History Main / CriticalStaffingShortage

* ''WesternAnimation/LegoScoobyDooHauntedHollywood'': When the gang wins a trip to the famous Brickton Studios, they find out that it fell on hard times since its star actor Boris Carnac passed away; Junior is one of the only remaining staff, [[WhyDoYouKeepChangingJobs left to handle the jobs of security guard, tour guide, and more besides all by himself]]. Once the film crew quits over Karnac's ghost seemingly haunting the shoot of a romcom, the gang ends up saddled with the responsibility of salvaging the movie.

* Wrestling/PaulHeyman was infamous for using wrestlers working Wrestling/{{ECW}} shows in roles that should have been filled by office staff. Heyman himself was in charge of negotiating with the network, other promotions, promoting his own product, booking...then he started losing wrestlers, mainly to Wrestling/{{WCW}} but also to the Wrestling/{{W|orldWrestlingFederation}}WF. While you can blame him for not investing his money better, definitely for not paying people while hiring an agent, one can at least understand the financial problems of ECW weren't easily dealt with precisely because of this.
* Promotions following in ECW's wake such as IWA Mid-South and Wrestling/{{CZW}} often {{invoke|dtrope}} this image, whether true or not, in an attempt to capture some of that same "charm". Prime offender Wrestling/RingOfHonor ran an angle where match maker Wrestling/NigelMcGuinness investigated a Wrestling/BulletClub attack on the promotion and found security needed ''quadrupling''. Wrestling/{{WSU}} played this for [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]] ''and'' [[PlayedForDrama drama]] when CZW took over and proclaimed the [[NoBudget cuts]] to security would be leaving fans "on their own".

* The [[ImpartialPurposeDrivenFaction Night's Watch]] in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' was once comprised of thousands of fighters who were able to man all 19 castles holding the Wall against the wildlings and White Walkers from the north. By the time the series takes place, the Watch consists of a few hundred men who can only hold three castles, while the rest have been completely abandoned, which bites them mightily in the ass when the forces in the North mount a massive invasion for the first time in centuries. It's noted that the Watch is so understaffed at the very beginning of the series and that the North is getting full of young nobles needing estates that the Lord Commander of the Watch and the Lord Paramount of the North are beginning to negotiate about manning the abandoned castles with said nobles (as long as they pay their taxes to the Watch instead of the North, the Lord Commander seems amiable to it).

-->-- '''T'Pol''', ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' ("In a Mirror, Darkly")

[[folder:Comics]]

[[folder:Film]]

* The [[ImpartialPurposeDrivenFaction Night's Watch]] in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' was once comprised of thousands of fighters who were able to man all 19 castles holding the Wall against the wildlings and White Walkers from the north. By the time the series takes place, the Watch consists of a few hundred men who can only hold three castles, while the rest have been completely abandoned, which bites them mightily in the ass when the forces in the North mount a massive invasion for the first time in centuries.
** It's noted that the Watch is so understaffed at the very beginning of the series and that the North is getting full of young nobles needing estates that the Lord Commander of the Watch and the Lord Paramount of the North are beginning to negotiate about manning the abandoned castles with said nobles (as long as they pay their taxes to the Watch instead of the North, the Lord Commander seems amiable to it).
* In Pratchett and Gaiman's ''Literature/GoodOmens'', there is the interesting example of the Witchfinder Army, once a thriving paramilitary organization but by the time of the book reduced to two. However, both Heaven and Hell believe the WA is at least regimental-sized...
* Creator/TerryPratchett

** In ''Literature/GoingPostal'', it is revealed that the Royal Post Office in Ankh-Morpork, formerly a city institution employing thousands, has atrophied with the years to a point where only two men remain--an elderly eccentric and a young boy who could be described as a little bit strange. The job of the new manager is to get it up and running again--with a staff of only two men and a cat. This doesn't last long, though; a load of retired postmen come in to lend a hand, and the new Postmaster retains the services of some {{golem}}s, meeting his LoveInterest in the process.

