The idea was mentioned in The Making of Star Trek (1968), which was presumably quoting the series’ Writer’s Guide.
I have no problem with civilians serving on board starships, so long as they’re performing useful functions (like Darwin on the Beagle) and are cognizant of the dangers involved in space exploration. What I find ludicrous is having entire families on board, along with the children’s nannies, teachers, and other far from essential personnel. Putting children at risk like that is both unnecessary and downright criminal.
If you can’t stand being away from your family for long periods of time, you don’t belong in the service. Having them on board is a complete waste of space, energy, and other vital resources.
Yanno, I did like their version of Engineering for the Abrams version, showing how life support aboard a starship works, less science-magic babble more reality
Not all space travel, and not all space battles, happen in deep space. In the fiction of the show, it’s generally held to be inadvisable to use warp drive in a solar system. And of course, if you’re going to encounter hostile aliens, it’s more likely to be near some celestial body of interest than in the middle of nowhere.
“Deep space” doesn’t mean there aren’t celestial bodies around. I think Kronos, Romulus, and Remus are in pretty “deep space,” so far as the Federation is concerned. So are all of today’s known exoplanets, and I wouldn’t want to have to abandon ship near most of them either.
Not to sound snotty, but where do you get that? They’ve gone to warp from orbit many times.
As for using the saucer section as a lifeboat, it’s easy to assume someone will come and get them. Probably with a starship with its own saucer section left behind. The saucer section will just keep everyone healthy, happy and fed in the meantime. (If you’re postulating hostile action and the baddies blast the saucer section, well, duh they won’t survive. They wouldn’t have survived if the saucer didn’t separate either.)
As big as space is, you have to assume starfleet has the equivalent of tow trucks. If you lost warp drive with no hope of repair in interplanetary space, say even only 50 light years away (for a round number), unless someone comes and gets you, you’re not getting home in the lifetime of anyone you know. And if the impulse engines can’t get you up to relativistic speeds pretty quick, you won’t get home in your lifetime.
It’s not “the service,” not as we know it. That’s one of, perhaps the most basic, premise of TNG. Starfleet of TNG is not a place solely or primarily for those interested in military service.
I’ll just put in here I don’t mind at all there are families on the D.
Society in the 24th century believes there shouldn’t be a separation between work and family. It’s the way they roll. If you say that’s bad, you’re just applying modern 21st century attitudes. When settlers in the 1500’s came to the New World, they brought families. You couldn’t even guarantee the ship would make it intact, let alone that survival would be possible. And yet, people came. They thought the risks were worth it. Same as TNG’s 24th century folk.
I mean, staying home is no guarantee of safety. How many times have forces come to completely obliterate the Earth? Having your children on Earth won’t save them from the Borg, or V’ger, or the whale probe, or the Dominion, or…you get the idea. And maybe having families on the ship makes it possible to create a better outcome. [cough Wesley cough]
It’s been mentioned several times in various movies and series. As I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show I cannot myself point to individual scenes. However, some cursory web searches point to some discussions on the Sci-Fi Stack Exchange where people cite some specific examples of when the characters have balked at using warp in a solar system, and when they haven’t:
[ul]
[li]What’s the problem of using warp drive within a solar system?[/li][li]Why did the Enterprise drop out of warp before reaching Bersallis III?[/li][/ul]
From what I can tell, the fact that warping near a star is dangerous must have been part of the shows’ writer’s bibles. When certain characters did use the warp drive in a solar system, it’s because they didn’t know any better (like Zefram Cochrane using the first warp drive in Star Trek: First Contact) or because they had an emergency where they were facing even greater danger. In rare cases it could just be bad writing, where the writers or showrunners of an individual episode simply forgot about the rule, or disregarded it for dramatic effect.
It doesn’t—at least, not on its own. The idea in separating the saucer section is to allow the hull to become more maneuverable (i.e., better able to attack the enemy and to defend itself, and also the saucer section, should the enemy pursue it). In the best case the hull neutralizes the threat and then joins back up with the saucer section. A worse (but still not absolutely catastrophic) case is that the hull is destroyed, but the enemy does not destroy the saucer section because it poses no threat. The saucer section is either taken prisoner (with most alien captors, probably still better than being blown up) or abandoned, whence it can send a subspace distress signal. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather wait for rescue on the roomy saucer section than a cramped escape pod.
No matter how you try to justify it, it’s still a bunch of crap. No organization, military or civilian, is going to let you bring along your family just to keep you happy, especially when (a) the dangers, known and unknown, are so formidable, and (b) there are untold numbers of people who would be more than happy to take your place without bringing along their families and all the unnecessary baggage that would entail. The whole “work and personal happiness are inseparable” thing smacks of dilettantism, not professionalism.
People who came from Europe to other parts of the world in the 16th–19th centuries brought *their *families with them because they intended to settle there, not because they wanted them to enjoy the scenery. The alternative was living in filthy, overcrowded, rat-infested cities and/or laboring under landowners and monarchs.
“Staying at home doesn’t guarantee safety” is also kind of a facile argument. OF COURSE it doesn’t. You could easily die of a fall or an automobile accident in the course of everyday living. However, actually going out and *courting *disaster is another thing entirely. I’d much rather wait here for the Borg to come to me (or my loved ones) instead of asking for trouble by intruding into their space. (We all know how well that worked out for Seven of Nine and her parents, right?) At least here I would have the possibility of a decent defense.
Knowing how easily Starfleet vessels are damaged in combat, I wouldn’t bet the farm on this.
As Zod, Lord and Absolute Dictator of the Zemfir Alliance, I assure you my primary task would be to blast that sucker out of space so fast they wouldn’t have a chance to react. If in the process I can harvest some Terran women and children to supply slave markets throughout the Galaxy, that would be a sweet bonus. (Men would be put to work immediately in the Co60 mines.)
This “distress signal” you’re going to send: Are you sure it’s going to be picked up by friendlies anytime in the next few decades or so?
Before or after you’re reduced to cannibalism and drinking urine? :dubious:
Like so many other things (e.g., being able to use the transporter while the shields are up), Star Trek ** has been about as consistent on this score as MASH* (the TV series) was about its timeline.
In “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they actually spiral in toward the Sun at—what, Warp 10? Warp 15?—and manage to pull away at precisely the right moment. In ST: TMP, Kirk calls engaging the warp drive while inside the Solar System a “highly dangerous maneuver.”
Who you gonna believe, eh? (AFAIK, this problem was mentioned nowhere in the Writer’s Guide, though there was a list of factors that determined what a “standard orbit” around a planet was.)
