CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 12:22 am
I really don't want Starbase 80 being "Cerritos 2.0."
It should be filled with genuine fuck ups and not good hearted people.
Why have fuck ups in Starfleet at all? Like, Starfleet isn't so strapped that they can't boot people from their ranks.
Because Starfleet is the military. Guy studying astophysics? Put him in power distribution and forget about him. Because he is not interested in going on an away mission he would have been discharged however. Guy wants to study gaseous anomalies? Put on a warship because it needs crew. We lost a bunch of people to the borg after all.
But defining a fuck up can also be luck of the draw. Look at the short Trek where the new captain showed up and threw out a biologist to study climate, then never spoke to him again. If he never touched a tribble she would have dumped him from her ship to anywhere else to get someone she liked. He will stop caring and get posted to an outskirt till he quits. Making room for the next person HR wants to pressure to quit. That way "They were idiots" and not "We are elitists with cliques".
The Dominion War canonically does account for a lot of this. Even Nog remarked that Starfleet was getting desperate when they promoted him over on DS9.
This does however illustrate once again how bizarre it is that Starfleet ships are so poorly automated when the capability is shown to exist. Scotty got the Enterprise to fly in The Search For Spock with like six people. And yes, it broke, but in fairness, the Enterprise was also still rocking a lot of its battle damage from The Wrath of Khan. And actually, both on ENT with Phlox and VOY with Seven and the Doctor, we see that these ships fly just fine with one or two people.
Janeway does make the point to Seven in one episode that the point of having a crew is that humans want to explore space themselves otherwise we would have ''built a fleet of probes''. And fine, that is a legit point... but I still think that once we have reached the point of ''giving Homer Simpson a job'' we really need to rethink just how many people we need on this ship. PIC introduces Emergency All-Purpose Holograms which is about one of the only things that I like about that show.
And how do these people even make it through the Academy? The savant version from TNG has probably been retconned, but the one from DS9 still seems to be pretty tough. It let Red Squad through but that wasn't a lack of ability that they fucked up.
How do they make it through the academy? They are in a college with uniforms. Not a holy crucible to burn away the weak. Not every cadet ends up on the command path out of the academy. Many could fold clothes to pass inspection and pass tests to meet requirements. Military training gets you the basics. That is why Air Force enlisted get 'Basic', then to tech school for your assigned job. Even then you come out of those classes as an 'apprentice' level. It takes years of doing the job to achieve the 5 level which is considered 'journeyman' level of skill.
And many begin to screw up from the transition from hard discipline of Boot/Basic to the more relaxed atmosphere of tech school.
All this said, I think you do not get many if any of Bashir's father through the academy. They will lose interest in the effort before then. But I have met more than a few college students that could pass tests. I think the social issues that are glossed over are what turn some of the officers bad.
My take is the difference between the officers of Star fleet that are supposed to be super elite and the people you need to scrub the replicator valves.
O'Brien isn't the only Enlisted.
There's also that guy who signed up despite being part Romulan.
This is one of the single dumbest parts of Starfleet and while I can defend a lot, I can't defend this. The ship that is all officers. Look, it's fine our main cast are, but is EVERYONE an officer? EVERY SINGLE ONE! When even Tom Paris, a convicted criminal tossed out of the academy, is made an officer and not an enlisted man... like, why? The Enterprise is a ship of officers bothering other officers to do the work enlisted people would but their's 10 people in Starfleet who aren't an officer. Hell here's the question we gotta ask... why IS O'Brien an enlisted man and not just an officer if everyone is? Given his skills and intellect and personality, I think he'd be a captain or Admiral! The guy should be RUNNING Starfleet engineering, and instead cause he never finished academy work, he was a mere transporter chief on Enterprise... the most worthless job ever.
Sisko was right to get him off that ship, sure DS9 was a piece of shit, but O'Brien FIXED IT! That's how good an engineer he is, that he turned that weird frisbee into a mega station in less than 7 years and with no real supplies or help and a lot, and I mean a lot, of Sisko and Kira bitching in his ear 24/7 to fix the next damn broken thing cause DS9 has 5 engineers.
Science Fiction is a genre where anything can happen. Just make sure what happens is enjoyable for yourself and your audience.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 12:22 am
I really don't want Starbase 80 being "Cerritos 2.0."
It should be filled with genuine fuck ups and not good hearted people.
Why have fuck ups in Starfleet at all? Like, Starfleet isn't so strapped that they can't boot people from their ranks.
Because Starfleet is the military. Guy studying astophysics? Put him in power distribution and forget about him. Because he is not interested in going on an away mission he would have been discharged however. Guy wants to study gaseous anomalies? Put on a warship because it needs crew. We lost a bunch of people to the borg after all.
