Honestly after watching DS9 I think O’Brien is the best engineer in the entire series.
Almost every other engineer we see works on some flagship federation starship. O’Brien has had to deal with:
- DS9, a hodgepodge of three different alien technologies and the occasional booby trap
- The Defiant, which was half baked to such an extent he had to design and implement a complete overhaul of major systems
- The dominion war alliance fleet, where he had to oversee repairs for the ships of three major alien races. Even if he didn’t do the repairs himself, he probably had to have significant working knowledge.
I feel like the only person you could compares is Scotty, and that’s mostly based on his feats in that one TNG episode and SNW.
I always wondered what the ‘battle stations’ would be for a lot of the crew.
Like what was Keiko’s battle station? “Botanist to the arboretum! The Romulans are attacking!”
“Botanist to the arboretum! The Romulans are attacking!”
Keiko: Seeds away. Locking time beam, and …Happy Arbor Day you Romulan bastards.
That was from The Orville where they duct-taped Chekov’s Gun to the MacGuffin. The seeds were specially designed to be self-sustaining, radiation proof, and could grow anywhere (and according to Bashir’s dad, tasted pretty good too).
Was Keiko crew, though? I thought she was just a civilian and would shelter somewhere (probably in their quarters).
What do you think the battle stations for the officers working at the high energy biophysics labs are? (I’m just enjoying looking for places on the ship with officers that wouldn’t have battle stations now).
Probably a damage control locker.
This guy Navies
I would imagine civilians’ biggest responsibility in such a situation would be “stay out of the way and lock the doors.”
Okay then, what did the officers working in the cargo bay do when they were told to go to their battle stations?
Make sure everything is tied down well and then prep for damage control, probably. Cargo bay officers are probably under the Quartermaster’s purview, so there’s probably a lot they need to do to support repair efforts.
Everything isn’t tied down anyway? That sounds like a terrible way to run a cargo bay on a ship that regularly takes unexpected moves.
Edit: Also, they damn well better lock shit down after the incident with Worf’s spine.
When you’re talking about a ship’s capacity that’s approaching five digits, that stuff would have to be moved around a lot.
Foodstuffs from the Conestoga is behind the new sensor package from Starbase 80, but we can’t install the sensor package until we get to a drydock, so we have to move it over there and get the ingredients for Thanksgiving out–but we’re also supposed to deliver half of the potatoes from the shipment to the Boyle when we pass them at Deep Space Two, so we have to crate them into a separate container, and the stasis container we need for them currently has Vulcan plomeek bulbs in it for a diplomatic function on Tendar IV, so we can’t move them over until Wednesday. Meanwhile, in Cargo Bay 2, we literally have a whole entire shuttle that for some reason the commander of the shuttle deck decided just had to be put here, but that means that the restraint units are inaccessible, so we’ve had to jury-rig some force fields to hold everything together. Plus, because of some sort of requisitions mistake, we got sent a double pallet of PADD-xe’s, when what we really needed were PADD-xt’s, so that was taking up every spare parts locker and case in Cargo Bay 3 until we could offload them to some environmental observatory or something, but then Lt. Cmdr. La Forge had this weird idea yesterday to pull 250 of them and try to network them together for…something?..and they’re still strewn all across the floor since he left to deal with a plasma injector leak yesterday afternoon, so I guess we should put them away? I mean, I don’t even know if they’re still functional–and THIS is when the Vendorian terrorist leader decides to pull up and have a tentacle-measuring contest? Does he have any idea how busy we are right now? I don’t have time to deal with artificial gravity fluctuations or inertial dampener overloads today, I’ve got potatoes that are about to rot!
The ship has interia dampers. It doesn’t take any turns in a gravity sense during normal operations. It’s just smoothly level at all times.
Battle or red alert can knock interia dampers off line, so that when you would need things locked down.
Dude, have you ever watched TNG? The dampers go offline constantly.
On the bridge, so officers can look cool. No way the “we have first backup, but what about second backup” federation doesn’t have redundant, localized inertia damping in the cargo bays.
Without dampers, the entire crew become jam splotches on the back walls when the enterprise makes any maneuver
Random civilian on the Enterprise “ALL HANDS BATTLESTATIONS!” grips chair harder
Yeah, Keiko was a just a civvy. Even yellow alert means go home and wait for instructions.
What about the medical officer or officers in Physical Therapy?
Help clear sickbay in preparation for casualties, prepare plasma burn kits and dermal regenerators, monitor comms for damage reports and put together response teams.
I don’t think physical therapists are qualified to do those things.
Its common to be a trained firefighter in the navy, gear and all, even if your day to day job is postal clerk.
You can 100% train a physical therapist to put together medical kits and organize response teams.
And when the trauma you’re expected to deal with is “run a glowy light over any plasma burns and bring anything else to Dr. Crusher,” I think a physical therapist could probably get qualified in a few hours at most.
Unless the ship’s chiropractor is a private practitioner, they’re all gonna be Starfleet.
Also I’m pretty sure Sickbay is a shelter since there are bound to be people who can’t leave.
Bill the Galactic Hero vibes.
Finger over the DELETE BUFFER button just in case they’re boarded.
O’Brien: Worf, before we head into this battle, I need you to promise me something.
Worf: What is it, Chief?
O’Brien: If I don’t make it, go to my station and delete all my pattern buffers.
Pfft… Just beam anyone who boards the ship into space. No need to delete the secret stash so hastily.
