Television compression and Starfleet's missing staff

Television budgets limit the number of actors who can appear as aides, specialists, and junior officers. The Star Trek scenes can therefore be read as dramatized versions of events in which a larger organization has been omitted from view. That interpretation explains why familiar captains and admirals perform so many roles that a real headquarters would divide among several people. It makes the fiction easier to accept, though the absent staff still weakens the command structure shown on screen.