quote:This scheme also lacks the rank of Commodore.
Yes, but we have the reference to Commodore Probert in TMP.
quote:And in ST2-5, there was no rank pin for Lt.Cmdr.
ST2-3. The Alien at Starfleet HQ in TVH was the first person with the Lt. Cmdr.-pin.
quote:So the brief absence of these rank markings shouldn't count as implied absence of rank.
Very true, but TMP is somewhat different, because it uses a stripe-rank-system. Ensigns in TMP wore one broken stripe (eg the Alien bridge officer) and Lieutenants one full stripe (eg Ilia, Chekov). So, no stripe-combination is left for Lt. JG.
quote:Or, rather, in the later TOS movies the marking exists in memo form but is not seen on-screen
At least 2 commodores were in the TVH Federation Council scene (the black cat and the Andorian with hair).
quote:Then again, what is the one-pip flag rank in TNG?
Well, since the TNG rank pips were clearly based on the USN rank stripes, I came up with this rank system for TNG Season 1:
If this is correct, we had two Commodores during TNG: Gregory Quinn and Mark Jameson. Since both were called "Admiral", I believe the rank was renamed from Commodore to Rear Admiral (lower half).
There's another indicaton for this renaming:
Admiral Quinn wanted to promote Picard from Captain to Admiral.
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To throw a few more monkey wrenches into the equation, there's the bottle of Romulan ale dated 2283 that McCoy gives Kirk in ST2, along with his line that "it takes this stuff a while to ferment." If this means that the bottle is a year or two (or more) older, then Voyager's 2270 date for the end of Kirk's mission can't be correct. If we assume that each season is roughly equivalent to a year, then we have to allow two years or so from "Space Seed" to the end of the five-year mission. However, the fifteen year gap between the episode and the movie, coupled with the date on the ale bottle, means that each year that the ale ages pushes the date of TMP that much further. A 2285 date for ST2, for example, gives "Space Seed" a 2270 date, the end of the mission 2272, and TMP either 2274 or 75, depending on how late in the year the mission ended.
On the other hand, a 2285 date for ST2 gives a 2279 date for TMP a couple of other problems. For one thing, it would require Chekov to go from lieutenant to full commander in six years or less, and Kirk to go from either captain or rear admiral (depending on whether or not his rank reduction was made permanent) to full admiral in the same space of time. That's a pretty good trick in either case.
Incidentally, Timo, the rank markings on Kirk's epaulet consisted of only one star, meaning his rank was Starfleet's equivalent of the US Navy's rear admiral (lower half). Where commodore fits into this mess is anybody's guess.
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I'm all for the idea that the commodore-equivalent rank of TNG era is called "Admiral" of some sort (although I hope to dear Prophets that they drop the idea that "the lower half of the rear" is a dignified military term). I'm not sure if I buy your early TNG flag rank marker system quite yet, though... Perhaps the 1st season Admirals just plain didn't wear their rank insignia?
The Lt(jg) dilemma is no dilemma if we disregard the idea that one broken stripe would equal Ensign. It didn't in TOS, after all, and the TMP scheme follows TOS in all other known regards. It's not as if anybody wearing that broken stripe would ever have been addressed as Ensign, right?
Thanks for the Lt.Cmdr pin correction! I should have remembered that.
Umm... Where did you find pics of ST4 where you can discern a Commodore pin? Lemme see!
quote:I'm not sure if I buy your early TNG flag rank marker system quite yet, though... Perhaps the 1st season Admirals just plain didn't wear their rank insignia?
We had Quinn and Jameson with gold braid, Savar with gold braid and one pip, and Aaron with gold braid and two pips.
quote:It's not as if anybody wearing that broken stripe would ever have been addressed as Ensign, right?
Yes, exactly that happened. The Alien bridge officer with one broken braid was called "Ensign" by Uhura.
quote:Umm... Where did you find pics of ST4 where you can discern a Commodore pin? Lemme see!
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Whoops, desperately trying to keep up with the responses:
Okay, so Uhura didn't notice one of her Ensigns had gotten a promotion when she was away... Big deal.
There were PIPS in "Conspiracy"? I gotta rewatch! I thought your scheme was based merely on postulating what wasn't exactly forbidden. But if it's actually built on on-screen evidence, then I'm an instant convert. It makes sense. Or at least more sense than most of the things related to TNG season one.
And to respond to what Woodside Kid wrote when I was typing away...
The round "15 years" reference could and IMHO should be taken to mean something between 15 and 17.5 years, which gives us a bit more leeway. "Space Seed" could go comfortably to 2268 or even 2267, then, and not contradict the 2283-plus dating of ST2.
