Civilians on Destiny

[Whitering]

Okay, so, we have the scientists and the military personnel, we have primarily focused on them and that's fine. The only other two we get to spend much time with seem to be Wray and Chloe.

Wray is...I won't say useless, she is a check on Young, but she is not really helping either, so she plays the role of an antagonist because they don't want a monster of the week.

Chloe on the other hand is...well, is she destined to eternally be the damsel in distress? What is she doing in all her spare time on the ship? I would go nuts not learning something so that I was useful. She could be helping TJ and learning basic field medicine, she could be learning some important maintenance tasks or put her in the freaking kitchen instead of that poor military guy that got stuck there at the beginning of the season.

Keeping her as the eternally useless damsel in distress will do SGU no good in the long run. So, ya, right now I dislike her character, but I wouldn't if they gave her something to do but be the middle point in a love triangle and be hurt, captured or otherwise endangered at almost every opportunity.

Show her training or something, please (and not fighting, she isn't built for that).

[ONeill4tW]

Isnt she um... trying to become SGU's Daniel Jackson learning all the archeology stuff on the Ancients? Thought that was what she was doing when it was mentioned in Lost. Though she probably was just BSing it anyhow.

[Cory Holmes]

It also begs the question: what are the other civilians doing on the ship? Do they just float around, day to day waiting for something to happen or have they all been given jobs to do? Do some of them tend the hydroponics garden? Do some help with ship repair and readiness for comabt?

The ship has been shown to be highly automated, allowing most functions to be controlled from the Apple Core unit, but what other jobs are there for the civilians to do?

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

Chloe is trying hard to make herself useful, given that she wasn't stationed on the base and didn't really have a job to do there. She's been seen helping TJ, and she's been studying to be more useful on planet trips. I don't know how many other pure civilians there are or if the rest of those that aren't military were scientists on the base.

I think the writers are keeping some of these people in the background and they'll come out later?

And yeah, what real jobs are there?

[s09119]

Chloe's proven quite useful so far, moreso than some of the scientists who seem to just do what Rush tells them anyway.

[garhkal]

I would love for a civ centered ep where they show some if not most of those other civies and waht they do.

[Cory Holmes]

So let's step back for a moment. Instead of focusing on individual civilians, let's look at life in general onboard Destiny. Due to the Ancients, the quarters and beds are human-scale and calibrated for human sizes and needs. Lights are dimmable on-command and there are windows.

Waking up and dressing seem to be normal, given that they all have Earth clothes and various bits of familiar technology.

Breakfast is where things start to get iffy. There is no in-room kitchen, so it's off to the messhall for breakfast. Standard for military bases and camps, I suppose, but still not "normal". Breakfast itself is composed of whatever odds and ends the crew has managed to cobble together, so it might be considered a very exotic "foreign food experiment" on Earth.

It's only after all that that things get really weird. Assuming the crew has various jobs and assignments, how are they set up? Standard 8-hour workday with weekends off? A new arbitrary time system? Are there any days off at all?

Your theories on this?

[Artemis-Neith]

To run the needs of 70 or so people, leaves a lot of work to be done for non military, non scientific personal. Collecting foot, and water on planets they stop. I think, you'll have always civilians, and military people in those groups, military for protection, and the rest to do the work.

After collecting everything, foot must be prepared for storage, or in case of plants, for the hydroponic gardens. Somebody must take care for those gardens, also. Somebody has to clean the rooms people are living in, and not only the quarters for the individuals, but also those rooms who are for all of them. We've never seen how they wash their clothes, is it done from everyone by oneself? Or is it done collective?

I think the more you do collective of those day by day routine, the more people like scientists, and soldiers, can spend more time with their work. So, the civilians can do a lot of useful, and importand things on Destiny, like in every community on earth.

[garhkal]

I would say 2 Twelve hour shifts.. 35 a shift.

[late_wolfy]

So, you're saying the show focuses on the military the most? Maybe sometimes, but you only brought up 2 civilian characters then. There are plenty more.

Chloe, Wray, Eli, Rush, Brody

There is also a few others who often have a few lines.

As for the military you have: Young, Scott, TJ, Greer, James

I'd say it's pretty even really

[Whitering]

I said scientists and military...so that includes everyone you mentioned except Wray and Chloe. The scientists work for the Air Force, and frankly, so does Eli.

