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Starfleet In Motion
There's rather a lot of crew on a Federation starship. So apart
from jogging around a lot during a red alert, what the heck do they
all do? Uncle Geoff muses on the unlucky blue shirts who draw the
Enterprise's toilet duty.
Granted the producers have remained somewhat static but they're still answerable to the moneymen suits at Paramount and the Trek series get more finance than other SF series. If anything, a lot of the problems have been caused by staying within the Roddenberry dream of having a future Earth at peace with itself while investigating the galaxy. The biggest common denominator of all the Trek series is having too much dependence on the use of the bridge crew. This was diluted somewhat with the original Star Trek by the focus on Kirk, Spock and McCoy rather continually bringing in all the bridge crew down on every planetary expedition. On the other hand, at least there was also a sense of having a decent chain of command left on board who could actually make decisions without anyone holding their hands. The writers also had the sense to bring in specialists and security crew from other parts of the starship as suggested in Roddenberry's original series bible as a means to bring in guest stars. Granted this made them expendable to the core group
and any red-topped security guard must have thought they pulled
the short straw to the grim reaper when asked to report to the Transporter
Room. At least it indicated that the crew was there for more than
filling up the corridors during a red alert. There was a big bridge crew on the latest Enterprise and as the actors are paid by screen time had to be used accordingly. Even then, many were short changed in terms of character development. To some extent though, I think this was a fan effect from the original series where the minor characters had their own fan clique and so a little better emphasis was placed on them. Mind you, had actress Denise Crosby (character Security Chief Tat Yar) not wanted to leave the show, token Klingon Worf would probably have stayed in the background than have so many stories based around him. To not use the bridge crew in away missions and brought in other crew members would have doubled the cost not to mention establishing who they were. If anything, the bridge crew grew too large and the focus made it impossible for other crew to be involved regularly. Even adding the likes of Transporter Chief Miles O'Brien was more because actor Colm Meaney came from a healthy film career and had more stage presence and..oh yes, he was also bridge crew when needed didn't hurt much either. Leaving Picard on board and letting Riker lead the away teams made a lot of sense logistically. You wouldn't put your captain in danger on a weekly basis when his first officer was available and willing to lay down his life. However, this tended to leave the more expensive actor away from the real action and had to be changed over the seasons. It would be an interesting dynamic if the actor playing the captain got paid less than the ones seen doing most of the work on the screen. Then again, the actors would probably say the captain is also the head of the acting troop and so should be paid more. This problem permeates through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. With DS9, when the Dominion War heated up and the Reliant was populated with the space station's command crew which practically meant no one of command rank - that was shown, that is - left on board for weeks on end. Hardly a way to run a Starfleet organised space station. If I was the Bajorian Ambassador, I'd be complaining about that but then Major Kira who actually filled that post on DS9, went with them most of the time, too. Although Voyager did go some way to restore the balance with episodes showing non-bridge characters, they were still expendable and mostly background to the bridge crew who did the most away missions, doubled up on jobs and had the worse problems. It sometimes makes me wonder why the Starfleet captains just didn't replace these troublesome bridge crew with the more obliging crew from the lower decks who always obeyed orders. Probably be fewer stories but would show a better command authority. Interestingly, looking at the Star Trek Files which listed most things, there was only about a dozen Voyager crew members that never had names or faces but I guess someone had to supervise the sewage recycling plant. Even so, only a fraction of this crew were ever shown to do anything other than hang around and few worked on the bridge. Were so few interested in flying a starship let alone assist the holographic Doctor? It isn't as though the crew was that specialised being a mixture of Starfleet and Marquis. Short of giving most of the bridge crew actors short term contracts to leave viewers guessing who would be left at the end of each season, there isn't much that can be done at this time. Even that idea would be dead in the water. Fans of any SF show raise arms and fists when a cast member leaves let alone get insufficient screen time. The centre of the action has to be on the bridge rather than anywhere else, short of the medical bay, cos that's where most of the decisions are made...the only problem is this also applied to the away teams! It hardly represents real life in any reality to put the alpha team bridge crew in continual danger when there's a whole starship crew who don't appear to do anything at all. They couldn't all work in Engineering or scientific analysis... unless that's intended to represent how specialised we're becoming in this century. In terms of chain of command, all crew are answerable to the captain. This is understandable. The last thing you want on any armed ship, be it at sea or space, is a lot of mavericks roaming around eager to do their own thing when pressing buttons. Voyager had her fair share of dissenters but when push came to shove, they pretty much stayed together or turned traitor and left. Unfortunately, it also has an effect on free-thinking as well. Unless Picard and Riker were separated, they pretty much acted under similar protocols and singular imagination. Had the situation when Picard had been abducted by the Borg been reversed in The Best Of Both Worlds Parts 1 and 2, the bald (sic) Captain would