Long term service?

[Crewman47]

Thinking the other night and I realised that out of the main cast all but 2 of them had served on the same ship and it's namesake for a total of 27 years (the two that didn't are obviously Sulu and Checkov) counting from TOS year 1 of 2266 to the decomisioning of the E-A after TUC in 2293 but what I was wondering, apart from Rand and Chapel who we know at least transferred to the refit in TMP, is there a chance that any other crewmember that we might've seen throughout TOS's run stay on the Enterprise and later the E-A for the same length of time, say for example DeSalle, Riley or Leslie, or are we to assume that only the senior staff and main cast were the ones who loved serving on the Enterprise so much that they were the only ones who wanted to stay on her (does this make sense) so that they could all stay together?

ANy thoughts and is this a common thing in todays Navy?

 

[Trekwatcher]

I imagine such an arrangement would be supremely rare. People often move to another ship to secure promotion ("moving over to move up"). This is also a common practice in Law, Medicine, and business. People leave to secure new opportunities for themselves.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Enlisted men often leave the service; officers often don't.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

^Agreed. Time=Rank (Which is power)

 

[Red Ranger]

Let's face it, in all the ST series, TOS being the prime example, the fact that these officers all stayed together for so long isn't realistic. Surely, some of them would've been reassigned by Starfleet to fill positions that needed to be filled in other important areas. We did see that in TSFS when Scotty was promoted to captain of engineering and ordered to help launch Excelsior. Obviously, someone thought it was a good idea to promote Kirk to rear admiral. And Spock did get bumped up to captain and served as a teacher at Starleet Academy. But with those exceptiona, plus Chekov's posting to Reliant, and Sulu's to Excelsior, we didn't see that with McCoy or Uhura. And even in the case of Kirk and Spock's promotions, six of seven of them mostly stayed together even while serving at Starfleet Academy. -- RR

 

[FalTorPan]

Thinking the other night and I realised that out of the main cast all but 2 of them had served on the same ship and it's namesake for a total of 27 years (the two that didn't are obviously Sulu and Checkov) counting from TOS year 1 of 2266 to the decomisioning of the E-A after TUC in 2293...

Voyager's "Q2" -- produced after the last Star Trek Chronology update -- established that the five-year mission ended in 2270, suggesting that it began in 2265.

As for how long each crew member served with Kirk, it's hard to say. McCoy's "27 years... USS Enterprise" line notwithstanding, we know that
McCoy served on at least two starships named Enterprise, and that there were gaps totaling at least 21 months during which he wasn't serving aboard any ship at all -- eighteen months during which the NCC-1701 was being refitted, and three months in exile on Vulcan. Further, McCoy may have resigned well before the onset of the NCC-1701's refit -- after all, Kirk had time not to have logged a single star hour in some 2.5 years.

This is all nitpicking, of course. However long Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov actually served together, it seems extremely unlikely that such a situation would occur in real life.

 

[Timo]

TOS is actually a "prime example" of nothing but exceptional circumstances. It would be a natural thing for the bridge team to hold together for the duration of this five-year mission thing. After this, they would scatter whichever way - but all the TOS movies were based on the premise of events pulling the scattered crew together. In TMP, Kirk pulled strings to get back his old ship, so he probably pulled other strings to get back his old crew as well. In ST2, people gathered together from diverse assignments to celebrate Kirk's birthday with an unscheduled training cruise. In ST3/4, the people stayed together because they were a bunch of fugitives. At the end of ST4, the people were celebrities who were given a joint gift in form of the new Enterprise. They probably held together in ST5 until repairs on the ship would allow them to perform their scheduled public relations mission, and then dispersed to pursue their individual careers. The final mission in ST6 was a diplomatic stunt that again explicitly pulled together a scattered crew; ST:GEN of course showed Kirk (and possibly Scotty and even Chekov) in retirement already.

It's not TOS that is "unrealistic without excuse" in this respect, then. It's TNG, and TNG only: the heroes of this spinoff have little excuse to continue joint service for seven years and then transfer to another ship as a group.

Timo Saloniemi