Harry Kim promotion theory

[Charles Phipps]

Janeway actually didn't have the authority to promote people on VOY and was only providing "Acting" Commander, Lieutenant Commander, and Lieutenant ranks for Chakotay, B'elanna, and Tom Paris while they were on VOY. The reason that Harry Kim was never promoted was because as a "real" Starfleet officer, his promotion would have to be submitted to Starfleet Headquarters and approved by Janeway's superiors. If she ever actually "promoted" him, it would be purely ceremony and possibly could screw up his actual career track.

 

[Tosk]

Except she also promoted "real" Starfleet officer Tuvok.

 

[Mage]

And Tom never had the alternate rank insignia that the Maquis had, but proper Starfleet ones.

 

[at Quark's]

Except she also promoted "real" Starfleet officer Tuvok.

I agree, that's a good counter argument. Tuvok is promoted early in the 4th year in the Delta Quadrant (Revulsion), and before contact with Starfleet is made. It's highly unlikely Starfleet would have granted Janeway special dispensation in advance ('You're supposed to only be on this mission for 2 weeks but in the unlikely eventuality that you should go missing for several years, we grant you the authority to promote Tuvok 4 years from now. But certainly not Harry Kim!').

Even so, I wonder how this works - I'd still imagine that Captains can't just promote officers whenever they feel like it, and I would expect Starfleet HQ approval to be required, at least starting from a certain rank and up.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I agree, that's a good counter argument. Tuvok is promoted early in the 4th year in the Delta Quadrant (Revulsion), and before contact with Starfleet is made. It's highly unlikely Starfleet would have granted Janeway special dispensation in advance ('You're supposed to only be on this mission for 2 weeks but in the unlikely eventuality that you should go missing for several years, we grant you the authority to promote Tuvok 4 years from now. But certainly not Harry Kim!').

Even so, I wonder how this works - I'd still imagine that Captains can't just promote officers whenever they feel like it, and I would expect Starfleet HQ approval to be required, at least starting from a certain rank and up.

TNG Lower Decks explains it.

Every day the Department heads write reports about their staff, so the complaints and commendations build up for 90 days until...

Every 3 months the First officer and Counselor do Crew evaluations where they look at the daily reports, and then interview the crew who stand out in a good way or a bad way. The evaluations decide promotion, demotion, transfers, or discharge.

Chakotay and Kes, or Chakotay and Tom would handle the quarterly crew evaluation, if the highest ranked sentient medical officer is not The Doctor.

The Quarterly Crew Evaluation is given to the captain as a list of recommendations, and then the Captain rubber stamps that paperwork, probably unread, and sends it up the flagpole to Starfleet, who think about it, and then send paper work back to the Captain agreeing or disagreeing with those recommendations, who posts a list of promotions on the community virtual notice board.

Harry is his own boss, and writes his own reports about himself, but the Doctor hates Harry.

I think it's fairly clear why he is still an Ensign.

 

[Tosk]

Even so, I wonder how this works - I'd still imagine that Captains can't just promote officers whenever they feel like it

Unless you count that absurd time time Pike promoted a suspended cadet to first officer, who then was made captain by virtue of goading the acting captain into an emotional reaction, and then got to keep the rank and position of captain after that.

 

[The Wormhole]

Even so, I wonder how this works - I'd still imagine that Captains can't just promote officers whenever they feel like it, and I would expect Starfleet HQ approval to be required, at least starting from a certain rank and up.

There are such thing as field promotions for people out of contact with their command authority. Basically, the promotion is only temporary until such time as contact with the command authority is established, at which point the command authority makes the decision to make the promotion permanent or revert the person back to their rank. Theoretically, when contact was reestablished with Starfleet, Tuvok could have been busted down to Lieutenant again, though Starfleet instead chose to confirm the promotion to Lt. Commander Janeway gave him.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Unless you count that absurd time time Pike promoted a suspended cadet to first officer, who then was made captain by virtue of goading the acting captain into an emotional reaction, and then got to keep the rank and position of captain after that.

To be fair, the JJ verse was "And most of Starfleet was annihilated"

 

[at Quark's]

There are such thing as field promotions for people out of contact with their command authority. Basically, the promotion is only temporary until such time as contact with the command authority is established, at which point the command authority makes the decision to make the promotion permanent or revert the person back to their rank. Theoretically, when contact was reestablished with Starfleet, Tuvok could have been busted down to Lieutenant again, though Starfleet instead chose to confirm the promotion to Lt. Commander Janeway gave him.

True, but I have the impression that we usually explicitly get to hear it when a promotion/commission is just a field promotion/commission. (Examples: Riker in BOBW, Paris in Caretaker). The promotion of Tuvok certainly didn't sound like that.

 

[DonIago]

To be fair, the JJ verse was "And most of Starfleet was annihilated"

I think you're misremembering. Most of Starfleet was in the Laurentian system doing...well, whatever they were doing is never really made clear.

 

[DonIago]

Janeway actually didn't have the authority to promote people on VOY and was only providing "Acting" Commander, Lieutenant Commander, and Lieutenant ranks for Chakotay, B'elanna, and Tom Paris while they were on VOY. The reason that Harry Kim was never promoted was because as a "real" Starfleet officer, his promotion would have to be submitted to Starfleet Headquarters and approved by Janeway's superiors. If she ever actually "promoted" him, it would be purely ceremony and possibly could screw up his actual career track.

