Of course the captain must needs be a know-it-all, right down to being able to operate the film strip projector.
James T. Kirk: He was a hero in every sense of the word and he was also a hell of an IT guy.
USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
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Gonzo
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Don't see the problem with crew numbers really, it isn't decided by the size of the ship and is more to do with what the role/class of the ship and how much automation is built into the ships systems.
All of that is decided while the ship is still on the drawing board so there is no real danger of a ship not being large enough to accommodate the numbers of crew needed for its day to day running and operation.
Many Starfleet vessels are multi purpose to varying degrees and the crew sizes reflect that.
Ultimately a larger ship means more space and more space means potentially more power with a larger core, more powerful engines able to sustain higher warp speeds, stronger shields/more shield emitters, higher yield weapons, more comfortable living arrangements, increased cargo space and increased crew specialists resulting in greater tactical flexibility and skill overlap/redundancy.
It really is a win/win situation with no down side whatsoever, if they want to reduce crew sizes all they have to do is increase automation and reduce skill overlap.
Using crew numbers as a way of whining about the larger ship sizes is utterly pointless and rather foolish.
All of that is decided while the ship is still on the drawing board so there is no real danger of a ship not being large enough to accommodate the numbers of crew needed for its day to day running and operation.
Many Starfleet vessels are multi purpose to varying degrees and the crew sizes reflect that.
Ultimately a larger ship means more space and more space means potentially more power with a larger core, more powerful engines able to sustain higher warp speeds, stronger shields/more shield emitters, higher yield weapons, more comfortable living arrangements, increased cargo space and increased crew specialists resulting in greater tactical flexibility and skill overlap/redundancy.
It really is a win/win situation with no down side whatsoever, if they want to reduce crew sizes all they have to do is increase automation and reduce skill overlap.
Using crew numbers as a way of whining about the larger ship sizes is utterly pointless and rather foolish.
Technically speaking, given the way Cogley worded his question, we could just assume that all the other talented programmers aboard were women... ;-)
Overall, I love Church's design for the Kelvin-Enterprise (I might be alone with that).
You're not.
Yeah. Who wants pipes and access ports and machinery in their engineering room?
No.
On a "space shuttle" or any astronaut crew, every astronaut has to be a specialist in one or two skills and a generalist in everything else. You have one crew member who is better at a particular task than others, but all of them are trained to do the job should the need arise.
Moreover, this is primarily a feature of astronaut crews being as small as they are and the fact that a spacecraft cannot bring its entire support staff along for the ride (they have to sit back in mission control and run the mission remotely). Larger crews are HIGHLY specialized for specific tasks, which becomes more and more evident on the ISS and in the ground support role. In effect, the Enterprise is what happens when you take the entire mission control center for the Apollo program and shoot the center and all of its staff into space with the astronauts. Once you realize the astronauts are only there to push the buttons that Control tells them to push when they tell them to push them, you realize that Neal Armstrong is really just a redshirt and Gene Kranz is the real captain of the mission.
On the old space shuttle missions, even with a large crew, the Flight Commander's main specialty was orbital maneuvering and navigation while the pilot's main specialty (weirdly) was instrumentation and engineering. The other crew positions are mission specialists and payload specialists, which is exactly what it says on the label. They're "specialists" because they can do things the commander is not specifically trained to do.
And Archer didn't know what the hell he was doing. If anything, this sort of proves my point if anything.
Of course, that analysis makes no sense in terms of how computers work. One of the hilarious things about TOS.
I assume you are referring to this line:
"Someone, either accidentally or deliberately, adjusted the programming and therefore the memory banks of that computer."
Our computers don't work like that, but computers in trek have similarities to the human brain. And if you try to adjust someones personality through electroshock or a lobotomy, memories get lost in the process. Of course in the episode the reverse is done, the memory banks are altered and that screws with the programming. But we can assume it works both ways.
Which works from a dramatic standpoint if your Captain is an action hero who loves to get into fights with alien adversaries and romance native women, but if you're not James T. Kirk then the commanding officer who micromanages every landing party or away team and has to have their nose in every single decision made by a junior officer just becomes annoying and a pest and begins to drag down the narrative with their endless interference and preaching.
It seemed overdone. Like the amount of it was to emphasize that it was a big, busy place with a lot of vital stuff going on etc, etc. I think that could have been very effectively conveyed without quite the amount that we saw.
Granted, TOS was minimalist by comparison but I think somewhere in the middle would have been better.
CAPTAIN, GIVE DEES CREWMEN AY-AH.
In all seriousness I got to meet Ronny Cox about nine years ago. He is a genuinely nice man and warm to his fans. For a man who played such a cold, joyless bastard in TNG and a megalomaniacal asshole in Total Recall he's remarkably lovable and willing to engage with others.
Which, is great for drama, but not great from a realistic standpoint.
Pike's Enterprise had a crew of about 200. Kirk had ~430. The volume of the ship did not change. Assuming smaller machines have made more room for extra crew,does that mean anything about a change of missions?
I hold to the theory that the Enterprise under Pike had larger internal equipment and more rooms and decks devoted to engineering and ship's systems than it would after Kirk took command. Some systems became smaller with advances made in the late 2250s and early-to-mid 2260s and were replaced with new computers and equipment or were removed altogether to make space for more crew.
Those two pictures right there should put any criticism about later changes to the Enterprise to rest.
Don't forget Dick Jones in Robocop.
As for Jellico, I'd genuinely have loved a spinoff with this guy.
Oh, does that EVER sound like a certain Trek series.
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