Just why send bridge crew. Those crew are important and mean to stay on the ship. Unless the mission required someone on the top like first-mate, you should send your boarding team or land team on mission.
Most of the eps, I see a dangerous mission with 2-5 bridge crew member. Sometime it is include both captain and first mate.
Sometime, it is fighting sorties, a first mate said: I need volunteer who is trained in close combat. And multiple bridge crew go with him. The next scene is the crews start shoting handgun in some dangerous place, maybe they also teleport inside enermy ship (boarding action), and sometime is fighting kungfu.
Why not send a sergeant and handful of soldiers ? The ship is quite big but there are no spare personel to send ?
I always like the theory that the entire Starfleet is just a relief valve for people who can’t be satisfied in a post scarcity utopia
They could stay on Earth and cause problems, or they can boldly go far the fuck away from an ideal society.
A high turnover of senior leadership due to stupid risks means that there’s room for promotion and ambitious people stay in the fleet.
Otherwise they’d return to Earth and fuck up society.
Historically, every society needs some kind of relief valve like this or domestic issues develop. Once it’s an entire world government, they need that relief valve to vent off planet. And that’s what Starfleet is.