I’m not talking about stuff like O’Brien’s hollow rank pip, I’m talking about stuff like “Why make Chakotay a lt. commander rather than a full commander?”
It seems like there was at least some forethought put into who has what rank, but it’s not clear to me how much thought, nor how much meaning was supposed to be baked in to those decisions.
For example, Dr Crusher was a full commander from Day 1, matched only by Riker on the main cast. Was that supposed to signify the authority afforded to the CMO? Was it supposed to be blatant enough for the audience to “get” it?
One of the most prominent examples is Sisko starting his series as a commander. Again — was that supposed to signify that he was more junior, a younger officer?
Behind the scenes, I wonder if we can trace a waxing and waning military influence in the writers room over the years. I know Roddenberry served, and I think some of the early TNG writers did as well. But I feel like that became less common in later series? (But I don’t know for sure.)
I think it’s striking that rank is significantly downplayed on DSC, except for Burnham and potentially Saru.
Narratively rank is very important especially when you are trying to demonstrate a paramilitary organization in the confines of a television series. I think there are probably often arguments about this. Why is Ezri written as a counselor and an Ensign instead of a science officer of a higher rank?
I do think there is real world relevance sometimes. We see Worf and Geordi get promotions and become a larger part of the series with more screen time and character development. This works narratively to distinguish the change. An “on screen” promotion indicates some sort of character growth. We see this happen with Sisko likely because the only reason to distinguish him at first was because he was written to have a fairly minor (in universe) role which was greatly expanded.
In recent years I think rank has been downplayed as there are so many inconsistencies and patterns and anti-patterns throughout the series. It’s important that you’re able to tell a story where if someone is supposed to be in charge they have the appropriate rank for this. This is one of the reasons Discovery effectively promoted Tilly rapidly (all the way to being the XO for a little bit) because she was a pivotal part of the cast and needed screen time. In fact Discovery doesn’t “ignore” rank it rather ignores rank conventions by having a mutineer on the bridge as a ‘specialist’ and a command staff that almost just takes turns at the wheel.
In Lower Decks we can assume narratively no one is going to get promoted permanently or demoted permanently because the show depends on that dynamic. If we look to Strange New Worlds we see rank downplayed to a large degree because everyone’s rank is so close together. This is important to get Spock of a low enough rank so that he can be promoted to commander later. (Frustratingly there are still inconsistencies here. There seems to be confusion between Lt. and Lt. Jg. and Nurse Chapel’s rank, which may be provisional because she may be a civilian contractor who has a temporary commission and then later joins with a regular commission of a lower rank - or her rank is just not important - is also out of continuity.) But importantly for SNW - narratively it makes sense to have these people of these ranks in these positions so it just works.
In a more realistic depiction people would be moving through ships much more quickly. There would be fewer officers and they would move through the ranks regularly and not stay in one position for 7 years. Likewise mostly Enlisted people would be spending a few years at most and moving onto other careers in civilian life as most people don’t want to be in the military forever and if they do they become officers. Miles O’Brien (despite the insignia being weird) is probably most accurately depicted. He served on many posts, he left posts for some period of time and then returned to them in new capacities, he moved between posts. He joined in 2345 and by 2375 he was probably ready for retirement or in the case of a utopian future, moving back to Earth to teach at Starfleet until he is absolutely ancient because he’s got nothing better to do and he loves his job.
We see this bear out in Miles O’brien. He enlisted in starfleet rather than attending the academy. He climbed the ranks (mostly in backstory) and by the time we meet him in TNG he’s a chief petty officer, non-commissioned but officer nonetheless. When he accepts the promotion/transfer to DS9 he achieves the rank of senior chief petty officer.
Its hard to say for sure that the rest of the show is inaccurate (or otherwise) in this regard because the shows mainly focus on bridge officers. Many characters receive offscreen promotions throughout the shows and you have to pay close attention to their uniforms and rank insignia to catch it. But also, you have to bear in mind how narrow a view we get of any crew outside of like Voyager.
For example, the Enterprise-D, as a Galaxy-class starship, can have a crew complement of anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000, and TNG as a show overwhelmingly focuses on just 7 of them. “best” case that’s a view of about a half a percent of them, so it would be easy to draw nonsensical conclusions if you overly extrapolate from that small percentage. Maybe a lot of crewmen do actually retire after just a few years, it’s hard to say for sure since there is basically no evidence either way.
Basically everyone in the commissioned officer corps (ensign and above) attended the academy first in order to receive the officer commission. You would not go to officer academy in real life if you did not intend to dedicate your main career to being a military officer, and likewise, people who attend starfleet academy generally intend to dedicate their careers to starfleet. Every depiction of the Enterprise is that it is the federation flagship and so we can consider a station there as being highly sought after and likewise regarded, it represents a high potential for being a crowning point on anyone’s career, so it kinda makes sense that the core officers might be reluctant to trade in for an inferior assignment, even if it meant a bigger promotion. Another aspect of this is loyalty: most of the officers depicted across all of the shows are supposed to be stand-out talents among the federation, with solid leadership skills that clearly foster loyalty. Loyalty that can create a reluctance for too much change. We see this reflected in Riker’s long resistance to getting promoted off the Enterprise to Captain. He doesn’t want to, partly out of loyalty to Picard, but also partly out of loyalty to the officers that report to him, and by extension the rest of the crew, and partly out of the chance that his potential new command is simply not as cool as being the first officer of the Enterprise.
