Well now I just look silly. The very next episode they split the ship.
@jon I always found this unbelievable. Can you imagine the amount of engineering needed to be able to split the saucer section off, and for what reason? Just in case? Because it's cool?
I've been in too many meetings to believe anyone would sign off on that level of feature creep.
@jonty the Enterprise is designed for crew to take their families along, so they said “oh, it’s fine, the saucer will run away whenever your kids may be in danger” and then they put in place a sign off process so onerous it only happened when all senior management were out and Geordie has been left in command. Perfectly believable.