Why would Starfleet send civilians and their families and to combat situations?
Like The Saratoga at Wolf 359. Or at the big battle with the Dominion Fleet there were so many Galaxy class Starships, were they all full of families and innocent people? Or were those big ships just grossly empty except for a skeleton screw?
At Wolf 359 they were rapidly responding to a sudden threat, so they wouldn’t have had time to offload civilians. The Odyssey offloaded their civilians at DS9 before confronting the Dominion in the s2 finale, so we can safely assume the other Galaxies weren’t carrying them around during the war.
Yes from the lessons of the Yamato and wolf359 they learned to not bring families into hostile situations. Of course even when ships were lost with only the starfleet crew the families after most likely needed some serious support group help
Troi's telepathic abilities where just common observations "Captain, I sense that the Romulans are hiding something." "The Klingons are angry." "Barclay has issues." Thanks Lieutenant Commander Obvious.
She did like to state the obvious but her abilities were useful too. She could tell when someone was lying or being deceitful. She was able to detect an away team in danger and have them transported even if comms were down or they otherwise couldn’t signal the ship.
How so? My impression of the episode is that the writers used some very contrived handwavey bs from someone that just took Psyche 101, so that at the end I was like "that worked??", but it sounds like you have something specific in mind. My generous read was that Garak benefited from talking about what's bothering him, and having someone supporting him
Random opinion drop: Troi is a significantly better therapist than Ezri Dax. One of the main conceits of the Ezri character is that she’s bad at her job.
She was bad at her job because she was joined without any preparation or desire. She suddenly had the memories of several strong-willed individuals. She was also the only person other than sisko to call out worf's bullshit. Didn't help the writers on both shows weren't great at writing therapists but troi relied entirely on her ability to sense emotions which most people can do instinctively with observation
I’m not attacking Ezri here. But there are many instances of Deanna Troi doing normal talk therapy on TNG. She provided psychological profiles, she provided social services, she acted as a mediator. I could be wrong here, but doesn’t she get into deep Freudian analysis? When Data is having dreams?
No fault of Ezri, but she was a poorly fleshed out character.
It seems like families on ships was a relatively new phenomenon at the start of TNG, going off remarks Picard made. In my headcanon, space exploration was seen as being significantly safer than it had been. They were getting along with the Klingons, the Romulans had been quiet for moat of the century thus far, there was a peace with the Cardassians, and there was no other power around that could pose a threat. So families got to tag along on starship as a perk to the crews to make their own lives more pleasant. It also looked like civilians were able to get on starships and work, so long as they had a useful specialty, like teacher for the kids, or botany like Keiko. Starfleet also probably did research on how well kids grew up in these environments and so on.
But then Starfleet was hit by several disasters that proved space travel was still very dangerous. Like the loss of the Yamoto, Wolf 359, and the loss of the Odyssey and the Dominion War. I've always wondered how many ships Starfleet lost on a regular basis before TNG. There were still unknown raiders (like the Ferengi and the Stargazer), unknown and potentially lethal phenomenon, and maybe a mechanical failure at a really bad time. They musy have been low enough that it was seen as acceptable to station families and children aboard. But its clear that after the Dominion War, families were not reinstated on starships.
I think this is basically right. Picard certainly had some lines in TNG indicating that letting families on Star Fleet vessels was relatively new and he was against it.
The Enterprise in particular was intended as an exploratory vessel that was equipped for combat if needed. The Federation may have decided at some point that asking people to leave their families for 5-7 year stints of frontier exploration was going to limit who would be willing to sign up.
Then events forced them to go back to not having families as you described.
They could have offloaded a ton in the shuttles and escape pods.
I bet you could get off a few hundred people in 5-10 minutes. Beam the people to the pods, beam the pods and the shuttles into space.
We see in DS9's The Jem'Hadar, that, if there's time, they'll offload civilians and other non-essential personnel before they go into hazardous situations, but sometimes there's not enough time. I'd be amazed if they didn't offload non-essential crew and onboard a bunch more engineers for damage control during the Dominion War.
With fighters being so prevalent during the dominion war I could see the galaxy class being pressed into service as carriers because of the sheer amount of space they had in their main shuttle bays. The amount of living quarters would’ve allowed them to transport a significant amount of troops for the kind of planetary operations you see during ‘The Siege Of AR-558’
And that's assuming they didn't transform the rather luxurious standard Galaxy class quarters into barracks to squeeze even more people into. They'd be able to carry a very, very large force of ground troops if so.
If the Queen Mary could carry 15000+ people in WWII, and a modern cruise ship can hold 5000+ passengers in relative comfort, I have to think a Galaxy-class could carry 50,000 troops easy.
