The Wounded (TNG)

[Crowley]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t186.php

I'm having a hard time making sense out of O'Brien's earlier service under Maxwell. He was a bridge officer (let's overlook that he's not an actual officer), and then he went from that to a transporter operator on the Enterprise. Yes, it's the flagship of the Federation, but isn't that still a rather bizarre career path? Also, he was the ship's tactical officer. I thought his specialization was engineering? Not only that, but this episode also reveals that he was mortified at killing another sentient being for the first time, which happened when he was serving there. A tactical officer who's horrified at killing someone, even in self-defense? Bwahuh?

[raiken_]

I don't know how his career path worked, but O'Brien was red shirt bridge crew in the first season of TNG (conn position? I don't remember). At one point in "All Good Things ..." when Picard is in the Farpoint era he tell's O'Brien to set up something in Engineering, who hesitated since it was out of his field. Parts in DS9 ("Empok Nor") talk about him as a soldier; guess he started in that field and moved over after transferring to Enterprise.

His position on DS9 was Chief of Operations, but the show treated it mostly as the Chief Engineer position. Was there more to his job? Was this just the position title for a station, as it didn't really have an Engineering to require a Chief? Was it because he was a non-com? Was it just too much fun to call him Chief on TNG and they wanted to keep the name?

[Admiral X]

He might have been a tactical officer because of some kind of field commission. Often brevet ranks are taken back after the war/conflict is over. I think the writers liked the idea of calling him "chief." If you notice, on TNG and early DS9, they actually have varying officer pips on his collar until they finally gave him that cool embroidered one. I also think they liked the idea of him being in charge of engineering, but apparently forgot that as an NCO, he couldn't actually have commissioned officers serving under him as his staff. Of course, they repeated that mistake in "Valiant," even though initially they actually had Waters (or whatever his name was) refer to Nog as "sir."

[MissKittyFantastico]

It's weird, yeah. Pretty obviously it arises mainly from them having a story (this episode) they wanted to tell, and giving it to Colm Meaney because he had the acting chops to sell the heck out of it, regardless of any continuity issues it may cause; since this is the episode that got me hooked on TNG (and probably explains why I took to DS9 like a tribble to grain when it rolled around) I can't think too harshly of the decision.

There's not much in the way of evidence for it, but I like to imagine O'Brien's role as transporter chief was really a head-of-department kind of deal - he's the boss of all the transporter operators and transporter techs on the ship, makes sure they're trained and up to date, is responsible (under Geordi) for all transporter hardware, is in routine contact with the Daystrom Institute and wherever else is doing R&D on faster better ways to dismantle people and fling them across the void, oversees all the weird and wacky things they have to do to beam people and things around in ion storms and plasma whatevers and all that... It seems like all he does is stand in Transporter Room 3 moving the little light bars up and down because we follow the senior staff, and the senior staff get beamed by the chief personally, by the same token as when Riker sprains his ankle the CMO fixes it or when Picard spills Earl Grey on his desktop terminal Geordi takes the service call personally. In my mind the move to Ops Chief on DS9 wasn't so much a whole different kind of role - he already was head of an engineering crew - just a matter of his job on DS9 being all the systems, not just one of them. So by the same token, it could be seen as a move up to go from bridge officer on a small ship - an important role for that ship, sure, but there's one like him on every ship - to a department chief on the flagship.

(As for the difference between Chief Engineer and Chief of Operations, I suppose if one wanted to be literal you could say that DS9 didn't have 'engines', so 'chief engineer' isn't quite the right term. Certainly it didn't have anything equivalent to main engineering as we're used to seeing on Starships, an engineering command centre O'Brien could've worked out of - maybe Cardassians want to keep their senior staff where they can see them, and only provide stations for the coal-shovellers down near the reactors. Maybe it'd be the same on a Federation Starbase as well - it seems like 'senior tech guy' of a starbase would be quite different to a starship, what with not having to worry about warp speed but having to worry about all the visiting ships coming and going, so maybe it's a different title to reflect that.)

[Durandal_1707]

He might have been a tactical officer because of some kind of field commission. Often brevet ranks are taken back after the war/conflict is over. I think the writers liked the idea of calling him "chief."

But Chief Petty Officer is a real non-commissioned rank, though. They could have kept on calling him "chief" no matter what position they put him in.

[Admiral X]

Uh, yeah. I think you missed the point of what I said there, which was in reference to the rank pips and how he was treated by the show, which is to say not terribly consistent with him being an NCO.

[Revolverman]

Do we ever see another Chief Petty Officer in Star Trek? Perhaps in Starfleet its a special rank given to Enlisted to give them officer rights and powers because there isn't an official way to jump someone from enlisted to commissioned?


Of course, then that begs a second question. Is there ever been someone else in Starfleet besides O'Brien that WAS enlisted and commissioned?

[MissKittyFantastico]

Did DS9 have actual officers on O'Brien's staff, though? I'm sure Muniz, the guy who died in 'The Ship', was a 'crewman' not an ensign, and most of the other helpers I recall O'Brien having were Bajoran techs who plausibly could've been assigned temporary Starfleet enlisted ranks while they were on DS9. (Assuming Starfleet needed them to have a rank, they seemed to just let the station wing it so far as command structure goes - Kira having authority over Starfleet officers even though she wasn't actually given a Starfleet rank until season seven, and so on. Never mind whatever regulations were supposedly governing Odo's position, or not. But so far as I recall they did, at least, stick to O'Brien not ordering around 'sirs', and just had the officers deferring to his recommendations rather than obliged by rank to obey.)

[Admiral X]

Worf's adoptive father claimed to have been one (the "I used to work for a living" comment in TNG's episode "Family").

As for the special rank you're talking about, that'd be the field commission I talked about. Back in ye olde days, brevet ranks were often handed out as the need arose during time of war, which gave that person the right to wear the insignia and the authority that went with it, but not the pay. Then afterwards, they were reduced to whatever rank they had been before. This is the only way O'Brien could have been a tactical officer during this war with Cardassia that they never really nailed down a time-frame for and then ended up as an NCO later on.

And yes they did have officers on O'Brien's staff. One example I can remember is in that episode where he'd had a Manchurian candidate clone made of himself, and I'm sure there were more examples I just can't remember off the top of my head.

As for Kira and other Bajorans being included in the command structure, it's probably some agreement worked out between the Federation and Bajor, and probably only applies to anything the Bajorans have control over. Strictly speaking, DS9 is their station, and Starfleet is only there to help them administer it. A real-world example I can think of would be how the Allies worked together during WWII, though there were plenty of examples of that breaking down.

[Durandal_1707]

Uh, yeah. I think you missed the point of what I said there, which was in reference to the rank pips and how he was treated by the show, which is to say not terribly consistent with him being an NCO.

The question being asked was why O'Brien's job was called "Chief of Operations", and whether that was just so they could keep calling him Chief. I was just pointing out that as an NCO (which I do believe the writers had settled on by the time O'Brien became a regular on DS9), they could have continued to call him "Chief" even if his job title had been called "Abuse Receptacle Officer" or something.