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FISHMANPET posted:Considering how perfectly Word and Geordi fit into their eventual roles, it really makes you scratch your head about why the hell they were even there in Season 1. What the heck was Worf supposed to be doing for 7 seasons as some random bridge command lieutenant while Yar was chief of security. What the heck was Geordi supposed to be doing for 7 seasons as a random bridge command lieutenant while we cycle through our 70th chief engineer. Geordi at least gets a fun spotlight serving as whatever the gently caress role that is in “The Arsenal of Freedom.” Worf is just “yep that’s a Klingon” though.
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Feb 14, 2024 05:20
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Sash! posted:I always take the Ferengi and such as basically UFO sightings. Given that first contact happened in Roswell.... But also while it probably didn't happen in the TNG episode where Picard makes first contact, there are loads of times when Kirk or someone comes across a species for presumably the first time and they ask the crew what they know and they're able to give vague details. I assume these types of encounters are how those vague details come into being. Captain A: "We encountered a weird race: let's make a note of the details in case we, or someone else, meets them again." *200 years later* Captain B: "What do we know about these... 'Ferengi'?" Crewmember B: "Well, sir, we know that they value acquiring wealth above all other pursuits."
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Feb 14, 2024 05:20
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What does the transporter officer do in the 99% of the time when there's no transporting happening? They're always already there whenever an away team walks in to beam down, and they're always there whenever anyone needs an unexpected emergency beam up. Is O'Brian just standing in his windowless room all day?
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Feb 14, 2024 06:04
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It's not like such a think is unheard of in the military. I image though he's doing maintenance and training drills and such.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:08
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Foxfire_ posted:What does the transporter officer do in the 99% of the time when there's no transporting happening? They're always already there whenever an away team walks in to beam down, and they're always there whenever anyone needs an unexpected emergency beam up. Is O'Brian just standing in his windowless room all day? Have you never seen the O'Brien comics???
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Feb 14, 2024 06:15
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Foxfire_ posted:What does the transporter officer do in the 99% of the time when there's no transporting happening? They're always already there whenever an away team walks in to beam down, and they're always there whenever anyone needs an unexpected emergency beam up. Is O'Brian just standing in his windowless room all day? O'Brian was chief of transporter operations on a starship that had 20 transporter rooms (not counting cargo transporters). Even if they only crewed 5 of them at any given time that's three shifts (or four when Jellico is in command) a day, seven days a week. O'Brian is probably in charge of a team of 20-80 engineers who maintain one of the most complex systems on the ship. Pressing the three sliding lights is probably the closest you get to a break from being elbows deep in the pattern buffer.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:15
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Someone has to be there to get knocked out by an escaped prisoner halfway through the episode.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:55
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Also just ensuring all the poop is transported out of peoples butts in a timely manner. Like people notice pretty quick if your slipping up on that, so everything involved in that is triple checked constantly.
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Feb 14, 2024 06:59
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dr_rat posted:Also just ensuring all the poop is transported out of peoples butts in a timely manner. It’s the Enterprise, not Hogwarts
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Feb 14, 2024 07:02
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dr_rat posted:Also just ensuring all the poop is transported out of peoples butts in a timely manner. For technical reasons, all the poop patterns have to be passed through the tranporter room, so there's always a faint but noticeable sulphurous smell in there. Watch for it. Every time in an episode when someone walks through the door to the transporter room, there's a pause in their step and a slight crinkling of the nose.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:40
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There's a single line in Voyager that mentions toilets, but it also implies they use a not insignificant amount of power. My personal theory is that toilets, in order to accommodate a range of potential expulsion organs, are actually mini-holodecks with a single function, so you can't like summon a holographic character to talk to you while you poop. It just makes a variety of toilet shapes and then transporters your fecal matter away when you're done.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:47
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I enjoyed finding out Bolian shits are so atrocious they have to have their own separate bathrooms.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:18
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What happens if the bridge calls down for an emergency transport when O'Brien's got the thing in a dozen pieces on the floor? Does whoever's in the transporter room that actually responds to the call just fake an Irish accent or what?
