The 'Night Shift'...

[The_Baroness]

Just watched Warhead on the tellybox yesterday, and something struck me as odd.

It's suggested in conversations between Kim and the bridge crew on the night shift that the night shift is quiet, and nothing happens.

but...why would this be?

It's surely only night-time for Voyager, not the rest of the Delta Quadrant? I mean, it's lunchtime here as I type this, but for people in other parts of the world it's morning, night time, even tomorrow in some cases, so why are we meant to believe that when it's night time on voyager, the rest of the galaxy is too?

And what...are those aliens who's time zone says it's 9:30 am, time to do some human killing meant to then think "Oh, actually, they're all sleeping, it's not fair to wake them all up to kill 'em..."

 

[Lord Manitou]

That's life in the military. Time to sleep. Early to bed-Early to rise- makes a man--? And-na don't.
All the eps. are based on regiment.

 

[Finn]

^No. He got a point. A borg cube is as likely to show up during the night shift as during the day when Janeway and Chakotay is exchanging looks in their chairs.

He isn't questioning the shift structure. He's questioning the suggestion that nothing happens during Voyager's night shift implying that all activities in the region they are passing though are always quieter when the senior staff are in their beds dreaming about getting home.

 

[exodus]

Maybe "night shift" is when Voyager is traveling thru sparsely populated and lesser traveled regions of space, so it's less likely to run into any confrontations. If space is as vast as they say, there also must be lots of empty regions inbetween as well.
I don't think they mean to imply the rest of the galaxy is sleeping too.

 

[Kai Winn]

they have probably a clock aboard voyager that's adjusted to the 24 hours day of the homeworld of most of the crewmembers, and following age-old traditions, they call the ever same periods of the day morning, afternoon, evening, and night. to assist the biological clock of humans, they might even order life support to lower lights and temperature during night shifts, that would make sense. no reason to lose sleep about it.

 

[The_Baroness]

they have probably a clock aboard voyager that's adjusted to the 24 hours day of the homeworld of most of the crewmembers, and following age-old traditions, they call the ever same periods of the day morning, afternoon, evening, and night. to assist the biological clock of humans, they might even order life support to lower lights and temperature during night shifts, that would make sense. no reason to lose sleep about it.

But again, how does that make the rest of the galaxy 'quieter' at night?

I'm not questioning the concept of night and day on a starship, of course it has a normal 24 (or 26 - of you're on DS9) hour clock, I'm questioning the notion that just because it's 0300 on Voyager, it must mean that nothing happens outside...

 

[exodus]

they have probably a clock aboard voyager that's adjusted to the 24 hours day of the homeworld of most of the crewmembers, and following age-old traditions, they call the ever same periods of the day morning, afternoon, evening, and night. to assist the biological clock of humans, they might even order life support to lower lights and temperature during night shifts, that would make sense. no reason to lose sleep about it.

I thought in space they didn't run on a 24hour clock but rather much longer due to no sun rotation.

 

[black_dranzer]

I would assume that a lot of the 'day shifts' also go by equally without incident...after all, we don't follow Voyager around every second of every day lol...

 

[Mr Silver]

I'd imagine the Night Shift is boring and uneventful because the majority of Senior Officers are off duty and the ship simply travelling at Warp, most of the time eventful things only happen when the Captain orders the Ship to investigate, out of the majority of Night Shifts we've seen on Trek, I think most of them result in the Duty Officer calling the Captain and the familiar Bridge Crew doing "Overtime" to investigate

 

[Shatnertage]

JOKE: Things are quieter on the night shift because the commodores are working: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrkEDe6Ljqs&feature=related
Listen to that and you'll realize why things were laid back. I can't imagine hitting a red alert while that was playing.

SERIOUS: I always wondered about this, too. They touched on it in ENT "A Night in Sickbay" [ducks], when Archer got steamed at having to synch up with the Cretassian capital city.

I guess you could say that they would pace themselves so they reached populated systems or rendezvous points when day shift was working, but what about all of the random anomalies they encountered?

 

[exodus]

^If they were unique or important, Harry would just wake the rest of the senior staff.

Didn't we see him do that once?

 

[hux]

Just watched Warhead on the tellybox yesterday, and something struck me as odd.

It's suggested in conversations between Kim and the bridge crew on the night shift that the night shift is quiet, and nothing happens.

but...why would this be?

It's surely only night-time for Voyager, not the rest of the Delta Quadrant? I mean, it's lunchtime here as I type this, but for people in other parts of the world it's morning, night time, even tomorrow in some cases, so why are we meant to believe that when it's night time on voyager, the rest of the galaxy is too?

And what...are those aliens who's time zone says it's 9:30 am, time to do some human killing meant to then think "Oh, actually, they're all sleeping, it's not fair to wake them all up to kill 'em..."

There is no reason that there would be less things happening in space during the nightshift - this is just lazy writing - at best, you could suggest that during the day shift, they explore anomolies and planets whereas during the nightshift they are encouraged to simply stay on course

saying that, in the warhead episode when Kim was commanding the night shift, as soon as something interesting did happen, the senior crew were alerted and took over so this may also be a reason why they say the nightshift is quiet - because if anything does happen, their shift comes to an end which makes it a shift without any real responsibility

 

[Finn]

^If they were unique or important, Harry would just wake the rest of the senior staff.

Didn't we see him do that once?

Yes, but the woman at the helm talked as if the night shift on Voyager was always quiet, with no aliens attacking or space anomalies zapping them.

 

[exodus]

^If they were unique or important, Harry would just wake the rest of the senior staff.

Didn't we see him do that once?

Yes, but the woman at the helm talked as if the night shift on Voyager was always quiet, with no aliens attacking or space anomalies zapping them.

Like I said, space is vast.
I'm sure there are times when days go by and they don't encounter much of anything from time to time.
We've seen eps where things are happening internally with the crew but nothings going on outside.

 

[Lord Manitou]

I'm confident most of it is regimen:
1.) A set of rules one must follow.
2.) A systematic plan
In the 6 or 8 hour time lapse when the officers were suppose to sleep almost nothing happened. It was worth noting by Harry and Jenkins almost nothing ever did, which could be an anecdote for the emptyness of the Delta Quadrant.

 

[kimc]

I've often wondered the same thing myself. After all, as someone has already mentioned a borg cube could show up during gamma shift just as easily as during alpha.

 

[AuntKate]

I'm guessing it is a lot like the "night shift" in a hospital, which is also a 24-hour operation. The bigger jobs and projects are handled in the "day" shifts, when the primary officers are up and about. During the night shift, those areas of the ship are in standby mode, or perhaps the computer is crunching numbers, etc. If/when something serious happens, the senior staff is summoned. In the meantime, the crew is maintaining the normal day/night cycle.

If I recall, the first time this concept was seen was in TNG when Data was on the "night" shift. So it would seem to be a routine to do this in Starfleet, not just on Voyager.