** In the "City Watch" subseries, the Night Watch, made virtually redundant by the legalizing of crime, is reduced to four men (Two incompetents and an idealist, commanded by an alcoholic) to police a city of a million by the time ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' is set. This gets better over the course of the series, with the City Watch eventually numbering in the dozens and later the low hundreds (Which is still a rather small organization to police a city with a population of one million, though they don't have to investigate thefts, since the Thieves' Guild takes care of that themselves).
* This is an underlying theme in both of the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' prequel series, which take place in the aftermath of ThePlague decimating the original colonists. In ''Literature/StephanieHarrington'', it is the justification for a large immigration incentive program, bringing many families with valuable skills to the Star Kingdom, including the Harringtons. In ''Literature/ManticoreAscendant'', widespread manpower shortages plague all levels of Manticoran society, including the Royal Manticoran Navy, leaving most of their warships unmanned and parked in orbit over the homeworld.

* The [[HotSubOnSubAction final act]] of ''Literature/TheHuntForRedOctober'' (at least the book version) gives some additional difficulties to the people that remain on the titular missile sub because they're twenty people handing a ship designed to be run by a crew of a hundred and twenty. When the sub gets attacked, this renders them unable to shoot back because they barely have enough people to run the bridge and the engineering compartment, and can't spare anyone to load torpedoes. An earlier sub-plot [[AdaptedOut excised from the movie version]] involved the running of an [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece about-to-be-decommissioned]] American sub to the spot where the ''Red October'' was to be "sunk" and be destroyed in its stead, while also being only staffed by about a dozen officers who had to do multiple duties, like an engineer working as a cook when off shift.

* In Creator/DavidGemmell's ''Literature/{{Legend|1984}}'', the Drenai fortress of Dros Delnoch is supposed to be manned during wartime by 40,000 soldiers. However, the current Drenai leadership has focused more on domestic matters rather than maintaining a strong military presence on the borders. When a massive Nadir army lays siege to Dros Delnoch, the fortress only has 10,000 under-trained and badly led soldiers to hold the walls.
* ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'': The Folly, the police division supposed to be responsible for all of Britain's magical law enforcement, is down from its full divisional strength to a single officer, raising to three and back down to two again over the course of the series. This has left London (and presumably the [[BritainIsOnlyLondon rest of the UK]]) at serious risk, due to infighting by the various {{Anthropomorphic Personification}}s, dangerous magical criminals like the Faceless Man, and TheMasquerade starting to fall apart, as they are unable to even respond properly much less anticipate magical crimes.

* In ''Literature/JurassicPark'' John Hammond promised the guests brought to tour the park before its official opening bragging that he spared no expense. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Hammond [[CuttingCorners cut corners everywhere]]. The reason why Dennis Nedry stole some dinosaur embryos with the intent to sell them to a competitor is because Hammond forced him to program the the park's computers to take care of everything, from running the tour vehicles to operating the feeding mechanisms - without paying him for the scope increase.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': In the novel "Child of Two Worlds" a nasty outbreak of Rigelian Fever on the USS ''Enterprise'' causes the ship to become increasingly short staffed. Captain Pike is forced to run the ship with fewer and fewer people, the one nearby planet with the cure not being forthcoming with the cure, and angry Klingons to top it all off.
** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': Scotty hijacks the old ''Constitution''-class USS ''Yorktown'' from a [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece Starfleet museum]] after Spock is captured by the Romulans. He routes control through his shuttle, and takes steps to ensure that the automation systems he set up don't overload like they did on the ''Enterprise''. While the shuttle's computer is but he is still a single person running a starship meant to be run by hundreds of people.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]
* ''{{Series/Andromeda}}''. The ''Andromeda Ascendant'' originally had a crew of thousands, but in the first episode everyone but Captain Dylan Hunt either abandons ship or is killed as it gets stuck in orbit around a black hole. For most of the series the crew consists of the captain and the five (later four) former crew of a salvage ship who pulled the ship away from the black hole 300 years later (due to TimeDilation). Other characters join as well, and the crew varies between 6 and 7 for most of the rest of the series. Andromeda's ArtificialIntelligence can fill most crew roles herself so they get by, but it's pointed out several times that the ship is way less effective in combat--or anything else--than it would be fully crewed.
* On ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'', the ''Galactica'' was about to be decommissioned, so the Colonial Navy already stripped it of its best personnel and it is left with a RagtagBunchOfMisfits who were meant to be retired or discharged after the ''Galactica'' is scrapped. When the war with the Cylons starts, combat losses makes this problem even worse. New personnel are recruited from the civilian fleet, and at one point, Adama has to cut a deal with the prisoners on a prison ship in order to use them as needed labor. There is almost a mutiny when skilled people are kept in undesirable job positions because their skillset is too valuable to allow them to be promoted or transferred out.
* In the ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'' episode "Potato", Lord Blackadder goes on an exploring expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. The ship has a total crew of four: Captain Redbeard Rum, who has no legs and doesn't know how to navigate from London to France, much less the south of Africa, and three passengers: Blackadder, Percy, and Baldrick, none of whom have ever sailed before. The voyage goes disastrously.

