Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

Now "Tapestry" is a great episode, but one thing has always annoyed me. After Q has given Picard the chance to undo his fateful fight with the Nausicaans, and fast-forwards Picard to his present day, Picard discovers that he's a blueshirt Lieutenant JG. He asks Riker and Troi to let him transfer to Engineering in the hopes that it would lead to command. Let's compare the likelihood of getting to Command by way of the Science and Engineering departments:

* Science officer is Spock. He's also first officer and is left in command all the time. At the beginning of ST II he's captain of the Enterprise and he retains his rank of captain throughout the rest of the film franchise.

* Engineer is Scotty. He's next in line behind Spock and periodically takes command when Kirk and Spock are both indisposed. Of course, sometimes they pass him over: In "Errand of Mercy" Kirk gave command to Sulu, and in "Menagerie" Spock (who had ousted Kirk temporarily) put some random extra in command. Scotty eventually retires as a captain but never commands a ship, and in his final appearance in in-universe chronology, "Relics," he and Geordi are on the ''Jenolan,'' where, in the absence of any non-engineers, they fight over who will ''not'' take command. ''Captain'' Scotty pulls rank and ''orders'' Geordi to sit in the big chair.

* There's no science officer. The closest they have is Data. He's second officer and is seen sitting in the captain's chair all the time. When Riker's off the ship, as in "Peak Performance," he becomes first officer, even though he got passed over for that job in "Best of Both Worlds" when Riker was captain. In "Redemption" he's given temporary command of another ship, and in "Gambit" he's acting captain of the ''Enterprise.'' In ''Nemesis'' he was going to get promoted to full-time first officer after Riker left, but he got killed instead.

** Data is, in fact, Chief Science Officer as well as Chief Operations Officer. That's official. The fact that he doesn't sleep and has unparalleled multitasking skills allows for this. Judging from some of the other Ops officers that have made captain (Harry Kim included since he does so in multiple timelines), Operations is apparently a decent path to command since it does effectively involve managing many of the day-to-day goings on of the ship.

* In the first season there's a revolving door of chief engineers. At this time Geordi is the helmsman, and it is in this capacity that we get what I believe is the only shot of him in the captain's chair ("Angel One"). In "Peak Performance" Riker promotes Worf over his head as temporary first officer of the ''Hathaway.'' In "Best of Both Worlds" he was never considered for first officer despite the fact that Worf, whom he outranks, was. In "Redemption" he gets to be temporary first officer of the ''Excalibur,'' no doubt because Worf is otherwise occupied. But in "Gambit," Worf is back and Geordi's best friend picks Worf over him as acting first officer despite the fact that Geordi still outranks him and, what's much worse, that Worf is openly disrespectful and insubordinate, at least as bad as Data's other first officer from "Redemption." The only other time Geordi commands a ship is in "Relics" when he lost the fight ''not'' to command the ''Jenolan'' to Scotty.

** In the ''Gambit'' example, Worf ''was'' the highest ranking full-time bridge officer behind Data. His reasoning (no doubt drawn verbatim from some Starfleet regulation) was likely that Geordi was more valuable in Engineering than on the bridge. Even so, Data is willing to suffer losing Geordi's expertise in Engineering to replace Worf if he doesn't shape up, which is a pretty clear illustration of just how insubordinate he was acting.

** You forgot about that Voyager episode where he's captain of a Galaxy-class starship. Of course, that's in one of those timelines that never happened.

* The science officer is Jadzia. She's left in command of the station fairly regularly and also captains the ''Defiant'' for certain missions. At the beginning of Season 6, when the station is occupied, she's Sisko's full-time first officer on the ''Defiant'' until Ross transfers Sisko to his staff, at which time Jadzia becomes the captain.

** Jadzia is considered to have large amounts of seniority despite her (relatively) low rank. This would naturally affect how often she is placed in command.

** O'Brien is not technically an officer, but his status as a Chief with large amounts of seniority clearly places him at a certain place in the chain of command. While he's technically the lowest-ranked person in the room at any given moment, it's pretty clear that no one except Sisko or his acting XO would ''dream'' of giving him an order (at least with any hope of having him just merrily follow it), and that in fact in the event of the first two or three members of the command crew becoming incapacitated, he probably ''would'' be put in command (at least in a combat situation).

* There is no science officer on the ''Voyager'' crew. However, we know from Janeway's backstory that she used to be a science officer and that, like Spock, she was promoted to captain and transferred directly from Science to Command.

** The ''Voyager'' is a "fast escort"... while like all Starfleet vessels it has science facilities, it may not have rated an entire science division, placing the sciences under Engineering or Ops instead. Either that or the CSO died when the Caretaker yanked them into the Delta Quadrant and Janeway simply didn't have any particularly qualified staffmember to replace them with, or didn't bother due to the shifted priorities of their mission. (Meaning, when they did sidetrack for science, she probably filled in as CSO.) It's implied that in later seasons, Seven became the defacto leader of the science department.

** Torres is technically not a Starfleet officer, despite being part of the command staff, and out of said command staff only she and Chakotay are Maquis. Chakotay is also technically not a Starfleet officer, but previously held a commission and is XO, meaning that he ''has'' to be allowed to take the conn. Even if B'Elanna's status as a provisional/Maquis officer didn't disqualify her from taking the conn, any situation that so heavily decimated the command staff would probably require her to be busting her ass in Engineering to keep the ship from exploding anyway. Besides, she was elevated to the command staff and a department head purely on merit of her engineering skills... she has neither the training or mindset to command a ship, meaning that even an ensign who'd actually completed their Academy courses would be more suitable than her.

* Science was T'Pol and engineering was Tucker. Tucker was originally going to be first officer but once T'Pol came aboard everyone thought better of it: Better a bitch than a blithering idiot. Actually, they both got plenty of time in Archer's chair, and both served as Acting Captain at different points. In "Twilight," both were made captain of the ''Enterprise'' by Starfleet, though that episode never happened. Still, T'Pol was senior to Tucker, despite not being in Starfleet for the first three seasons, and holding the same rank as Tucker but junior to him in terms of time served in the fourth.

Blueshirt Picard also suggested that he might want to transfer to Security and get to Command that way. In "The Search" Eddington whined that security officers didn't get to become captains, but that's not true. Sulu was a security officer who became captain of the ''Excelsior.'' Worf transferred from Security to Command, and though he never got a permanent command of his own, he was deeply involved in command decisions and responsibilities. Tuvok, same story, except he would have become first officer if Chakotay (whom I believe was in Security before defecting to the Maquis) hadn't been there. Reed was pretty high up on the NX-01 food chain, even forcing Major Hayes to take his orders despite the fact that a major outranks a naval lieutenant.

== Warbirds ==