Science division and the Dominion war.

[Saito S]

Why does everyone keep implying that I want to remove anyone that has any relation to the word "science" removed from the ship? This is not what I am saying at all.

Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that that's what I thought you meant, if my post was included in that. I agreed with you to some degree: out of all the major departments, I think science would see the biggest drop-off, more than any other single department. But I also think that even for science, the drop-off would be relatively small, and consist mostly of noncoms.

And remind me, how many insane phenomenon or spaceborne entities were encountered during the dominion war? Space is big. Really Big. And mostly empty.

That's a good point.

Of course, the out-of-universe explanation is that during the war, the show runners were doing war stories, not anomaly-of-the-week stories. Hence, while war stuff was going on, those pesky anomalies that seemed to crop up daily on the Enterprise(s) suddenly decided to politely stay out of the way while the Defiant was busy pasting Jem'Hadar bugs.

In-universe... perhaps the main theaters of war, and the sites of most of the big battles (and the routes that the combat fleets of both sides used to get to those various places), were all contained within "known space", i.e. along mapped corridors and near already charted planets. Any dangerous anomalies would already have been either eliminated/subdued in some way, or at least mapped and easily avoided.

Where the "problem" anomalies show up is uncharted space. And that's where you really need your science department, because those anomalies could be as dangerous as any enemy warship and won't go away if you shoot at them. But if ships spend far less time traveling in uncharted space during wartime... well, there you go.

Still, I mentioned other possibilities in my last post about why many science officers (especially commissioned ones) might stay: crossover with medical, operational, and repair skills, and pure manpower for filling in where it's needed, regardless of skill or training, as Caliburn pointed out (i.e. Ezri handling communications).

In all honesty Starfleet should have gone to almost(or fully) automated combat ships a long time ago. Scotty's automation center in STIII was fine, except it was jury rigged. And the Prometheus seemed to fight well enough without a crew.

One of the reasons the Prometheus makes no sense (the bigger one being the idiotic MVAM, but let's not get into that here!). The problem with what you are saying is... well, you're probably right. And given what we can do with today's military tech, Starfleet should have unimaginably greater automation technology than what we see in the show. But the problem is that it IS just a show. The lack of truly advanced automation has nothing to do with Starfleet's fictional capabilities, and everything to do with the fact that it is a fiction, one which is about people out there exploring and fighting themselves.

It might make real-world sense, but it would irrevocably alter the nature of the show.

As to land-based combat, we haven't seen enough of it in Trek to really argue anything dogmatically, but it never seemed of enough strategic importance to have even a sliver of the significance of one of DS9s major fleet battles.

Agreed. There are mentions of various land-based vehicles and
weapons for both Starfleet and the Cardassian military; sadly, none of this is ever seen. Still, it does seem like - excepting unique situations like the one on AR-558 - the more important battles are in space, and the more important discussions about territory and assets involve systems and sectors, not single planets.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I think the science division saved Starfleet a few times, and practically won the war for the Federation.

Still though, the science division, they don't really look like fighting types to me.

 

[sojourner]

Again, the problem is that you have to have those people to replace them with, which is far from guaranteed, especially with Starfleet not having any organization that's the equivalent of the National Guard.

Starbase crews on non war borders and in the interior. That's the Starfleet equivalent of national guard.

Considering what we have seen onscreen in Trek, pulling the science department off of starships and replacing them with more engineers or security specialized crewmen would have zero effect on space-born combat power. Sure you could pack your hulls full of elite phaser marksman or crackerjack engineers on the off-chance you get boarded,

Dude, wtf? do you really think I was talking about adding crew only for the purposes of repelling boarders? How about some of the reasons that have been argued for keeping the sciences on board, like medical, engineering/repair, command and control. Would you really rather have the botanist taking over for the dead second engineer instead of having a backup that specialized in... oh, I don't know, engineering?

 

[The Wormhole]

Your an admiral with an exploration ship under your command. During peace time 10 of the 20 crew on board are in the sciences division with specialties such as archeology, botany, and first contact. Now, a war starts. Do you keep those 10 on board or do you maybe cycle them to behind the lines positions and replace them with 10 starfleet personnel that have more applicable war time skills but are otherwise stuck in postions not on the "front"? What's the best use of resources here? What's going to give you the best combat advantage you can muster?

This issue is being addressed in the novels. For those unaware, the current novel continuity features a Starfleet far more militant than we ever saw on the shows. Yes, even more than in the height of the Dominion War. And yet the science staffs of a starship have not been reduced at all. In fact, dedicated science ships are still as abundant as they were during TNG.