* ''Series/{{MASH}}''

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead''
** Dr. Jenner is the only one left of the hundreds of doctors that once staffed the CDC.
** Later on the cast settles for a time in a prison that had at least a couple hundred inmates and guards. At their peak of RedShirts there are maybe three dozen. This is a real problem in the fourth season when there just aren't enough able-bodied people around to do everything even before people start dropping like flies from an epidemic (and then rising again).

* In ''Series/StargateUniverse'' less than 50 people arrive on a ship designed for many more--but it's a good thing they number so few, because the ship is falling apart after millions of years despite its RagnarokProofing, and they are far less prepared than the expedition to Atlantis. Most of their time is spent trying to keep systems failures from killing them.

*** When the ''Enterprise'' crew falls victim to alien spores in "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E24ThisSideOfParadise This Side of Paradise]]" the entire crew beams down to a nearby planet, leaving Kirk running the ship by himself for a time.
*** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]]" Kirk and a small boarding party try to get the wrecked and almost totally abandoned USS ''Constellation'' operational enough to help the ''Enterprise'' defeat the planet killer. It's hard enough for the few people from the ''Enterprise'' to run a ship that like the ''Enterprise'' normally has a crew of over 400 people, but the ''Consteallation'' is basically a "dead hulk" as Kirk puts it to Commodore Decker.
*** Then a maveolent entity draws the USS ''Enterprise'' and a Klingon ship Captained by Kang to an uninhabited planet in "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E7DayOfTheDove Day of the Dove]]." After the entity kills all but about 40 Klingon crew members and forces the ''Enterprise'' to rescue them, the entity causes the majority of the ''Enterprise'' crew to be trapped below decks so it could force the two crews to fight each other on equal footing.

'''Dr. Crusher:''' Then why am I the only crew-member? (the computer makes a strange noise) Aha, got you there.

*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E05Babel Babel]]" an artificial aphasia virus created by the [[LaResistance Bajoran Resistance]] to be deployed against the Cardassians was accidentally deployed on [=DS9=] after the Cardassian occupation had ended. The virus eventually affected everyone on the station except Odo and Quark, who are forced to run the station by themselves until a cure was found.
*** Then [=DS9=] is practically empty in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E04InvasiveProcedures Invasive Procedures]] after most of the inhabitants evacuated due to a plasma disruption. The station is run by a skeleton crew consisting of Sisko, Odo, Bashir, Kira, and Dax along with Quark who managed to get himself left behind on the station. This makes it easy for a band of renegades to come on board and briefly take over.

