The “I didn’t know my device could do that” thread reminded me…in the begininng of the ep, Chekov turns OFF his tricorder to wander around in a dark building.
Really Feds? I have a flashlight on my mini-computer.
My completely uninformed guess is that you (as a Starfleet member) can stipulate in your “paperwork” what your funeral and inheritors/next-of-kin desires are.
Some cultures are going to want elaborate ceremonies, and I don’t see Starfleet being insensitive to those needs. Starfleet obviously can’t guarantee a body, as some scenarios won’t make recovery possible or practical.
My guess is that in “Galileo seven”, Spock buried that redshirt because a) the other emotional crew members requested it, and b) a timely rescue may not be in the cards, and keeping a decaying corpse aboard the shuttle is not healthy.
He was young … and inexperienced! :mad:
Spock wanted to leave the body behind because it would have added dead weight (heh!) to the shuttlecraft. He allowed Boma and McCoy to bury the body even though it would take time.
If you think about it Spock was right. The extra time allowed the natives to regroup and interfere with the shuttlecraft’s takeoff, forcing Spock to use extra fuel which otherwise would have enabled the Galileo to reach a stable orbit.
More importantly, a controlled landing. A stable orbit wouldn’t have been of much use, given that the *Enterprise *had abandoned its search.
Oddly enough, neither of the two grunts who were killed in that episode were Redshirts. Both Latimer and Gaetano were Command level (“Gold/Greenshirts”).
The time delay came from Scotty being able to drain the hand phasers “only so fast.”
In TNG, didn’t Picard bring Jack Crusher’s body back to Beverly for burial (or whatever)?
I think that was more out of friendship and loyalty than regulations or expectations.