lol, upon watching the entire series for a 4th time. why would they allow kids on board especially after the Borg incident? being a kid on that ship would be horrible. the ship is constantly being attacked or bounced around.
shareI don't think even Q could find a way to argue against that.
It's not just children, though, it's ANY kind of 'untrained civilians'.
The implications are STAGGERING, but just to mention one, tiny thing:
The prime directive.
It can't exist if you bring with you untrained civilians, because they would NOT understand such a directive, and would probably fight against it, if it means the 'death of the innocent'.
This means, they might REBEL at any time, they might cause a MUTINY, and then what? You can't keep thousands of people in the brig all the time.
Remember, that is just ONE of the implications.
I mean, this is not a darn CRUISE ship, it's a basically military exploration vessel (or supposed to be, but they almost never end up doing what the intro always promises us, so basically this show lies to us from the get go) with structured military hierarchy, with military terminology and labels and ranks, from captains to number ones to engineers to who knows what.
So they have this super well structured crew with, I assume, lots of rigorous training behind them, and then they bring an ENORMOUS bunch of everyday joes and families, kids and other untrained idiots that don't know what's going on, while they go on dangerous missions and encounter beings like Q... How many people were killed on the first 'The Borg' encounter again? Were those civilian families?
Even IF it could somehow be justified (and I can't even figure out a way to do that, no matter how hard I try), what is the reason or point of it?
Why would they make it so? What compels anyone to include families on this kind of missions, or ANY 'untrained civilians'?
What does ANYONE get out of it, including the families? Aren't there more family-friendly ships they could use? What the heck is this?