In the same vein as the Star Wars thread with the same/similar name, what questions about Star Trek (all incarnations) do you have questions about and would like answered? For me, it's what does an Ops officer actually do on a starship that requires them to have a station on the bridge of the starship and, in the case of the Enterprise D & E, in the front next to the helmsman? According to the Enterprise (TNG) Tech Manual the Ops officer's job is described as being what an operations officer should do, coordinating all of the operations on a ship, routing all requests for assets, time on sensors, in labs, and I'm guess duty shifts, etc. yet on TNG and Voyager we never see them doing any of that, they always seem to act as everything but ops, more often than not they seem to act as science officer, or comms officer, a duty they seem to share with the helmsman and security officer.
Another question I have about TNG & Voyager, where do all of those spare crewmembers come from and go to whenever the senior officers are summoned to the bridge or when they are tasked to leave the bridge for whatever reason before the end of their shift? Do they have a ready room of sorts just off of the bridge where they sit during their shift and wait until one of the senior bridge crew leaves when they have to go on an away mission or have to check out something elsewhere on the ship? Likewise, when the senior officers are off duty but are called up (something that seems to happen fairly often on Voyager) do these people go to the same ready room, or do their shift officially end whenever they're replaced by the senior officers, or do they actually have secondary stations or duties?
it was his ship to command.
