posted
I don't think that would happen. The Encyclopedia may claim that a black pip means "warrant officer", but, even if it's true now, I doubt it's what it meant when O'Brien wore it.
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quote: I follow a lot of military history and parlance, but im still not clear on what it means to go from 'warrant officer' (like obriens hollow pip indicated) to a master chief (which his chevrons work out to in most peoples reasoning) or if thats even likely.. anyone know?
That would be a demotion. A warrant officer is superior in grade to any enlisted man. He or she doesn't have the rights and responsibilities of a commissioned officer (and therefore is junior to an ensign or 2nd lieutenant), but the warrant officer still receives a salute from enlisted personnel.
To throw another problem into the mix, consider this: O'Brien was tactical officer under Captain Maxwell. That would be a strange position for a chief to have, especially since a Nebula-class ship is an explorer, Starfleet's top of the line design.
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posted
Actually, O'Brien was Ben Maxwell's tactical officer on the Rutledge, which i believe was New Orleans-class...
but the fact remains.. there werent any officers on the frigate? O'Briens had a lot of odd jobs though.. he wasnt originally a specialist in transporters, but was forced to learn fast by jury-rigging them during the First Cardassian War.. then Maxwell liked his tactical ability so much he had him do that.. then he became transporter chief on the E-D, then operations on DS9, which encompasses a lot more. And what happened when Starfleet assigned engineers who were officers? They had a few lines about it with Ensign Muniz in his episodes like 'The Ship' (O'Brien pointed out he didnt have to call him sir)
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Following current naval tradition, one can only salute when covered (wearing a hat). There are no uniform hats for Enterprise.
-------------------- "Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It?s us. Only us." Rorschach
posted
But not formal hats that are considered part and parcel of a full uniform.
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I'd still love to see some epaulets on the boys and girls of NX-01.. oh well...
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Hm... If you oly have to salute when wearing a hat, could you avoid saluting by taking off your hat every time a superior walks by? Pretend to be scratching your head, or something...
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"O'Briens had a lot of odd jobs though.. he wasnt originally a specialist in transporters, but was forced to learn fast by jury-rigging them during the First Cardassian War.. then Maxwell liked his tactical ability so much he had him do that.. then he became transporter chief on the E-D, then operations on DS9, which encompasses a lot more.
And don't forget that he was at conn during "Farpoint".
"And what happened when Starfleet assigned engineers who were officers? They had a few lines about it with Ensign Muniz in his episodes like 'The Ship' (O'Brien pointed out he didnt have to call him sir)"
They got round that by conveniently having all engineering staff on the station and Defiant be non-coms. Which strains credibility. When Nog returned though, O'Brien was quite clearly still his superior officer (and I think Nog called him "sir" as well, although that might have just been out of respect).
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posted
O'Brien's stint in an officer position on the Rutledge could be explained by attrition: in "The Wounded", he says he beamed down to defend part of the Setlik III colony against surface assault, and in "Armageddon Game", he says he barely managed to save his captain and a bunch of others by repairing a field transporter on Setlik III. So we might speculate that, as was typical for many starship captains, Maxwell beamed down with a big bunch of his senior officers. The Cardassians then killed a number of them, depriving the Rutledge (a ship smaller than the Voyager) of key personnel. O'Brien stood in until a starbase could be reached - partially as a reward for his heroics.
The stint at E-D battle section helm could also be due to personnel shortages - the ship was missing many key officers, after all.
Aboard DS9, however, O'Brien did command a number of officers. Both Neela and Anara, the first-season assassin and her predecessor, seemed to be Ensigns, and so were many of the uncredited Starfleet extras doing O'Brien's bidding. One or two such exceptions I could understand, especially in a fuzzy joint command structure like that, but it became pretty unrealistic after a while.
posted
Muniz was not an Ensign, as I recall. He was an enlisted man.
I guess I don't find it that hard to believe that DS9 didn't have any officers in the engineering field. It was a backwater post that was never going to go anywhere. It needed alot of grunt work done when Starfleet first took over. Now, after awhile, and especially when the Defiant was stationed there, it would seem more reasonable to have a few officers on board.
posted
The station's Starfleet complement need not have been very large: during the first season, about 300 people crowded the corridors in a typical day ("Captive Pursuit"), yet even in the later years, the UFP component of the crew could be evacuated by just a handful of runabouts ("Call to Arms") presumably not even making multiple trips. So it would be theoretically possible that there weren't enough officers to man the Engineering dept.
Yet we did see plenty of officers from Starfleet there, wearing yellow and yes sir'ing O'Brien. Perhaps many of these people were actually part of the Security dept, though? Just like Security could borrow LaForge's men in "Chain of Command", perhaps O'Brien was loaning people from the officer in charge of Starfleet Security forces - Primmin or somebody like him, later Eddington, then probably Worf (that Klingon is a workaholic - he'd certainly want to pull double or triple duty aboard the station).
It seems weird, though, that the person in charge of these officer-level people would be so seldom seen. And that there would be so many officers in the Security force to begin with, when Engineering would have none. I suspect the role of the top yellowshirt on the station was not to usurp Odo's role in station law enforcement, but to stand by and train for military action like invasion repelling. Only in exceptional times would Primmin and his kind take Odo's place or help him in his task. A weird arrangement in any case.
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The theory of O'Brien filling in for officers on the rutledge seems as good as any.. maybe he did it for a few years, as Maxwell really liked his spunk and just decided to not go by the book and have him on the bridge, because he needed someone he could trust there. Keeping in mind that Maxwell doesnt seem much like a cool head, maybe he made that decision.
What bothers me more is that, even though they finally acknowledged enlisted ranks in Starfleet after all those years by giving O'Brien chevrons on his collar, whenever they have crewpeople on VGR they just have blank collars.. i could imagine some variant of a single slash on the square or a single chevron on the square to indicate their rating, going along the system of O'Brien's 3 chevrons and two pippy things sewn on there
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posted
As for saluting, in the British Army, when you're in the presence of a superior and you don't have a hat on, it's customary to straighten to attention until he acknowledges your presence. How he does that if he doesn't have a hat on either opens whole cans of military-issue worms. . . Tricky thing, ettiquette.
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Probably he realizes that theres no way for him to salute you unless he goes to get a hat, so he feels so sorry for you that he cannot relieve you of your at attention status that he shoots you.
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