probably have rescued Riker in a similar fashion. Whether this is a fault of the scriptwriters not looking at all the options or writing themselves into a corner can be left to debate. It might have been more interesting to have left the Enterprise under Lt. Commander Shelby's command as the rest of the bridge crew were fired up by her presence. The same happened in Chain Of Command Part 1when Captain Jellico took command and showed just how lovey-dovey the crew were instead of acting like military officers. One might as well criticise Pickard for being too soft with his crew - hardly a good trait for a starship captain. Part of this problem really lies at Gene Roddenberry's own feet when ST-TNG was created when he chose to reduce any on-board hassle by making everyone get on so well with each other. Hardly a way to maintain efficiency even on a flagship. I doubt if any of the captains have shown themselves to be a markedly individual people simply because military trained people aren't recruited for that reason. They just obey their training than think too much for themselves for imaginative solutions. Captain Kate Janeway might have broken the Prime Directive on a number of occasions but it seems a traditional for Starfleet captains to do such a thing as you're not even court-martialled over such an offence any more. If they do demonstrate any individuality, then training itself would soon sort that out and try and leave a situation better than when they arrived. This pattern continued through all subsequent series. Even Enterprise, set in an earlier time period, hasn't escaped this problem. Rarely is there any consideration for offending the Prime Directive other than changing an existing regime to something like their own. Maybe we only see the stories where alien societies are either dictatorial, fascist or plain military rather than ones that are better run than our own? The crew selection is based on particular expertise rather than any other abilities or hobbies that they have. Hikaru Sulu's interest in botany and fencing seems an oddity than the norm. Even with ST-TNG, only Data was shown trying to develop an artistic bent. Other hobbies, such as playing in an orchestra, poker and even acting were mostly for social development than developing other talents. This is the future Star Trek style, folks. I doubt if there would be much room for your average Science Fiction fan or solitary hobbies in their reality. Whether that's true of any future SF reality can be debated another time. It's even questionable in our current reality as things that were once considered SF are now becoming viable and certain technology looks less advanced compared to how it was perceived in the 60s, let alone the early 80s. One thing that does lead from this is the level of technological advancement. There has been comment that even the 60s Star Trek communicator looks more cumbersome than the current mobile telephones. Saying that, I doubt if a mobile phone has the battery power or range to signal a starship circling the moon and even the next generation weren't too concerned in seeing someone's face when passing on orders. Mind you, we're not likely to have warp engines or transporters any time soon either. What is odd is that based on our current rate of advancement and computer automation that these starships are so crew heavy. Most of the crew, including those on the bridge are redundant. In the original Star Trek, it was shown how three aliens could pilot the Enterprise to the Andromeda galaxy in the episode By Any Other Name. Even the M-5 multitronic computer from the episode The Ultimate Computer illustrated how redundant the crew actually is. In the ST-TNG story, '11001001, Picard flies his Enterprise on his own. All right, so you need a maintenance crew & an away team but that doesn't mount to a 1000 plus crew, not to mention putting their families at risk in encounters with such as the Borg. Instead, there's a musical chairs game whenever a chair or post is vacated on the bridge, someone sits down before the music starts. Hardly an indictment for future advancement where you'd expect automated hardware to run more efficiently. The problem lies with whether a future depiction would work with a small crew running a large starship. Ask Balok in the The Corbomite Manoeuvre episode or original Trek. It does happen. Whether it would be good television is debatable, especially as other SF TV series have already got there. Having and persistently using the bridge crew for everything has pushed Star Trek into a heavily defined formula that it fails to surprise us in what happens. The bridge crew status remains static and so has the story limitation which has created this vicious loop. Having at least one leading crew member out to discover what it is to be human is also typical of this formula. Just once, I'd love to have an alien who couldn't give a flying fig but want to teach humans to be more like him...or her or it instead. Maybe it's up there with Man's arrogance in believing a god would make someone in his own image when he/she/it is really immaterial that the human way is the only way. Hardly represents IDIC - Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, does it? Granted that both Vulcan and Klingon ways of life are a little extreme but the humans from this period demonstrate something similar with their own flagrant abuse with their own laws as well. While we're covering families, the whole point of them being on board was to keep married crew together than be separated for years on end. Considering that it was rare for any of them to be allowed shore leave, this writer can't be sure whether it's a good thing or a punishment to marry a Starfleet officer. It would undoubtedly need some explanation for a stream-lined Star Trek Starfleet crewed starship but considering how much of their galaxy has been mapped does raise an interesting question as to whether there are any new life or civilisations out there to find. Certainly, it won't be in this quadrant. The addition of a marines section on the early first Enterprise looks like the producers/writers have realised the same as me as far as the bridge crew is concerned. It has yet to be proven as to whether these marines are going to end up being red-shirt cannonfodder than be instrumental in changing the status quo