Chekov's career seems to skyrocket, true, but I don't think Kirk ever got promoted past Rear Admiral. At least his pin on ST2-4 corresponds to the Rear Admiral rank as specified by Bob Fletcher - it just happens that the pins for all the other Admiral ranks look pretty much the same from afar.
And the single starburst on Kirk's shoulder in TMP could mean just about anything. Perhaps it's a generic symbol for SF Command (much like the similar symbol on the door of Kirk's executive shuttle)? A full Admiral might wear the exact same number of stars, except his sleeve would have more braid. We never got a large enough sample of TMP-era flag officers to tell one way or the other...
Personally, I don't like the idea of a 2279 TMP, given the visual differences between it and the later movies. And like said, 2277 ('78?) is when we already have proof of the ST2 uniforms being in use, in "Cause and Effect"... But mid-2270s are still a possibility. I'd prefer something equidistant from TOS and ST2.
Timo Saloniemi
[ August 05, 2002, 05:53: Message edited by: Timo ]
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quote:Kirk to go from either captain or rear admiral to full admiral in the same space of time. That's a pretty good trick in either case.
But Kirk never got a promotion to full admiral. His rank insignia in TWOK was a Rear Admiral's pin.
quote:Incidentally, Timo, the rank markings on Kirk's epaulet consisted of only one star, meaning his rank was Starfleet's equivalent of the US Navy's rear admiral (lower half). Where commodore fits into this mess is anybody's guess.
Yet, his sleeve stripes indicated Rear Admiral (upper half). Commodores had probably 3 stripes on the epaulets.
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I don't buy the idea that Kirk's shoulder epaulets were some kind of generic admiralty symbol. Every other officer rank we saw in the film matched the sleeve markings to the epaulet markings; why make a difference for a person serving at HQ? After all, we dont do a similar thing to the rank insignia of officers assigned to the Pentagon.
My quibble as to where commodore fits in has to do with the fact that (when it existed), it was the lowest flag officer rank. If my surmise about Kirk being a one star admiral is correct, then where does that leave commodore rank?
Unfortunately, the rank structure in ALL the movies is screwed up. Lt. JG disappears in TMP, Lt. Commander is virtually gone as well, and I don't know what the hell Valeris is supposed to be in TUC (lietuenant? lt. commander? lt. jg? take your pick). And, speaking as an ex-NCO in the Air Force....WHERE THE HELL ARE THE ENLISTED FOLK????
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quote:My quibble as to where commodore fits in has to do with the fact that (when it existed), it was the lowest flag officer rank. If my surmise about Kirk being a one star admiral is correct, then where does that leave commodore rank?
Maybe Rear Admiral (with one star) was the lowest flag rank at this time and Commodore a combination between the rank and the position of a senior captain.
quote:And, speaking as an ex-NCO in the Air Force....WHERE THE HELL ARE THE ENLISTED FOLK????
TMP: All the people with blank shoulder tabs or triangles or squares on it.
ST2-7: All personnel in jumpsuits with black turtlenecks
TNG: Personnel without rank pins or with one hollow pip
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quote:Originally posted by Woodside Kid: To throw a few more monkey wrenches into the equation, there's the bottle of Romulan ale dated 2283 that McCoy gives Kirk in ST2, along with his line that "it takes this stuff a while to ferment."
Why would a bottle of illegal Romulan ale (noted to be from accross the Nautral Zone) be labeled with an Earth date? "Gambit" and "Unification" clearly establish the Romulan exodus from Vulcan to have been about two thousand years ago... if Romulus orbits a type-G star and has a similar year-length to Earth, this fits pretty well for being a Romulan date. I think the bottle's vintage can be ignored for timelining purposes.
quote:Originally posted by Timo: The round "15 years" reference could and IMHO should be taken to mean something between 15 and 17.5 years, which gives us a bit more leeway. "Space Seed" could go comfortably to 2268 or even 2267, then, and not contradict the 2283-plus dating of ST2.
Well, we know that TWoK-TFF were probably all within one year of each other, despite Okuda's stretching in the Chronology. Certainly TVH is only three months after TSfS. While some time passed before TFF, the implication is that the Enterprise-A is still untried and untested, so anything more than a year would be pushing it. I believe a Starlog article quoted someone as saying TFF was supposed to be six months after TVH. Whatever. You get the point. Anyway, in TFF, Nimbus III is 20 years old. It couldn't have been founded before "Balance of Terror," which is within months of "Space Seed." So the relevant movies simultaneously take place 15 years after TOS Season One (by TWoK) and 20 years after TOS Season One (by TFF). We can ignore one or the other, or use those dates as upper and lower limits. I choose the latter.