*** Occurs in the episode "Displaced" where crewmen keep disappearing while aliens appear in their place. Before too much longer, they're down to a skeleton crew, and then it turns out it's a ploy to take over the ship, beaming crew members off one at a time and replacing them with their own people.
*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E23One One]]" ''Voyager'' has to traverse a nebula that is flooded with radiation deadly to everyone except Seven of Nine and The Doctor. Except for those two individuals, everyone else goes into stasis so the radiation won't effect them and they don't have to take a detour that would add years on to their journey. This leaves Seven and the Doctor running the ship by themselves. While it at first goes smoothly, the radiation begins to affect the ship's systems, and Seven begins experiencing psychological difficulties due to being almost completely alone on ''Voyager'' as she was not used it having been a Borg drone for so many years. Her psychological problems get worse when the doctor is knocked off-line by failing computer systems but she powers through and successfully gets ''Voyager'' through the nebula.
*** In the episode "Equinox", ''Voyager'' encounters the titular starship and find that they've got this problem bad, especially since they went through over half of their {{Redshirt}}s during their first month in the Delta Quadrant.
*** The twoparter "Workforce" has an industrialized world so desperate for workers that they resort to kidnapping and brainwashing any aliens they can find. Most of ''Voyager'''s crew gets this treatment after being forced to abandon ship by a radioactive mine, leaving the ship with a crew of four.
** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': In "In A Mirror, Darkly", the 47 surviving mirror-''Enterprise'' crew are forced to operate the [[spoiler:U.S.S. ''Defiant'']], a ship meant to be crewed by 400 people, by themselves. They manage to make it work, largely by virtue of the fact that their new ship is a hundred years more advanced and powerful than their enemies.
* ''Series/WKRPInCincinnati''. A radio consultant is hired by Mama Carlson to report on the station. Everyone acts out of character for him so his report will be useless. At one point he says that Herb, [[TheMainCharactersDoEverything a sales "staff" of one]], is horribly overworked and needs an entire staff under him.
* ''Series/TheOrville'': The only reason Ed Mercer is even given command of the titular ship is because the Union has 3000 ships to crew, and he's the only captain available. It's later subverted when Kelly reveals she used her friendship with the admiral to get him posted and the crew shortage was just an excuse to hide her involvement.

* Promotions following in ECW's wake such as IWA Mid-South and Wrestling/{{CZW}} often {{invoke|dtrope}} this image, whether true or not, in an attempt to capture some of that same "charm". Prime offender Wrestling/RingOfHonor ran an angle where match maker Wrestling/NigelMcGuinness investigated a Wrestling/BulletClub attack on the promotion and found security needed ''quadrupling''. Wrestling/{{WSU}} played this for [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]] ''and'' [[PlayedForDrama drama]] when CZW took over and proclaimed the [[NoBudget cuts]] to security would be leaving fans "on their own".[[/folder]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', the [[ImpartialPurposeDrivenFaction Grey Warden]] force in Ferelden is dangerously small for two reasons. In the BackStory, the Wardens were banished from the country by a Fereldan king after a rogue Warden-Commander raised a rebellion against him; they were only allowed back 30 years before game begins. Furthermore, in the first story mission of ''Origins'', most Fereldan Warden recruits are killed by the Darkspawn horde when the paranoid general Loghain leaves them and the reigning king to die, thus leaving the country mostly unprepared to fight TheHorde. He also refuses more Grey Wardens to arrive from Orlais, paranoid of anything Orlesians do.
* A game mechanic in ''VideoGame/CityBuildingSeries'', and quite possibly the single biggest headache in the games. Services that have less-than-full staff work slower, and since housing and industry depend on these services walking past, this creates a Catch22Dilemma: housing is devolving because the lack of services, so people are kicked out. This lowers your population, and in turn the amount of available workers, which means services suffer, which means devolving housing, which...\\
Compounded by the fact that some buildings don't work ''at all'' with even a single worker missing, to the point where the game considers that up 5% unemployment (out of thousands) to be fine, a mere ''10 workers'' is a major cause for alarm (when it's quite common to see shortages in the hundreds).\\

