So, I'm watching ST:TNG

[Silver]

It is the scent that first speaks of love. ~ Lt. Worf

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I had a question along the lines of In Star Trek, they must sleep sometimes. Who is manning the bridge as the ship flies through space?

The answer

The concept of ‘duty watches’ aboard a starship didn’t get a lot of attention on Star Trek until TNG dealt with it in episodes like ‘Data’s Day’ and the ‘Chain of Command’ two-parter.

The way duty watches typically work on a normal US Navy warship is along the lines of a three-shift day. The ship’s captain might typically be on the bridge for the first watch as the commanding officer, then the first officer might typically take the conn on the second watch, and the second officer would be on the bridge for the third watch (Sometimes these officers may then delegate command to junior officers for various reasons). Each watch would have enough crew members assigned to perform the ship’s routine ship-handling, engineering, communications, and other necessary tasks, All watches report for duty during battlestations or similar drills.

Star Trek is consistent with the Navy way of doing things, to a point. When a yellow or red alert is declared, we tend to see reinforcement crewmembers arriving on the bridge; when a bridge crewman is selected for an away team, a replacement is dispatched to the bridge.

Where it diverges is in the tendency to have the show’s cast of characters generally focus on the ship’s (or station’s) senior officers, resulting in the narrative’s demand to have the captain and first officer in the same control room week after week. Thus, Captain Pike’s first officer doubled as the Chief Helmsman to keep both characters on the Enterprise’s bridge; Kirk’s first officer doubled as the ship’s chief science officer for the same purpose. Picard’s first officer had no secondary role, but was still at his captain’s side each week. If Star Trek duty shifts and chain of command worked like the Navy, you would never see Kirk and Spock in the same place except at watch relief / shift change. During the Enterprise’s non-alert posture, Spock would be in charge of the second watch, and would also not be trying to do two vital jobs at once. During alert posture, Spock would be manning the Auxiliary Control Room in case the Bridge gets put out of action somehow. Scotty wouldn’t be third in command - that role should have been filled by a gold-shirted command-branch Chief Navigator or Chief Tactical Officer with the rank of lieutenant commander. Riker should have been in the Enterprise-D’s Battle Bridge, ready for the Battle Section to operate independently after ship separation…