Children on Starships.

somuj

How does it make any sense..

The Enterprise is the only one I know of. But presumably there must be many more.

A windowed parent has just being killed on an away mission and now the child is left to the officers to deal with.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273728/children-on-starships

Voyager and the Saratoga, the ship Sisko was on at Wolf 359, had children on them and Geordie moved from post to post with one of his parents too, IIRC. It's probably a concession to the fact that Starfleet don't do six month deployments like modern navies so you can take your family along with you instead of being away from them for years at a time.

JayRoc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273728/children-on-starships

As the son of a merchant navy officer, I was on the ships a good bit as a small child. My father was allowed to bring his wife and two children on board for several voyages.

Personally I think it's a bit mad but there certainly seems to be naval precedent. Given that Starfleet has adopted so many naval traditions this could be one of them

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273728/children-on-starships

This must be your first time watching this episode is it?

I would say every Galaxy Class ship had familys on them not just the Enterprise.

Even some of the Cargo ships in Enterprise had family's on them so its nothing new really. It was just starfleet letting familys be together on the D Enterprise as they would otherwise be apart for a long time.

Maybe before that when the ships were smaller and less advanced it was deemed too dangerous. Be the time of the Enterprise D and the big crew it had it was probably deemed useful and safe enough to let familys on board if they so want to.

Stark

For much of TNG's era, starships didn't face any major threats. Okay there was the weird spatial anomaly of the week but that was just for TV dramatisation. In any sort of space travel reality, the Enterprise-D would spend the vast vast majority of the time just casually cruising through space with nothing of note happening. Aside from the Borg, they had no real enemies. Most interactions with the likes of Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians were just bluster and posturing with neither side willing to risk all out war by blowing up a ship full of civilians. No more dangerous for the kids than taking them on a commercial passenger flight over unfriendly nations airspace like happens regularly today. It was a sign of the Federation's complacency in the pre-DS9 TNG era.

Witcher

As has been said it's a concession based on the length of deployments, necessary skillsets etc.

Starfleet is investing time and effort in training these people and if they can't have their families near them for 3-5 years you're looking at a situation where people start looking for transfers off long term deployments in favour of Starbases, freighters or if they can't be facilitated...leaving Starfleet altogether and finding work in the commercial realm where they will be accommodated/closer to family. You're constantly losing officers to starting a family, emergencies back home that they want to leave for and attend to etc.

You'll end up with people just not joining because they know there's no future in it long term or joining, doing 5-10 years and leaving to have a family. You're weighing up losing people with serious skillsets or letting them have their kids on board which is essentially risk free for the organisation and basically costs nothing bar a school and a teacher. If the parent gets killed..drop the child to a starbase, 'engage'...done.

knucklehead6

In Yesterday’s Enterprise Tasha mentions that the Galaxy Class ships were capable of carrying over 6000 troops. That’s allowing for the crew (1012 according to Memory Alpha) to run the ship.

They have an evacuation capacity of 15000, so it’s not as if they’re a cramped ship. 1000 crew, allowing for 3 dependents (civilian wife and 2 kids) is still only 4000 people. And that’s assuming that every crew member has a partner and children who are non serving.

endacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058273728/children-on-starships

Easily avoidable scenario. A word with the writers asking them not to create fictional orphans, with the backup safeguard of the script editor’s big red pen.

Stark

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119944096#Comment_119944096

Unless you want to write a story about a little orphan boy Timmy who wants to pretend he's Commander Data.

Evade

Just thinking on this again the only times kids were left for one of the main cast to deal with was when they had a connection, like the kid in Hero Worship that imprinted on Data and the one in the bonding that Worf felt responsible for making an orphan.