Spoilers Why wasn't the Franklin and NX class ship?

That's assuming that the equivleant of today's emergency number was called. Isn't it possible Starfleet Medical was directly called? What are they going to do if that was the case. "Please disconnect this call and contact your local emergency services?"

 

It's not shifting the goal posts. Web Lurker spoke of civilians who live on Starships without jobs, I was curious who he was referring to, because the children of officers are the only such people I can think of. So rather than point out any possible grown civilians who lived on the ship who had no jobs, you go ahead and review the jobs of the civilian personnel we see. Well done, but it doesn't answer my question and just makes you look argumentative. The very text book definition of a strawman.

She was in the Mirror Universe, but we never learn her profession in the Prime Universe.

The only thing Emissary makes clear is that Jake was born in a medical facility with Starfleet equipment with it, there's no indication this is the Saratoga, and indeed the novels say it was a Starfleet hospital on Earth.

 

... FOR STARFLEET. Everyone already knows civilian contractors work on military bases and ships in support of the base/ship's facilities. It's quite beyond precedent for civilians to live on military bases and ships just because they like being there.

You could make the case that Keiko O'Brien was a civilian botanist employed by -- but not a member of -- Starfleet in order to tend to the Enterprise's plants. The same cannot really be said for Guinan or Mott. They're civilians who are on board the ship mainly because they want to be and they are allowed to be on the ship because the officers in command gave them personal permission to be there.

I thought that was the obvious implication: that the people in the two universes are mostly similar in all respects except for their circumstances. So O'Brien is a good engineer, if a little subversive; Worf is an authoritarian hardass; Kira is a Bajoran ultra-nationalist; Sisk is a brilliant leader and strategist, and Jennifer is a brilliant scientist.

Well it LITERALLY IS the set of the Enterprise-D sickbay, but it's fair to say it COULD be just about anywhere.

 

Web Lurker did not specify Starfleet. Read his post again:

As you can see, he's talking about civilians living on a ship without a specific job, period. I then asked for him to provide examples, as I am unaware of such people aside from the children, you then walked in and began making accusations of "moving the goal posts" and providing the definition of a civilian contractor.

Which the novel authors obviously did.

 

The question I was trying to ask was how the civilians on the Enterprise would factor into a military vessel, if that is indeed what the Enterprise is. So, in retrospect, the "no job" bit might've been a bit limiting?

So, on a military ship, would it be considered acceptable to have non-com families or other civilians onboard, esp. in active duty?

 

Well, if you're talking about civilians in general, then yes, US Navy ships do have civilians employed on board them, particularly larger ships like aircraft carriers which can have multiple recreation areas on them, including movie theatres and bowling alleys.

Even in other branches civilians can be hired for various jobs and tasks on the bases and depending on what exactly it is they do can even be deployed to front lines with the actual military personnel. I know a contractor for the Canadian military who has been deployed along with the troops to the Middle East a few times.

You don't find families living on Navy ships, but that always has been one of TNG's odd quirks. Military bases do house families, and it is common for military bases to have accommodations for families, typically homeland bases, but there are some cases of overseas bases housing families, like US military bases in Germany for example. In fact, many Trek actors were even born at military bases on Germany, like LeVar Burton and Jeri Ryan.

 

"Civilian contractors" work for the military (hence the "contractor" part. They're there under contract). If they get paid by Starfleet to render their services (e.g. Neelix helping them find their kidnapped crewmen), then they are civilian contractors. If they get paid on an individual basis from whoever happens to be taking advantage of their services at the moment (e.g. Quark), then they're just civilians running a business.

What makes this hard to pin down is the fact that Federation citizens (well, humans at least) don't get paid either way, so there's actually no real reason for those civilians to be there even if they WERE contractors; all work is volunteer work, so the civilians on starships are "civilian volunteers" in a sense. This may or may not be true for Guinan; she keeps a stock of booze that she apparently purchased herself and gets speciality items every now and then, so she probably IS getting paid in Federation credits and has an open tab for half the crew. She, like Quark, is a business proprietor and not a volunteer or a contractor.

And again there's the question of whether or not Keiko O'Brien actually worked for Starfleet when she met Miles or was simply pursuing her own career using the Enterprise as a venue. The latter seems the most likely, considering Starfleet -- unlike modern day militaries -- has a whole science department and its own staff botanists on EVERY starship and no reason whatsoever to hire civilians to do that job.

It bears repeating that none of this is actually relevant vis a vis Starfleet's legal status. It isn't a military organization, it's an armed paramilitary exploration service. Starfleet has a whole BRANCH of the service to deal with the stuff modern militaries outsource to civilian contractors.

 

Sweet shit, you don't give up do you? Web Lurker already admitted he misworded his post he has reworded his inquiry and the discussion has moved on along those lines. There is literally no reason for you to continue on the matter.

 

Yes, you're right. It's been confirmed that Starfleet is not a military organization, so the status of civilians on the ship is basically irrelevant.