And remind me, how many insane phenomenon or spaceborne entities were encountered during the dominion war? Space is big. Really Big. And mostly empty.

Granted, but given how common space phemenon are in the Star Trek universe it only makes sense to be prepared. Take the Xindi conflict for example, the Enterprise NX-01's sole purpose for entering the Expanse was one of combat, to find the Xindi and deal with them. To emphasise this the ship's weapons were refitted and a contingent of MACOs were assigned. But as it turned out, space anomalies became very prominent dealing with them was the key to eventual victory.

And regardless, in most cases where we see more militant services in Star Trek, the science staffs are rarely reduced. As I've stated before, Klingons and Romulans have science officers. Romulans even have science ships. In the Mirror Universe the Enterprise had a science staff and a chem lab. I'm pretty sure we even saw black-uniformed Starfleet troops with blue stripes in Nor the Battle for the Strong and The Seige of AR-558. I doubt all of them were doctors and medics.

The only times there has been a noticeable lack of science staff was on the Enterprise D in Yesterday's Enterprise, where I doubt we saw any blue shirts outside of sickbay. Which seemed odd, considering the referance to "Cetacean Ops" implies the ship still carried whales and dolphins. Oh, and they still had a civilian bartender.

Then there's the Defiant which apparentally there was no scientific facilities at all as evidenced by Dax piloting the ship.

 

[Timo]

...Also, Dax commanded a wartime mission specifically because she was a scientist with expertise on a natural phenomenon that would decide the outcome of the mission. Clearly, Starfleet had no need (chance?) to replace her with a combat-trained redshirt and relegate her to an advisory role, despite there being no evidence that she would have been a particularly experienced or well-trained starship-commanding warrior.

We don't know if Starfleet evacuates unnecessary personnel from ships when they are sent to war. We do know that on a relatively short notice, Starfleet managed to mobilize a fleet of some 40 starships at Wolf 359, and lost nearly all the ships - but only 11,000 people, indicating that the largish vessels (most much larger than Kirk's) had an average crew size of just 280 or so. That might indicate

1) evacuation of nonessential personnel (even if Sisko's ship apparently did not evacuate civilians)
2) hasty activation of many of the ships with skeleton crews, a somewhat exotic practice that nevertheless is sort of echoed in STXI
3) lots of survivors floating around in lifepods or perhaps fleeing with select surviving ships (like Sisko; but our TNG heroes saw no sign of such survivors, which is more understandable if there only were few)

Apart from that, what other evidence is there? Keogh evacuated personnel before going to battle, but we don't know what sort and how many. Kirk never considered evacuation in "Errand of Mercy"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Caliburn24]

Dude, wtf? do you really think I was talking about adding crew only for the purposes of repelling boarders? How about some of the reasons that have been argued for keeping the sciences on board, like medical, engineering/repair, command and control. Would you really rather have the botanist taking over for the dead second engineer instead of having a backup that specialized in... oh, I don't know, engineering?

And when have we ever seen that scenario play out in Trek? Eleven movies, countless hundreds of episodes, how many times has that plucky Engineer(or botanist) 2nd Class John Doe done anything important? Any Starfleet ship that takes enough damage to kill significant numbers of the crew almost always destroys the ship as well. Having a secondary or tertiary crew of engineers just means you have more engineers dying when the ship is destroyed. The power of Trek space-born weapons doesn't leave much wriggle room. Shields down, hull breached(this is when people start dying), warp-core overload, ship go boom. Everybody dies. Having an engineer and a botanist versus two engineers is meaningless in the threat environment of the Dominion War and with the design-doctrine that Federation ships have onscreen.

Now yes, I know I am not being entirely fair. Trek is about our main core characters always saving the day because the plot demands it. We don't care about Ensign Timmy stepping up and doing exciting things.

But that is the Trekverse we have.

 

[T'Girl]

Why does everyone keep implying that I want to remove anyone that has any relation to the word "science" removed from the ship?

Why? Because that's exactly what you did in the OP. You asked if Starfleet would removed certain DIVISIONS from ships, then when on to specifically mention sciences.

What is pertinent to this topic is something every service member is familiar with, "Needs of the service".

In the US Marine Corp, you are a rifleman first, and your particular speciality second.

There was a move in the US Air Force in the 1980's, where the officers were to be Air Force officers first, and be specialists in their career fields second.

A Starfleet officer's main duty, is to be a Starfleet officer ... not a science officer, medical officer, engineering officer.

