Lessons from Fanfiction: Life on a Starship Requires More Than 7-9 People

One of my favorite Next Gen episodes is "Lower Decks." I've always enjoyed examining a world from an outsider's perspective (outsiders to the "in-group" or main cast).

Consequently, all of my Star Trek fan fiction uses new characters--that is, I'm not writing fan fiction about Picard or Data or Janeway or Tuvok (or even Neelix). Rather, I'm writing fan fiction about unknown, unseen crew members as well as the occasional civilian.

Of course, I needed to give jobs to my outsiders. As I gave my characters jobs, I began to realize: a starship requires a lot of work!

Miles O'Brien: Great Star Trek Character!

Here, for example, are some of the jobs I gave my characters (some of these jobs exist in the Star Trek universe; some of them exist but under different titles; some of them must exist but are never referenced):

Loadmaster--The person who oversees the cargo bays. Things can't just be beamed up and left all over the place. Someone has to put everything away. 

Quartermaster--The person who keeps an inventory of supplies, such as cleaning/replacing uniforms. Because even in the future, people sweat.

Security Officer/EMT--The officer in security who can perform emergency medicine because the Doctor and Dr. Crusher can't be everywhere at once and, well, it just makes sense.

Holographic Engineer--Considering the many, many times that people carry live weapons onto the holodeck, someone must be patching all those laser and bullet holes. I also figured out a way to explain why sometimes people are able to leave the holodecks still carrying supposedly holodeck-created papers and objects. The holodeck engineers were experimenting with incorporating "real" matter alongside holographic matter! Got to watch out for those overly zealous and creative holodeck engineers.

Communication without the UT.

Translator--The Universal Translator has to be updated by someone. It supposedly works on brain waves, but Wikipedia states that it works by analyzing and identifying patterns. Diane Duane does an excellent job in her books--Romulan Way, Spock's World--exploring how someone like Uhura is constantly updating her console in response to languages identified by the Universal Translator. Duane also makes a distinction between a learned language and a translated language--some things do not translate easily.

Replicator Engineer--Someone has to program all those special dishes into the food replicators in VIP quarters. And someone has to go around and check all the replicators that weren't working the last time a starship went through some weird nebula thingy and the replicators started producing cacti in response to a request for "chocolate sundae." It sounds pleasingly sci-fi to say that everything could simply be uploaded or downloaded into everyone's quarters through some centralized A.I. The fact is, no technology works seamlessly. Someone needs to check *each one.*

Cook--Because Neelix does occasionally have to sleep (and tell stories to Naomi Wildman and go on diplomatic missions).

Someone has to "vet" these puppies--rabies on a starship

is a really bad idea.

I have at least two characters, engineers, who work on the "fabric" of the ship--carpets wear out, bolts wear down, constant exposure to space storms drills pits into metal. Windows get streaked. Aquariums require filters. Consoles get smudged. People spill stuff. Animals poop in wrong places. Someone--large crews of someones--has to make sure the ship doesn't come to pieces.

And then there are all those civilian experts in agriculture and zoology and first contact who prepare reports and PowerPoints whenever Starfleet visits a new planet.

In sum, it makes sense that an hour episode would condense the following process: a starship enters a new area of space. The crew who monitor ship-to-ship and ship-to-planet communications catch an alert: the computer has "recognized" a language but cannot identify it. First contact personnel as well as numerous linguists immediately get involved. One of the whiz kids in the back room deciphers a phrase that indicates a threat. That information is conveyed to consoles on the bridge (or directly to the captain). The ship moves into yellow alert. Security personnel are called back on duty, including security EMTs. In the meantime, all the people who keep the ship actually functioning continue to do their jobs.

Every episode uses a kind of short-hand of this process--but let's face it, the seven to ten main characters can't do everything, no matter how quickly they tap their consoles. Good leaders wisely use and winnow out information from their subordinates (and those leaders shouldn't take all the credit).