posted
Rapid? It was the fourth season before he got his promotion. Fandom usually accepts that doctors start out with at least a Lt. (jg) for department command and chain of command reasons. Anyone know how medical ranks work in the Navy or Air Force? Nurses tended to have a rank of Ensign (Ogawa, Voyager's first nurse, etc.), whereas the technicians or orderlies were always crewmen.
As for the "full commander" rank, they were pretty rare in the TNG era. The few full commanders we've seen are Riker, Shelby (field promotion), Ferris (field commission), Crusher, Dr. Quaice (really old guy), McCoy, Spock, Quinteros... In the XO position anyway, Lt. Commanders were far more common: Sisko on the Saratoga, Chakotay, Cavit, Riker on the Hood, the guy on the Odyssey...
IMO, the full commander's relative rarity is ammunition for the notion that lesser, smaller ships are mostly captianed by them.
posted
Bear in mind everyone we've seen with the rank of Captain was a Commander before that. Plus, you forgot Chekov, Uhura, Troi (after she passed the test), and probably others I'm forgetting at the moment.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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posted
And the prick with the maggott in his stomach was a commander too...Remick? I think so.
As to Bashier's promotion: by the time he's finally recieved it, we's already seen him save heads of state, wipe out plagues and the Harvesters and save future generations from the Quickening. He's done more than any other Trek doctor by season four (only possible exception is McCoy).
AND he plays a mean game of darts.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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capped
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posted
Back to the hypothesis of the requirement of rank, it may be that for the flagship of the Federation, they don't want a snot-nosed lieutenant (jg).
On a side note, I was watching a rerun of a game show a few months ago - that one where three people come out all pretending to be the same person and the celebrity panel has to guess who is the REAL so-and-so. Anyway, in this particular episode, the mystery guest was a female Vice-Admiral, head of the Navy's nursing branch. The host asked her later, "Who commands in the operating room?" She replied that while she was superior in the office, in the operating room, even if the doctor was only a lieutenant, she would be answerable to him. In other words, it wouldn't be out of the question for the chief surgeon on a starship to be a lieutenant and be giving orders to a nurse with a rank of full commander in a medical capacity. Besides, we saw Ogawa get promoted to lieutenant, remember?
posted
Bashir graduated the Academy with a rank of Ensign and Starfleet Medical with the rank of Lt. J.G. He basically had served for 4 years as an ensign before becomming a J.G. Then another four before getting to full Lt. And then there's the heroism which was mentioned. Doesn't seem out of line.
As for all captain's having been commanders at some point: Picard apparently wasn't.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
How sure are we that Bashir completed his training through Starfleet Medical? I mean, okay sure, he gets his bachelors through Starfleet Academy. But why do we assume he got his M.D. through Starfleet Medical?
Let's look at Troi. We know she went to Starfleet Academy - she says impressing her classmates is a motivating factor for her desire to test for commander. But where did she get her degree? Dialogue in "Tin Man" suggests she was at the university on Betazed for a period of time. Speaking of which, does Troi have a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry? Wouldn't you think that would be considered essentially for a position that amounts to "Ship's Shrink"?
posted
In response to the question about doctors in the Navy. No clue. Our ship didn't have a medical officer. Instead we had a HMC (Hospital Corpsman Chief E-7).
Although once I heard about a civilian medical specialist becoming a captain (O-6) because the only way he would serve the Navy is at the same pay he was making on the outside world.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
In my Air Force days (80s and early 90s), most of the doctors (and dentists, for that matter) I encountered were captains. Occasionally I saw a major, but that was pretty rare. The most senior-ranking doctor I ever saw was a lt. colonel who treated me the night I sprained my ankle.
During one training course I took the instructor mentioned that specialists with doctorates in needed fields (not just medicine) could be commissioned with a rank commensurate with their level of experience. The highest rank one could be commissioned with was full colonel (O-6), but that would be very unusual
-------------------- The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.
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posted
I remember Bashir talking about a romance he had once and saying that his graduating is what ended it because her father had offered him a job at a hospital, but that taking it would mean ending his Starfleet career.
This gives us two clues: When this graduation took place, he A) already had a starfleet career and B) had medical training sufficient to allow him to take a high-falootin' position at a hospital.
To me, this suggests that he had already been through the Academy, had been serving various assignments during his Starfleet Medical Training, and was speaking of this SM graduation.
It is, however, quite likely that he took some sort of Pre-med classes at the Academy, as would all cadets interested in serving as medical officers.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
On my last ship we had our SMO (Senior Medical Officer) was a civilian doctor and took a Navy Commision and they made him a commander based on his experience. Of course we also had a couple of Lieutenants and LCDR's who were civilian doctors but were facing malpractice suits so they joined the navy, how ironic. While we are on the discussion of healers, I wonder if Starfleet has a Chaplains Corps? I wonder how that would work.
-------------------- "Who cares if we bomb a few hospitals, it just means we got them a second time" Warrant Officer Robert Clift, CVN-71 OEF
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