I think this might warrant a more in-depth fact-finding:
putaro wrote:Well, I'm curious because as far as I could tell the actual episodes never mention an actual prohibition other than T'Pol's comment about subordinates - but it seems to have taken pretty deep roots.
When Archer is talking with the kids, I think that needs to be taken at face value.
1) He talks about people sharing quarters and that making dating difficult. Now, if you want to define dating as going to movie night together than sharing quarters won't make that difficult. Actually, anyone who has ever lived in a college dorm should know that sharing quarters doesn't make sex that difficult. Though, Enterprise's cabins don't have doorknobs so I don't know where you'd put the coat hanger.
Here's the relevant passus from "Breaking the Ice":
ARCHER: Stay put, Commander. This is important. Start the recording. To the students of Ms Malvin's fourth grade class at the Worley Elementary School in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. This is Captain Archer aboard the starship Enterprise. On behalf of the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for your transmission. We all got a real kick out of your drawings and letters. You asked a lot of interesting questions. I wish we had time to answer all of them, but if we did that, we wouldn't get much exploring done. So I've selected a few, and hopefully our answers will give you a better idea of what life is like out here. Liam Brennan asks 'what do you eat?' For the most part, the same things you eat at home. Our Chef can make anything from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to turkey with all the trimmings. We have a hydroponic greenhouse onboard where we grow fruits and vegetables, and we can also replicate certain foods with our protein resequencer.
Here's one from Geoff Miles. 'Is dating allowed on Enterprise?' Well, it's not discouraged, but there isn't a lot of privacy on a starship. Most of our crew share quarters with at least one other person, so it wouldn't exactly be practical. But if two crewmembers decide that they really like each other there are a lot of places they can go to look at the stars. Chloe O'Shannon wants to know, 'how do we talk to aliens?' I think I'll give that one to my Communications Officer, Ensign Hoshi Sato.
There are some things to consider:
1) He's talking to fourth-graders, meaning 10 or 11 year olds, so one can assume dating to be meant like meeting for an ice-cream or going to the movies. When Archer refers to dating, it's more meant in a sense of spending off-duty time together. In a later episode, he urges T'Pol to 'fraternize a little' and I doubt he meant 'see if you can get laid.' It is clear from the context (and the target audience) that we are not talking about personal relationships, but more likely about spending off-duty time, which might include private meetings.
fast-foward : Fallen Hero
T'POL: Starfleet forbids officers from fraternizing with subordinates. Unless you've been violating regulations
TUCKER: Those regulations don't apply to you. Have you been suffering?
T'POL: On Vulcan, we mate only once every seven years.
Here fraternization is clearly used in the context of shagging. And she makes it clear that there are standing regulations against it. It has to be noted however, that she only mentions it to apply to relations between officers and subordinates, which makes it possible for such rules not to apply to people of equal rank. This theory is confirmed by the following passus of "Home"
ERIKA: Why did we stop seeing each other?
ARCHER: Well, I was your superior officer. It wasn't appropriate.
ERIKA: You're not my superior anymore. (they kiss) I wonder if Starfleet would approve? The captains of the only two warp five ships?
putaro wrote:2) The writers put it in there. It would have been pretty easy to just say "No, dating's not allowed" for Archer as well.
Again, we're talking about 4th-graders. Saying "Not allowed" would not make it probable that they'd develop ambitions to join Starfleet, as "dating prohibited" would mean "No fun" to a 10-year old.
putaro wrote:When T'Pol is talking in Raijn, she's definitely saying there's no regs about senior officers having a relationship. I wouldn't say that's even a little ambiguous. If it was against regulations then it would be Lieutenant Reed's concern as well as all of the other officers.
Here's the scene from Rajiin
T'POL: I see no reason to be concerned with idle gossip.
TUCKER: It doesn't bother you?
T'POL: We're both senior officers. If we were pursuing a romantic relationship it wouldn't be Lieutenant Reed's concern, would it?
TUCKER: I suppose not.
T'Pol says that they're senior officers, meaning, she considers them of equal rank. This is however not even relevant as she's technically a civilian unless she's gotten a field-commission. By her pointing out the officer-think makes it clear that Trip fears to break regulations, else he'd not be concerned at all.
putaro wrote:As far as NX-01 being the first long mission ship, I don't think that can be at all assumed. It was the first FAST ship but we've got the boomers going on multi-year missions. Why wouldn't Starfleet be doing that? At warp 1, Alpha Centauri is a multi-year mission.
Well, they do need the Vulcan star charts in "Broken Bow" and except for the boomers they have never heard of many other races other than Vulcans or Denobulans, so there could not have been many deep space missions, even with slower ships. Why Starfleet didn't go out with slower ships is anybodies guess, but if they had, they'd have ran into the Andorians or Tellarites before Enterprise shipped out.