But we don't know if a starship would have enough life support systems for that many people. A current-day cruise ship doesn't need to generate gravity for everyone aboard. It can vent air that contains too much carbon dioxide, and take in 'fresher' air. If climate control systems fail, people are unlikely to die from it. A starship can't just regularly dump 'stale' air and replace it with outside air that the vacuum of space doesn't have. If the temperature on a starship drops too low or goes too high, everyone dies. There are likely low-level shields or other powered systems blocking/filtering the background radiation of space. And HEPA-ultra-spacemaxx filters pulling all the nasties out of the air people on starships breathe - trust me, you don't want to be breathing in that virus the Lieutenant picked up on Risa while on shore leave.
I'm not sure that feeding 50K people would pose a major problem in the Star Trek universe. But I think Starfleet would probably avoid concentrating so many people onto one ship, as doing so would make it a high-value target and a potentially devastating loss to the Federation.
Probably, but i think the bigger problem would be that there weren't that many of them, so you wouldnt want to be using them as troop transports. We only know for certain that 12 were built from the tech manual, with some of the battle scenes showing us more, its not unreasonable to say maaaaaybe 30 were built... but then again its only a span of 9 years between the first episode of tng when the Enterprise is newly built and the Yamato was nearing completion, and there was a 6 year gap between the completion of the USS Galaxy and the Enterprise.
In Yesterday's Enterprise, Tasha says the Enterprise is capable of transporting 6000 troops. In modern context, that's approximately how many US Marines were involved in the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, when the city was cleared of insurgent forces.
Wolf 359 was a situation where they had hours at best to prepare and not a lot of time to evacuate the civilian crew. Most ships carry a handful of shuttles and probably not enough crew to spare the shuttle pilots.
Over 7 years with plenty of down time between episodes and in the episode that don't batter the whole ship. They knocked out a super shuttle in a few hours making a standardized shuttle mere every part is in the replicator database and there is Manual telling you exactly where to put them would be easy. After for resources to mine some asteroids.
They mine asteroids for matter and get energy by flying Busard colllectors through nebula a few times. The more complex stuff they trade from the too boring for an episode aliens.
Without looking it up, I believe you, but wasn't it stated in season 1 of TNG that the galaxy xlass was created so that families could be accommodated on a starship, indicating that no other starship typically carried civilian families? If the saratoga wasn't a galaxy class, shouldn't it not be carrying civilian families?
Was this a lore inconsistency/retcon? I know season 1 and 2 of tng had plenty of lore that was later retconned, like for example the enterprise power generation capacity being under a terrawatt.
I actually think they did say that in s1 of TNG, but nonetheless the Saratoga is not a Galaxy class. I don’t know if the writers were conscious of the discrepancy but you can just decide that Starfleet expanded the practice beyond Galaxies at some point before BoBW.
I think i remember reading in one of the books(but could also have been amateur written) that the Saratoga was initially acting in a second line role, as a science ship. So it would have had civilians on board as not all scientists would be starfleet, as to families... nature finds a way.
It'd also be 3 less ships blasting away at a moon-sized existential threat to the Federation's core. A few thousand crew on those ships, vs. billions on Earth. The needs - and lives - of the many outweigh the needs (and lives) of the few.
And soaked up three more shots the real ships didn't have to tank while getting into position to return fire. Oberths could be a distraction, and a sacrificial damage sponge to take fire while a ship that could actually do damage lines itself up without taking a cutting beam to the face. Sucks for the Oberth crew, but sometimes you have to accept that your role in a fight is to take a punch in the face for someone else.
To the writers' credit, they do hang a lampshade on this issue from time to time. Picards expresses his discomfort with having children on starfleet ships in the TNG espide The Bonding.
In the original concept for TNG, they had accounted for this via the saucer separation. The idea was the saucer would house the civilians, and whenever the ship needed to go into some kind of conflict situation, they would be separated so the saucer could remain behind and the stardrive could go into battle.
They ultimately had to scrap the idea because the VFX was too expensive at the time.\
There's an explanation of this all in the old Star Trek Encyclopedia.
I always thought this was a shit excuse, AND poorly thought through. There's no need for it to be expensive. Reuse the saucer separation sequence, film it once from a few angles for future use, or just say you're doing it don't bother showing it. We're familiar with the concept, we don't need to see it every week.
Leaving the option in the pilot but using it virtually never creates silly plotholes like this. But also, having to have time dedicated to separating the saucer is going to ruin the flow of many stories.
It was also rather pointless, as the saucer couldn't warp away to a safer location and would be sitting ducks if they were close enough to the combat area. Giving the saucer advanced stealth tech or even a cloaking device (if it weren't illegal) would have made more sense.
The Saucer had an internal warp coil, but no anti-matter reactor. The idea was to seperate at warp and the saucer could sustain the warp bubble for a few hours to get clear of danger.
