This is why I’ve always thought it would make a lot more sense to do it at a personal level instead. Every officer that is on feels like it is day time.
That said, maybe they can more easily detect “night owls” in the future and assign those to the late shift. Thus there’s no reason they have to be less experienced or less skilled.
Living somewhere that never gets dark for months is a health hazard. They have that problem in some Arctic countries. It really screws up people’s biological clocks. They end up awake for 30 hours at a time. Can’t sleep or they just sleep a few hours and then they are awake again for extended periods.
Remember the old tv show Northern Exposure? They did an episode on how living without darkness screwed up Doctor Joel Fleischman .
Even nuclear submarines (and newer long endurance conventional ones like the French/Pakistani Agosta 90b and the German U214) have shipboard time which is different from local time. Usually shipboard time is that of the boats home port while fr US subs it is IIRC GMT.
That still doesn’t explain why the ships need a night cycle. Picard can go to his quarters and turn off his lights when he’s ready to sleep. Meanwhile the bridge can operate just the same with people who slept during Picard’s shift.
I never understood why they dimmed the lights on the bridge for the night shift. Were they all going to take naps at their stations?
Bells are fully compatible with a 24-hour clock. They are sounded every half hour, and re-start every four hours.
They are not regarded as a substitute for the clock. “What time is CO due back aboard?” receives the answer “At fourteen thirty”, not “At five bells in the afternoon watch”.
Definitely not the case when I was on one (which admittedly was some time ago).
A ship’s company needs the concept of a normal day, including such things as breakfast in the morning, lunch around noon (when the sun is near its zenith), and supper toward evening.
Nitpick: 300.
In my experience, Trekfans do not operate on the same intellectual level as the Great American Public.
The bridge on Voyager was always dimly lit. The ones on TOS and TNG, never! I think it was only in the ships’ corridors that the lights were turned down; depending on their function, individual rooms could be brightly lit or not lit at all.
Higher or lower? 
You decide, bonnie lad! 
Well, they’re not showing us the times of the day when there’s nothing interesting going on and everything is proceeding according to plan.
Would you care to rephrase that, Laddie?
Six hours on submarines. Most of the crew are in three-section rotation (six hours on watch, six off), though some are in four-section (six on, eighteen off) and the really ‘lucky’ ones are port-and-starboard (six on, six off, or twelve on, twelve off).
We normally stayed on homeport time if we were going to be returning to homeport. When we travelled from Hawaii to Japan (or back) on my first boat, clocks were shifted one hour each day until we were on the same time as our next port.
In the episode “Data’s Day,” the first scene shows Riker relieving Data of command of the bridge at the shift change. After Data hands over command, Riker announces, “Begin day watch!” and the lighting on the bridge brightens. In the last scene at the end of the episode, Data relieves Worf of command of the bridge. After Worf leaves, Data says, “Begin night watch,” and the bridge lights dim significantly. I always thought it made sense to dim the lights gradually toward the end of a shift and brighten them when the new shift starts, but it made no sense at all to have the lights dim for the whole night shift. What possible purpose could it serve but to make the entire crew on that shift groggy and slow?
I missed that one. You’re right; like having children (the ultimate in nonessential personnel) aboard, it makes absolutely no sense.
Say to yourself: “It’s a TV show, I should really just relax.”
A long time ago, at a convention probably, someone made the point that Starfleet encompasses features of all the earthly militaries. They are star SHIPS, so Navy. They fly, so Air Force. They can invade, so Marines. They can transport an occupation force, so Army. They can bombard or bomb a territory, Army, Air Force, or Navy. They protect and patrol the “shores” of their home planet, so Coast Guard.
Sounded reasonable to me.
To continue the Hornblower analogy, I always thought of Star Fleet as being rather like the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
At the USCG LORAN station I was at, I stood Duty and Watches. Every 3rd day I was the Duty Electronics Technician and was on-call for 24 hours starting at 0600 for any electronics issues. And since the radio was in the LORAN building, I also stood two 6 hour communications watches.
Yes, they’re arf as long.
Even worse than just having children aboard, apparently these children were allowed to roam around the stardrive section. Every time they did a saucer separation, we would see children rushing to get to the saucer section. Seems to me that if you’re going to have children on board, the stardrive section should be off limits so the separation could occur immediately when needed.