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

* 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.