(Although I disagree with Gertch that a show about exploration would be boring. Personally I find exploration stories a whole lot more engaging than combat stories.)

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

(Although I disagree with Gertch that a show about exploration would be boring. Personally I find exploration stories a whole lot more engaging than combat stories.)

Especially since exploring and "boldly going where no man has gone before" was what the show was supposed to be about.

 

[Gertch]

Christopher said:
(Although I disagree with Gertch that a show about exploration would be boring. Personally I find exploration stories a whole lot more engaging than combat stories.)

It's certainly all in the writing. And of course the show. By itself I guess I shouldn't say exploration stories would be boring.

I love Discovery and History channel shows (and all the predecessors over the past decades) but I can't even think of one TNG episode that was exploration without some sort of conflict that involved the Enterprise in danger. Perhaps the one with Data and Sarjenka?

 

[poundpuppy29]

I am kinda mixed on this I can see both sides. If they are signing up for a decade or more then yes they should be able to have families. I also don't think everyone did want to have families Picard is a great example who I saw chose not to have a family. I also think it was probably a limited number of those who did or was allowed.

 

[Spider]

Christopher said:
.......The original concept was that a Galaxy-class starship would be a roving research institution-cum-university town in deep space, carrying a large contingent of civilian scientists alongside Starfleet personnel and spending 15 to 20 years away from any home port or starbase.....

The whole problem with this exploration stuff is the ship seems to make it to Earth quickly enough from whereever it's at. (usually a matter of days, perhaps a week) So why would they need to stay out so long? If they were going to completely unexplored parts of the galaxy, which they seldom did, it makes sense they'd always be close to some sort of Federation outpost or planet.

 

[Christopher]

Spider said:
The whole problem with this exploration stuff is the ship seems to make it to Earth quickly enough from whereever it's at. (usually a matter of days, perhaps a week) So why would they need to stay out so long?

That's only a problem because the writers the show ended up with kept doing stories that involved Earth or other Federation worlds. How often in TOS did the Enterprise return to Earth, not counting trips into the past? Exactly never.

The problem is that the intentions behind the show changed. The people who created the show intended the ship to be way out in the unknown, far beyond Federation space. Remember, the very first episode of TNG showed the Enterprise arriving at a station called "Farpoint," beyond which lay the great unexplored mass of the galaxy. The series was supposed to begin with them crossing beyond the farthest point of human exploration and going on from there into totally uncharted waters. But then the original staffers were replaced by other writer-producers who shifted the focus toward stories set in more familiar territories, stories driven more by politics, diplomacy, military tensions, and the like than by first contacts and frontier perils. So these producers took a ship that their predecessors had conceived with the specific goal of deep-deep-deep space exploration and turned it into a glorified border-patrol vessel. And so its potential was wasted.

When DS9 came along, I kept wishing the TNG producers would send the Enterprise through the wormhole for an extended mission in the Gamma Quadrant. They could've spent the last two seasons of the show exploring totally unknown realms and actually taking advantage of the strengths of the Galaxy class for once. But they didn't. When we did get a show about a ship that was permanently in uncharted space, it was an Intrepid-class ship that wasn't designed for that kind of mission. So we never really got to see the Galaxy class used for the thing it was specifically designed for: an extended mission requiring it to be totally self-sufficient for years at a time.

 

[Spider]

I see your point. TNG would have been a different show then.

Interesting.