When giving his portion of the destruct code, Scotty stated his rank as commander. I think "captain of engineering" reflected his position, and not his rank.
Too Many Commanders?
- Thread starter Farscape One
- Start date
Right on. At the end of STIV, Scotty had a Commander's insignia, along with McCoy, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. Kirk & Spock were both Captains at this point. Now that's (still) top heavy command-wise.
You left Data off. He was Lt. Cmdr from jump. And I believe Geordi & Worf got there eventually?
In terms of Disco, I would say the following:
1) There could be more, as the CMO and Engineering chief could also be commanders.
2) But some are not really supposed to be on Disco long term (Nhan), at all (Reno), or are supposed to have left (Stamets), or are dead (Culber).
3) As a leading edge science ship, I can see it top heavy in science & engineering. Stamets is not Chief Engineer, but in terms of the Spore drive, he is top 2 (top living). Commander is justified.
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Oh I’m sure. But was he an admiral or general? They are the only ones I KNOW that have stewards. The rest of us were all on our own. Lol.Agree here...apart from the last bit about uniforms "others prepare and lay out for them". One of my childhood memories was how fussy Dad was with his uniform and boots. He would sit for hours lovingly swirling polish over his boots and dipping the cloth in the nugget tin lid filled with water. He would iron all his clothes and whenever I ironed give me pointers on how to do it right. Happy Days
No he wasn't
He was an NCO for so many years (SAS) and frankly quite a mean bastard. However, he ended up being an officer but always with his old school ethic.Enlisted characters who appeared as regulars:
Janice Rand, initially Yeoman (Petty Officer) later Chief and later Lieutenant or Commander (depending on source).
Miles Edward O'Brien (intially "misidentified" as an Ensign or Lieutenant by uniform, mostly described as a Chief (Petty Officer) and later a 'Senior Chief Specialist' (likely equiv of Senior Chief Petty Officer)
Odo (not confirmed but he wore a different style uniform that the BM officers)
Rom, once he joined the Bajoran Militia as a Technician.
There were a number of other enlisted that appeared as recurring characters, especially during Voyager and who were important to the plot of those episodes (Enrique Muniz (DS9), Michael Jonas (Voyager) being the best examples).
So exactly one enlisted Starfleet regular, Miles O'Brien.
The point is only that Starfleet is not an exact analogue of the US Navy in all things and that can include the distribution of officer ranks. Just because it would be unusual for a naval vessel of 150 to have a dozen Lt Cmdrs, it doesn't follow that is true for Starfleet
...Heck, in DS9, a naval vessel of 40 crew had one Captain, two LCdrs and a visiting Major or Lieutenant Colonel in her regular complement.
One aspect of this no doubt is that it takes relatively little effort to get these ships moving, so the emphasis in crewing is on mission specialists who in turn are more like mission generalists, with extensive academic cross-training.
Timo Saloniemi
One aspect of this no doubt is that it takes relatively little effort to get these ships moving, so the emphasis in crewing is on mission specialists who in turn are more like mission generalists, with extensive academic cross-training.
Timo Saloniemi
Star Trek sure does its damnedest to make Starfleet as similar to the US Navy as possible. The ship names have the USS prefix and in the 1980s the decision was made to drop the Commodore rank from Starfleet exactly because it was no longer being used in the US Navy. If Starfleet isn't supposed to be analogous to the US Navy, they need to stop trying so hard to copy the US Navy every opportunity they get.
In the later movies, Scotty did wear Captain's insignia on his uniform, TUC for example which would make it clear his rank was indeed Captain.
I'm not sure that's the case. Many counselors on the bridge of US Naval vessels? Large science departments on warships?
We are edging closer to the damn military argument, so I'm going to wave off, but the point is just that Starfleet is happy to point away from strict adherence to the US Navy when it wants, so why not in this case?
I'll concede the part about the counselors, but in the case of science departments, given how much stuff of a scientific nature there is in space, spaceships will need a dedicated science division larger than one might find on a modern day warship. We see this reflected with the truly militaristic Klingons and Romulans, and even the more militaristic takes on Starfleet as seen in the Mirror Universe or Yesterday's Enterprise had comparable science divisions to their Prime Universe counterparts. Hell, Yesterday's Enterprise is actually the only canonical reference to cetacean ops, which is where whales and dolphins contribute to shipboard duties.
So, in other words, next season?
There's a Captain pin on Scotty in TSfS, too. But Scotty removes that and inserts a Commander pin in its stead for TVH. So we're left wondering whether Scotty really got demoted out of that pin, and then re-promoted into being authorized to wear it again.
We could alternately argue that the Enterprise computer would not yet recognize Scotty's very factual promotion, and OTOH that Scotty would scorn that promotion and start to pretend it never happened while on Vulcan. His still wearing Commander at his trial would be an act of rebellion, then. Or then the latter bit never happened, and Scotty merely had a spare Commander pin in a spare jacket of his that he had not yet bothered to remove when packing it for the trip to Genesis and subsequently Vulcan...
Timo Saloniemi
Regardless, he's definitely a Captain by TUC so what went on between TSFS and TVH is neither here nor there.
It was obviously just a costuming error by the wardrobe department. The last time he wore the jacket prior to TVH was in the torpedo bay scene in TSfS prior to the promotion.
Well, he continued to wear Captain's insignia in Generations and for that matter, he was also wearing it in TFF so if it is a costuming error, it's one hell of a costuming error. Are we sure having him wear the Commander's insignia in TVH wasn't the costuming error?
In a sense, what Scotty wears in TUC is the neither-here-nor-there bit, as the ship once again is given an impromptu crew by summoning the old gang from diverse assignments. Regular Starfleet crewing practices are not easily studied by examining the TOS movies. If anything, TFF is the one movie where the ship might be argued to have a Starfleet-assigned crew rather than a Kirk- or Spock- assembled posse or birthday entourage or whatever. And there Scotty is a Captain by rank pin...
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah. I guess I wasn't clear, the Commander's bars in TVH are the error.
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