Voyager has different circumstances, of course: the crew complement is much smaller, and they are stranded, but Rick Berman also decided that field promotions would be unlikely in their circumstances since they have no real way to gain more crew
Important to note that even among the enlisted ranks, the NCO corps begins just one rank above crewman. Similar to real life military there are only 3 ranks of non-officers
IIRC Roddenberry’s idea was that everyone in Starfleet was a commissioned officer, but later writers overrode that.
One of the things that was good in the way O’Brien was written is that he was clearly a senior and respected member of the command structure. But that did not mean he had the positional authority to disobey a commissioned officer’s orders should he disagree with them. Something that came out in… err… I think it might have been “Hippocratic Oath”, where even though O’Brien had more years of military experience, and Starfleet experience, he still had to obey Bashir’s orders (who might still have been a Lieutenant Junior Grade at the time?).
A couple of quibbles that no one else seems to have brought up. Ensign Tilly was not promoted to XO - she was assigned to the position of acting XO while remaining an Ensign. The designation of “acting” makes it clear she’s just holding down the slot temporarily until Saru makes a more permanent selection, and makes it much more tolerable for those she’s now in charge of despite the lower rank. It probably wouldn’t have been tolerated (by the Admirals at Command) even in the lax standards of Starfleet, but even ADM Vance realized Saru had to pick from the tiny crew he brought to the future with him, so he let it go.
As for Ezri, again, remember that rank and position are only loosely connected, while rank and specialty (Counselor, science officer, engineer, navigator) are COMPLETELY unconnected. Ezri is a counselor because they wanted to make her distinct from Jadzia, and is an Ensign to highlight her inexperience both as a person and in dealing with a symbiote.
But yes, it does seem like the writers’ familiarity comes and goes. I swear there are at least a few episodes (and I can’t remember which series, because I’m alternating between three right now) where people refer to a Lt. Cdr. as “Lieutenant” instead of the proper term of address, “Commander.”
Tuvok is such an example as he is almost always referred to as Lieutenant and later he’s promoted to Lt. Cdr properly, but he wore Lt. Cdr. rank insignia for like maybe the first season without anyone really correcting it.
It’s true that Tilly was not ‘promoted’ to any rank and kept her rank simply being assigned a position, however, I think it’s weird for her to be the XO except that she was part of the principle cast and they needed to give her a reason to be part of the overarching narrative for each season.
Oh, absolutely, story/cast reasons were the real reason - but while assigning an Ensign to a Commander slot is extreme, assigning people above their rank and above higher ranks in the process is not completely unheard of, even in today’s military. Given their utterly unique situation as an in-universe excuse, I don’t have any real problem suspending disbelief on Tilly’s assignment there.
I thought it was a clever way to handle it, but it was… strange because it telegraphed it’s narrative purpose rather than keeping it as part of the narrative. But I mean - to be fair I can’t think of a better way to make it work than exactly what they did and I thought it kind of worked out well all things considered.
It’s a testament to Mary Wiseman’s acting that the writers sought to give Tilly more screen time. But the way they did it made my eyes roll through the roof. I did not for a second consider it believable that an Ensign, only a couple (?) of years out of the Academy, would be skyrocketed through the hierarchy to become the Chief Operating Officer of the ship.
Tilly’s promotion was even more unbelievable than when Jed Bartlet made CJ Cregg his Chief of Staff, elevating her above her Toby Ziegler (whom she reported to) and Josh Lyman. I know why the writers did it - because Allison Janney was the best actor in a world-class ensemble, and they wanted to give her more to do. But it didn’t ring true to me (even though there is an argument to be made that all the West Wing characters are so hyper-competent that reporting lines are mere formalities).
Sure, you could argue Starfleet has a history of promoting promising youngsters unbelievably fast - like when they gave that cocky repeat offender fresh out of school command of the most modern ship in the fleet simply as a reward for saving the world. But even so.
This actually goes to a related point about DIS and how the writers treated the rank of its main character. Discovery was notable in that it was the first show where the lead actor was also not the most senior member of the crew. As David Gerrold pointed out in The World of Star Trek (IIRC), there’s a reason why the captain is the star of the show. Because in a crisis all decisions come back to that role. And the ability to make decisions is what makes for good characterisation (Hamlet notwithstanding). But if the command decisions, the decisions around which the plots and the drama pivot, are ultimately made by someone other than Michael Burnham, more senior than her and who can overrule her, what do you do then? Well, you make the Captain a baddie (like in season 1) or you find other ways of making the main character go against orders (which Burnham did repeatedly). Unfortunately that led to a backlash because the character, Mary Sue-like, was always proven to be correct whenever she went rogue.
I actually liked the fact that the lead character in DIS wasn’t the CO. But - like Tilly’s promotion - I just wish the writers had found a better way of exploring that dynamic. Having Burnham assume the traditional captain’s seat in season 4 was - in some ways - an admission of defeat, but an understandable one.
Lower Decks of course pulls it off, but as a comedy the stakes are generally lower, and the fact that the main characters often don’t know what’s going on, or aren’t in a position to decide how to shape events, is part of the gag.
That too for LD, especially in later seasons, the main characters are much more interesting than the average ensign and get a lot more to do. For example, Rutherford was previously injured in a ship racing accident and wrote an insane AI program, Boimler has a “dead” transporter clone in Section 31, Mariner is the captain’s daughter, and Tendi is from an Orion pirate family. Not only that but whatever they are doing that episode usually has some impact on the “main” plot, like how Rutherford ends up acting as a diplomat in one episode or how they attempt to steal the Cerritos.