posted
Ummm, well, the Defiant is stationed at DS9. Other ships have maximum warp speeds in the 9.5 range. So, maybe this was a ship that was going that way anyway. Or maybe it was an Olympic Class hospital ship.
All we know is that Ezri said the Destiny was taking Dax back to Trill.
quote: Originally posted by Dat: Well we know there's not a rank requirement to be a CMO on either a ship or a station.
Actually, we don't know that, since I don't recall any Trek series giving us explicit job descriptions for any position. Also, it isn't all that surprising that a junior officer might be selected for DS9. Until the discovery of the wormhole, DS9 wouldn't have been on the wish list of most career-minded officers; it wasn't exactly a high profile assignment.
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Well, even though Bashir ended up taking the DS9 CMO position, he did claim he could have picked any assignment (supposedly meaning any MD position open in the Fleet at the time). And according to "Explorers", his competition Elisabeth Lense did - she became the CMO of the Lexington, a coveted assignment by all standards.
I'll have to check the episode for confirmation, but AFAIK, her position was made explicitly clear, and her collar still showed the pips of Lt. (j.g. or s.g.). Presumably medics get their promotions thanks to service years or extracurricular achievements or something, so there's no proof of actual competence on the collar of a doctor. A three-pipper might be simply older than a 1.5-pipper, not significantly more competent. Or he might have completed courses on the nostril care of Joolian mangulates, but this doesn't really make him a better starship CMO.
One wonders if this goes for all fields of specialization in Starfleet. Or at least all blueshirt fields. Naturally service experience counts for something, but it seems that even one-pippers can handle key jobs aboard small and medium starships competently enough.
posted
Another interesting note: Ezri was promoted to Lt. J.G. as soon as she was made the counselor aboard DS9. She had to finish a couple of courses, which Sisko talked Starfleet Medical into waiving. I just find it interesting that the promotion in rank accompanied her position. Maybe a J.G. rank is the minimum for being a senior medical officer. It's also possible that she was in line for a promotion anyway.
We know that promotions don't always accompany and a position promotion. Worf was made a high ranking officer aboard DS9 without being promoted to Commander.
posted
My personal theory has been would-be doctors typically do the Academy in 4, graduate w/ensigns pips and blue shirts, and then move onto Starfleet Medical for 3 or 4 more years, and on graduating they automatically get promoted to Lt. (j.g.). It would explain nicely how a 27-year old Bashir arrived "fresh out of Starfleet Medical" w/a pip-and-a-half in Emissary.
Lense was indeed a Lt. (j.g.) to my recollection.
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You graduate from the Academy, are given rank, and then move on to medical school, flight school, or whatever, and upon graduation from that, get another promotion.
Naval Aviators go into flight school as ensigns, and graduate with the rank of LT (jg).
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The two theories that coincide with the Okudachron 'eight-year' assumption are that A) Starfleet Academy has a medical program, which requires you to learn not only your complete SF line officer training (Bashir was often shown being able to step in to other stations.. tactical, helm, etc...) and your medical degree.
B) Troi and McCoy apparently didnt do this.. Troi is established to have gotten a non-military psychiatric degree ("Tin Man" says she graduated at The University of Betazed), then been commissioned as a staff officer based on that status (note the reference to her rank in "Disaster").. she then had to up some sort of officer training to become a 'bridge officer' (read: line officer) in "Thine Own Self". McCoy it seems got a non-military degree also (At Ole Miss, "Trials and Tribbleations), and then was commissioned into the Fleet based on that, and never achieved line officer status (which begs the question of whether or not he ever did, or if his rank of admiral applies only within the Medical Corps, since it seemed to be a prereq for Troi to be certified in order to reach the rank of commander)
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Indeed, Lt. Cmdr. may well be a "cap" rank for folks who've picked up a Starfleet commision sans Academy training. (Wasn't McCoy still a Lt. Cmdr. in TUC, what, 25 years after the five year mission?) Pick up the vaunted "bridge officer training" and you get the full pip, but otherwise you ain't going any higher.
Which reminds me that some other theories have been thrown around about perhaps there being a fairly restrictive cap on being bumped up to Cmdr. in general, which explains why Data has been parked where he is for 14 years. It could well be position-restrictive for standard issue line officers like him.
And then there's my warrant-officers-and-petty-officers have been merged theory, but that's just, um, crazy. But I like it nonetheless.
