I had a "Well, duh!" moment when I was in the shower a couple of hours ago. Having aquatic species aboard doesn't necessarily mean there is less room for the rest of the crew, it just means that the swimming pools are really big. At least one of the tanks can do double duty; just put in a balcony at surface level with diving boards and patio furniture. And lifeguards, too! All those female ensigns need to be trained to run in slow motion.
I think it would be cool to have a transparent aluminum bulkhead between Ten Forward and one of the tanks, too. I'll have to check the deckplans and see it I can fit that in.
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LUGTrek isn't really dead. Not as long as we remember it.
As long as that tank in 10-Fwd is there with the intention of allowing the dolphins to visit 10-Fwd, and not as one of the dolphins' quarters. That'd really suck.
I'd thought I'd read every page in the TNG-TM three times over. I've had the thing for eight years. I never noticed that there were dolphins and orcas crewing the Enterprise.
If a transporter can beam two Full size Humpback whales from the water, and transplant them into a water filled cargo hold of a B'rel class Bird of Prey (and note that is 80 some odd years before most 'modern' campaigns), why shouldn't a replicator work? The technology runs along the same lines . . . therefore I think a replicator will work underwater . . . save the fact that the food may, this is a big one, be a tad salty if our Cetacean crewmen & officers like their tanks filled with salt water.
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"See Everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little." -Pope John XXIII
A few concepts for Narrators to cross-index in their minds reg. cetacean (characters) on a starship:
* The 'Cetacean Probe' returns! (remember The Voyage Home?)We never found out what the probe was all about- OK a bit in the novelization. Maybe we shouldn't find it, some might say. But when you factor in cetacean PCs, doing an episode with this seems too good to resist.
* What about other aquatic races in Star Trek? Could be interesting for cetaceans to mix it up with, say, Antedeans. I'm sure more could be found, especially with all the RPG/non-canon stuff floating around.
* Exciting aquatic environments: The USS Voyager encountered an ocean planet once; I'm sure cetacean (N)PCs could find something to do in such a location. And if we look at some "real-life" locations like Jupiter's moon Europa...a Starfleet crew exploring such an ocean-beneath-the-ice would benefit from a couple of cetacean mission specialists, right?
* To finish up, some random brainstorming tidbits: Cetacean escape pods; Cetaceans in special Starfleet branches (A Section 31 cetacean, brrrrr...); humanoid exchange crew members on an all-cetacean starship; the weirdness goes on.....