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Always on Duty
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In Real Life, ships at sea, police departments, ambulance corps, fire brigades, and other 24-hour organizations have lots of people who work there, and split up into duty sections so that there is always someone available to deal with problems (and on ships, just the usual operation of the machinery, as well) and everyone can get some sleep, food, etc. In fiction, this doesn't seem to be the case. The Cool Starship runs into the Negative Space Wedgie, and who has the watch? Lieutenant Hero, Ensign Newbie, and Helmsman Recurring. A crime occurs? It's always our usual squad sent to find out what happened. There also exists a tendency for senior members of the organization to be at the controlling station all of the time. The Captain may be responsible for the whole ship, but seems to spend all their time on the bridge, for no stated reason. This is realistic in some circumstances—some things are important enough that The Captain needs to be involved, however tired they are—but this trope is for when it seems like they may as well set up a cot and sleep there, too. The reason for this is clear enough: Unless your production has a huge cast, there's only so many people who can be shown at a time. Even then, it's hard to make the audience care about all of them at once. So while having rotating watch stations would be realistic, it is hard to do well. Related to but distinct from The Main Characters Do Everything. It's not that the hero runs the entire ship themself, from the bridge to the engine room to the hangar bay, but that strange things only seem to happen whenever the main cast is on watch, implying that they're either on watch all of the time and don't eat or sleep, or that the other watch sections are absolutely boring with nothing to do. A Sub-Trope of Economy Cast and Conservation of Detail. Sister trope to Eternal Employee. Contrast Lower-Deck Episode, when the people on the relief watch do get an adventure. This can be Truth in Television in very small or overextended organizations, but is not sustainable for more than a few days, at which point everyone collapses of exhaustion. Examples: |
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