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Feb 14, 2024 08:25
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CPColin posted:What happens if the bridge calls down for an emergency transport when O'Brien's got the thing in a dozen pieces on the floor? Does whoever's in the transporter room that actually responds to the call just fake an Irish accent or what? That's why they have like nine transporter rooms. You only lock out one at a time for preventative maintenance or training or whatever, the other eight still work fine. And you put it in the daily briefing so that you dont have to awkwardly correct the First Officer when he tells everyone to meet him in Transporter Room Four.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:33
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Lemniscate Blue posted:That's why they have like nine transporter rooms. You only lock out one at a time for preventative maintenance or training or whatever, the other eight still work fine. *O'Brien stealthily pastes a sticker with a 4 over the 2*
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Feb 14, 2024 10:32
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Let's just say O'Brien isn't the first O'Brien clone and he won't be the last. Federation starships need this redundancy to achieve a guaranteed uptime of 99.999%, or five DS9's.
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Feb 14, 2024 11:21
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Miles O'Brien is the Duncan Idaho of the Star Trek universe.
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Feb 14, 2024 11:33
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Atlas Hugged posted:Miles O'Brien is the Duncan Idaho of the Star Trek universe. Except a lot less... most things.
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Feb 14, 2024 11:45
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Atlas Hugged posted:Miles O'Brien is the Duncan Idaho of the Star Trek universe. Miles O'Brien is climbing the mountain;
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Feb 14, 2024 12:13
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Tighclops posted:Miles O'Brien is climbing the mountain; Gilmore is waiting for the rope to drop down
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Feb 14, 2024 16:43
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Arivia posted:Geordi at least gets a fun spotlight serving as whatever the gently caress role that is in “The Arsenal of Freedom.” Worf is just “yep that’s a Klingon” though. You can kind of explain this in-universe, based on what we learn about him later (aka what the writers made up after the fact). What we know of his history at the Academy and before was that he was a great engineer. I could totally see someone like him who wants to eventually be a chief engineer aboard a starship moving into the command track for a bit to get command experience, and he demonstrates in situations like in that episode that he's got both the technical and command chops. You'd probably see his performance in that battle as part of his promotion paperwork. Out of universe, looking at it as the creators of the show and the characters at that point in time, it just makes no sense. They just stuffed the bridge full of conn officer characters and hoped something would shake out. And it did, quite perfectly! But it really feels like an accident that they stumbled into rather than anything that was planned out and executed over time.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:08
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FISHMANPET posted:Considering how perfectly Word and Geordi fit into their eventual roles, it really makes you scratch your head about why the hell they were even there in Season 1. What the heck was Worf supposed to be doing for 7 seasons as some random bridge command lieutenant while Yar was chief of security. What the heck was Geordi supposed to be doing for 7 seasons as a random bridge command lieutenant while we cycle through our 70th chief engineer. Piloting the ship seems like an important job to have a named character on the bridge doing, even though it's usually done by more junior officers. His job gets taken up by random extras and Wesley. I think most Trek shows have pilot characters, like Chekov and Mayweather. Worf...I dunno, maybe he was supposed to be just an extra for if they wanted stuff to be done, maybe the showrunners felt like they needed somebody on a long-term contract for a recurring character if they were going to have crewmembers in alien makeup around. Maybe he was there for Yar to order around? As if the chief of security was actually an administrative position rather than just the fightingest guy aboard the ship to attack threats personally. Jadzia on DS9 is the Star Trek character who never really seemed to have a real job to me. She's supposed to be "science officer", but DS9's not as much of a science bullshit of the day show, so that isn't really relevant most of the time, and often Bashir and O'Brien (and Rom) could do all the relevant explanations. She doesn't get replaced when she dies. Most of the time when she was on duty, her main responsibility seemed to be Sisko's highest ranking starfleet subordinate, since his proper second in command wasn't Starfleet. I don't really remember what Sulu's official job was either, but I haven't watched that much of TOS I guess. Data's job title is some weird thing that I don't think shows up anywhere else in the series.