Furthermore, we know that "Space Seed" can't be in 2267-68, if you accept that TOS occurred in roughly production order over several years. "Sarek" puts "Journey to Babel" in 2266-67, and "Trials and Tribble-ations" puts "The Trouble With Tribbles" in 2267-68. Since these two episodes are very close to each other, we can safely say that they both take place in 2267. Both are second season episodes, which means that "Space Seed," as an early first season episode, would have to be in 2265 or, more likely, 2266, unless one wants to compress time to ridiculous levels.
[ August 05, 2002, 07:38: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
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even before the Okudachron became common, people still say that the '2283, it takes a while to ferment' line was a joke.. basically, its saying that the Romulan ale wasn't that old at all, because it is like drinking moonshine, and the date was really close to the presumed date of the movie. even if we push the date up further, to concur with the movies '23rd century' tagline, we still can't make that bottle very much older at all. people who are taking it too literally and getting huffy about the okuda date.. well, think about it. i think Diane Duane originated this hypothesis, back in the day before chronologies when fans and novelists still ran the history of Trek, and it made sense then too...
ok.. the whole board took a big facelift while i was typing this, by damn!
as to disappearing ranks: just because lt j.g. disappears for a while doesnt mean they eliminated it and brought it back. same with non-coms (i actually read the ST:Mag article where they theorize that non-com ranks were abolished for a few years, making O'Brien a lieutenant, then re-established causing him to be busted down. can anyone imagine the logistics of how stupid this would be for bookkeeping or morale purposes? to eliminate a whole rank for no reason?) *sigh* i dont support any of these nonsensical claims. TOS had juior grade, TMP had junior grade. we just didnt see it, or the way we saw it was inaccurate in some way...
BTW, i think that Commodore, which has been eliminated in the present, returns in the future as a position or honorary title (much like it was originated, created to show a captain in command of captains).. basically, a one star flag officer could either be a Rear Admiral or a Commodore.. it depends on what his assignment is. This would explain any post TMP commodores (or post TVH.. nice caps! :-) )..
BTW, i remember the Reeves, writing under the pen-name 'Bill Shatner' wrote a few paragraphs on how Commodore is a rare rank that is skipped by many officers in Starfleet by the TNG era in one of the newer Kirk books. so leaving it as a 'skippable' rank leaves it open to be used, and explains Kirk's non-use of it.
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I've always had the view that Kirk's promotion was partially a Public Relations move on Starfleet's part. Yeah, it was a reward for Kirk's super-successful five-year mission (according to generally-accepted conjecture), but it was also probably some kind of "advertisement" or politically-related move. Depending on what kind of politics they had at that time, anyway. Kirk was something of a maverick -- is it possible that some high-up admiral might've tried to rein him in by giving him a desk job disguised as a promotion? I don't remember much about TMP, what was Nogura's attitude (did he even appear in the movie? I know he was in the book.) towards Kirk?
At any rate, it seems that Commodore is more of a field rank than a Command job. The Commodores were all either exalted starship captains or starbase commanders. If Kirk was vaulted into the Starfleet Command hierarchy, jumping a rank just might be possible. Especially when you also factor in the popularity mentioned above.
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quote:TOS had juior grade, TMP had junior grade. we just didnt see it, or the way we saw it was inaccurate in some way...
The absence of the Lt. JG doesn't make sense and can not explained within the Trek Universe. It was a big mistake by Povill due to sloopy research about the TOS ranks.
BTW: What happened to the Forum logo? I liked the old one better.
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so thats two things i disagree on.
im prefectly content with there being unseen J.G.s all over the place, no explanation needed.
and the new logo is cool
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quote:im prefectly content with there being unseen J.G.s all over the place, no explanation needed.
But what rank insignia do they have, when a broken stripe is for Ensigns and a full stripe is for Lieutenants?
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i think the system has enough problems for us to disregard the broken stripe/no stripe inconsistency.. there are a number of explanations for it, and i always look to the way of reason to deal with costuming errors. basically, it doesnt make sense the way they did, so i assume there is a deeper explanation. just like how were they supposed to tell non-coms apart in TOS with no stripe ensigns? they did somehow, we just dont know. how are TNG petty officers differed from CPOs and the problematic 'warrant officer'? its a small detail that doesnt make sense unless you assume there is an explanation you just can't see.
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