But defining a fuck up can also be luck of the draw. Look at the short Trek where the new captain showed up and threw out a biologist to study climate, then never spoke to him again. If he never touched a tribble she would have dumped him from her ship to anywhere else to get someone she liked. He will stop caring and get posted to an outskirt till he quits. Making room for the next person HR wants to pressure to quit. That way "They were idiots" and not "We are elitists with cliques".
The Dominion War canonically does account for a lot of this. Even Nog remarked that Starfleet was getting desperate when they promoted him over on DS9.
This does however illustrate once again how bizarre it is that Starfleet ships are so poorly automated when the capability is shown to exist. Scotty got the Enterprise to fly in The Search For Spock with like six people. And yes, it broke, but in fairness, the Enterprise was also still rocking a lot of its battle damage from The Wrath of Khan. And actually, both on ENT with Phlox and VOY with Seven and the Doctor, we see that these ships fly just fine with one or two people.
Janeway does make the point to Seven in one episode that the point of having a crew is that humans want to explore space themselves otherwise we would have ''built a fleet of probes''. And fine, that is a legit point... but I still think that once we have reached the point of ''giving Homer Simpson a job'' we really need to rethink just how many people we need on this ship. PIC introduces Emergency All-Purpose Holograms which is about one of the only things that I like about that show.
And how do these people even make it through the Academy? The savant version from TNG has probably been retconned, but the one from DS9 still seems to be pretty tough. It let Red Squad through but that wasn't a lack of ability that they fucked up.
Too be fair, that's a simple A to B situation in flying. The point of these ships is exploration, science, evac, medical, and more. A skeleton crew can run it, but for how long before they break down, and can ONLY just run it. Flying the ship is probably easy, as long as its a straight line. It's when it stops being that you need a Helsman.
Science Fiction is a genre where anything can happen. Just make sure what happens is enjoyable for yourself and your audience.
Nobody700 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2024 10:42 pm
This is one of the single dumbest parts of Starfleet and while I can defend a lot, I can't defend this. The ship that is all officers. Look, it's fine our main cast are, but is EVERYONE an officer? EVERY SINGLE ONE! When even Tom Paris, a convicted criminal tossed out of the academy, is made an officer and not an enlisted man... like, why? The Enterprise is a ship of officers bothering other officers to do the work enlisted people would but their's 10 people in Starfleet who aren't an officer. Hell here's the question we gotta ask... why IS O'Brien an enlisted man and not just an officer if everyone is? Given his skills and intellect and personality, I think he'd be a captain or Admiral! The guy should be RUNNING Starfleet engineering, and instead cause he never finished academy work, he was a mere transporter chief on Enterprise... the most worthless job ever.
Sisko was right to get him off that ship, sure DS9 was a piece of shit, but O'Brien FIXED IT! That's how good an engineer he is, that he turned that weird frisbee into a mega station in less than 7 years and with no real supplies or help and a lot, and I mean a lot, of Sisko and Kira bitching in his ear 24/7 to fix the next damn broken thing cause DS9 has 5 engineers.
In general I agree with you. But lets argue it out.
Back in WW2 having a degree, any degree meant you were automatically an officer. When I was in enlisted were getting degrees. Late 80's very early 90's for reference. I have a younger friend who went to college and got a degree. Applied for the navy and was told a bachelors and even a masters degree does not get you an automatic officer spot now. Didn't even get him an extra stripe out of boot camp.
Why is this pertinent? No one acts like Miles O'Brien is less than any officer. In fact some of the people he commands on DS9 are ensigns. Today's military a butterbar still technically out ranks the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. By purely ranks scales. But what if it means something different in Starfleet because education is so readily available?
Worf's father was enlisted but I swear he was chief engineer on a starship. What if this means he was just not an Academy trained officer and the distinction is tradition not actual ranking?
It's a minor thing about this episode, but I like how Mariner appears to be making peace with the fact that she's a complete nerd too. She's not hiding it anymore.
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
Nobody700 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2024 10:42 pm
This is one of the single dumbest parts of Starfleet and while I can defend a lot, I can't defend this. The ship that is all officers. Look, it's fine our main cast are, but is EVERYONE an officer? EVERY SINGLE ONE! When even Tom Paris, a convicted criminal tossed out of the academy, is made an officer and not an enlisted man... like, why? The Enterprise is a ship of officers bothering other officers to do the work enlisted people would but their's 10 people in Starfleet who aren't an officer. Hell here's the question we gotta ask... why IS O'Brien an enlisted man and not just an officer if everyone is? Given his skills and intellect and personality, I think he'd be a captain or Admiral! The guy should be RUNNING Starfleet engineering, and instead cause he never finished academy work, he was a mere transporter chief on Enterprise... the most worthless job ever.