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Feb 14, 2024 18:18
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SlothfulCobra posted:Piloting the ship seems like an important job to have a named character on the bridge doing, even though it's usually done by more junior officers. His job gets taken up by random extras and Wesley. I think most Trek shows have pilot characters, like Chekov and Mayweather. Data was the Operations Officer. The story goes that he needed to be in a gold uniform for his makeup to work best, so instead of making him the science officer (blue), they created this catchall position that ran ship's systems -- including secondary control over helm and navigation (with primary in the right BarcaLounger) -- which would be an gold uniform on analogy with engineering and security -- and kludged it all that way to make it make sense.
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Feb 14, 2024 18:26
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Sulu is a helmsman. Except in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” where he’s a physicist/astro scientist and Mitchell is the helmsman. Other guys take up the job when he gets left in charge of the ship, or off filming The Green Berets. Chekhov is a navigator. Again, one of a number of more or less qualified officers who takes up the role. Kirk had some problems with these guys and it generally seems to have been the role they went to when the script needs a bridge officer to be a crazy freaking out fool of the week…Bailey, Riley and Stiles all pissed all over themselves in the post so let’s hand it to the Russian boomer with the mop top. Because TOS uses a naval metaphor, they usually don’t use the terminology of “pilot” which means (in a maritime context) something that the ship wouldn’t really need.
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Feb 14, 2024 18:37
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Helmsman was always a bit tricky, as the 90s trek shows found out, because they don't really have an established role to play in figuring out most plot.
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Feb 14, 2024 18:47
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MikeJF posted:Helmsman was always a bit tricky, as the 90s trek shows found out, because they don't really have an established role to play in figuring out most plot. And when helm skills are critical in TNG, the Captain will say, "gently caress you, I'mma going to pilot the shuttle through the dark matter field; eat my wake, suckas.*" * May not be a direct quote from Captain Picard in that episode.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:03
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MikeJF posted:Helmsman was always a bit tricky, as the 90s trek shows found out, because they don't really have an established role to play in figuring out most plot. Ortegas: "I fly the ship!" Admiralty Flag posted:* May not be a direct quote from Captain Picard in that episode. Excuse me, this is clearly a Mariner quote
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Feb 14, 2024 20:15
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MikeJF posted:Helmsman was always a bit tricky, as the 90s trek shows found out, because they don't really have an established role to play in figuring out most plot. Which Voyager to their credit solved by frequently having Tom Paris play the idiot who needed technobabble explained to him but could handle his own role just fine when it came time to dramatically move the ship.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:16
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A lot of the stations don't make a ton of sense at space scale with FTL computer cores. I'm sure a 4 way d pad gives you enough control over the reaction control system to deftly maneuver between asteroids on a 2d console or looking out of the 3d view screen with a limited FOV. It's funny how in TMP they made a separate tactical station so that Chekov would have something to do while still having a role for Ilia. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 20:21
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bull3964 posted:A lot of the stations don't make a ton of sense at space scale with FTL computer cores. That also made it like, way more realistic. On a modern naval vessel, the helmsman has absolutely nothing to do with fire control.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:25
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Heck, some ships have steering and thrusters manned by two different people.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:38
