I wouldn't consider ending a term of office to be a 'demotion.' It's a post, not a rank. To me it makes perfect sense that an admiral would hold the postion of Starfleet Commander for a specific length of time--say, two years or something--and then be replaced by someone else.
The rotation idea makes good sense in that it allows everyone to get familair with areas; however, the idea that someone who's specialized in, say, Klingon affairs is placed in a position where they're dealing with the Sheliak is idiotic. No doubt there's a certain level of qualification requirements for any post as well as ability; I sure as shit wouldn't want Jellico as Chief of Staff, Starfleet (which seems to be the official title of "Head Dude" as noted on the dedplaques) because he's too gung-ho & too much of a hardass.
On another tack, there may (like in the Navy) be rank requirements--A quadrant commander billet like COMBETAQUAD may need to be 3-star (er, 3-pip) & above, because only vice admirals higher would be deemd to have the necessary experience. Sector commanders can be commodore & higher. There would also be allowances for personal experience, though, resulting in Rear Admiral Kirk's billet of note.
-------------------- "I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists!" --Hedley Lamarr
[ April 25, 2004, 09:10 PM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Getting back to the original topic...this is a breakdown of the officers of the TMP Enterprise, based on Bob Fletcher's chart (after my modifications to it). With a little tweaking, it comes to exactly the 72 officers the TMP Enterprise is supposed to have.
I've also noted a few NCOs and crew, but I'm only getting started on that. FWIW I expect other ships of the same era to have a roughly similar slate of officers; after all, they need to fill the same duty slots. It's the number of crew that would be more variable.
Generally speaking, where three officers are assigned to a given duty slot, it means that each watch has an Officer of the Watch for that duty slot. E.g., every shift has an Impulse Engineering Officer of the Watch, a Helmsman, etc. One of them, typically the Alpha Shift OotW, is the senior officer for that duty slot, and the other two act as his assistants. A Yellow Alert would bring a second officer on duty as well as the current officer of the watch, and a Red Alert would put all three on duty.
Two officers assigned to a given duty slot means there doesn't have to be an officer on duty at all times. Again, one is senior, with the other acting as an assistant. As in my torpedo room example above, they arrange drills and training and see to the paperwork, while an NCO actually oversees the day-to-day management of the post, but everyone shows up when the ship is put on alert.
If there's only one officer assigned to a slot (not counting SOs), it means that officer is never needed without warning and can simply keep "office hours."
Generally speaking, that is. The Chief Security Officer doubles as a security officer, so there's actually three of them, one for each shift. Ditto the Chief Medical Officer.
Interesting to note that Engineering accounts for almost half of the ship's officers by itself. And Command is the smallest.
Enjoy. Or rip apart or ignore, as you prefer.
COMMAND DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 2 SO, 0 JO, 1 NCO, 1 CREW
CAPTAIN (1 SO)
FIRST OFFICER (1 SO)
BOSUN (1 NCO)
CAPTAIN�S YEOMAN (1 CREW)
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 1 SO, 33 JO, ??? NCO, ??? CREW
CHIEF ENGINEERING OFFICER (1 SO)
MAIN ENGINEERING OFFICERS (3 JO)
IMPULSE ENGINEERING OFFICERS (3 JO)
BATTERY ROOM OFFICERS (2 JO)
MAINTAINANCE & REPAIR OFFICERS (2 JO)
DAMAGE CONTROL OFFICERS (2 JO)
RADIATION CONTROL OFFICERS (2 JO)
TRANSPORTER OFFICERS (2 JO)
ENERGY-FIELD OFFICERS (2 JO)
TECHNICAL SUPPLY OFFICER (1 JO)
PHASER ROOM OFFICERS (2 JO)
TORPEDO ROOM OFFICERS (2 JO)
TORPEDO & PROBE MAGAZINE OFFICER (1 JO)
HELMSMEN (3 JO)
LANDING BAY CONTROL OFFICERS (2 JO)
HANGER DECK OFFICERS (2 JO)
MAIN COMPUTER OPERATIONS OFFICERS (2 JO)
SCIENCES DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 1 SO, 17 JO, ??? NCO, ??? CREW
CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER (1 SO)
NAVIGATION OFFICERS (3 JO)
SENSOR SYSTEMS OFFICERS (3 JO)
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICERS (3 JO)
ANTHROPOLOGIST (1 JO)
ARCHAEOLOGIST (1 JO)
ASTRONOMIST/ASTROPHYSICIST (1 JO)
BIOLOGIST (1 JO)
CHEMIST (1 JO)
GENETICIST (1 JO)
MATHEMATICIAN (1 JO)
PHYSICIST (1 JO)
SECURITY DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 1 SO, 2 JO, 3 NCO, 27 CREW
CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER (1 SO)
