The command structure of the ship depends a great deal on what the ship is designed to do, and how many separate divisions are needed to do these tasks. A battleship has a different bridge structure than an aircraft carrier, to reflect the different roles of the ships, while a destroyer has a different bridge structure than a battleship to reflect the much smaller size and crew of the ship. Even the technology being postulated has a huge role in how the bridge is structured, the HMS Surprise (a Napoleonic era frigate) has a different bridge structure because it is a sailing ship, compared to a modern ship with an engineering division to run the power plant. (A nuclear submarine's engineering division is obviously different from a gas turbine powered Aegis cruiser).

So the first thing that needs to be defined is what sort of ship is this (the class or role), and then the technology needed to do the things required to run the ship and carry out the role. A ship with a large crew could mean that there is a lot of work which cannot be automated for whatever reasons (a wooden sailing ship needs a lot of hands to set the sails), or there are a lot of different tasks (an escort carrier with a similar sized crew is divided into many divisions to both run the ship and the air wing).

Once yo ave settled on that, then each division has an internal reporting structure, and each division has a senior officer who reports to the Captain, either directly on the bridge, or to the bridge via communications systems (having everyone on the bridge when the enemy photon torpedo comes crashing in is a bit of a difficult situation).

Within the bridge crew, there are also subdivisions. The Captain is on the bridge for critical operations, but when he is otherwise occupied there is an XO, and a Chief of the Boat to report to the Captain on issues regarding training, discipline and morale of the enlisted ratings and (on modern ships) perhaps civilian advisors from the various companies who make the systems that run the ship.

There are also military staff who are critical to the mission but not bridge staff, like the legal and political advisors for non military issues. There are also officers and crews like the ship's Purser, Quartermaster, Chaplain and Surgeon, who have critical roles to play and would be accessible to the Captain.

A realistic setting would have to split the action between the Bridge crew (on a modern warship, they would control the action below decks in the Combat Information Centre or CIC), various divisions which are separated from the Bridge and CIC for practical and safety reasons (the Engineering Division should be in a separate compartment, and an Air Wing equivalent would have several different compartments as well), and a conference room where the Captain can meet advisors during planning sessions outside of combat or sailing manoeuvres (the Captain would be on the bridge during docking or transiting through a spaceport, for example).

As a writer, there is no reason not to do this, but if you are contemplating shooting this for a film, TV show, Podcast etc. you can see the time and expense for setting up sets will be much greater than "Star Trek", where everything happens in one place.

The command structure of the ship depends a great deal on what the ship is designed to do, and how many separate divisions are needed to do these tasks. A battleship has a different bridge structure than an aircraft carrier, to reflect the different roles of the ships, while a destroyer has a different bridge structure than a battleship to reflect the much smaller size and crew of the ship. Even the technology being postulated has a huge role in how the bridge is structured, the HMS Surprise (a Napoleonic era frigate) has a different bridge structure because it is a sailing ship, compared to a modern ship with an engineering division to run the power plant. (A nuclear submarine's engineering division is obviously different from a gas turbine powered Aegis cruiser).

So the first thing that needs to be defined is what sort of ship is this (the class or role), and then the technology needed to do the things required to run the ship and carry out the role. A ship with a large crew could mean that there is a lot of work which cannot be automated for whatever reasons (a wooden sailing ship needs a lot of hands to set the sails), or there are a lot of different tasks (an escort carrier with a similar sized crew is divided into many divisions to both run the ship and the air wing).

Once you have settled on that, then each division has an internal reporting structure, and each division has a senior officer who reports to the Captain, either directly on the bridge, or to the bridge via communications systems (having everyone on the bridge when the enemy photon torpedo comes crashing in is a bit of a difficult situation).

Within the bridge crew, there are also subdivisions. The Captain is on the bridge for critical operations, but when he is otherwise occupied there is an XO, and a Chief of the Boat to report to the Captain on issues regarding training, discipline and morale of the enlisted ratings and (on modern ships) perhaps civilian advisors from the various companies who make the systems that run the ship.

There are also military staff who are critical to the mission but not bridge staff, like the legal and political advisors for non military issues. There are also officers and crewmembers like the ship's Purser, Quartermaster, Chaplain and Surgeon, who have critical roles to play and would be accessible to the Captain.

A realistic setting would have to split the action between the Bridge crew (on a modern warship, they would control the action below decks in the Combat Information Centre or CIC), various divisions which are separated from the Bridge and CIC for practical and safety reasons (the Engineering Division should be in a separate compartment, and an Air Wing equivalent would have several different compartments as well), and a conference room where the Captain can meet advisors during planning sessions outside of combat or sailing manoeuvres (the Captain would be on the bridge during docking or transiting through a spaceport, for example).

As a writer, there is no reason not to do this, but if you are contemplating shooting this for a film, TV show, Podcast etc. you can see the time and expense for setting up sets will be much greater than "Star Trek", where everything happens in one place.