Of course, we have no solid canonical evidence that McCoy/Crusher/Troi didn't go to the academy, do we? I mean, U.Betazed could have been post-Academy counsellor school which might hop you from ensign to lt. (j.g) and bypass an apprenticeship-style way of doing things that Ezri was doing on the Destiny.
[ April 16, 2002, 10:30: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
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Perhaps both Old Miss and the University of Betazed are used by Starfleet to train their medical staff. Other school would no doubt be used too. I seriously doubt that a person could rise to the rank of Lt. Commander or Commander having never attended the academy.
McCoy could certainly have gone through SF Academy before Old Miss and as for Troi, I remember the line about her training at the University of Betazed, by where was it inferred that she didn't go to the Academy before or after that?
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I'm not saying they had no training for space.. I'm saying Troi and McCoy probably took medical degrees from civilian institutions, then had to be certified with Starfleet training (perhaps a staff officer version of the training course that was taken by non-coms like O'Brien and Simon Tarses, who said he wanted to get into space in a hurry, taking a few months boot camp over a few years at the academy)
isnt there a precedent in real life for being a commissioned staff officer based on your education..
the doctors in M*A*S*H were all oficers but none of them seemed to be graduates of military school, i thought the impression was theyd been drafted.
possibly positions like that where the best training is available outside the academy, they offer commissions to new graduates, or those schools have some sort of ROTC program.
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quote:Indeed, Lt. Cmdr. may well be a "cap" rank for folks who've picked up a Starfleet commision sans Academy training.
Well, it's very possible that this is a requirement established AFTER TOS, and pre-TNG.
Troi mentioned the Academy somewhere (can't recall, though). The University of Betazed line was from Tin Man. She got her psych degree there, but it's never mentioned if she got it before or after the Academy. It's very possible she got her degree while posted to Betazed, or went to the Academy afterwards. It's also very possible she went to an OCS course at the Academy, designed to bring in experienced professionals to the Service ... therefore, she could still say she went to the Academy ...
Dr. Crusher also went to a civilian medical school. Witness "1001101" or whatnot ... her line to Riker about a medical doctor lecturing at the starbase, "he lectured at my medical school." NOT "he lectured at Starfleet Medical." Maybe it was just the way she said it, but I gathered she got non-Starfleet Medical training.
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BTW, has anyone read "Doctor's Orders" by Diane Duane.. great book that makes sense of a tenuous plot premise.., that Captain Kirk left McCoy in command as a joke and then disappeared and McCoy was unable to relinquish command before leading the ship into a tense situation.
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quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: BTW, has anyone read "Doctor's Orders" by Diane Duane.. great book that makes sense of a tenuous plot premise.., that Captain Kirk left McCoy in command as a joke and then disappeared and McCoy was unable to relinquish command before leading the ship into a tense situation.
One of my personal favorites, from back in the day when I was buying the novels.
Recently, I did end up buying another . . . "Immortal Coil". It's got a really nifty pic of Data on the cover. More importantly, though, the plot is quite intriguing, if a bit formulaic in places. But, hey, it's better than 98% of Voyager. :-)
Also, I doubt very seriously that Ole Miss would ever end up as a premiere medical establishment. Officially, it's current specialty is law . . . unofficially, it's beer. Even more unofficially, it's "Whiskey & Whores(TM)". Granted, this holds true for 97% of American universities, but I'd bet gold that, should the institution last into the 24th Century, it would then be known as the Synthelager capital of the universities of the North American continent.
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posted
To get back to the medical business at hand, or the veterinarian variety anyway...
I suppose the poor dead horse could use a few more swats: even though Troi did get a promotion by taking a bridge officer competency test, this should by no means be taken as establishing that
a) the test is the only way for her to achieve Commander rank or b) the rank of Commander proves a blueshirted person has taken the competency test.
The latter claim seems to be contradicted by the explicitly stated fact that Commander Pulaski was not a bridge officer. McCoy probably wasn't, either, although that's not as clearly stated. But the precedent of Pulaski would seem to indicate that Lt.Cmdr is not a ceiling for "staff officers" of the Trek variety. McCoy's later Admiral rank could thus quite well be staff.
Considering McCoy's education, mightn't it be the case that McCoy went the Bashir way? Perhaps he was at Ole Miss *after* completing four years in SF Academy? The timing is vague enough to allow for that, I think. Not that I'd necessarily want McCoy to have gone through the standard Academy.
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