SECURITY OFFICERS (2 JO)
SECURITY PERSONNEL (3 NCO, 27 CREW)
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 1 SO, 5 JO, 5 NCO, 25 CREW
CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER (1 SO)
MEDICAL OFFICERS (2 JO)
PSYCHOTHERAPIST (1 JO)
DENTIST (1 JO)
RECREATION OFFICER (1 JO)
CHIEF NURSE (1 NCO)
ASST. CHIEF NURSE (2 NCO)
RECREATION PERSONNEL (2 NCO)
NURSES (12 CREW)
MEDICAL TECHNICIANS (9 CREW)
MEDICAL RESEARCH TECHNICIANS (4 CREW)
SERVICES DEPARTMENT ROSTER: 1 SO, 8 JO, ??? NCO, ??? CREW
CHIEF SERVICES OFFICER (1 SO)
QUARTERMASTER (2 JO)
CARGO BAY OFFICER (2 JO)
COMMISSARY OFFICER (2 JO)
JANITORIAL SERVICES OFFICER (1 JO)
SPECIAL CRAFTS OFFICER (1 JO)
TOTAL: 72 OFFICERS (7 SO, 65 JO)
Marian
[ April 28, 2004, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: MarianLH ]
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Another question for people with real military experience:
In Star Trek: The Motion Picturethere's no rank insignia for lieutenant (junior grade). According to The Making Of TMP the rank didn't exist during this time. Obviously, it's back by the time of Star Trek II. I don't know if they actually meant to remove the rank, or forgot about it and make up the idea to cover their asses.
Is that realistic, eliminating a rank and then restoring it a decade later? I know real services have tinkered with their ranks to some extent--the US Army's gotten rid of those technical ranks since WWII, for instance. Has a military added a rank in the last century or so? What happens to people in the rank above? Do they get to keep their current rank, or drop down to the new one? And why might Starfleet want to get rid of the rank, and for what reason might they bring it back?
I'm tempted to ignore the official story and say that the ensign's single broken stripe is actually a lieutenant commander, while ensigns have no stripe. This would make the TMP uniform cuff rings the same as those in TOS. But for those who want to account for every detail on screen this may be unnacceptable--in TMP a character is actually addressed as "ensign," and he has the cuff ring. If there's a plausible reason why Starfleet might do away with the rank, and then change its mind a decade later...
posted
It's just a goof. As we only saw those uniforms in one movie, and have no idea how long they were in service (no more than six or seven years, tops, based on "Cause and Effect")... I've found it can only be explained away through an excessive amount of mental maneuvering, so -- at least for the time being -- I just shrug and move on.
For that matter, I have a hard time with TOS ranks all the way from "The Cage" on up until Bob Fletcher completely started from scratch in TWoK. I know GR theoretically wanted a merely paramilitary service, with no way to draw a direct 1:1 real-world comparison to ranks, but people evidently couldn't wrap their brains around that, and GR himself was never very good at noodling out these technical details in a realistic way (look at his explanation for figuring stardates, due to out-of-sequence airing order).
I liked non-coms having narrow silver sleeve bands, as opposed to the officers' wider gold bands, but they were dropped for regular series production. For that, Bill Theiss redid the ranks to include a bit more graduation than "1 stripe = officer, 2 stripes = Captain", but stepped it down so what the Captain was wearing was the direct equivalent of a real-world US Navy Lieutenant Commander. This only became a problem because one can't distinguish Ensigns from noncoms from crewmen if all have no sleeve stripe.
GR didn't help matters by saying it was an "officers-only" specialist service, with all those slick-sleeved Ensigns serving as crew.
Bob did a good job of extrapolating an enlisted corps for TMP, but the commissioned ranks remained the same, with the above mentioned oversight. Me, I'd like to go back and recreate the pre-TOS/TOS rank structure from square one -- it doesn't have to be consistent with TFS/TNG, etc., but it should include a rank indicator for Ensign and a way to differentiate enlisted ranks.
--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
I have no problem with ignoring one particular minor onscreen detail in the name of general consistancy. But I know not everyone feels that way, and if there is any plausible reason for dropping and then reaquiring a rank, I'm willing to go along with it.
As for enlisted ranks, I just close my eyes and pretend the rates from Bob's II-IV notes were always there. With the possible exception of "crewman" being changed to "able seaman." I'm of two minds about that one, and have also experimented with the contraction "ables'man."