Looking back at TOS. Captain Kirk had no problem placing his Engineering Officer in command of his ship. If Spock hadn't also been First Officer, I could still see Kirk placing his Science Officer in command. In one of the early novels, Kirk once placed McCoy in command (admitted this caused problems).

Lieutenant DeSalle was at times a assistant engineer, a navigator, and a biologist. That's all three of the major divisions of the day.

Chief O'Brien was trained in engineering, but also as a helmsman, we saw him in a security role, and under a previous command he was employed as infantry.

When Worf was moved to security, there was no obvious signs that he was retrained, he was simply reassigned to a new department ... as a Starfleet officer.

**********************

It would seem by observation, that all Starfleet personel (officer or otherwise) are train in the use of a hand phaser. With rare exceptions they all look physically fit.

I know some people will resist the use of the term, but science officers (and enlisted) are the Federation's soldiers.

 

[sojourner]

The Wormhole - Enterprise was s single ship going into unexplored space to find an enemy they knew nothing about. The dominion war was fought with fleets in charted space between protagonists that were much more informed of each other.

You say the Klingons and Romulans have science officers. This is a given. Do you have any evidence against those science officers being in reduced numbers as well during war time? That they have less to begin with? No? That Romulan Science vessel, do you think they would send it to the front before an attack frigate?

Yesterday's Enterprise is a good example for and against as you have shown. WTF was that bartender doing on board during a war?

And when have we ever seen that scenario play out in Trek? Eleven movies, countless hundreds of episodes, how many times has that plucky Engineer(or botanist) 2nd Class John Doe done anything important? Any Starfleet ship that takes enough damage to kill significant numbers of the crew almost always destroys the ship as well. Having a secondary or tertiary crew of engineers just means you have more engineers dying when the ship is destroyed. The power of Trek space-born weapons doesn't leave much wriggle room. Shields down, hull breached(this is when people start dying), warp-core overload, ship go boom. Everybody dies. Having an engineer and a botanist versus two engineers is meaningless in the threat environment of the Dominion War and with the design-doctrine that Federation ships have onscreen.

Sounds like a pretty good argument for removing non-essential personnel, hmmm, I wonder what departments would go first?

 

[Sandoval]

WTF was that bartender doing on board during a war?

Tending bar.

Obvious really.

 

[7thsealord]

WTF was that bartender doing on board during a war?

Tending bar.

Obvious really.

Heck, yeah. War going on. People would need drink and entertainment as much as ever, if not more so.

Noting that, during the World Wars and at other times, warships of the Commonwealth navies commonly had a few civilians on board to run the ship's canteen, laundry and/or other "service" facilties. I believe that something like this was also known to happen on the larger USN warships as well.

 

[7thsealord]

It does occur to me that Star Fleet vessels would probably vary their balance of personnel for a number of reasons, not just war versus peace.

A ship is assigned to border patrol - it may (if time and circumstances permit) take on a few "specialists" in whichever race is across the border.
A ship is assigned to aid colonies - it may (ditto) take on some extra medical and life science people.
A ship is assigned to "monitor gaseous anomalies" - they might reassign or transfer a few of the less relevant specialists to make room for extra people who know all about this stuff.
And so on.

 

[Caliburn24]

I'm all for getting rid of non-essential personnel during war-time or when a starship is going into combat. Or as I already mentioned, increased automation.

Where I think we differ is then using those now open extra billets to add in additional crew with more valuable war-time specializations.

When my regiment arrived in Iraq we originally had a five man crew for every gun-truck. A vehicle commander, gunner, driver, and two backseat dismounts who only did anything when we stopped and let them out. Within a couple weeks we phased that out as we realized having the two dismounts was a waste of manpower, and in the event of an IED hit just increased the number of casualties. We still carried dismounts when we needed them for specific missions. But carrying extra crew just in case one of the three essential crew got incapacitated and needed to be replaced was tactically and statistically unwise.

I think one of the great stories Trek could tell if it ever returns to TV again is how a democracy deals with such military matters. Remember all the hubbub about US soldiers not having adequate body-armor or up-armored vehicles? Or lives being spent wastefully without clear objectives?

Now imagine a Federation news conference. "Mister president, why are you sending some of the bravest men and women in Starfleet into battle in Miranda-class hulls that are a hundred years past their service life, and with only a twelve second life expectancy in a modern fleet engagement? My neighbor's son Ben works on a Defiant-class ship and I am told he plans his tactical maneuvers to take advantage of the debris clouds of exploding Mirandas because they are a battlefield constant. Does Starfleet value some lives more than others? Is it true that casualty rates among Andorian and Tellerite officers are higher than average? Is Starfleet using them as cannon fodder?"