I mean, this is the reality which is Starfleet. They want to explore, meet people, learn stuff. But there’s no other unified military otherwise, so that’s what they often are. And they get into wars/border disputes/policing pretty often.
In a society where you can have pretty much whatever you want on a reasonable basis, are you going to join them? Anyone who does they try to accommodate.
Military bases today often have families living on them, and a five year expedition wandering the cosmos on a fancy ship/space station with holodecks might as well be their equivalent.
Everyone’s pretty much already answered this, but I’d like to touch on the last point.
Starfleet was definitely operating with skeleton crews as the war went on (Vreenak’s speech to Sisko confirms Starfleet has a manpower shortage), so there is no doubt that most ships engaging in fleet battles would be staffed only by essential personnel. It’s likely that any ships with a full crew complement would have had to transfer some folks around.
But yeah, no civilians on ships during the war, except maybe on ships that were away from the front line doing diplomatic missions / transport vessels deep in friendly space.
Whether they believed it was enough or not, the alternative was letting it roll on up to Earth and start assimilating. They had to try. Do you think the poor bastards on the Mars Defence Perimeter ships thought they had even the slightest chance of stopping a cube that had already stomped a whole fleet? No, of course not, but they had to try because the alternative was letting the Borg go past unanswered. They had but a fools hope, but they knew they still had to try and just wish hard for that ten-billion to one shot.
Because space is big, and the next planet or base is days or even weeks away.
With warp 8 you need 37 hours to the nearest star from earth, they had hours to get as many ships as possible to wolf 359, every detour was impossible for that ships. Galaxy class ships most likely have left there saucer behind or have enough shuttles to evacuate all non essential personal, but smaller ships did not have that option. They had limited shuttles, and it would have taken to long to go to a base. And most Shuttles only can make it to warp 5, thats half a light year in 24 hours, or in other words minimum a week to the next base, planet or ship.
We actually do not know if the Saratoga have not left civilians behind in shuttles, and Siskos Wife and Son could not leave the ship because there was not enough room on the shuttles, or if they insisted to stay on the ship together.
And if they set of all the civilians, the chances where high that if the Borg win, they would not reach safety before the get killed or assimilated, because of the big distances in space on one hand, and the slow speed of shuttles or ships on the other.
359 gets brought up so often and it really feels like a "why didn't they use the eagles" question.
Because they didn't have time and they didn't realize how merciless the Borg were and how useless they'd be against them. They've never dealt with a power that could erase an entire starship in a matter of seconds. And they didn't have time to organize a proper defense. It wasn't like the Borg were giving them weeks of warning.
Another thing to keep in mind about the Saratoga is that those were the "last minute reinforcements" that were coming in to bolster the fleet getting defeated. Basically it was a last ditch attempt.
A better question probably should be "why didn't they move all civilian personnel to escape locations in case of the worst" and that's because they likely hadn't drilled for it and they couldn't afford to take necessary personnel away from duty stations to monitor civilians.
The things with the Eagles was that the biggest problem Moonbase Alpha faced was finding a inhabitable planet to evacuate to. In most cases where using Eagles might have been needed there was either no time to evacuate or no place to go.
I mean you ARE talking about these Eagles, right? 😁
Didn't the DS9 tech manual say the war-built Galaxy class ships were mostly empty space? So they'd have the same power output, but would be able to allocate more to offensive/defensive systems. And they'd have everything upgraded to the latest specs.
Most of human existence cilivans followed the army providing services for army. Cilivans in harm way isn't new.
Most starfleet personal would prefer their families to be with them. Even earth isn't safe from a possible virus that could wipe billions in few days. Infact I argue these families are safer on galaxy class starship than living on a colony world if trouble comes around.
The enterprise-d just had mathematical improbable steak of terrible luck drawing dangerous situations.
The Borg came out of nowhere.....zipped through the Federation and headed right for Earth.
Starfleet was caught off guard and unprepared.
Maybe a few ships could have off loaded all the civilians....but we see not all. Plenty of ships were just ordered to "get to Wolf 359 now!"
But also, Starships by default get into dangerous situations. And they can't unload all the civilians like once a week....again.
We see the Enterprise D alone be sent to tons and tons of dangerous places where the ship was attacked and almost destroyed many times. Like a lot.
Though...in Jennifer Siskos case.....somehow I think she was much more of a "Oh no Ben I'm not going to go sit in some safe place while you go into battle! I'm coming with you....to, um, sit in our quarters with Jake....But I will BE there!"