But if enlisted personnel did have rank insignia, that would help distinguish between crewmen and ensigns. Likewise, I presume that enlisted ratings never wore the tunic/pants versions of the TMP uniform, only the jumpsuit.
posted
Yes, the military did add a rank. Just recently the navy promoted I think 17 CWO4's (Chief Warrant Officer 4) to CWO5. The Army has had CWO5 for awhile now and the navy just added it to its rank structure. Also the rank of Fleet Admiral (5 stars) which I think Admiral Nimitz was the last one was done away with and I think the regs state that in certain times of war the President can bring it back. Those are the only examples that I know of of a rank going away and then coming back.
-------------------- "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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posted
Buuuuut if I understand you correctly, the CWO5 rank was added to keep the navy's ranks equal to the army's. That wouldn't work as a reason for Starfleet.
Or would it? Maybe the Starfleet Marines dropped out "2nd lieutenant," or something, and Starfleet dropped out the j.g. rank to keep things even. And then ten years later decided that it was a dumb move, and brought the rank back.
Also, from your post I'd guess that if something like that did happen, the result of the rank being restored would be a whole lot of ensigns getting promoted, rather than full lieutenants getting dropped down.
I think I'd rather stick with the VFX error route, but for those who insist on accounting for every onscreen detail, here's one possible explanation.
Marian
PS: DISCLAIMER: This post should not be taken as an endorsement of the existence of a Starfleet Marine Corps. That's a separate and unrelated debate.
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posted
I'd think that Starfleet has re-structured it's command structure several times as new member-worlds were brought in.
Look at Bajor- they have a military structure using terms equivalent to the US army. In the DS9 relaunch books, a Major becomes a Commander and a Colonel translatesn into a Captain in Starfleet.
I'm sure there has been some starfleet concessions in terms to new members between the TMP era and TNG as the Marines were phased out (as example).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Well the only person I can consider close to an Army or Marine Corps officer in Starfleet is Colonel West in ST:TUC.
-------------------- "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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quote:Originally posted by Harry: But he was wearing the wrong rank to be a Colonel. And probably the wrong color too.
I don't recall his rank pin, but I recently had a thought about his division colour. According to Bob Fletcher's notes, the head of a department on a starship (e.g., chief engineer, chief science officer, etc) can opt to trade in his division colour undershirt for a white one, and white stripes on the right shoulder and left sleeve (albeit with a diagonal hash mark in the division colour). This was seen on Saavik in Star Trek III, and on lots of Starfleet Command personnel in Star Trek IV. Mr. Scott started wearing white too, although only after his promotion to captain. (Saavik, OTOH, couldn't wait to start flashing command colours, even though she was the CSO of a two-for-a-credit tub like Grissom. And only a lieutenant to boot. )
So it occured to me, maybe SFMC colonels can opt to wear white too. Although to be perfectly accurate, there should have been a hash mark with the Marines colour (whatever it is) on both the shoulder and sleeve stripes. Saavik's uniform in III was correct for a chief science officer--the gray hash mark is visible a couple of times. But I don't remeber if Scotty's was. Most of the time he wasn't wearing his tunic anyway, just the white undershirt and that thingamabob-studded tool vest.
Anybody see what kind of rank pin West was wearing? A colonel's usually analagous to a captain, but if it's something close--like a commander, or a commodore--it could probably be explained away. Or ignored as a VFX error.
Or, as you say, "colonel" could be an informal title. Or an honourary thing, like the old TOS "fleet captain" reference. Something similar to the RMN idea of making a starship captain an honourary marine colonel when they do something spectacular, but aren't quite ready to be promoted yet. As is so often the case, the data is scant and ambiguous and each person can interpret it however they prefer.
posted
West was wearing Kirk's old Rear Admiral pin -- two ranks higher than Captain/Colonel. And Marines most likely are the cobalt blue we saw on the ground troops in TFF -- those togs being the combat uniforms. Love to extrapolate that structure further...
--Jonah
P.S. I have my own notions about Army ranks, Commodores, and Fleet Captains, but I'm not sure if you want me to launch into them in here.
-------------------- "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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quote:Originally posted by Harry: But he was wearing the wrong rank to be a Colonel. And probably the wrong color too.
My theory is that "Colonel" is just a nickname, similar to "Constable" Odo, coincidentally played by the same person.
His rank's a joke, Colonel West = Lt. Colonel Oliver North.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: West was wearing Kirk's old Rear Admiral pin
Nope, it was a Vice Admiral pin.
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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