In The Princess Bride, it was Westley
In Star Trek, it was Wesley.
In Blazing Saddles it was Hedley.
In The Princess Bride, it was Westley
In Star Trek, it was Wesley.
In Blazing Saddles it was Hedley.
Corbomite Maneuver was the first regular (non-pilot) episode filmed - they messed around with the order because the network liked “planet stories”
Despite your name, you’re no ST fanatic! ![]()
It was the first episode filmed. You can tell, things aren’t quite right, yet.
Speak for yourself, I served aboard a trident missile submarine that had ample racks for everyone, including extra mats that could be put down in out-of-the-way nooks and storage areas. I recall only one time when anyone had to hot-rack when I was aboard and it was a couple of the absolute most junior enlisted guys for a couple days when the boat was up to its neck in inspectors and other visitors.
From what I’ve heard, hotracking is more common on fast attack submarines, but even then they try to limit it and as soon as you’re not among the most junior folks aboard you get your own bunk to yourself.
Yeah, on my brief sojourn on an Ohio class they actually had bunks designated for tech reps. This was a test cruise of only a few days and probably didn’t have the full crew complement but there was a lot of extra bunk space, and the food was fresh and plentiful if a little bland. While the boat wasn’t absurdly SeaQuest large, it wasn’t Das Boot, especially in the missile compartment (e.g. “Sherwood Forest”).
Stranger
Whatevs, dude.
So, has this been adequately addressed in Star Trek or elsewhere? Or am I missing something obvious about the premise?
Yeah, Earth navies have done this very thing for centuries.
The day is broken up into “watches”, and different officers have “the deck” for each watch, meaning that they’re in charge of the ship during that watch. The Captain is sort of over it all- typically they don’t stand a watch from what I understand.
From what I’ve heard, hotracking is more common on fast attack submarines
I toured the USS Blueback in Portland, and unless their crew was like 25 guys, they HAD to hot-rack, and likely for multiple watches, as there were very few bunks, even counting the ones in the forward torpedo room.
USS Blueback
That was a diesel submarine built over sixty years ago! The Navy hasn’t run diesels since 1988.
There was the TNG episode(s) with captain antagonist where he wanted to switch from a 3 shift rotation to a (IIRC) 4 shift.
Brian
There are FOUR SHIFTS!
More info if duty shifts in Star trek:

A duty shift, duty watch, or watch rotation, was the portion of the day that various scheduled personnel aboard a starship or space station were on duty. Officers were expected to report on time for their duty shifts and those that failed to do so,...
Brian
Thanks, Brian: a quote from this:
The day shift or day watch was the first duty period which theoretically occurred during whatever would be considered day in space. The day shift was presumably preceded by the night watch, which was a time of limited activity. (TNG: “Data’s Day”, “Lessons”)
This gets back to one of my original qualms, which is that in space there is no objective night and day; rather, there are subjectively ascribed periods of time to which humans cycle between ‘asleep’, ‘awake but time off’ and ‘awake and on duty’ - and these, by necessity, must be staggered in a shift-pattern so that the ship itself is always in ‘day mode’. How, therefore, could night watch be a period of ‘limited activity’, when asteroids, Klingons and metaphysical demigods could appear and commit mischief at literally any time?
I suppose that the ship’s captain could plan its trajectory and activities such that when it comes time for night shift you ‘set anchor’ in a quiet bit of space with not-much-happening, with the hope and expectation that the A-listers can all sleep while a skeleton crew of B-list, junior officers oversee things. But, surely, this isn’t really the Star-ship Enterprise’s MO.
I realise that most people are in this thread for the submarine-chat, so to steer things in that direction… Do submarines which regularly chug across time zones (and are, therefore, unbeholden to the geographical time zones which they temporarily inhabit) do anything similar? Does the main captain say, when hanging up his/her hat for the day, “Let’s just chill here for now so the night shift doesn’t have to do much and we’ll pick things up tomorrow after my shower?”.
Do submarines which regularly chug across time zones (and are, therefore, unbeholden to the geographical time zones which they temporarily inhabit) do anything similar? Does the main captain say, when hanging up his/her hat for the day, “Let’s just chill here for now so the night shift doesn’t have to do much and we’ll pick things up tomorrow after my shower?”.
Not exactly. As has been mentioned previously, most US submarines operate on a three-watch rotation, with six hour watches (no, eighteen hour days are not a good way to live your life).
At least on my boat, the midwatch (from 0000 to 0600) was low activity, but the boat was still going somewhere and doing something (clearing baffles, shooting trash, picking up the broadcast, doing maintenance, …). About the only thing we usually didn’t do on midwatch was run drills. If something happened (fire, flooding, incoming torpedo, launch orders…), off-duty personnel could be racked out and on station in minutes.
Because my XO was insane, our midwatch was neither home-port time, local time, nor Zulu time. No, our midnight was when it was light outside.
Without wanting to seem in any sense cavalier or disrespectful towards those such as yourself who have served in submarines, I hope it’s not too bold of me to surmise that being in a militarily-equipped submarine during peacetime isn’t quite as interesting or eventful as being on the Star-ship Enterprise. You could, therefore, make luxuriously indulgent decisions like scheduling drills for certain times of ‘day’, therefore maintaining some semblance of low-activity (night) and high-activity (day) shifts.
But what about a full-on apocalypse scenario, where your nuclear sub has to regularly whizz around the planet, destroying cities, firing missiles at super-sized radioactive lizards and nuking invading alien warships (which are, surely, the principle purposes of any modern navy)? This would strike me as more of an Enterprise context, whereby the ship on the whole has to be on high alert all the time, and any concept of ‘day’ and ‘night’ shift is dangerously inappropriate.
Or, to get a bit more real for a moment, when the US and Japan were going at it in WWII, were any time zones/day-night patterns really adhered to?
We could hit any radioactive lizards we needed to from home port. We went to sea so that the radioactive lizards couldn’t find us.
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We spent the bulk of our patrol on “alert” status, with very tight constraints on how quickly we needed to be able to let missiles fly. That said, you can’t maintain an on-edge status forever. Things need repair and people need rest, precisely so they can respond when you need them to.
Despite your name, you’re no ST fanatic!
It was the first episode filmed. You can tell, things aren’t quite right, yet.
The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before were filmed before *The Corbomite Maneuver.”
Do you think even during WWII a ship would be at General Quarters all of the time? Like everything else in the military it would be weeks of boredom punctuated by minutes of terror.
Well, yeah, but those minutes of terror wouldn’t happen according to a pre-determined (and agreed) time schedule so arranged that both sides can get their beauty sleep. Would they?