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'s'' Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Never mind staff, the only actual living ''person'' in the entire game is Chell. There used to be a lot more people working there, but [[spoiler:[=GLaDOS=] killed them all]].
* Happens to the ''Normandy'' in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' after [[spoiler:the Collectors abduct the entire crew minus Shepard, his/her companions, and Joker. Unshackled EDI takes care of most of the grunt work.]]
* Implied in the ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games when you set the budget for services really really low.
* In the thirteenth mission of the first game in ''[[VideoGame/GhostRecon Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon]]'', you are able to walk right through the gate to a Russian air force base due to mass desertions mentioned in the mission briefing.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel III'', there's revealed to be a lack of military to take care of all the problems across Erebonia. The eastern part of the country is dealing with attacks from [[PrivateMilitaryContractors jaeger corps]] and [[TheConspiracy Ouroboros]], which has left the western portion of the empire with a shortage of personnel should any problems pop up there. This is also the main reason Thors' Branch Campus was founded. The students would be sent to patrol the area during their field exercises, and monitor activity in the area to see if Ouroboros is up to anything. Whenever things go south during a field exercise, the staff has to be reminded about the personnel shortage and accept that help isn't coming.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Archipelago}}'': [[ImpoverishedPatrician Anthony]]'s household never was large, but when we see it, it counts six people (including the surly teenager) besides the absent master and his six-year-old daughter. Two servants have actually resigned this very morning. These six people are trying (and slowly failing) to keep a fairly large castle running.

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueVsTheFatalFive'': During the events of the movie, most of the Green Lantern Corps are busy dealing with a war on Rann, leaving Oa staffed with a skeleton crew of Kilowog, Jessica Cruz, and a few others. As a result, the Fatal Five are able to breeze right through one of the most secure places in the galaxy and [[spoiler:get all the way to the Central Power Battery.]]

** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E05Babel Babel]]" an artificial aphasia virus created by the [[LaResistance Bajoran Resistance]] to be deployed against the Cardassians was accidentally deployed on [=DS9=] after the Cardassian occupation had ended. The virus eventually affected everyone on the station except Odo and Quark, who are forced to run the station by themselves until a cure was found.

* In Creator/DavidGemmell's ''Literature/{{Legend}}'', the Drenai fortress of Dros Delnoch is supposed to be manned during wartime by 40,000 soldiers. However, the current Drenai leadership has focused more on domestic matters rather than maintaining a strong military presence on the borders. When a massive Nadir army lays siege to Dros Delnoch, the fortress only has 10,000 under-trained and badly led soldiers to hold the walls.

** In the "City Watch" subseries, the Night Watch, made virtually redundant by the legalizing of crime, is reduced to four men (Two incompetents and an idealist, commanded by an alcoholic) to police a city of a million by the time ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' is set. This gets better over the course of the series, with the City Watch eventually numbering in the dozens and later the low hundreds (Which is still a rather small organization to police a city with a population of one million).

* In the ''Star Trek'' novel "Crossover", Scotty revisits his automation system when he steals a [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece museum ship]]. The computer in a TNG-era shuttlecraft proves to be more than up to the task of controlling a TOS-era starship, meaning that Scotty can fly the entire thing on his own.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': Scotty hijacks the old ''Constitution''-class USS ''Yorktown'' from a Starfleet museum after Spock is captured by the Romulans. He routes control through his shuttle, and takes steps to ensure that the automation systems he set up don't overload like they did on the ''Enterprise'', but he is still a single person running a starship meant to be run by hundreds of people.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': Scotty hijacks the old ''Constitution''-class USS ''Yorktown'' from a Starfleet museum. He takes steps to ensure that the automation systems he set up don't overload like they did on the ''Enterprise'', but he is still a single person running a starship meant to be run by hundreds of people.

*** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]] Kirk and a small boarding party try to get the wrecked and almost totally abandoned USS ''Constellation'' operational enough to help the ''Enterprise'' defeat the planet killer. It's hard enough for the few people from the ''Enterprise'' to run a ship that like the ''Enterprise'' normally has a crew of over 400 people, but the ''Consteallation'' is basically a "dead hulk" as Kirk puts it to Commodore Decker.

