Do you think a lot of the civilians on board Enterprise requested to leave?

[Elephant999]

The kids on the ship always jarred with me. Particularly as they called red alert every episode!

It didn’t sit right that a space ship should contain kids. It was too cosy a set up and perpetuated the cruise ship in space image.

 

[Nyotarules]

The entire concept is bizzare.

Putting civilians on MILITARY ships is akin to using human shields.

Picard - we're not soldiers !!!

 

[Crazyewok]

Picard - we're not soldiers !!!

Picard and riker spoke a lot of crap.

For a non-military, Starfleet certainly fought a lot of wars......

 

[Qonundrum]

The entire concept is bizzare.

Putting civilians on MILITARY ships is akin to using human shields.

Military families, but still families.

The only way they could be used as human shields is if an enemy intruder managed to beam aboard. Which happened only once ("Rascals").

And the ship was used for far more diplomatic missions Makarov nailed it), the big "E" wasn't used for offensive combat as such.

It's ultimately, to me, more of an interesting concept.

 

[Tenacity]

Military today do it all the time.

Modern military ships don't go on multi-year deployments. And there were bases during the cold war that would have been first strike targets, even in non-nuclear war. These bases had families,

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

didn't the Odsysey off load its civilian population to DS9

It did.

 

[Timo]

Her "nonessential personnel", to be exact...

The military not tagging civilians along is a very recent phenomenon here on Earth. And probably to the detriment of the civilian population, even, because the military then takes what it needs from random civilians, rather than "their own".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

Picard - we're not soldiers !!!

Picard might like to read back through some of his own log entries, apparently he has forgotten what he recorded.

 

[Elephant999]

Picard and riker spoke a lot of crap.

For a non-military, Starfleet certainly fought a lot of wars......

And their ships were armed to the teeth so how can they not be classed as military? Plus Starfleet had military ranks and a discipline code.

 

[Timo]

Then again, the military is the antithesis of the navy in some books written in the 1950s still. And Star Trek is all about anachronistic terminology, of the future being more like the past than the present. If Picard wants to distance himself from the mindless drills of the ground forces, fine. That doesn't necessarily make him any less a soldier.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Delta Vega]

Maybe career quasi military personell should put off having children if they plan to swan off to the Stars for five, ten, fifteen years at a time.
A Starship is no place for screaming, interfering, spoiled brats.
It's a very dangerous environment.

 

[Farscape One]

A lot of career officers don't have children... it seems to be the norm. Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Scotty, Chekov, Riker, LaForge, Bashir, Kim... none had any children that we know of.

(Alternate futures and realities notwithstanding.)

 

[at Quark's]

^ Wait… Kirk didn't ? Then who was that David Marcus lad killed by Klingons in The Search for Spock ? Or does that movie also count as 'alternate reality'?

I'll agree that Kirk left him alone at the request of his mother, though, and also we never learn when he found out he had a son.

 

[NigellaDeanna20]

possibly but more likely after generations, they probably got a caught a couple of shuttles or other starship back to earth.

 

[cgervasi]

I don't get the answers that say in the Star Trek universe, exploring space on the Federation flagship is not much more dangerous than staying home.

 

[DonIago]

Well, how many planets did we see get destroyed/infected with a pandemic/attacked by The Enemy?

 

[Nyotarules]

A lot of career officers don't have children... it seems to be the norm. Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Scotty, Chekov, Riker, LaForge, Bashir, Kim... none had any children that we know of.

(Alternate futures and realities notwithstanding.)

Star Trek's message regarding human parenting was make babies then abandon them ala Kirk, Sulu and McCoy style, until The Sisko came along.

 

[Timo]

Not much evidence for Sulu abandoning Demora, who was apparently born well after the TOS adventures and thus may have enjoyed basically 100% dad coverage...

Timo Saloniemi