Sisko was right to get him off that ship, sure DS9 was a piece of shit, but O'Brien FIXED IT! That's how good an engineer he is, that he turned that weird frisbee into a mega station in less than 7 years and with no real supplies or help and a lot, and I mean a lot, of Sisko and Kira bitching in his ear 24/7 to fix the next damn broken thing cause DS9 has 5 engineers.
In general I agree with you. But lets argue it out.
Back in WW2 having a degree, any degree meant you were automatically an officer. When I was in enlisted were getting degrees. Late 80's very early 90's for reference. I have a younger friend who went to college and got a degree. Applied for the navy and was told a bachelors and even a masters degree does not get you an automatic officer spot now. Didn't even get him an extra stripe out of boot camp.
Why is this pertinent? No one acts like Miles O'Brien is less than any officer. In fact some of the people he commands on DS9 are ensigns. Today's military a butterbar still technically out ranks the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. By purely ranks scales. But what if it means something different in Starfleet because education is so readily available?
Worf's father was enlisted but I swear he was chief engineer on a starship. What if this means he was just not an Academy trained officer and the distinction is tradition not actual ranking?
A lot of this probably can be blamed on Roddenberry. An interesting chap, being a USAF man he didn't seem to know much about the Navy.
For example, he seemed to think that ''Commodore'' was still a navy rank even though according to Wiki the last two were in the 1880s and was even then only ever awarded in wartime.
He also reduced the highly regarded and historically important role of Yeoman into ''the Captain's Secretary.'' And tbh, it is not necessarily a bad thing that there is someone making sure that the captain has someone who is making sure that he is fed and watered during a high pressure situation - i just do not think that ''Yeoman'' was the best title for her.
Anyway, that aside, Starfleet ranks clearly have no real world analogue beyond their names. I do not know if this is really how it works or not - but my gut is telling me that ENSIGN Kim had no place being fifth(?) in command of Voyager. Then there is that ludicrous scene in ''Twisted'' where he is ordering around senior grade lieutenants.
Nobody700 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2024 10:42 pm
This is one of the single dumbest parts of Starfleet and while I can defend a lot, I can't defend this. The ship that is all officers. Look, it's fine our main cast are, but is EVERYONE an officer? EVERY SINGLE ONE! When even Tom Paris, a convicted criminal tossed out of the academy, is made an officer and not an enlisted man... like, why? The Enterprise is a ship of officers bothering other officers to do the work enlisted people would but their's 10 people in Starfleet who aren't an officer. Hell here's the question we gotta ask... why IS O'Brien an enlisted man and not just an officer if everyone is? Given his skills and intellect and personality, I think he'd be a captain or Admiral! The guy should be RUNNING Starfleet engineering, and instead cause he never finished academy work, he was a mere transporter chief on Enterprise... the most worthless job ever.
Sisko was right to get him off that ship, sure DS9 was a piece of shit, but O'Brien FIXED IT! That's how good an engineer he is, that he turned that weird frisbee into a mega station in less than 7 years and with no real supplies or help and a lot, and I mean a lot, of Sisko and Kira bitching in his ear 24/7 to fix the next damn broken thing cause DS9 has 5 engineers.
In general I agree with you. But lets argue it out.
Back in WW2 having a degree, any degree meant you were automatically an officer. When I was in enlisted were getting degrees. Late 80's very early 90's for reference. I have a younger friend who went to college and got a degree. Applied for the navy and was told a bachelors and even a masters degree does not get you an automatic officer spot now. Didn't even get him an extra stripe out of boot camp.
Why is this pertinent? No one acts like Miles O'Brien is less than any officer. In fact some of the people he commands on DS9 are ensigns. Today's military a butterbar still technically out ranks the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. By purely ranks scales. But what if it means something different in Starfleet because education is so readily available?
Worf's father was enlisted but I swear he was chief engineer on a starship. What if this means he was just not an Academy trained officer and the distinction is tradition not actual ranking?
A lot of this probably can be blamed on Roddenberry. An interesting chap, being a USAF man he didn't seem to know much about the Navy.
For example, he seemed to think that ''Commodore'' was still a navy rank even though according to Wiki the last two were in the 1880s and was even then only ever awarded in wartime.
He also reduced the highly regarded and historically important role of Yeoman into ''the Captain's Secretary.'' And tbh, it is not necessarily a bad thing that there is someone making sure that the captain has someone who is making sure that he is fed and watered during a high pressure situation - i just do not think that ''Yeoman'' was the best title for her.
Anyway, that aside, Starfleet ranks clearly have no real world analogue beyond their names. I do not know if this is really how it works or not - but my gut is telling me that ENSIGN Kim had no place being fifth(?) in command of Voyager. Then there is that ludicrous scene in ''Twisted'' where he is ordering around senior grade lieutenants.
LEt's be honest if the show keep going, Kim would have to take orders from Naomi Wildman.