*** In the episode ''Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine'' Kirk and a small boarding party try to get the wrecked and almost totally abandoned USS ''Constellation'' operational enough to help the ''Enterprise'' defeat the planet killer.

*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E23One One]]" ''Voyager'' has to traverse a nebula that is flooded with radiation deadly to everyone except Seven of Nine and The Doctor. Except for those two individuals, everyone else goes into stasis so the radiation won't effect them and they don't have to take a detour that would add years on to their journey. This leaves Seven and the Doctor running the ship by themselves. While it at first goes smoothly, the radiation begins to affect the ship's systems, and Seven begins experiencing psychological difficulties due to being almost completely alone on ''Voyager''.

** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E05Babel Babel]]" an artificial aphasia virus created by the [[LaResistance Bajoran Resistance]] to be deployed against the Cardassians was accidentally deployed on [=DS9=] after the Cardassian occupation had ended. The virus eventually affected everyone except Odo and Quark, who are forced to run the station by themselves until a cure is found.

--->'''Dr. Crusher:''' It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
--->'''Captain Picard:''' We've never needed a crew before.

** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E05Babel Babel]]" an artificial aphasia virus created by the [[LaResistance Bajoran Resistance]] to be deployed against the Cardassians was accidentally deployed on [=DS9=]. The virus eventually affects everyone except Odo and Quark, who are forced to run the station by themselves

* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] several times in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E5RememberMe "Remember Me"]], after all the crew has disappeared except Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher, only the latter of which has RippleEffectProofMemory.
-->'''Dr. Crusher:''' It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
-->'''Captain Picard:''' We've never needed a crew before.
** And later, after Picard disappears as well:
--->'''Dr. Crusher:''' What is the primary mission of the starship ''Enterprise''?\\

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
** The series begins with both the ''Voyager'' and the Maquis ship sustaining heavy casualties while far away from Federation space. The only way ''Voyager'' can be operated is by merging the two crews and having skilled Maquis take over key positions on the ship. Notably, neither crew has a doctor or even a medic left alive, so the Emergency Medical Hologram has to be used all the time, which it was not really designed for. Over the course of the series, the EMH develops a distinct personality and starts fighting for his rights as a person.
** Occurs in the episode "Displaced" where crewmen keep disappearing while aliens appear in their place. Before too much longer, they're down to a skeleton crew, and then it turns out it's a ploy to take over the ship, beaming crew members off one at a time and replacing them with their own people.
** In the episode "Equinox", ''Voyager'' encounters the titular starship and find that they've got this problem bad, especially since they went through over half of their {{Redshirt}}s during their first month in the Delta Quadrant.
** The twoparter "Workforce" has an industrialized world so desperate for workers that they resort to kidnapping and brainwashing any aliens they can find. Most of ''Voyager'''s crew gets this treatment after being forced to abandon ship by a radioactive mine, leaving the ship with a crew of four.
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': In "In A Mirror, Darkly", the 47 surviving mirror-''Enterprise'' crew are forced to operate the [[spoiler:U.S.S. ''Defiant'']], a ship meant to be crewed by 400 people, by themselves. They manage to make it work, largely by virtue of the fact that their new ship is a hundred years more advanced and powerful than their enemies.

** ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock'': Scotty has jerry-rigged the ship to operate with only five crew. The ''Enterprise'' is supposed to have a crew of hundreds. At least the automation breaks down later. Scotty says "The automation system's overloaded. I didn't expect to take us into combat, ya know...!" It's understandable that simply moving in a straight line could be done with a far-smaller crew than usually necessary.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': In the novel "Child of Two Worlds" a nasty outbreak of Rigelian Fever on the USS ''Enterprise'' causes the ship to become increasingly short staffed. Captain Pike is forced to run the ship with fewer and fewer people, the one nearby planet with the cure not being forthcoming with the cure, and angry Klingons to top it all off before the crew obtains the crew and the situation is resolved.