Star Trek (DS9): Valiant

[Jedi Commisar]

(And speaking of Data, it's only made more ridiculous by the sheer number of times he proved himself to be a serious security risk, yet he's still maintained not only as crew, but in a position of authority. One wonders what the heck Tom Paris could ever have done to end up in PRISON.)

Obviously during the best Starfleet Captain debate he said Archer, Duh

[Dînadan]

(And speaking of Data, it's only made more ridiculous by the sheer number of times he proved himself to be a serious security risk, yet he's still maintained not only as crew, but in a position of authority. One wonders what the heck Tom Paris could ever have done to end up in PRISON.)

Obviously during the best Starfleet Captain debate he said Archer, Duh

Nah, remember it was a prison for savants - obviously the crime was competency; can't have competent people running around showing us normal fuckups up.

;p

[Fixer]

The entire point of being a Starfleet Admiral is to give orders so badly thought out and illogical that a Starship's Captain and Crew can appear more heroic by having disobeyed them.

They have a proud tradition of incompetence and insanity that stretches back generations.

Why else do you think Janeway was promoted over Picard?

The savant's prison is there to keep anyone competent from poisoning the well.

[Admiral X]

One other little niggle I don't see much of in Starfleet is an NCO corps..

Its funny you bring that up, as in another thread, there was a big debate on what the NCO ranks meant in Starfleet, as O'Brian had Ensigns (and I think a few times, a Lieutenant as underlings. Which is its own can of worms.

I think that had more to do with lack of understanding on the part of the writing staff. O'Brien never had consistent rank pips early on in TNG, and later on they seemed to settle on what looked like full lieutenant pips, and his title was "chief" seemingly because of his occupation as "transporter chief." Then in DS9, they started him out with a single hollow pip, and didn't give him an embroidered rank until later on. I suspect that just as in TNG, he was called "chief" based on his title with a rather nebulous idea of what his rank actually was. But as far as in the writing, he was effectively treated like the chief engineer of both the station and the Defiant, and it seemed to me like the writers didn't really understand what the ranks meant, and they kept using generic ensigns whenever they needed some no name crew member for O'Brien to give orders to, like basically every other main character.

[Mickey_Rat15]

...it seemed to me like the writers didn't really understand what the ranks meant, and they kept using generic ensigns whenever they needed some no name crew member for O'Brien to give orders to, like basically every other main character.

I suspect that is simply because they had any number of spare officer rank pips to go around for bit parts, but O'Brien himself had one of the few enlisted rank insignia they made. They tried to spare the prop department figuring only nitpickers like us would be bothered by it.

[TGLS]

You know, if I were running TNG, I would have had O'Brien's pips constantly change, even during the same episode. One shot he'd be a Lieutenant (Junior Grade), next shot he'd be a Vice-Admiral, next shot Lieutenant Commander, next shot Five-Pips three black, two full.

[Wolf359]

I always assumed that O'Briens position as transporter chief/Chief of Operations/Chief Engineer trumped his actual rank within his own department. So Sisko made him the Chief of Operations of DS9, therefore all the other engineers on the station reported to him, regardless of whether their actual rank was higher than his. Nog always served under O'Brien even though O'Brien himself said that when Nog became an ensign he'd have to call him "sir". Same with Odo being over Primmin and Eddington in matters of station security, despite Odo not being in Starfleet (and not displaying any rank of any kind) and they being a Lieutenant and Lt. Commander respectively.

[Tonesthegeek]

In addition to Nog being green, not confident enough to stand up to Waters and having been enamoured with Red Squad as a cadet, wasn't it established that he'd been promoted to Ensing/graduated early due to Starfleet trying to fill out the ranks quickly? As such that'd enhance the greeness/lack of confidence.

Also, side note on the Waters losing his battlefield promotion when he got home, even though that's what should have happened, unless there was a change in rules between Kirk's era and the TNG era, the 2009 film retroactively implies that he'd have kept that rank and probably that ship (of course that was just as stupid for Kirk to keep his battlefield promotion)

I thought Kirk keeping his commission in ST 2009 was a major and absolutely stupid misstep as well. I think if they went the route chuck had suggested, showing the commendation beginning a montage of Kirk's career, receiving additional medals (the ones we often see stored in his quarters in TOS) rising through the ranks and ultimately receiving his commission as captain of the Enterprise a couple years later.

As for Nog, it's no doubt he still had a lot to learn, but his Ferengi nature does give him an advantage as he has a good memory for citing regulations, his people skills to acquire connections to procure parts and essential items when needed, and a stereotype of his people being cowards that he needed to overcome and prove himself. This episode could have been a great learning experience for him, to understand how big the responsibility of command is and that not everyone is cut out for it. Waters was as Nog said at the end, not a bad person but a bad captain, if Nog had the courage and opportunity to take command, maybe he could have done better, but then maybe he could have failed just as badly. Either way he would ave learned something from it, which is most important for anyone who has their eyes set on the captains chair.

[StrangeDevice]

Captain Nog... There's an image. Given everything he goes through over the series, I can definitely see it. He'd probably make a damn good one too.

[bronnt]

Waters may have had a battlefield commission, but where was his orders giving him authority to wage war on his own as he did? Further, even if he somehow outranked Nog, Nog STILL has his duty to look to as a commissioned officer. He can't just let Waters go off like he does without any orders from on high. What you saw here was an act of piracy on the part of Waters and the cadets of Red Squad. And given that Red Squad is supposed to be this elite corps of cadets, that means that Starfleet does not instill the most important thing necessary for any officer, and that is the Chain of Command.

While this doesn't contradict your point about the lack of professionalism in Starfleet, it's worth pointing that Waters was tenuously following orders up until the decision to go blow up the battlecruiser himself. Starfleet knew that they had a battleship behind enemy lines and assumed that the training officers were still alive and crewing the ship. I'm assuming this means Valiant was able to receive long-range communications but could not reply for fear of giving away their position and Waters was unable to inform Starfleet about the crew's condition.

That does open a whole can of worms, of course. Starfleet is still happy to use a ship crewed mainly by cadets performing a high-risk covert mission. Then again, the war was going poorly enough that Nog, along with many other cadets, was fast-tracked through the academy in order to fill out the officer ranks, so perhaps that didn't matter and all the cadets would have quickly been commissioned when they returned to Federation Space.

But then we get to Waters' decision to violate orders. Let's talk about how stupid it is. You've actually done something extremely vital to the war effort by gathering intel on a new class of battlecruiser deployed by the enemy. Getting that information back to the fleet is infinitely more important than destroying one ship that the enemy can probably duplicate, considering their resources. You're going to risk losing that vital intel in order to attack it, using your own ship which is already battle-damaged and with a depleted crew. And your crew is so obviously green that this Ferengi ensign is infinitely more fit to run the engineering department than anyone you have based solely on his experience spent watching people who know what they're doing.

So that's a deconstruction of the "teen-hero" fantasy. It's actually not that unusual to have a story build where the grown-ups, the experienced professionals, are all killed or disabled and the kid has to take over and save the day. But that's ludicrous because of how impetuous teens can be and you see it here. He wants the glory of blowing something up at the end of his mission because that's how the story should end.