[Icarus Base]

Haven't the civilians been seen doing Yoga type exercises with one of the crew members? One episode i saw the other day showed at least 10 civilians running around the ship for exercise. It seems as though they try to keep them occupied

[Taiko]

It also begs the question: what are the other civilians doing on the ship? Do they just float around, day to day waiting for something to happen or have they all been given jobs to do? Do some of them tend the hydroponics garden? Do some help with ship repair and readiness for comabt?

The ship has been shown to be highly automated, allowing most functions to be controlled from the Apple Core unit, but what other jobs are there for the civilians to do?

Why do we always treat the civilians like they were random passengers on Oceanic Flight 815? The other civilians should be scientist or engineers. Why fly cooks and custodians to Icarus in the first place? The military's First Sergeant would just assign such duties to the troopers and you don't have a minimum wage civilian allowed in on the grand secret of space travel, stargates and hostile aliens. As scientist and engineers the civilians would be doing much the same thing they did on the Icarus planet just as the Airmen and Marines of the Defense battalion are doing pretty much the same thing they did. Study, gain knowledge about the universe and use their skills to build practical goods beyond a flamethrower, distillery and kino sled we have seen so far. In both cases solider and civilian they have to step up and man the gate teams or has the series change the terminology to the Star Trek "away teams"?

There should be only two useless mouths to feed on Destiny. The government bureaucrat without a bureaucracy to file reports to and the daughter/aide to a dead political leader

[magictrick]

Do we even know the number of civilians other than Wray and Chloe that are on the ship? I don't see why the number of civilians would be very high. I mean they would have no reason to be at the Icarus base in the first place. Wray is with the IOA and Chloe was the daughter of the senator. Maybe there's a reason we haven't seen other civilians, and that's because there aren't very many.

[Artemis-Neith]

Why do we always treat the civilians like they were random passengers on Oceanic Flight 815? The other civilians should be scientist or engineers. Why fly cooks and custodians to Icarus in the first place? The military's First Sergeant would just assign such duties to the troopers and you don't have a minimum wage civilian allowed in on the grand secret of space travel, stargates and hostile aliens. As scientist and engineers the civilians would be doing much the same thing they did on the Icarus planet just as the Airmen and Marines of the Defense battalion are doing pretty much the same thing they did. Study, gain knowledge about the universe and use their skills to build practical goods beyond a flamethrower, distillery and kino sled we have seen so far. In both cases solider and civilian they have to step up and man the gate teams or has the series change the terminology to the Star Trek "away teams"?

There should be only two useless mouths to feed on Destiny. The government bureaucrat without a bureaucracy to file reports to and the daughter/aide to a dead political leader

I think, you're right. With the exception of a very few, like Chloe, and Camile, most of the civilians must be scientists, and engineers, so they're quite useful for the group as a whole. And it makes sence, that daily routine work, like cooking, and custodial personal will be done by military people on Icarus base. I guess the group would retain the same structure on board Destiny. Anyway, the cook is the same I don't think, that anyone -- even not Chloe, or Camile -- of them is completely useless, everybody must have a lot of work to do, day after day, after day. And there must be a lot of work to be done, that we don't see it on screen, don't mean, it's not there at all.

Do we even know the number of civilians other than Wray and Chloe that are on the ship? I don't see why the number of civilians would be very high. I mean they would have no reason to be at the Icarus base in the first place. Wray is with the IOA and Chloe was the daughter of the senator. Maybe there's a reason we haven't seen other civilians, and that's because there aren't very many.

It was said in the beginning that about 80 people made it from the Icarus base to Destiny. Greer and Scott counted the guns early in Air I, it was about 23, if I remember right. So, I think one can assume that they have about 20 to 25 soldiers amoug the whole group. From all we've seen so far it seems not more. In the few cases you see nearly the whole group, you see mostly people in civilian clothes, and I don't think, that we've soldiers in civil clothes in the group. That means also we have much more civilians on Destiny, than soldiers, but without concrete numbers it's not more than a guess.
But for me, it would make sence to have a lot of scientists on the base, Icarus was a research facility after all, with military personal to protect those, and run the base for all daily routine, but would there be really a need to have more soldiers than scientists/civilians?