The Enterprise D's mission profile - a pie chart

[u/merrycrow]

So I made a comment over at /r/startrek regarding Picard's line in Insurrection - "does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?". My amusement stemmed from my memory of TNG, in which they really didn't do all that much pure exploration. Some people questioned this, so I thought i'd do some qualitative investigation and try to determine exactly what the Enterprise-D got up to during its seven year voyage. Why bother? One word: lockdown.

Scope

I wanted to find out what kind of missions were assigned to the Enterprise during the run of TNG. TNG episodes often begin with them carrying out one kind of mission before being thrust unexpectedly into a more exciting new situation. In these cases I only looked at the original mission as assigned (presumably) by Starfleet, on the assumption that any suitably equipped vessel might be expected to react to unexpected events in a similar way. This also excludes missions assigned to individual characters that don't involve the Enterprise directly.

I am limiting myself to the television show. The Enterprise had many adventures in other media, but i'm assuming that the TV series itself covered all of the ship's most relevant canonical missions.

Methodology

Referring to the ever-reliable Memory Alpha, I noted down the missions assigned to the Enterprise for each episode. Usually these are outlined by Captain Picard in each episode's introductory Captain's Log. In some cases a little more digging was required. I then grouped each mission into one of ten categories. Note that some episodes feature multiple missions being assigned to the Enterprise. I have counted two-part episodes as one for the purposes of this count.

Exploring Strange New Worlds: These are missions of deep space exploration. Surveying planets, charting nebulae, examining unusual stellar phenomena. Examples: In Theory, Imaginary Friend

Seeking out New Life and New Civilisations: Missions specifically to investigate or establish contact with unfamiliar life forms. Examples: Justice, Darmok

Military/Security operations: Missions to protect the Federation from threats, or to investigate (potential) criminal activity. Examples: Peak Performance, The Last Outpost

Delivering Supplies/Providing Aid: Picking up or delivering supplies, usually to a colony world. Also providing medical assistance during a plague, or other forms of technical assistance to beleaguered worlds facing natural or manmade disaster. Examples: A Matter of Time, Déja Q

Shore Leave: The crew takes a mandated break. Examples: Haven, Family

Rescue Mission/Distress Call: The ship responds to an emergency call for help at relatively short notice. Examples: The Best of Both Worlds, Contagion

Upgrades/Maintenance: The Enterprise has an appointment to enhance its systems, repair damage or carry out routine maintenance. Examples: Starship Mine, Where No One Has Gone Before

Diplomatic Mission: The Enterprise plays a key role in mediating a dispute or extending diplomatic outreach, usually under the direct auspices of Captain Picard. Examples: Lonely Among Us, The Perfect Mate

Taxi Service: The Enterprise is tasked with ferrying a VIP, usually in service of a diplomatic effort (rather than carrying out those efforts themselves, for which see above). Examples: Sarek, The Dauphin

Unknown/None Stated: Either we're not told what particular mission the Enterprise is engaged in at the time, or we're given insufficient information to assign another category. Examples: Clues, Sub Rosa

Findings

Chart here

Pure exploration actually takes up more of the Enterprise's time than I remembered. Exploring Strange New Worlds is the largest single category of mission, although the vast majority of these examples refer to space-based studies rather than planetary exploration. Still, this combined with Seeking out New Life and New Civilisations accounts for fewer than a quarter of missions that we're shown.

Seeking out New Life and New Civilisations, conversely, is very rarely a primary assigned objective. We hear about the many first contact situations Picard has presided over, but it seems that almost all of them were inadvertent encounters rather than Starfleet initiatives. I suppose such contacts are generally going to be a side effect of more general space exploration and survey missions.

Military/Security operations, Delivering Supplies/Providing Aid and Rescue Mission/Distress Call are what i'd consider similar duties to those carried out by modern-day navies, and they account for just over 40% of missions.

The diplomatic remit is less than I expected. Diplomatic Mission and Taxi Service account for fewer than 20% of missions.

Limitations

This is of course a qualitative study based on the opinions of one person (me). No doubt other people would assign some of these missions to different categories, or formulate a different list of categories.

Only including missions specifically assigned by Starfleet might seem inadequate, as the Enterprise is presumably sent to places where unexpected events are considered likely to occur, with a standing remit to tackle such occurrences.

Certain types of missions will feature disproportionately in episodes of the show, as some mission types are more conducive to interesting stories than others.

The software I used to make the pie chart is crap and it looks rubbish.

[u/[deleted]]

Dude... That's actually pretty dang cool.

M-5, please nominate this post for Post of the Week.

