TNG - Best of Both Worlds

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

A new video has been uploaded to Youtube.

You can watch it, here.

Part 2 can be found here

[Artabax]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t175.php episode 2

Status quo is God. This is Ryker banging on the 4th Wall, hey Audience watch status quo being god. In regular Navy, it is common for 2nd in command to be promoted to Captain of their own ship. TPTB could have just ignored this, but, no, they have to make a big deal of Ryker it's all about me refusing promotion.

Season end Cliff-hangers, so cheap. we hates it forever. If they entertain us, we will watch next Season. Not good enough for TPTB. They think we will only watch if there is a Cliff-hanger.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yes that's the actual review, but what I posted was the mini review.

[Beastro]

In regular Navy, it is common for 2nd in command to be promoted to Captain of their own ship. TPTB could have just ignored this, but, no, they have to make a big deal of Ryker it's all about me refusing promotion.

It ignores the practical reaction to someone effectively destroying their career and climb up the ladder of seniority: A person like that would be reassigned to some ass end assignment with no further prospects offered to them in any way because such a choice both hurts the navy and hurts that person.

A big issue that always pissed me off in Trek is the assumption that officers could have their choice of where they want to be, and if someone like Kirk is happy being a captain of a starship, he could refuse promotion and just keep puttering around space without consequence. It effectively means throwing a wrench into the gears of the machine that is Star Trek preventing a new up coming CO from taking over from him while depriving Star Fleet of someone with command experience to at the very least come back home and help train others even if he's not worth flag rank and greater assignments as an admiral.

[TGLS]

It's pretty clear there is no such thing as Up or Out in Starfleet, otherwise the whole cast save Crusher, Troi and Picard would have been promoted at least once in the whole series, and Barclay would have never appeared as he would have been bounced out before he got his act together.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Military brahs I didn't want to mansplain the chain of command or anything, but, wouldn't something like The Enterprise as the flagship vessel be a little more static in roster? Firstly I don't see it as something Starfleet would want to put an "up and coming" officer in the captain's chair of.

[Madner Kami]

Military brahs I didn't want to mansplain the chain of command or anything, but, wouldn't something like The Enterprise as the flagship vessel be a little more static in roster? Firstly I don't see it as something Starfleet would want to put an "up and coming" officer in the captain's chair of.

First misconception is, that a flagship or, as it is somehow always done in Star Trek for some reason, the flagship is a dedicated ship. It is not. A flagship is the ship that the commander of a fleet (and this is not a fleet as in the fleet, but fleet as a sub-unit of a military navy) chooses as his command ship or rather, whatever ship the commander of a fleet is currently performing his duty from. This can be the biggest battleship or the crappiest torpedo boat, it does not matter. Flagship is a designation showing where the CO of a fleet is working from (indicated by the CO raising his flag, hence flagship), not a ship "type".

Second misconception is, that the captain, the command staff or the crew of a flagship is something special. They are not. As said above, literally any ship can be a flagship and as such, any captain could be captaining the flagship and any crew could be crewing the flagship. Except for one detail: the captain of the flagship still has the commander of the fleet (and his staff) present on his ship. And that is pretty much all there is to being the captain of the flagship and only of the flagship, because anyone commanding more than one ship is either a commodore or an admiral and as such, a fleet commander (although it's a bit more complex in the case of the commodore, but that's a different thing to talk about).

For obvious reasons, flagships tend to be the more representative ships of the fleet, often the bigger elements, due to their ability to house the staff and have the necessary command and control equipment for essentially being the fleet's mobile headquarter. But beyond that, they are still just ships of their navy and as such subject to the rules and customs of their navy. Now the specifics differ from nation to nation, but they equally apply to everyone, regardless of their station.

Funnily enough, we almost never see Enterprise-D performing as flagship. If I recall right, she's the flagship exactly three times. Once during the Klingon Civil War, where Picard commands the fleet blocking the Klingon-Romulan border. Once during the Cardassian Crisis under the command of Jellico. And once in Star Trek: First Contact. Outside of these three instances, Enterprise is never a flagship.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Military brahs I didn't want to mansplain the chain of command or anything, but, wouldn't something like The Enterprise as the flagship vessel be a little more static in roster? Firstly I don't see it as something Starfleet would want to put an "up and coming" officer in the captain's chair of.

...the captain of the flagship still has the commander of the fleet (and his staff) present on his ship. And that is pretty much all there is to being the captain of the flagship and only of the flagship, because anyone commanding more than one ship is either a commodore or an admiral and as such, a fleet commander (although it's a bit more complex in the case of the commodore, but that's a different thing to talk about).

...

Funnily enough, we almost never see Enterprise-D performing as flagship. If I recall right, she's the flagship exactly three times. Once during the Klingon Civil War, where Picard commands the fleet blocking the Klingon-Romulan border. Once during the Cardassian Crisis under the command of Jellico. And once in Star Trek: First Contact. Outside of these three instances, Enterprise is never a flagship.

What about ST I-IV when Kirk is admiral?

[Madner Kami]

Kirk never commands more vessels than just Enterprise in any of these movies. As said, a flagship is a ship of a given fleet, where the commanding officer for that fleet is currently stationed (raises his flag). So Enterprise is not a flagship in any of these cases.

[Yukaphile]

It's a flagship in the sense that, as the Borg commented, it's "the strongest ship," the flag-bearer of the nation and its power structure and mission and goal and interests.