Can someone out there do a body count for me?
I was reading an interesting article by Kaylennea Pierce-Bown called “Star Trek: The 10 Most Heartbreaking Deaths, Ranked.” And then I thought to myself, ‘You know, that’s kinda’ cold-blooded. We think these deaths are heartbreaking only because we know about them’.
I ask: How many deaths happened during Picard’s captaincy anyways? I am not only talking about visiting dignitaries, alien assailants, and strange cosmic entities. We normally expect them to get theirs. I am thinking about all of the poor families who were stuck onboard as Jean-Luc ramrodded the ship through one catastrophe after another.
At least with Janeway’s Voyager, we knew right after the first episode how many bodies were left jettisoned from torpedo tube 1. (There’s a little piece of trivia for you die-hard Trekkies. Do you know how many Voyagers died over the course of the show?)
A Galaxy-class starship such as USS Enterprise-D normally had a complement of approximately 1,000-6,000 crew members, including civilian residents and families. [Source: memory-alpha]
During its 8-year run, I’m pretty sure Picard’s Enterprise (the TV-run) racked up more corpses than a land skirmish in Star Wars. I dedicate this blog post to all the unnamed fallen.
Now, can someone out there do a body count for me? I know someone knows.
THIS JUST IN:
One of our readers was nice enough to send this excellent video that does a pretty good job answering the question posed above:
The sources I can find vary on the count. Memory Alpha lists 42 confirmed deaths on the Enterprise-D, but notes that there were “light casualties” in ST:G that were not counted. I found another source that lists 57 dead over the seven seasons of ST:TNG, but doesn’t explain how that was counted or why the total is higher.
Sources:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_casualties_(24th_century)
https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/2u5yit/a_history_of_hazard_pay_in_starfleet_mortality/