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Long, probably irrelevant infodump warning. Proceed at risk of boredom. Real-world US Navy command structures work differently than in Star Trek (obviously) but here's a general rundown. There are "Line" officers, directly in the chain of command - for TNG these would be your red shirts. They command, whether a ship or a department on a ship (that's not left for Staff Corps officers, see below), or if they're really new butterbars just a teeny division. At the start of TNG, Worf and LaForge are junior officers, but don't seem to have a command role of their own. That's fine, Starfleet seems to have a lot fewer enlisted who need bossing around. Instead, and this is true of the real-world Navy too, their job is to Learn Everything. Worf says this to LaForge in "Lonely Among Us" actually, just before he gets zapped with blue cartoon lightning. An officer on a ship is expected to have a high level of general knowledge about how the ship runs, both in terms of what everybody does but also how the systems operate. If they don't, then in an emergency they could make a decision or issue an order that won't work because the ship doesn't work that way. TMP actually has a great example of this when Kirk orders the phasers fired at the asteroid when it's in the way of going to warp and they get stuck in whatever the hell special effect that was - if he had "qualified" on the refit Enterprise he'd have drat well known about the phasers running through the warp core. Decker saved everyone's rear end there because he knew his ship. There are also Restricted Line Officers who are subject matter experts and run specialized departments like engineering, aviation maintenance, intel/crypto/infowar, etc, who can hold command positions but typically only within their particular specialty (whether that's an engineering design group or a maintenance unit on a shore base or whatever). Gold shirts. We can assume that "Operations" and "Security" are this kind of duty position in addition to Engineering. In the real-world Navy, the officers in the Engineering department on a ship are NOT restricted but full Line officers, by the way. So Geordi would be in a red command shirt. Engineering Duty Officers are much more specialized and their duties are more like Sisko designing and building the Defiant before taking command of DS9. Then you have Staff Corps Officers who are dedicated specialists for support services like medical, logistics/supply, JAG, chaplain, which have their own command structures. A Medical Corps officer could be the CO of a hospital unit or hospital ship but would almost certainly never take command of a warship like a cruiser or carrier. This is like Troi in "Disaster" - she has official rank but shouldn't be in the line of command. If Trek operated by the same rules as the real Navy, Ro would absolutely have been in charge. "Real-world" Starfleet would almost certainly have these folks all in blue, except we have seen JAG officers wearing red and I suspect they'd make logistics officers red or gold because blue is for science geeks. Now, any officer on a ship who is Line or Restricted Line would almost certainly be expected to qualify for and serve watches, which are temporary roles filled so the ship can operate day-to-day. You can't have the Captain sitting in that chair 24/7, after all. So you have a list of roles that need to be filled at all times, and a list of people who can fill those rolls in shifts. These range from Officer of the Day (Guy In Charge for as long as he's on watch, subject only to orders from the CO or XO) to various department officers of the watch (engineering, damage control, medical, c&c, etc) to senior and junior enlisted (quartermaster, helmsman, lookout, security, others). You don't necessarily have to be a Line officer to be OOD, by the way. Most of the officers and enlisted on a ship no matter what their actual job are expected to qualify to stand a lot of different watches, generally based on rank. A Senior or Master Chief for instance might stand OOD or JOOD even though that's theoretically an officer watch, especially on ships with smaller crews. When General Quarters is called ("Red Alert", "Battle Stations", whatever) everyone on the ship goes quickly to their designated positions and takes on those roles for the duration of the incident, relieving whoever was on watch. This ensures that in an emergency A) all necessary positions are filled B) by the best person to fill it. We see this when the main characters get to the bridge and swap seats with whatever nameless schmuck is currently at the helm. There's another point here: Starfleet is way more willing to let officers cross-train and jump tracks than the real Navy. The "track" structure indicated by uniform tunic color is NOT the same as whether you are Line, Restricted Line, or Staff Corps, it represents your position at your current command. Geordi wears gold because he works in Engineering. He used to wear red because he didn't have a specialty at the time and as an officer without special position he's assumed to be on command track, just low on it. I was enlisted so I don't know the intricate details of officer career stuff, but I'm pretty sure that isn't a thing you could do in the US Navy, at least not easily. Janeway was a science specialist IIRC before switching to command track. Sisko went from red to gold and back, so did Worf. Presumably Geordi would have too. Enlisted crewmembers, I have no idea. Gold and blue shirts yeah, they obviously work in those areas. I'm not sure what a red-shirted enlisted crewmember would do but obviously we've seen them around. Admin, maybe?