"I, ah. Sometimes you have to go to war with the Starfleet you have, rather than the one you wish you had. I will remind you, that the Defiant program was cut due to political pressure outside of Starfleet's control. Likewise we had to scale back our deployment of pulsed phaser arrays, ablative armor and quantum torpedoes. Instead of every ship getting them only a relative handful got them. This was due to budget overruns in Starfleet's budget over the last six years, and the unwillingness of the Federation council to grant us special dispensation in the face of ongoing threats. To be blunt, you didn't give us the money we needed to make sure every Starfleet officer goes into battle on the most advanced ships, with the proper training."

"This is the Federation, we don't use money. How can you put a value on life?"

"..."

 

[The Wormhole]

Science division - Starfleet's scientific divsion. The guys who wear blue uniforms who aren't doctors/medical staff.

Dominion War - The storyline of DS9's sixth and seventh seasons. With buildup at the end of the fifth.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Starfleet is very scientist oriented and biased.

To show how extreme or absurd this can get, look at how on TNG command of the entire ship during a crisis situation is left in command of a science officer with no operation skills.

Dr. Crusher, medical officer, was left in command of the Enterprise two times--one when they were expected to face the Romulans.

And then that one with Troi- a counselor-in Disaster, she was given command when obviously they should gave O'brien command.

Even when competent officers are available, they'd rather defer to a science officer with lesser knowledge.

The scientists may have helped win the war, but it can get pretty silly at times.

 

[sojourner]

In all of the cases you mentioned the chain of command takes precedence to experience.

 

[Damask]

Doesn't Dax negate all this? Science officer on DS9 (the only one?) and she normally does other duties while on the Defiant.

 

[Nightdiamond]

In all of the cases you mentioned the chain of command takes precedence to experience.

True, but isn't it strange to have a psychologist or doctor take command instead of an engineering or operations officer.

Troi was completely confused, while Obrien was giving all the answers.

Starfleet also had a strange habit of sending all the operations officers away on away missions and leaving only science officers to man the ship or bridge.

I think it's part of Starfleet's (somewhat) pacifist philosophy that everyone is a scientist first and soldier last.

 

[JB2005]

In all of the cases you mentioned the chain of command takes precedence to experience.

True, but isn't it strange to have a psychologist or doctor take command instead of an engineering or operations officer.

Troi was completely confused, while Obrien was giving all the answers.

Starfleet also had a strange habit of sending all the operations officers away on away missions and leaving only science officers to man the ship or bridge.

I think it's part of Starfleet's (somewhat) pacifist philosophy that everyone is a scientist first and soldier last.

Crusher was a fully trained command officer and was perfectly within her rights to take command...

 

[7thsealord]

In all of the cases you mentioned the chain of command takes precedence to experience.

True, but isn't it strange to have a psychologist or doctor take command instead of an engineering or operations officer.

Troi was completely confused, while Obrien was giving all the answers.

Starfleet also had a strange habit of sending all the operations officers away on away missions and leaving only science officers to man the ship or bridge.

I think it's part of Starfleet's (somewhat) pacifist philosophy that everyone is a scientist first and soldier last.

Crusher was a fully trained command officer and was perfectly within her rights to take command...

Exactly. In a previous episode, it was revealed that she had become Bridge-qualified whilst on the Enterprise, and sometimes stood watches when things were quiet.

 

[T'Girl]

Starfleet also had a strange habit of sending all the operations officers away on away missions and leaving only science officers to man the ship or bridge.

I have less of a problem with this than some. Look at it this way, is the Captain the ship's commander, or is he the mission's commander?

If the objective of a given mission is to accomplish diplomacy, survey, or a military goal, what sense is there in the Captain taking the ship 99% of the way to the objective, and then handing the mission to a junior officer? Any junior officer can (in the event of the Captain's death), direct the ship back to a location where a new commanding officer can be assigned. While a prime asset to Starfleet, the Captain is replaceable.

So where is the priority? To the ship, or to the mission? Sometimes the ship comes first, or there are multiple missions occurring in the same time frame.

The majority of the times Kirk beamed down, it made sense for him to do so (not always). The same when Sisko lead from the front. Janeway was a bit different, with the exception of Tuvok, I don't think she completely trusted any of her crew.

I think it's part of Starfleet's (somewhat) pacifist philosophy that everyone is a scientist first and soldier last.

Perhaps a explorer first is more accurate. I still think a science officer is a officer first, and a scientist second. And if need be a science officer would be a soldier when called apon to be one. Just as a helmsman would become a science officer if required.

Lt. Sulu filled both roles quite handily.