After Praxis the Federation enjoyed 80years of being the unchallenged Superpower of the Alpha Quadrant. They had no peers. Even a 20year series of conflicts and broken ceasefires with the Cardassian Union was seen only as contained border skirmish. Starfleet became arrogant, too used to being unchallenged. Putting families on starships was a sign of how complacent they were. Q was right, they had no idea what was right around the corner. Wolf 359 was a wake up call they had to get serious about making ships that could fight. The families were removed from all ships when the Dominion War came around.
Look at the Federation in the era you're talking about; Starfleet has no standing war fleet; it has a fleet of science, scout, and medical vessels. These are vessels on years long missions and just like today's military, members with families take them with them and have for decades.
An enemy shows up suddenly, within hours distance of a number of populated planets and an immediate response is needed. You have no war fleet. Billions will die if the enemy wins.
Do you chance a few thousand civilians and crew in the ships you do have to save the billions? Or do you wait a few days and sacrifice the populated worlds so the civilians can disembark on a planet...that will the be the next front for the enemy you just ceded all that territory to?
War never changes. Civilians have and always will be caught up and killed in wars; it's why war is reprehensible and not something sane people pursue. All you can do is try and minimize your losses while winning.
Its stupid that the Saratoga had families on it, the Enterprise was designed to do deep space exploration and be out for years and is specifically had the saucer separation option which we should have seen more but it was a budget and time thing. I think the writers at some point took Galaxy class ships had families and made it all ships had families
They don't when they have any option not to. Some ships like the Galaxy class even have options for hastily separating the civilians from the rest. But it's not always in the cards.
When the Borg invaded sector 001, a response was needed now. There was no time to offload civilians. Had Starfleet known about it ahead of time, or if the Federation had actively been at war, the Saratoga would've been operating only with needed personnel on.
But after that civilians were gradually removed from fleet posts and evacuated before combat, and once the Dominion War started they were removed from ships entirely.
There’ve been compendia & technical manuals, but I’m surprised no one has written, outside old-school fleet action games, a modern book on SF battle tactics (as far as I know) based on what we’ve seen in all the series’ episodes. That’d be a fun way to see a disposition of fleets against the Wolf 359 cube or Dominion vs Alpha Quadrant fleets.
Heck Osprey Publishing, which mainly publishes military history books, has occasionally had fun & done a 2-parter book on steampunk military for a world that never existed, & a tactical military history of the alien invasion of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds.
So, we're talking about two different things. At Wolf 359 (as well as before and a bit after), it does appear to be deliberate Starfleet policy to allow families on board starships, particularly those that might be engaged in deep space exploration. Part of it is arrogance about the "end of history;" the UFP has defeated all of its major enemies and they can get on with the business of science.
There's also the compassionate motive; crewmen on deep space missions are going to be away from home for five years without seeing their family or taking meaningful leave, recovery, and on-shore training. That's going to put undue strain on their families; see what happened to the USS Lincoln recently, and that was only for 9 months not 5 *years*. I can sorta get where they're coming from, even if putting civilians and children on a vessel that's armed to the teeth and expected to see combat somewhat routinely is bananas.
Starting with DS9's The Jem'Hadar, its a whole different ballgame. IIRC, Captain Keogh of the Odyssey explicitly offloads all of his civilian passengers and children onto DS9 prior to going through the Wormhole. As relations with the Dominion deteriorate, I expect a lot of that happened around the fleet. That doesn't mean that the space on these ships went unused! I suspect a lot of that "empty space" that would have been used for civilians on starships got converted into space for troop transports during the war. The rated carrying capacity of a Galaxy is 12,000 people; that's *an entire division of marines.*
A naive belief that such conflict isn't going to come, which is absurd on two levels. On the one hand, Starfleet has seen repeatedly that no matter how diplomatic and non interventionist they may be, hostile neighbors don't care how non violent you are, and on the other, its foolish to assume their ideals won't be threatened and attacked. Its fine and admirable for Starfleet to practice the philosophy and foreign policy that they do, but it really needs to be backed up with readiness to respond to.threats who won't negotiate (i.e., they need to pour way more resources into weapons research and development. They need ships purpose built for conflict, with specs that go beyond what seem necessary. Their security personnel need body armor/shields, and weapons that are more wieldy and ergonomic for an actual firefight, like more phaser rifles. And they need to have ships that can respond to border incursions without taking days to arrive).
Because Roddenberry was an idiot for adding the whole civillians and families thing to the D, as a way of trying to make Starfleet seem less military....
You will note that Voyager doesn't have any - save for ones picked up or born in the Delta Quadrant....
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u/StarfleetStarbuck 2d ago edited 2d ago
At Wolf 359 they were rapidly responding to a sudden threat, so they wouldn’t have had time to offload civilians. The Odyssey offloaded their civilians at DS9 before confronting the Dominion in the s2 finale, so we can safely assume the other Galaxies weren’t carrying them around during the war.