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Feb 14, 2024 20:44
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Lemniscate Blue posted:interesting IRL navy stuff I know that because it's a TV show they're going to have all the main cast on the bridge at the same time, but would the CO and XO be on different duty shifts? Enterprise was on a three shift rotation (I gather, since Jellico wants to move to a four-shift) and one of the rules is there has to be a guy in the chair so if Starfleet was "real life" would you expect to see Picard and Riker on the same shift or Picard on alpha and Riker on beta (and the unsleeping Data on gamma shift)?
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Feb 14, 2024 20:52
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zoux posted:I know that because it's a TV show they're going to have all the main cast on the bridge at the same time, but would the CO and XO be on different duty shifts? Enterprise was on a three shift rotation (I gather, since Jellico wants to move to a four-shift) and one of the rules is there has to be a guy in the chair so if Starfleet was "real life" would you expect to see Picard and Riker on the same shift or Picard on alpha and Riker on beta (and the unsleeping Data on gamma shift)? We do indeed see Riker and Picard do shift handover a couple times, and we know Beverly works as the bridge commander on third shift sometimes. So yeah, we do see them get split up a fair bit for normal operations but they're all there together for most of the big stuff we see on screen.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:55
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ST:II actually reveals just how much Kirk didn’t update himself on the phaser design change. Even Joachim knew about it and he was on the Reliant for like half a day? I always liked that little nod to continuity that only someone who knew TMP would understand why that dialogue made sense. “Why can’t you fire” “They damaged the photon control and the warp drive.”
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Feb 14, 2024 21:00
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Enlisted crewmembers, I have no idea. Gold and blue shirts yeah, they obviously work in those areas. I'm not sure what a red-shirted enlisted crewmember would do but obviously we've seen them around. Admin, maybe? Supporting your line officer thesis is the fact that all the cadets wear red -- they're theoretically unlimited coming out of the academy, but some will go to science and others will gravitate toward engineering and yet more will suffer CTE repeatedly and then volunteer for security (which is admittedly a safer career path in the TNG era than the TOS era).
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Feb 14, 2024 21:01
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zoux posted:I know that because it's a TV show they're going to have all the main cast on the bridge at the same time, but would the CO and XO be on different duty shifts? Enterprise was on a three shift rotation (I gather, since Jellico wants to move to a four-shift) and one of the rules is there has to be a guy in the chair so if Starfleet was "real life" would you expect to see Picard and Riker on the same shift or Picard on alpha and Riker on beta (and the unsleeping Data on gamma shift)? In my experience the CO isn't in shift rotation, and the XO may or not be depending on how many people are available. The CO is on the bridge as much as he wants to be, the more important the thing that's happening is the more likely he'll be there.
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Feb 14, 2024 21:12
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Admiralty Flag posted:Have we seen an enlisted TNG red shirt? Gold for O'Brien, of course, and Blue for crewman Tarses, but if all red shirts are explicitly line officers then why would any enlisted personnel be red? Maybe the guy who monitors the auxiliary conn inputs because the conn officer usually seems to be red (except when it's Data or Wesley)? Or is that just because of the butter bars scenario you posit? Not that we have a lot of enlisted Starfleet personnel to go by. Discounting O'Brien's early appearances in red because they didn't know what they were doing with him, there's at least one.
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Feb 14, 2024 21:38
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Long, probably irrelevant infodump warning. Proceed at risk of boredom. That was actually really interesting, thank you very much for writing it up. (It also makes a lot more sense than the Star Trek way, where the top-ranking half dozen people do almost everything themselves, and are frequently all on the bridge together in non-emergency situations.)
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Feb 14, 2024 21:41
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disaster pastor posted:Discounting O'Brien's early appearances in red because they didn't know what they were doing with him, there's at least one. Voyager has a few background crewmen in red too, but I don't think they do anything more recognizable than sit at stations or hold PADDs so it's impossible to extrapolate what they're doing
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Feb 14, 2024 21:57
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