Star Trek: 10 Biggest Differences Between Kirk's Enterprise And Picard's

One of the oddest changes from The Original Series to The Next Generation was that the Enterprise now inexplicably had families and children onboard at all times, a fact that Picard himself expresses disagreement over in the pilot episode, Encounter At Farpoint.

The Enterprise-D even had a school and many children would spend years of their lives on the ship. This is terrifying when one considers how often the ship is threatened by aliens, anomalies, and other disasters. When the entire crew de-evolved into prehistoric animals in Genesis, all these children were affected too. They were subjected to memory loss in the episode Conundrum, and nearly assimilated by the Borg in Q Who?, not to mention the near weekly space battles.

Clearly, a starship is no place for children. Starfleet in The Original Series was much more logical in this regard, treating starships more like military vessels than luxury cruises, only allowing civilians and children onboard for short periods when necessary.