Assuming this was accurate, and others have already refuted why it likely isn't accurate, why not ask Kim himself whether he'd prefer a provisional promotion that might not ultimately be approved and possibly could screw up his actual career track (how?) to no promotion at all?

Even indicating a desire to promote Kim would have been meaningful.

 

[evilchumlee]

I've made the observation, the hill i'll die on for this topic, that Harry Kim actually wasn't cut out for Starfleet. Had he not been on Voyager, he wouldn't have lasted on a ship. He has consistent behavioral issues and has shown time and again to be completely willing to ignore or disobey orders when it benefits him personally to do so, and he tends to be erratic and emotionally driven, lacking discipline beyond even that of someone like Tom Paris and the Maquis crew.

Kim was Voyager's trouble maker. Janeway didn't promote him because he didn't deserve to be promoted. He was good at this job... as long as he actually obeying orders... and given their situation she needed to keep him in place, but in essentially any other situation, Kim would have been either sent to some low level position or kicked out of Starfleet entirely.

He's smart and good at what he does, but he's an absolutely maverick firebrand. That was supposed to be Paris, but by and large, Paris is the voice of reason to Kim's madness.

This isn't really a negative view of Kim, it's just an observation. While he "should" have been the model Starfleet officer, turns out... Starfleet actually probably isn't for him. That's ok, his talents can still be utilized.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I've made the observation, the hill i'll die on for this topic, that Harry Kim actually wasn't cut out for Starfleet. Had he not been on Voyager, he wouldn't have lasted on a ship. He has consistent behavioral issues and has shown time and again to be completely willing to ignore or disobey orders when it benefits him personally to do so, and he tends to be erratic and emotionally driven, lacking discipline beyond even that of someone like Tom Paris and the Maquis crew.

Sounds like Captain Material!

 

[DonIago]

Is it wrong that now I want Kim to become an S31 agent?

 

[Charles Phipps]

Is it wrong that now I want Kim to become an S31 agent?

He and William Boimler!

 

[fireproof78]

I've made the observation, the hill i'll die on for this topic, that Harry Kim actually wasn't cut out for Starfleet. Had he not been on Voyager, he wouldn't have lasted on a ship. He has consistent behavioral issues and has shown time and again to be completely willing to ignore or disobey orders when it benefits him personally to do so, and he tends to be erratic and emotionally driven, lacking discipline beyond even that of someone like Tom Paris and the Maquis crew.

Kim was Voyager's trouble maker. Janeway didn't promote him because he didn't deserve to be promoted. He was good at this job... as long as he actually obeying orders... and given their situation she needed to keep him in place, but in essentially any other situation, Kim would have been either sent to some low level position or kicked out of Starfleet entirely.

He's smart and good at what he does, but he's an absolutely maverick firebrand. That was supposed to be Paris, but by and large, Paris is the voice of reason to Kim's madness.

This isn't really a negative view of Kim, it's just an observation. While he "should" have been the model Starfleet officer, turns out... Starfleet actually probably isn't for him. That's ok, his talents can still be utilized.

Still should have been promoted due to acting as a department head.

 

[The Wormhole]

True, but I have the impression that we usually explicitly get to hear it when a promotion/commission is just a field promotion/commission. (Examples: Riker in BOBW, Paris in Caretaker). The promotion of Tuvok certainly didn't sound like that.

By the very nature of the circumstances it would have to be a field promotion. That is, Janeway made an independent decision to promote Tuvok while out of contact with Starfleet. That's the text book definition of a field promotion. Splitting hairs over the fact that the term "field promotion" wasn't actually used in reference to Tuvok's promotion is just overzealously clinging to Canon and the Spoken Word.

Seriously, why do Star Trek fans get so bent out of shape over not calling a spade a spade unless onscreen dialogue canonically acknowledges it's a spade?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Still should have been promoted due to acting as a department head.

Job dictates rank.

The importance of the ship, therefore the importance of the ship's missions multiplied by the size of the ship multiplied by the number of staff to his department multiplied by the actual complexity of the job...

Ensign.

It is a waste of resources to staff any rank higher than Ensign as head of Ops on an Intrepid class vessel sent on black ops missions to kill terrorists, and anyone of a higher rank than ensign given that job would feel like they are wasting their time on bullshit.

If you promote Harry, he's transferred to another department where he is not the boss and then he doesn't get to go to the big mission meeting every week with his mom, I mean Captain Janeway.

Selfsabotage?

 

[Akiraprise]

I was pondering merging this topic with the Garret Wang thread, but that's 48 pages long now. Maybe it's time to start anew?

Leaving out the real world drama behind the lack of promotion the Harry Kim character should have been a Lt JG at minimum by the time they returned home. I don't think we ever really got an explanation for why he was seemingly placed in charge of Ops fresh out of the academy on board one of Starfleet's newest, most advanced, science orientated vessels. He should have had a direct supervisor that was killed off like the medical staff for the justification.

 

[fireproof78]

Ensign

No.