in the chain of command. After the era of Star Trek: Enterprise, return to the 24th century future is inevitable as the past is going to be difficult to milk without treading on the toes of the original Star Trekcontinuity, especially as the technology will have to match 60s design as it gets closer to the 23rd century. As to what happened in the 24th century future isn't too hard to guess. We need to see what happened after the Dominion War and all those worlds no longer under their control. With the Federation devastated by the Founders, it would also be logical to see it re-building its defences and protocol to prevent such a situation catching them out again. How many times can the Earth and the Federation planets be attacked by aliens with different political viewpoints before some serious military protocols are enforced as much as the desire to explore the galaxy? In many respects, it would reflect the US of today with a lot of unrest from other worlds who think that they might do a better job at running the Federation. To attempt to achieve a peaceful utopia would definitely be a backward step at this time. It might not be the Roddenberry dream but it would make more sense to build back towards from these events than to press the reset switch as if nothing has happened that can't be fixed with a few Band-Aid.. Whether there would be much in the way of space missions is debatable but it would change the situation where it came to putting things back on an even keel and reminding the quadrant that the Federation is still there to protect them. With this change of situation, the circumstances and hopefully how Starfleet starships are ran would also be affected. Considering the Star Trek computer games are based around violent rather than peaceful confrontation, I can't see that many being unhappy with such a policy change. It would be better to aim to try to achieve Roddenberry's dream than use it as the starting point. Episodes like ST-TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise or Voyager's Living Witness have shown a more interesting starship and crew than we normally get. The biggest common denominator being spirit and a different approach to sorting out problems rather than anything wrong with the cast as such. If anything, even with mirror images of the normal characters, the actors relish doing something with a bit more bite in their parts. I doubt if the post-DS9 future is going to become lovey-dovey any time soon. The producers and writers of any series set that far into the future when they get back there will have to take such unrest into account. A re-building of allies isn't going to depend on big starships. The allegiance between the Federation and the Romulans is likely to be uneasy but the sharing of technology together with what has been learnt about the Borg should be enough to mark some change in starship set-up and go for a smaller battle-cruiser position. A more militaristic POV to dealing with awkward situations would allow some flexibility and a definite change in what should be done. With changes in alliances through such co-operation, non-Federation species and possible empires who've watched from the sidelines might see the Federation a much bigger threat to their own independency. A definite mirror on our current times when Russia is no longer considered a super-power and other nations or terrorist groups want to fill such a vacuum. It would also be interesting to see the return of other omnipotent species, other than the Q, who've been largely quiet in the 24th century resurfacing. Assuming the number of seasons possible with Enterprise, the return to the far future should allow a real shake-up if the formula is to be changed. I can't see Paramount calling it a day after the current series. This would no doubt be a reflection of our current day situation after 9/11 and where we might be 5 years down the line from now. The revised Starfleet starships would have to take a stronger stance against possible invasion. They might not go in firing but if they'd be more formidable. With faster warp drives based on Borg technology, generational based starships will be seen as uneconomic. A more functional crew not devoted solely to a bridge pattern would also allow for far more interesting levels of command. Considering the loss of personal in the Dominion War, we should also have less perfect people crewing these starships which would encourage more mistakes. The Prime Directive shouldn't stop Starfleet being cautious with any new world species encountered, including those with warp-drive capability lest the Federation presence be regarded as a threatening force. To boldly arrive in a starship loaded with weapons is hardly a way to win friends. I can't see the Federation becoming a total militaristic force but it would be an interesting stance to be explored. If conventional Starfleet starships are ignored in such investigations then it also opens up something that has long been over-due in being seen in the 24th century and that's commercial merchandise starships. You'd still have your explorations but with a lot more variations to prevent the material appearing stale or variations on an old theme. Having other purposes than meeting aliens would certainly change the agenda. Of course, this is all speculation. I'm not out to drum up support for this way of thinking just percolating thought before Paramount ask for another Star Trek series and a need to shake up the formula which they haven't really broken out of yet. GF Willmetts (c) 2004 - all rights reserved
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OTHER CONTENT - February 2004
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There's
been much debate as to the diminishing interest in the multitude
of Star Trek TV series over the years. This has ranged from going
to the well dipping for gold too many times to not having sufficient
turnover in creative staff to any number of reasons you want to
look up or make. That being the case, there's no harm in me having
my two-pennyworth and addressing some of the criticisms while presenting
other problem areas in the shows'dynamic.
Firstly,
changing the creative staff won't change the overall problem because
they've been changing ever since the original 1960s series.
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