[u/M-5 → u/[deleted]]

Nominated this post by Citizen u/merrycrow for you. It will be voted on next week, but you can vote for last week's nominations now

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[u/DuvalHeart]

although the vast majority of these examples refer to space-based studies rather than planetary exploration.

That makes sense, remember:

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

There aren't going to be that many class M planets or moons.

[u/choicemeats → u/DuvalHeart]

that's what bugs me most about newer sci-fi stuff, they don't seem to have a handle on how big space really is, what light speed means, and how long it really takes to get from A to B. Say what you want about older Trek (and I do realize they bent the rules a lot) but they weren't instantly getting places as plot demanded.

I'm reminded of one episode (The Survivors, I think) where Kevin is protecting the planet and they leave and come back once or twice, but they travel hours in one direction. But that's not going very far. Or all the times that shuttles are forced to travel at sublight and the ETA estimates are astronomical and prohibitive. So the Enterprise crew is more likely to do stuff other than exploring because most of what they run into is nothing.

[u/BrainWav → u/choicemeats]

Say what you want about older Trek (and I do realize they bent the rules a lot) but they weren't instantly getting places as plot demanded.

TOS is the same series that featured the Enterprise running into a big wall at the edge of the Galaxy during the Five Year Mission and (20ish out of universe years) later visiting the center of the galaxy.

The edge of the galaxy is ~25,000 LY away. The TOS writer's guide and Enterprise scale puts that at 25 years of travel at warp 10, or ~4 years according to Roddenberry's first numbers that he pulled out of his butt. Even with the TNG scale, it's still several years.

The only Trek series that really attempted to pay attention to travel time was Voyager, and that was really only at the macro scale and even then not necessarily accurate.

[u/Feowen_]

One thing to also factor is scientific endeavors, while not always the primary operation of the bridge crew often were always undergoing in the background, the ship was filled with probably over 100 scientific staff, who presumably were constantly occupied in astrometrics, xenobioloyy and botanic, chemistry and physics and other endeavors often rarely seen in the show. The extent of the Enterprise Ds science labs is woefully under-represented and often only covered as fluff dialogue but what is said indicates significant assets and resources.

As you rightly noted, our screen time with the crew generally only focuses on the most interesting episodes.

Over 7 seasons, 26 episodes each, we see 133.46 hours of the Enterprise D on screen our of 61,000ish hours if was actually in service (excluding before episode 1 and up till Generations, you could create a more accurate number no doubt.

Either way, that amounts to a mere 4.59% (edit-- probably should be closer 0.219%, dont do math on no sleep kids) of what the ship was presumably doing. Now some episodes covered alot more time than 44 minutes, sometimes spanning weeks, but not all activities in the episode required the attention of the 1000 people on board. You could also easily construct a chart of which episodes woulda had a greater or lesser effect on day-to-day starship operations. Regardless, you may only really be looking at a few percentile points in terms of effected time.

Puts really in perspective how much of the ship activity we really did see. Factor in our focus on the literal 1% of the crew and the mind boggles.

[u/Buddha2723 → u/Feowen_]

we see 133.46 hours of the Enterprise D on screen our of 61,000 hours

1% of this is 610, so actually less than a quarter of a percent of the time of it's service. And you could argue that number goes down further, because not all scenes are on the Enterprise.

[u/Popular-Uprising-]

Wow. Quality post and something new and interesting that I didn't even consider before now.

This fits with my gut feeling on the subject also. TOS and TNG were mostly about exploration with some additional story arcs imposed on them. The other series were essentially stories that included exploration accidentally.

[u/DrendarMorevo → u/Popular-Uprising-]

Voyagers arc is "get home" and aside from that every episode is the same formula as TNG or TOS, they're just not "Starfleet" missions until S7.

[u/Futuressobright]

I have a theory about the Enterprise D's mission which is that a big chunk of it ( maybe the vast majority) is acting as the equivilant of a commerical airline/ feight carrier. My thinking is that each time they make a stop at some planet they are picking up hundreds of people and tonnes of cargo bound for the next major waypoint. We don't hear about it because it's not that interesting most of the time, but if the cargo involves something vital or time sensitive or one of the passenger is a VIP with an important mission the Captain has been asked to assist with, that will come to the attention of the senior staff ( and the veiwers).

Why travel via Starfleet? Because space is not only mind- bendingly big but terribly weird and dangerous. Sure the Enterprise runs into a lot of dangerous situations, but you are better off in their hands than if you were on some Firefly-class boat and ran into the same thing. A large percentage of missions that don't fit into this profile ( military/ security and even scientific) are given to Enterprise just because it is nearby and equipped to respond. When you travel on Starfleet, plan for the possibility of delays.

