Number Two: Difference between revisions

* In [[Rick Cook]]'s ''[[Limbo System]]'', Iron Alice [[De Rosa]]. She often serves as a sounding board for the captain.

 

* Spock is Kirk's Number Two on ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'', and Riker is Picard's Number Two on ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|The Next Generation]]''. Though he, and other ''[[Star Trek]]'' seconds-in-command, are referred to as "Number One", this is because their title is First Officer (i.e., the number one ranking officer after the captain). They're still second in command. As we see (such as in the original [[Lower Deck Episode]], "[[Trope Namer|Lower Decks]]"), aboard Starfleet vessels the first officer is very much the authority figure to the crew: setting watch schedules, disciplining the crew, et cetera.

** In one episode of [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|TNG]], "Conundrum", the crew had their memories altered by an energy pulse, while at the same time the alien responsible took on human form and transported onboard the ''Enterprise''. According to the temporary [[External Retcon]], the alien was Commander MacDuff, First Officer, second-in-command, and "Number One" as Picard called him. Meanwhile, Riker, though he had the same rank, was Second Officer.

** In the first [[Pilot]] of the original series ''The Cage''/''The Menagerie'', Majel Barrett played Captain Pike's cold emotionless "Number One", who was referred to by [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|no other name]]. [[Executive Meddling|Some]] didn't like the actress, or the idea of a woman in authority, so the character was dropped for the second pilot and series, and her unemotional nature was added to Spock's characterisation. (Gene Roddenberry snuck the actress, Majel Barrett—his girlfriend and later wife—back into the series later in a [[Wig, Dress, Accent|blonde wig]] as Nurse Chapel, a safely traditional and subordinate female role.)

*** One of the earlier (and of dubious canon) [[Star Trek]] novels indicated that "Number One" [[His Name Really Is "Barkeep"|happened to be her actual name]], with her siblings being [[Numerical Theme Naming|named in sequence.]]

* Leo McGarry on ''[[The West Wing]]'', the [[Our Presidents Are Different|President's]] Chief-Of-Staff. Since Vice-Presidents are only used as a political tactic in the U.S., they usually don't actually have much to do with running the country, and in practice, the only thing that makes Leo a slight subversion of the Number Two is that he can't ascend to President upon death or disability. [[Man Behind the Man|Legally and in public, that is...]]

** This leads to a few problems in season 2: when the President is shot and rushed into surgery everyone reflexively takes their orders from Leo until Bartlet's concious again. Then the dust settles and people start pointing out that, legally speaking, ''they can't do that''.