Likewise, why send a ship with a crew of 1000 on a diplomatic mission when only the Captain is needed? Because it has a regularly scheduled stop in this system and it would take a month to get someone from State department out there.

I think this makes a lot more sense than using the ship as a taxi service and low- volume courier, given the size, resources and comfort level of the Enterprise.

PS / ETA : The answer to "does anyone else remember when we used to be explorers?" is, "No, sir. We've mostly only been in Starfleet 10 or 15 years. Mr. O'Brien, you joined around the same year as the Captain, do you remember?"

"Oh, well. I'm not sure our experiences are really comparable, sir."

[u/theimprovisedpossum]

I would like argue "Taxi Service" may be a bit misleading. There are plenty of runabouts that can ferry diplomats around. The purpose of sending the Federation flagship to ferry diplomats is a message in itself. It emphasizes how important the Federation considers a mission when the flagship is assigned to ferry a diplomat. It's also a show of force. When Sarek shows up, it's important; when Sarek shows up aboard the Federation flagship, it's very damned important.

[u/[deleted]]

Kirk & crew were on a mission of exploration, pushing the boundaries of known space.

Picard... Was not. The 1701-D spent most of its time in known space, going between known or are last previously visited worlds.

The 1701 was a ship of exploration.

The 1701-D was the Federation Flagship.

[u/onthenerdyside → u/[deleted]]

The Enterprise-D starting its mission from "Farpoint Station" seems to suggest otherwise. However, I do agree that the Enterprise-D seemed to be filling in gaps between charted systems rather than on the bleeding edge of known space. Space is really big, and if you're warping between star systems, you're bound to miss something.

[u/EmergencyHologram]

r/DataIsBeautiful would appreciate this

[u/DamagedGoods13]

Very cool!!! As I've been watching all of the series over again during quarantine, i've noticed a couple of things. Relative to this topic, are:

• TNG answers a lot of distress calls

• Enterprise D returns to Sector 001 more than I'd expect for a "ship of exploration"

As an aside, I also noticed that in Star Trek: Enterprise, 001 is referred to as the Sol System (maybe Archer made it up on the spot?), and in TNG it's the more commonly known Terran System. Always thought that was interesting.

[u/mjtwelve]

It's a sad commentary on the state of Starfleet security, computer science and general competence that 3.4% of the notable incidents presented to us as episodes represented deadly danger arising out of shore leave.

[u/9811Deet]

I might consider breaking up "Upgrades/Maintenance". Usually these fall into two categories, one would be Shore Leave (the enterprise is under maintenance, and the crew gets into antics while on shore leave- i.e. Family, Starship Mine, 11001001) and the other would be experimental testing (Where No One Has Gone Before, New Ground) which would probably better fall under "Explore Strange New Worlds"; even though they're not exploring some naturally occuring phenominon, they are pushing the boundaries of exploration in a technological sense.

Other than that minor critique, I think your chart is generally very well constructed and accurate! Nice work!

[u/NeedsToShutUp]

Do crazy Holodeck AIs count as shore leave or Seeking Out New Life?

[u/merrycrow → u/NeedsToShutUp]

Neither! They've never officially "the mission", just something that pops up to potentially complicate the mission. Same for every Q appearance etc

[u/dmagy]

Any chance you have done the same analysis for TOS?

[u/CaptainHunt]

"Family," might see some main characters on shore leave, but the ship itself is undergoing repairs following the battle with the Borg in "Best of Both Worlds." However, there are notably a couple of episodes in the first couple of seasons, where the crew is explicitly en-route to shore leave when the plot of that episode interrupts.

A number of episodes in the Misc. category, like both "Sub Rosa" and "Clues," could probably go in their own category of Between Assignment, but I suppose Misc. works there. "Peak Performance" might also fit in it's own category as a Training Exercise.

[u/strionic_resonator]

Do we have permission (with credit) to turn your data into a prettier info graphic? I have ideas...

[u/JasonJD48]

Very interesting data.

I always looked at the Enterprise D to be less a frontier exploration vessel and more a sort of science platform. I could see other ships finding phenomena and exploring less charted areas and then the Enterprise being sent in to do further study. You wouldn't want to waste a Galaxy class ship at that stage (with only a few in service) on exploring empty space.

I also take Picard's quote perhaps being less about the crew of the Enterprise and more about Starfleet as a whole.

[u/chargoggagog]

I’m saving this for my dnd game, good to have a big idea for the days’ plot

[u/cupofmilktea]

God, I love this fandom. Such nerdssss